Welcome to the ‘manosphere’ – a brave new book shows why we should all be afraid | Book lover - The Independent

Laura Bates’s ‘Men Who Hate Women’ proves that misogyny hasn’t disappeared, it’s just gone underground and online. Our books columnist Ceri Radford, The Independent on why the dangers are real.

Men Who Hate Women author Laura Bates

I don’t mean to slight the brilliant, insanely brave writer Laura Bates when I say that I did not want to read her latest book, and that my first reflex on getting through a page of Men Who Hate Women was to slam it shut and go watch something soothing on Netflix. Sure, I realise that there is a seething cesspit of misogynistic hatred out there, but much like my next dental appointment, while dimly aware of its existence, I’d rather not think about it.

It’s uncomfortable to know that a violent hatred of women isn’t confined to the tame cliche of spittle-flecked keyboard warriors in greying Y-fronts, and that there are swathes of men in all layers of society who hold views that frankly make Margaret Atwood’s Gilead look progressive. Bates is best known for running the Everyday Sexism Project, a website predating the #MeToo movement that lets women share their dispiritingly commonplace experiences of prejudice and harassment. For her new book, she set out to find the source of an increasingly fanatical wave of misogyny. Prowling the message boards undercover as a disillusioned young man called Alex, she walks us hand-in-hand through the shocking online communities that stoke a real-world pandemic of sexual assault and violence against women...

In a cruel irony, men and boys suffer too. “We have to recognise that our current societal version of masculinity is failing them. It leaves them isolated, forced to adopt a swaggering bravado that prevents them from talking about how they feel or forming mutually supportive relationships,” as Bates writes. This could explain the high rates of male suicide that sincere men’s rights activists seek to tackle, in part by challenging rigid stereotypes.
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Source: The Independent