Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all

by Laura Bates

In the context of a discussion about MRAs’ cherry-picking tactics, the case of Lorena Bobbitt is significant. In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt, who had suffered violent sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband, John, cut off his penis with a knife after she said he had returned home in the evening and raped her. Despite the fact that she was found not guilty at trial (due to temporary insanity after years of rape, abuse, and terror and because both prosecution and defense attorneys agreed that Bobbitt had demonstrated a history of abuse), MRAs seized upon the case and continue to use it as evidence of the vindictive violence of women to this day. This is typical of the way in which the movement highlights individual, emotive, and often highly unusual cases and distorts them to try to imply a much wider pattern, or a gender-neutral problem, when there is overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary.