Men Who Hate Women - Laura Bates

I don't have a lot to say in the intro for this one, except for the fact that it was a coincidentally very timely read, given the events of the past week, and I would recommend it to everyone - regardless of gender.

As the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates is no stranger to online misogynistic abuse and threats. Inspired by her own experiences, Bates spent months investigating and lurking on forums and sites promoting everything from the Incel movement, to Men's Rights Activists and Pick Up Artists, in an attempt to expose these increasingly dangerous and extremist communities, and understand how they operate to radicalise men and boys. More importantly, she charts their their shift from dark, isolated corners of the internet, to the mainstream media, real life terrorist attacks and normalised beliefs.

This was certainly a difficult book to read. It's accessible to anyone regardless of your prior knowledge of internet slang, but I found myself only able to read it in short bursts, sickened and disheartened by this tour of the Manosphere - the increasingly popular areas of the internet where hatred of women and violence against them is nurtured and encouraged. Of course, that feeling of discomfort is usually the sign of an important read, and so I would encourage everyone to persevere - but maybe do it in small doses. Bates exposes multiple different communities here including the Incels (Involuntary Celibates) who believe that women are actively denying them their right to sex, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) who have sworn off women altogether (even if they do seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about them), and Men's Rights Activists (MRA) who seem to be less interested in tackling the issues that do genuinely affect men, and more interested in just standing in the way of progress that benefits anyone - male or female. Although these communities have grown from different sources, they have a lot in common - namely that women are subhuman, existing purely to provide sex, and any deviation from this should result in rape. There's also a common theme is reverting to extremely traditional expressions of masculinity, without any kind of acknowledgement that it's these staunch stereotypes of what masculinity should look like, that cause many of the issues facing men (e.g. suicide rates, lower life expectancy etc). The chapters build well into each other and it becomes clear of the course of the narrative how all of these areas feed into each other, and Bates does well to draw parallels with other extremist movements.

That's not to say this book is without it's flaws. As an ultra nerd, I love a good statistic, and I often found myself lamenting the fact that Bates would often give an example of false statistic or fact perpetrated by these communities, but then just say "but that's wrong", rather than giving the solid factual counter statistic and source. These stats/sources do exist, and they are sound, but I had to go looking for them myself, which not everyone would be willing to do. I'd say this a good introduction to the topic as a whole, but lacks depth for people already fairly well versed and aware of the issues. There was exploration of how men and boys are becoming radicalised - the analogy about the frog an boiling water comes to mind -, but little discussion as to why this happens, I felt. Although there was some very interesting exploration of social media algorithms that did start to explore this, I definitely wanted more.

Bates finishes the book with a chapter on the Men who hate men who hate women, looking at the men who are working to combat these dangerous and pervasive levels of misogyny and the attitudes that more and more of our young men and boys are starting to express, as well as what can be done as a society to stop us from backsliding. Unfortunately it did feel a little overwhelming - we've already reached a point where many of the opinions and rhetoric that began in the darkest corners of the internet have been legitimised and are now part of the mainstream narrative. This means that until large shifts happen, like the media being willing to portray mass murderers driven by extreme misogynistic, ideologies as what they are - terrorists - instead of "lone wolves", this problem looks to only get worse - what can the individual do? It would have been good to see more of a focus on how to improve the situation throughout the book rather than just in the final chapter, though the compassion for those being radicalised is found throughout.

The key thing to remember here, and it is something that Bates makes clear, is that this is harming everyone - regardless of gender, but that the people best placed to tackle it are men themselves. In that case, I'd recommend this to everyone, but particularly to the men reading this. Even if you're the best, most well meaning guy in the world, even if you can't relate to any of the sentiments Bates unearths in her research, we all need to be aware of the rise of extreme misogyny, and how to spot it and address it in friends and family, and this is a great jumping off point.