Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Men Who Hate Women

This is a rough one, but so important to read. You get a real deep dive into the manosphere, which is literally just a massive community of men who will literally do anything but go to therapy. You start to realise how horribly ubiquitous and normalised misogyny is, and the internet is only making this worse. I can’t begin to fully explain the impact of this book. I’m glad this information made it to press; it feels much more real than when you read about it online. Anyway, the internet sucks, social media suck, (toxic) masculinity is good for literally no one, and we’ve really got to take this trend seriously, especially because it’s rotting impressionable people’s minds.

Content Warnings

cdubbs's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

vessel's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

I would describe the experience of reading this book as personally harrowing, but quite necessary.

Very informative, well-structured look into the dark topic of male supremacist communities. It's a topic I had cursory knowledge of going in, and I recommend it to anyone looking to expand their understanding of the ways fringe sexist ideologies from the bowels of hate groups' forums ripple through society and affect all of us.

Content Warnings

sunday_evening's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Disturbing but necessary read

Content Warnings

priesty23's review

Go to review page

challenging dark hopeful informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

notthatcosta's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark sad tense slow-paced

2.5

I tend to struggle with books that were written by journalists, because I find that their storytelling skills are lacking when it comes to creating a whole book. Even though Laura Bates is not a journalist, Men Who Hate Women falls foul of similar traps that I've seen previously in non fiction books of this type.

Most of the chapters feel unnecessarily padded out, often with repetition of previous points made that don't serve to create a cohesive narrative thread. Even in more successful chapters like 'Men Who Don't Know They Hate Women', half way through it veers off into a tangent about the 2016 election.

I understand that the topic at hand is very broad, complex and wide reaching, but the lack of focus makes it frustrating to read beyond the frustrating subject matter. With better and tighter editing I think this could have been a great book, but it ends up feeling like an unfocussed and cluttered collection of ideas and case studies with some paraphrased 4Chan posts sprinkled in.

I probably would have preferred it if the book just centred on what Laura Bates heard during her school visits and talks, rather than the need to try and summarise what she read on manosphere forums.

Content Warnings

nugenmak000's review

Go to review page

I plan to pick up this book later when I'm in a stringer mental headspace. This book is dark and covers the different layers of the manosphere and their groups. It covered misogyny and crimes against women/general hate of women. It also mentioned manifestos of crazed misogynistic murderers like Elliot Rogers. This book is overall very heavy and difficult to read.

Content Warnings

More...