#Men who hate women

[grison-in-space]

I am not particularly interested in a “redemption” narrative for incels. That is a question for those individuals to ponder. We do not implore the victims of other forms of terrorism to absolve and educate their tormentors. Nor do we require that other extremists be acknowledged as some kind of wounded, misunderstood victims. It is ironic that so much pressure is brought to bear on women to allow for the humanity and individuality of fallible men when it is precisely this courtesy that incels unfailingly refuse to pay to women.

But I am interested in the men in between. The boys who fall through the cracks. The “good” men who feel scared. The ones who went looking for help, because they felt frightened or sad or lonely, and haven’t been able to disentangle themselves. The ones who just haven’t heard about any of this yet. The ones who look the other way on the bus. Because we can’t change anything without those men. So how do we reach them?

Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women (2020).

Importantly, she's just spent a lot of time talking about men-led feminist groups that do good work, both in terms of reducing domestic violence and other "traditional" feminist concerns and in terms of providing other narratives, support structures, and information about things that men, like all people, care about: how to keep yourself safe physically and emotionally; how to cope with feeling frightened or uncertain; how to communicate with other people in a world that feels zero sum and frightening.

It's a good, thoughtful discussion of what it means to respond to radicalization in an effective way: you reduce the pain points that funnel people towards radicalized groups, you provide them with positive things to do to help themselves, and you provide empathy to anyone who is willing to provide empathy back to you. But you don't immolate yourself on the altar of healing people who already hate you: you focus on the ones who are easy to help first, the ones who need only a little help, and then you expand.

It's a heavy book, but well worth reading—and not only if you're interested in online misogyny and radicalization. I would recommend the book to anyone with an interest in gender, building a better world, deradicalization, and effectively handling terrorism.

[fem-lit]

In the case of incels, their prime focus is a feverish obsession with sex, and anger at being ‘denied’ it. Yes, this is a community of tens of thousands of men who claim that the world (and, in particular, individual women) is withholding from them the vital human right of getting laid. Amazingly, in the thousands of conversations and endless hours spent discussing their sparse sex lives, alongside lengthy rants about how women are evil, subhuman vessels, it never seems to occur to these men that their hatred of women might be related to their lack of romantic success. In fact, even to suggest such a thing is a banning offence in many incel forums. Instead, incels see themselves as innocent and tragic victims, creating a vivid portrait of a bleak society irreversibly stacked against them.

— Laura Bates (2020) Men Who Hate Women

[leighlew3]

Some light reading…

[1000rh]

We do not, as a rule, talk about male perpetrators of violence against women. We describe a woman as having been raped; we discuss the rates of women sexually assaulted or beaten. We do not speak in terms of men committing rape or being sexual assaulters and violent abusers. That is what makes it so easy to focus on women’s dress, behaviour and choices when we consider sexual violence. [...] When we are forced to confront these men, because high-profile cases hit the headlines, we describe them as ‘beasts’ and ‘monsters’, in order to separate them clearly from those other, ordinary, decent men, among whom we walk every day. We do not count them, quantify them or, in any meaningful sense, study them. In fact, we rarely think about them at all.

– Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women (2020)

[feminist-furby-freak]

hey,

I sometimes watch “The dadvocate” and wondered if you ever were recommended her videos by your male friends/ from YouTube itself? I’m not a feminist outspokenly and sometimes I try to see both sides - I do notice other women are critiqued more harsher than the other sex even when I don’t agree what they’ve done. Wishing you a happy morning or day, thanks for reading 💛

Hey! So I genuinely don't have male friends (I have one gay male friend but other than that I do not talk to men). I just looked up her channel I've never heard of it or gotten it recommended -- is she just some sort of men's rights lady who is like boo hoo dads never get custody and men always kill themselves and all rape accusations are fake? That is what it looks like. I'm always yapping about this book but Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates is really great at unpacking the modern anti-women movement, not just the incels but also the false "fathers' rights" and "men's rights" movements.

[maslows-pyramid-scheme]

I'm reading Laura Bates' Men Who Hate Women and I think Bates is far too willing to believe some men find and join extremist communities because they're shy, socially inept, or unsure how to approach women - I disagree, I think men have to dehumanise women to some extent in order to find/join these communities (and I'd imagine they're getting that base dehumanisation from pornography).

For example, Bates notes that 'pick-up' communities frequently feature racist and homophobic/biphobic ideas about women of colour and lesbian/bisexual women:

Like much of the manosphere, the PUA ['pick up artist'] community presents deeply problematic racist stereotypes, particularly through sweeping generalisations about the 'types' of women in different countries, suggesting that they all conform to dehumanising stereotypes. (Women from a particular European country are sex-crazed; Asian women are submissive to white men; etc.) One well-known pick-up guru's website, for example, offers an 'American Man's Guide to Seducing Oriental Women,' which, after a disclaimer to reassure readers he's not a racist, goes on to promise it can tech men how to 'get all the yellow and pink you can handle' by building their own 'harem of willing, docile, obedient Oriental chicks' ... [featuring topics like] 'how to use your vastly superior knowledge of American culture to appear as god-like superman in her eyes, who she is compelled to obey, serve, and satisfy!' ... Pick-up gurus present damaging and prejudiced stereotypes about lesbians (who are often portrayed as simply not having been 'banged' by the right man yet, thus actively encouraging straight men to harass them) and bisexual women (who are presented as exotic, sexually greedy creatures, whose main reason for existence is to spice up the sex lives of heterosexual men). Some pick-up gurus even capitalise on these stereotypes to the extent of branding themselves 'experts' in bedding such women.

But Bates never addresses the dehumanising wants these communities purportedly address (or use to suck men in): if they're about overcoming shyness, insecurity, or talking to women, then why would men get invested in communities aimed at helping men where (enthusiastic) consent is either entirely absent (for lesbians, who are not sexually attracted to men), or mitigated by coercion (for Asian women, who get reduced down to sex toys; for bisexual women, who get reduced down to a real-life pornographic film)?

[gothicvalentine]

Must watch video compilation. They're coming out and saying they want to go back at least 100 years, before women had rights, one guy said they want to go back to the middle ages and another that things went wrong when "we" stopped burning women at the stake.

Mention was made that they want to make The Handmaid's Tale real--and worse. What the guy means by "and worse" can only be imagined, but considering the actual state sanctioned r*pe in the book and show, it really makes me concerned about them trying to implement forcing women to submit to having sex with (yeah r*ape) men who are not able to get laid, but also feel like they should be able to have sex with supermodels. There's obviously more men than not who will never be able to have sex with super hot women and not all of them can become wealthy enough to make their grossness irrelevant. I've seen articles where it's been stated that some incels have proposed the government "give" them hot women. Like we're nothing more than animals or food.

I know younger people keep complaining that Democrats keep saying that elections are "the most important ever." And I guess it sounds like we're "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

But it's shit like this that has become more and more open and mainstreamed. So much so that every future election may continue to be "the most important." Because at this point, we're just trying to keep America a democracy (or Democratic Republic or whatever the fuck the legal def is).

These people are the enemy of our country and anyone who wants freedom for women, POC, LGBTQIA, men who don't fit their criteria of "manly men," the lower classes, immigrants, disabled people, neurodivergent people--and anyone I may have forgotten. We have to remain vigilant!

Sadly, for anyone who isn't convinced, I think the only thing that would convince them is if we do lose our freedoms, and I, for one, am not willing to let things get that far! It's enraging enough to me that they've rolled back civil rights and Roe despite everything I've been doing to try to at least maintain the status quo. I'll keep fighting though.

Because I may not fit into most of these groups, but just because someone is different from me, does not mean they should not be able to live happy lives, be the person they are and love who they love. All of you who are dissimilar to me are just as important as I am and the law should consider you all as such. When it doesn't, that's when I have a problem with any of those legislators, even if they are in different states. I wish I had billions of dollars so I could at least try to counteract all the douchy billionaires! 😭

[smallsinger5901]

More people need to read this book

[distractedpebble]

I started reading a book called "Men Who Hate Women" by Laura Bates. I'm not even q chapter through it but I can tell this is going to be one of those books that takes me a while to get through because the subject matter is making me physically ill. The part I'm reading is focusing on incels and incel forums and while I know about incels and how hateful they are, I didn't realize just how far they go on those forums.

So far it's a 10/10 book, just incredibly disturbing. Learning about "rapecels" and even a part of the community called "wristcels." Like...what the fuck is this??? Holy shit.

[feralgirlfromatl]

[boldlypaletraveler]

Should be interesting.

- Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates

[fem-lit]

Incels use the metaphor of the red pill to describe the moment a man’s blinkers fall away and he suddenly realises that he has been lied to his whole life. The world that he has been forced to believe works in his favour is actually hopelessly stacked against him. Everything, from our government to our wider society, is designed to promote women over men. The myth of male privilege, so the story goes, is perpetuated by a massive feminist conspiracy. Incels refer to this man-hating world as a ‘gynocracy’, a clever system designed to keep men (the true victims of oppression) in their subordinate place, without them even noticing.

Lost your job? What could be more appealing than a whole new worldview in which it isn’t your fault: you’ve just been the victim of a power grab by women and minorities. Dumped or divorced? That lying bitch is part of a much bigger attack on you and other men like you. Angry that you don’t seem to be lucky in love? It’s not you, it’s her. Every single ‘her’, in fact.

The manosphere […] subverts the narrative of the privileged and the victim altogether. It tells men that they are suffering, and it blames women.

— Laura Bates (2020) Men Who Hate Women

[arisingonmorningsinnocent]

Just finished reading Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates, and as someone who was born in 2001 and grew up on the internet, I think the strangest part of this book is reading Bates' breathless, horrified|fascinated descriptions of... things that are just normal to me and always have been. Everything from "this is what the word "subreddit" means" to "most parents don't know this, but there's actually a lot of political content on YouTube! It's not just cat videos anymore!"

Don't get me wrong, it's a very well-researched book on an underreported topic (which was even more unknown at the time it was published) and most of it seems accurate. But there's something almost surreal about hearing someone, especially someone who has done so much meaningful work in her field even at a great personal cost, react with shock and horror to even the most mainstream aspects of something I tend to assume (even though I know this is incorrect) everyone already knows about and just sort of lives with. What do you mean you didn't used to know incels wanted to kill women? What do you mean you were surprised by how many teenage boys watch Jordan Peterson?

I think that's part of the value of reading the book, even beyond the value of the information itself. Bates is clearly addressing the more offline members of her own generation, and honestly, its helpful for members of gen z (those of us who are a little too online, at least) to get a reality check on what we can realistically expect millennials and gen-xers to be familiar with. One of the cognitive pitfalls I personally fall into most easily is assuming everyone else has the same set of knowledges and blind spots that I do, even when it rationally wouldn't make sense to assume that.

[1000rh]

Emotions are equated with shame, and boys are encouraged to hide them. Isolation breeds longing for community. Shame breeds desperation for prestige, for respect, for a sense of purpose. A sense of vulnerability [...] leads naturally to a desire for the security of a group allegiance. All these cravings are gleefully satisfied by manosphere communities, keen to seize upon disenfranchised, angry young men and fill their gaping holes with false promises, skewed logic and hate.

– Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women (2020)

[butteryunlikelylady]

the craziest thing about reading Men Who Hate Women is realizing most incels direct their hatred towards young, white, blonde, thin women. those are the ones they believe should be providing them with sex and those are the ones they hate for “withholding” it and rejecting them, those are the women targeted in some of the mass murder cases the author tells of. The “cheerleader” type. Don’t know what to do with/how to feel about this knowledge.