The book, Men Who Hate Women, written by Laura Bates, sets the bar low when it comes to defining what hate is. Any disagreement with feminist orthodoxy or any men’s rights advocacy, is sufficient evidence. As a result, people who manifestly do not hate women are sucked into her divisive narrative. Examples include Warren Farrell, James Damore and Jordan Peterson who feature in her book purely because they challenged some aspect of feminism. You may agree or disagree with their point of view but there is no evidence that they are motivated by hatred.
Predictably, Laura is a product of the standard radicalisation pipeline for media feminists. Private school followed by English Literature at Oxbridge. Think Laurie Penny, Cathy Newman, Helen Lewis, Marina Hyde and Hadley Freeman, for example.
Something left out of Laura’s book is the fact that women have always been an important part of the Men’s Rights Movement. She could not have been unaware of this and I can only assume, to use a favourite expression of feminists, that they were ‘airbrushed’ from the narrative or to put it another way – erased. That is the pattern in other parts of the media, men who challenge the feminist narrative can expect ad hominem attacks while women are ignored.
Taking Laura Bates ‘logic’ to its conclusion, the women listed below hate women. Internalised misogyny perhaps?
Bettina Arndt. Bettina is a writer and commentator based in Australia. Although she started out as a feminist she has not been afraid to speak out injustices affecting men. She has been particularly vocal about campus Kangaroo Courts adjudicating alleged sexual assaults and the educational underachievement of boys. For some samples of her writing try her Substack column here.
Sally-Anne Burris. CEO of Split the Difference. Sally-Anne is an eloquent campaigner on the issue of male suicides and bias in United Nations Directives. see the YouTube video – Choice, Real Equality, Changing UN Directives to Include Men and Boys.
Femalefedupwithfeminism. A thought-provoking blog by Catherine, a contemporary of Laura Bates at Cambridge, who chooses not to reveal her full name. She has been particularly good on Laura Bates’ distorted account of Gamergate and even wrote her a letter (here), based on first-hand experience, challenging the account given in Men who Hate Women. Predictably, no reply has been forthcoming. The YouTube videos below give useful accounts of the affair.
Janice Fiamengo. Janice is a declared antifeminist and defender of the right to dissent. A little unwisely, I think, she appeared regularly on Studio Brulé’s YouTube channel. Although Janice’s contributions were always thoughtful and measured the channel got taken down because of the weird views of the co-hosts. For a sample of her work see my blog post of 19-01-21 here.
Hannah Gal. Hannah is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. Her documentary Progressivism is Destroying Men, Families, Societies and Civilization was previewed at the International Conference on Men’s Issues 2021. I hope it will be more widely available shortly, it was one of the highlights of the meeting. Useful articles by Hannah include-
Forty years a politician -Article about Harriet Harman’s legacy that appeared in The Critic.
The gathering Resistance to the Stigmatisation of Masculinity. Quillette
Education and Masculinity: An interview with Will Knowland. Quillette
Elizabeth Hobson. Elizabeth was the leader of Justice for Men and Boys between March 2020 and March 2021. She was one of the organisers of the Messages for men conference that Laura Bates claimed to have bravely infiltrated (she only had to buy a ticket on Eventbrite or use one of the complimentary tickets sent to the Guardian). Oddly, Elizabeth doesn’t remember seeing Laura there.
Christina Hoff Sommers. American author and philosopher at the American Enterprise Unit. She is well known for her video blog ‘The Factual Feminist‘ which does a good job of debunking feminist statistics. She is the author of ‘The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men‘
Valentina Ortiz. Valentina is the social media director of the Asociación Hombres Maltratados, a Spanish association for abused and falsely accused men. See the YouTube video The practical implication of feminist discourse to the detriment of men.
Erin Pizzey. Erin is an ex-feminist and founder of the first domestic violence shelter in the UK. She came to realise that the issue of domestic violence is more complex and nuanced than feminists would have you believe. According to Erin many of the women in refuges were themselves violent. For useful insights into her thoughts try the following YouTube videos- Erin Pizzey Talks Truth To Jess Phillips, or Erin Pizzey on Violence and Truth, both on the Glass Blindspot YouTube channel.
Nina Power. Nina has just published a book called What do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents. For a sample of her views see this article in the Daily Mail here or her interview with Triggernometry here.
Deborah Powney. Deborah is a psychology researcher at the University of Central Lancashire who specializes in domestic violence from a non-gendered perspective. I recommend her YouTube video The Male Victims: Busting the Gendered Myths.
Natty Raymond. Formerly director of communications for Justice for Men and Boys. She was present in 2019 when Mike Buchanon tried to give a talk at Cambridge University and was drowned out by a braying mob of feminist students. When two feminists one female and one male threw milkshakes at Mike she performed a citizen’s arrest on the female student. You can see the confrontation here.
Helen Smith. Helen is a psychologist and author of the book Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood and the American Dream. She argues that men are not boycotting marriage because of arrested development but in a rational reaction to a hostile climate towards men that has been created by society. For a flavour of her book see the National Review Interview here.
Karen Straughan. Karen is well known in MRA circles. She is frequently invited to speak at men’s rights meetings such at the ICMI and J4MB. A good example is her keynote speech to the ICMI in 2018, Why women must consign feminism to the dustbin of history.
Hannah Wallen. Hannah has been a noted sceptic when it comes to feminist dogma. For example, her talk at the last ICMI was Female Violence and The Accountability Gap. Also, see here sub stack page here.
Anne Widdicombe. Former Conservative party Member of Parliament for Maidstone and the Weald. For a good example of her thoughts on men’s issues try the YouTube video Men: Second Class Citizens? The Attack on men and Men’s Rights.
Cathy Young. Cathy is a Russian born American journalist. She has written a book called Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality. She has also written a much more nuanced account of the Gamergate affair than provided by Laura Bates in her book. See (Almost) Everything You Know About GamerGate is Wrong.
There is another group of women who I left out of this list. They have voiced scepticism towards aspects of modern feminism and the culture emerging from gender studies departments. However, they stop short of being men’s rights advocates. Examples might include Helen Pluckrose, Meghan Daum and Iona Italia. According to the Laura Bates scheme of thought perhaps these women don’t like women very much but don’t go as far as hating them.
Of course, the title of this post is a ridiculous one, none of the women listed above are motivated by hate. I hope that highlights the problem with Laura Bates’s book in which she appears not to accept the possibility of good-faith objections to feminism and puts a disparate range of opinions into a single basket of ‘hatred of women’.
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