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

by Laura Bates

So the first major shift we need to see is for male supremacy and misogynist extremism to be included whenever organizations or governments are monitoring, legislating for, and tackling other forms of terrorism.

The second important shift we need to see is for that horrifyingly normal, everyday form of terrorism—domestic abuse—to be taken just as seriously too.

Davey believes that the adoption of misogyny as a hate crime category would help to shift the dial on the public and institutional perception of male supremacy and extremism, stressing the importance of acknowledging that gendered hatred can be as forceful a driver of criminal acts as other already existing strands, such as race and religion.

When feminists talk about “toxic masculinity,” we mean the enormous potential damage posed by an outdated version of what it means to be a man: showing strength and hiding weakness.

It wasn’t until I started researching the manosphere to write this book that I began to stumble across increasing numbers of casual forum discussions and chatroom threads dedicated to fantasizing about raping and murdering me specifically. As I worked my way through the different manosphere communities, I saw the way they treat women who have dared to write about them or even simply to make the briefest comments about them on social media. Borrowing the wording of jihadist terrorism, an incel message board contained an announcement about a female journalist who made a single YouTube video about incel message boards: “fatwa on this cunt. all incels have a duty to do her harm if they see her. INCELU AKBAR!!!!”

I’m scared about this book being published.