We review Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women – her vital new investigation into the vast networks of misogynist networks and communities currently at work around the globe. With devastating precision, she reveals the very real danger that these organisations pose to the fabric of society. Pick up a copy here.
In Men Who Hate Women, Laura Bates takes a deep dive into the vast network of misogynist communities currently at work around the globe. It’s both a fascinating and terrifying read that traces the roots of misogyny from Incels themselves to Pick Up Artists and Men’s Rights Activists – exploring the way pervasive and pernicious narratives have become a large part of the mainstream, from political posturing to the large erasure of misogyny from the definition of terrorism. Bates looks deep into how these movements can groom and radicalise young and vulnerable men, tracing the origins of this extreme ideology from the internet to real life through real-life sleuthing of internet forums to interviews with trolls, former incels and academics understanding the movement.
Largely, the book feels despairing as Bates how pernicious these thoughts and narratives have become and how prevalent the idea of the manosphere is. Still, Bates does provide an element of hope in her examination of the conscious ways that people – particularly men – can work to undermine this momentum. More than anything in her desire to work against the narratives that are propagated on YouTube, Reddit and more. Bates largely feels empathetic in how impressionable young boys can fall prey to these narratives and it is this that prevents the book from feeling despondent. This is a vital and necessary read for people of any gender.
