Firstly, I’d like to pay a debt of gratitude to Laura Bates for putting her safety on the line in getting the subject of men who hate women or online misogyny out into the public’s consciousness, where it belongs.
Secondly, I’d like to declare, that, like Bates, I’ve previously frequented the black abyss that is the online manifestation of male sexual frustration, i.e. The Manosphere (the collective term for websites, forums and blogs which promote men’s rights, misogyny etc.). My foray into the Manosphere was done to facilitate research on my MA dissertation. It was there that I, like Bates, was introduced to the world of involuntarily celibate males (‘incels’) and it was harrowing!
Unlike Bates, however, I did not develop sympathy for the men who occupied chat rooms and forums dedicated to the sadistic dehumanisation of women and girls. An area we did agree on, however, was the need for greater investigation by government organisations into the seedy world of incels.
Bates’ book is replete with examples of extreme misogyny from start to finish. At about the tenth page mark I started to notice that she (when discussing killer Elliot Rodger) used words such as “grooming”, “vulnerable”, “radicalisation” and “naive” in relation to Rodger’s time spent in women-hating chat groups online.
Who, you may ask, is Elliot Rodger? Elliot Rodger, 22, was a young man who took it upon himself to drive to a Sorority House in California, USA in May 2014, with the intent to kill as many women as he could. When no one answered the door to him, Rodger started shooting women on the campus grounds instead (any dead woman was a good woman it seemed!). In the end he killed 6 and injured 14 (this includes deliberately running women over!). What became of Elliot Rodger? Well, the “vulnerable” and “naive”, fully-armed, young man beat justice and killed himself! Rodger left behind a 107,000 word manifesto entitled: “My Twisted World”.
What is it with monsters and manifestos? In it, he chagrined about his lot in life and how women were the root of all his misery. Elliot Rodger was an incel who wanted to punish women for their sexual disinterest in him. He received encouragement online from other incels to carry out his shooting and is a hero to many of them today. Do you feel sorry for him? Or other incels? No, neither do I.
As stated at the outset I found Bates’ word usage (“grooming”, “vulnerable”, “radicalisation” and “naive”) odd and very uncomfortable to read at times as it allows the perpetrator of violence against women to shirk responsibility and blame others. If she had been discussing a paedophile who had premeditated walking onto a playground and shooting the place up, surely she wouldn’t have used language which sought to foster empathy in the reader because she’d know she wouldn’t be able to elicit any. Why try to get us to empathise with men who kill women? What makes them different from any other type of killer? I read her book looking for her to answer this question for me: Why should I care for men who hate me?
It honestly blows me away how we are encouraged to feel sorry for men who would literally kill us dead on the street for no other reason other than being women. As stated, would a pedophile be offered as much clemency? Would we accept that he had been “radicalised” online? That it’s all the internet’s fault? NO! What first draws a person to such sites? Answer: a personal interest! Elliot Rodger was a misogynist first and foremost, who sought out (and found) a safe place to express his vehement dislike of women. He is not a victim! In her book, Bates names many other women killers motivated by misogyny who knew of Elliot Rodger online, including: Sodini, Moynihan, Harper-Mercer, Bentley, Atchison, Cruz, Minassian, Beierle and Clyde to name a few. All young, all sexually frustrated and all – Bates wrongly attests – poisoned by incel ideology online. These men are not victims!
Bates has named her book aptly – men who hate women! Time and again, she uses quotes posted to forums by rabid women-haters, not all of whom are unemployed college goers, as one might wrongly assume. One such member of a rapecel (pro-rape enthusiast) group was a 34-year-old accountant and American congressional candidate who espoused that “feminism is the problem and rape is the solution”. This same man also believes that acid attacks on women are a good thing, that women should be viewed as property by law and that father-daughter incest isn’t that bad.
Again, I ask you: Why should we care for men who hate us?
The answer becomes clear the closer I get to the end of the book. Why should we care about men who hate us? From having read Bates’ book, I can see that it is for our own safety, women, that we should know about incels and how much potential danger we are in just walking down the street!
Bibliography
Bates, Laura. Men Who Hate Women. Simon & Schuster UK (2020).
Laura writes about issues affecting women. If you enjoyed her writing, donate to this author.