Men Who Hate Women: The Extremism Nobody is Talking About – Laura Bates
Written by Elisa Garbil – 27.06.2025
What can I say? Another urgent and necessary read on the escalating risks of extremism, especially anti-feminist and right-wing radicalisation.
Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women was one of the first books that opened my eyes to the growing threat landscape of misogynistic ideologies, particularly in digital spaces. Her new book is even fully focused on AI! Nevertheless, MWHW was a catalyst for my own research into the dangerous convergence of inceldom, online radicalisation, and gender-based hate. Bates does not simply inform; she issues a warning, one we cannot afford to ignore.
A man in the UK is 230 times more likely to be raped himself than be falsely accused of rape (…) in the meantime, 85.000 women each year in the UK experience rape or attempted rape.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
This is not just a statistic. It’s evidence of a systemic minimisation of gender-based violence, and a diversion of public concern toward false narratives. We are witnessing a strategic manipulation of fear, where the risk to women is downplayed and the myth of male victimisation is amplified.
We’ve all heard the rhetoric: trans women are the threat. These baseless accusations are weaponised by political forces to justify regressive policies, like the UK Supreme Court’s decision to ban trans women from women’s restrooms. But lived experience, and risk data, show otherwise. I have never felt unsafe around trans individuals, but many women, and I am part of those, can testify to very real threats from cisgender men in everyday public spaces.
The problem with the conspicuous support and subsequent mass-media coverage of manosphere ideology is that it legitimises, and even sympathises with, what is actually extreme misogyny.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
The real danger lies not in fabricated bathroom scenarios but in the growing social acceptance and normalisation of incel rhetoric, which now infiltrates political discourse and mainstream platforms. Young men are increasingly expressing a fear of false rape accusations, despite the statistical improbability (as a man you have higher chances of getting raped yourself than being accused falsely of rape!), which is an anxiety stoked by manosphere influencers, such as Andrew Tate, and sympathetic media coverage (looking at you The Daily Mail!). This is not an accidental shift; it’s part of an intentional narrative designed to erode protections for women and discredit feminist progress.
The more accustomed you become to seeng women referred to as acronyms, the easier it becomes to forget that they are people too.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
Language matters. When women are dehumanised into nothing more than acronyms, such as ‘Chads’ or ‘Stacy’s’, we lose our empathy towards others as their suffering is abstracted. This dehumanisation is a core risk factor in the rise of gendered violence and far-right recruitment. Without empathy we cannot live together as humans.
The resurgence of the far-right, think of Farage in the UK, Le Pen and Bardello in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, Trump in the US, amongst others, is no coincidence. These figures exploit the growing normalisation of manosphere ideologies to undermine human rights, stoke moral panic, and roll back decades of progress on gender and LGBTQIA+ issues. When extremism is dressed up as “traditional values,” we risk mainstreaming hate.
The more we underestimate the manosphere, the more we risk serving it our young men on a platter.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
The risks are no longer theoretical. They’re measurable, visible, and deadly. We cannot challenge extremism unless we name it, study it, and fight back with truth, solidarity, and structural change.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
This book is essential not just for understanding the present, but for anticipating the risks of inaction. Bates presents a chilling, well-researched analysis of how extremism becomes normalised, how gendered hate becomes policy, and how a quiet form of terrorism, like domestic violence, continues to be ignored.
Men hurt women. It is a fact. It is an epidemic. It is a public health catastrophe. It is normal.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
Quotes That Might Make you Read the Book:
The most powerfully reinforcing rigid and patriarchal gender stereotypes are suffocating those who most need to escape them.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
The only meaningful relationship with a woman must be a sexual one; and there are so many women ready to lie about rape that any contact with them is simply too dangerous to risk.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
People who are just trying to provoke outrage with fake provocation don’t go out and kill people in real life. Incels do.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
If masculinity is the problem, it is men who must decide and drive new forms of manhood.
Laura Bates – Men Who Hate Women
