A lot of people are unaware of the issues Laura Bates discusses in this book. I was somewhat aware of the issues, as a feminist myself, but I still leA lot of people are unaware of the issues Laura Bates discusses in this book. I was somewhat aware of the issues, as a feminist myself, but I still learned some important things from reading this book. I did not know that men were radicalized online into extreme misogynist movements, but it isn’t entirely surprising to discover that. I also did not know the details of some of the mass shootings that Bates discussed in this book. I’m sure she is right that the mainstream media is hesitant to cover the misogynist motivations of mass shooters, instead shoving it under the rug as “mental illness”, which is later used to demonize innocent mentally ill people, including women who develop mental illness as a result of abuse.
What surprised and frustrated me was that for all of her comparisons between radicalization into extreme Islamic viewpoints and radicalization into alt-right viewpoints, Bates failed to mention the extreme misogyny present in the very extreme portions of Islam. It certainly deserves a mention that ISIS also propagates extremist misogynistic viewpoints, but Bates seemed more interested in discussing how Islamic terrorism is unfairly focused on more than alt-right terrorism. I agree that alt-right and misogynistic terrorism needs to be focused on more, of course, but I don’t understand why a book about men who hate women that discusses Islamic extremism wouldn’t mention the misogyny that’s a significant part of Islamic extremism.
It also frustrated me that Bates recommended ContraPoints as a resource to de-radicalize men who are being radicalized into PUA/MGTOW/incel extremism. ContraPoints certainly does have plenty of useful videos, but she’s also had a controversy for selling merchandise with lizard people pictured on it with the caption “David Icke was right”, prior to the publication of this book1, which she is still selling with a different caption now (David Icke being an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who believes in lizard people). This doesn’t seem an appropriate person to recommend to de-radicalize people, especially given her points about YouTube’s algorithm pushing people towards more and more extreme views via the recommendations. After viewing a video by someone like ContraPoints, who knows what sort of more openly antisemitic content YouTube might recommend next?
Overall, Bates’ book is useful, especially for those who were previously unaware of the extent to which the “manosphere” has influenced public policy and opinion, but I’m hesitant to fully recommend it. ...more
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