Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all

By Laura Bates

***Laura Bates' new book Fix the System, Not the Women is out now in paperback***
 
‘A fascinating, mind-blowing and deeply intelligent book that should be recommended reading for every person on our planet’ SCARLETT CURTIS

‘Laura Bates puts out books that perfectly describe growing problems and possible solutions. She's a proper hero at the coal mouth’ CAITLIN MORAN

'Brilliantly fierce and eye-opening' OBSERVER
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The extremism nobody talks about
And how it affects us all

Imagine a world in which a vast network of incels and other misogynists are able to operate, virtually undetected. These extremists commit deliberate terrorist acts against women. Vulnerable teenage boys are groomed and radicalised.

You don't have to imagine that world. You already live in it. Perhaps you didn’t know, because we don’t like to talk about it. But it’s time we start.
 
In this urgent and groundbreaking book, Laura Bates, bestselling author and founder of The Everyday Sexism Project, goes undercover to expose vast misogynist networks and communities. It’s a deep dive into the worldwide extremism nobody talks about.
 
Interviews with former members of these groups and the people fighting against them gives unique insights on how this movement operates. Ideas are spread from the darkest corners of the internet – via trolls, media and celebrities – to schools, workplaces and the corridors of power, becoming a part of our collective consciousness.
 
Uncensored, and sometimes both shocking and terrifying – this is the uncomfortable truth about the world we live in. And what we must do to change it.
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‘Passionate and forensic, Bates produces a powerful feminist clarion call. The world needs to take notice. Things must change’ ANITA ANAND

‘This is how change is made: by looking at uncomfortable things directly in the eye and not turning away. This book is a rallying cry to end suffering, for both women AND men’ EMMA GANNON

‘Laura Bates is showing us the path to both intimate and global survival’ GLORIA STEINEM

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Sep 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781471152276

Laura Bates

Laura Bates is a Sunday Times bestselling author and the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a collection of over 200,000 testimonies of gender inequality. Her non-fiction books include Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Misogynation, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women. She writes regularly for The Guardian and the Telegraph, among other publications, and won a British Press Award in 2015. Laura works closely with organisations from the Council of Europe to the United Nations to tackle gender inequality. She was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to gender equality and has been named a woman of the year by Cosmopolitan, Red and The Sunday Times. 

Reviews for Men Who Hate Women

[devil_llama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well researched book by the woman who runs the Everyday Sexism project. She spent time actually on the websites frequented by angry young men (and angry older men) who blame everything bad on women. She writes well and her style is engaging. The book itself is horrifying, even to those of us who have followed the manosphere long enough to be familiar with much of what she says. She details the way much of MRA/PUA/Incel ideology has moved into the mainstream, using tactics familiar from watching the Alt-Right. I did find the final chapter disheartening as everyone she interviewed was talking about how being lonely, sad, and afraid drove the young men to the internet bubble of toxic masculinity, and seemed to think this was something unique to men. They never observed (not even the author) that these are things that women feel, too, and that in many cases women don't have any more support groups than the men. The other minor downside I saw is that she talks about how young men are drawn into the manosphere, groomed as it were, but never mentions the other aspect of extremist misogyny - male entitlement. It's there in the conversations she has or listens in on - "our" jobs, "our" games, "our" spaces...suggesting it is a major driver that can predict which young men will turn to misogyny as a so-called red-pill, and deserved a chapter of its own, because you can't understand the woman-hating men without understanding male entitlement.

[arosoff-513117 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was already familiar with a lot of the ground Bates covers in this book, but she does a good job of putting it together and analyzing it, especially the political and media coverage and how violence against women is minimized and normalized. It's worrying and enraging to know how boys are being sucked into this through websites and YouTube, but I know from experience that she's not wrong.

[antao-3 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

After last year’s Harmange’s “I hate Men” I thought I’d have better luck with Bates on the subject. Nope. Feminists who write propaganda books imply two propositions about violence towards women that I believe are intellectually shallow. First, that violence towards women is caused by misogyny and is therefore idealistic as it is an effect of thought, and second that violence towards women should be understood as sui generis - unique in its own characteristics - and unrelated to the causes of other social violence. I think both of these implications are untrue and it would be more constructive to understand violence towards women in terms of what we know about violence more generally. Significantly, that a predisposition towards violence is a psychological trait usually linked with a lack of empathy and this is developed in children's early years (and not necessarily through exposure to misogynistic ideas but more profoundly neglect, violence, bullying etc.). Also, I would like to know more about the perpetrators of violence towards women. I would be surprised if the people who were beating and killing their girlfriends and wives were not also violent towards other men and children and that violence towards women did not occur in isolation. A thought experiment might be instructive - imagine a society where misogynistic ideas had been totally eliminated. Has violence towards women including rape completely disappeared? I'd suggest no. That doesn't mean fighting misogyny is not important but it does mean we should try to understand the causes of violence towards women more broadly and using knowledge from other disciplines instead of just cultural theory. Most violence against women (in the US and UK – Bates who is British doesn't often mention non-Western women so let's safely assume we're talking US and UK) is domestic and is therefore carried out by someone they know. Which proves feminist assumptions - that violence against women is caused by misogyny - completely wrong. It's useful to say that this kind of book is exactly what a misandrist or a misogynist hates. This is part of the problem. What’s really at stake is the hater's picture of actual people who've hurt them, based not on the people but on the hurt. The other part- the 'gendered' part- is a social idea of what a man or a woman is like inside. From this mix emerges the object of hate, a gendered concept: a creep or a bastard or a slut or a witch. Actual people with all their contradictions are beside the point. It's this lazy conceit that we can know people in 'identity' terms, reducing them to the crudest concepts, that converts personal enmities into sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, snobbery and the like. I sometimes wonder if it’s not counter-productive, since it just gives those who believe feminists are misandrists a reason to go “see, they do hate us!!” But then, would they think otherwise no matter how pleasant or polite the opposition was? Well, it certainly doesn't do feminism any favours - quite the opposite, it undermines credibility - and I think anyone who is genuinely interested in the rights of women should be bothered about that. It's just a shame so many feminists would rather defend the indefensible rather than tackle the job at hand. It sometimes seems as if the label is so much more important than the cause. NB: All women beaters are arseholes.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

#NotAllMen they yell whenever a woman shares an encounter with an aggressive admirer, a handsy boss, a leering stranger, a violent rapist, a condescending colleague, an abusive partner. They are right, but there are definitely too many men, and their numbers don’t seem to be decreasing.In Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All, journalist Laura Bates investigates the online communities whose ideology centers around having power and control over women, how these affect society, and what can be done to change it moving forward.Whilst incels (Involuntary celibates) beg for sex on demand, pickup artists (PUA) deploy predatory “gaming” tactics, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) choose to eschew relationships with women altogether, and Men’s Rights Activists (MRA/MRM) insist women return their stolen power, there remains a wide range of common ideas and tactics underpinning what Bates terms ‘manosphere’ communities.As ‘Alex’, a lonely young man, she allowed herself to be recruited into an online world in which nothing was his fault, in which he was an aggrieved martyr, not the privileged loser he felt society painted him as. And the cause of all his woes? Women. ‘Foids’ that won’t sleep with him, ‘sluts’ who say no when they really mean yes, ‘nags’ who sap their energy, ‘feminazi’s’ who want to rule the world.While such groups are often dismissed as ‘fringe’ online activities, Bates shows how savvy members of these groups have actively spearheaded campaigns that downplay, distort and discredit women’s issues, amplified by trolls who enjoy the controversy, the irresponsible practices of clickbait mainstream media, and social media algorithms. Bates also explores how the manosphere rhetoric spills into the real world, inspiring everything from wordless intimidation to mass murders, and even influencing politics.If terrorism is a means of attempting to exert control and wield power by creating fear, then at an individual level, it also describes men who intimidate, harass, coerce and abuse women. Bates is aware that the publication of this book will again make her a target of derision, vile abuse, rape, and death threats, and that her physical safety could be at risk. No one will be surprised to hear it, few will believe that there is anything that can be done about it. As a society, we seem to assume violence against women is inevitable. #NotAllMen hate women, but some do. Some men blame women for every frustration, every grievance, every loss. Some men see women as objects, undeserving of respect or autonomy. And they are emboldened when these views remain unchallenged. These men are an obvious danger, not only to women, but also to society at large. A significant percentage of those who commit acts of terrorism and mass murderer have a history of violence against women.I agree with Bates that intervention is needed well before some boys/men wander down this path. We, both women and men, need to be informed, to admit there is a problem, and work together to change it. We need to challenge instances of sexism, and fake ‘news’, to encourage boys and young men to define masculinity in a manner that doesn’t put them in opposition to women. “Ultimately, there are major changes that need to happen across a wide range of sectors, from government to tech companies, from media to education...”I am the wife of a man who loves me, and whom I love. I am a mother of two daughters, and two sons whom I adore. So I know it’s #NotAllMen, but it is #SomeMen, many of whom I have had the misfortune to encounter in my lifetime. Men Who Hate Women is a book that will disturb, infuriate, challenge, and perhaps change you, for the better.