By: Alex Eubanks, Nonfiction Reviewer
When I first saw Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates at my local Barnes and Noble, the title exhausted me. The subtitle below the bright bold initial words reads, “From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All.” As a woman, I know what incels are and the harm they cause to women daily. I knew what a title like Men Who Hate Women would discuss—all the insults, rape, and murder.
However, it was the last bit about the Pickup Artists (PUAs) that caught my attention. I was shot back in time to a conversation I had with my brother half a year prior when he tried to get me to watch an Andrew Tate video. For anyone who has had the blessing of not knowing Andrew Tate, he is a self-proclaimed “alpha male” that sells his course “Hustlers University” to any man who will listen. Underneath his philosophy of financial independence (which is really just five drop shipping businesses in a trenchcoat), Andrew Tate coaches men on a very specific set of vernacular.
Underneath the “Wisdom” tab on his website, cobratate.com, are his 41 tenets. If you blink, you might miss the subtle language that Tate utilizes to manipulate his male audience. Next to pictures of Andrew Tate flexing, flashing hundred dollar bills, and smoking cigars are tenets such as “I believe that men have the sacred duty to raise strong, capable, and honorable sons” and, “I believe that men have the sacred duty to raise kind, feminine, and virtuous daughters.”
Even before Andrew Tate was arrested for human trafficking in late 2022, the alarm bells were going off for me. When I told my brother I wasn’t interested in Andrew Tate’s business philosophy, he immediately got defensive. The defensiveness got worse when I outright called Tate a misogynist. To my brother, Andrew Tate was telling him all the things he felt he needed to hear: that men are oppressed by women and need to be lifted up in brotherhood. The only way that my brother felt like he could be strong was to establish dominance through not only getting me to watch a TikTok, but by shunning the society that wanted to reject ideals of traditional masculinity.
In the end, it was remembering the helplessness I felt in trying to get my brother to understand how a man like Andrew Tate could possibly be harmful that made me brave this tumultuous read. My hope was that Men Who Hate Women would show me solutions on how to reach my brother and others like him.
Instead, I was greeted with the quote, “Since they deserve to be raped, I cannot concern myself with the pain rape causes them.” Laura Bates jumps right into the deep end by discussing where incels live, breathe, and breed. Much of the book discusses the brain of an incel, the websites they visit, the terminology they use, and their threats to cause violence. Sometimes, those threats become a reality. Acts of terror and the lack of any kind of substantial punishment is frequently mentioned to further explain the machinations of our misogynist society.
Not every man will commit senseless murder in the name of “retribution,” such as Elliot Rodger, but the majority will ignore the ever-growing problem. It’s simply easier to accept that the millions of men all over the world who support this ideology will just silently exist than confront an alternative where they have the potential to commit frequent and atrocious acts of violence.
As I knew internally before this book, PUAs hide behind the language of innocuous flirting and male empowerment to push an agenda of hatred towards the feminine gender. I finally had the evidence to confront my brother concerning why Andrew Tate was so terrible to me. However, how would I ever get him to listen? How could I get him to read this book?
Herein lies my main issue with Men Who Hate Women: how can we get the people who need this information the most to want to read it? Laura Bates’ audience is unclear, and it is very easy to fall into an echo chamber. I wanted to be validated. Although I found what I was looking for in terms of the existence of various forms of misogyny, I didn’t find any solutions on how to talk to people who have fallen into this particular pit of despair.
Education is an obvious solution. If men read this book and listen to the women around them, there is a potential to cut the head off of this snake. As an educator, however, I also recognize that simply snapping my fingers or asking nicely will not make someone be willing to read. When someone is steadfast in their beliefs, the only person that can change their mind is themselves.
While this book has the information that everyone needs to know inside, I doubt it will reach the audience that desperately needs to hear it. In the same way that my brother will most likely never read this review, Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women will likely never catch the eye of the local incel who dares tread into my Barnes and Noble.