cover image Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists; The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists; The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All

Laura Bates. Sourcebooks, $28.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-7282-3624-7

Bates (The Burning), founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, examines “women-hating” online communities and their impact on real-world sexism and sexual violence in this distressing yet familiar exposé. According to Bates, the “manosphere” includes “incels” (members of online “involuntary celibate” communities), pickup artists, men who avoid women in order to prevent themselves from being manipulated by them, and men’s rights activists who believe that men are the truly oppressed gender. Their ideologies are linked, she contends, by the belief that “all women are the same.” Bates infiltrates misogynistic forums to reveal how they foster a sense of belonging in order to indoctrinate alienated young men, and discusses recent examples of how the manosphere manifests itself in the real world, including the Gamergate controversy, which “introduced the idea of troll armies to the mainstream”; Elliot Rodger’s 2014 killing spree at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which has inspired other acts of incel violence; and characterizations of the #MeToo movement as a witch hunt. Though Bates offers little new information about who these groups are and how they operate, her argument that extreme misogynistic ideas are entering the mainstream is well-documented and persuasive. Readers will come away from this viewing the manosphere as a more serious threat. (Mar.)