Man Reads "Men Who Hate Women" by Laura Bates

When I was a young teenager a long, long time ago, I became indoctrinated into the online "seduction community" of pickup artists (or PUAs). I was a lonely and depressed kid with a lot of love to give but was only ever met with soul-crushing rejection time and time again before that community helped me.

I believe that my discovery of online content which helped me become more attractive to women literally saved my life. I didn't have reliable access to mental healthcare (Amurka), and it wouldn't have helped anyway; the rare instances when mental health counselors and psychiatrists had the chance to assess me, I could never get past the shame to admit that my depression stemmed from a lack of feminine affection. Pickup artistry was the saving grace that helped me heal.

This was a time before "incels" or whatever different-colored "pills" started popping up and creating the collective manosphere as we know it today.

I watched as the manosphere's version of the incel community started sprouting from some crap called the "True Forced Loneliness" movement, while my peers in the PUA community started talking about "the red pill" one by one.

I watched as our communities slowly started to focus less on how to attract women, and more on blaming them for our struggles in dating. Little by little, self-victimization started to become more popular than problem-solving.

As the senior moderator on one of the largest PUA forums at the time (now defunct), I eventually found it necessary to draft a new rule, and to abuse my power to implement it unilaterally in early 2014 (just a few months before the infamous Elliot Rodger shooting):

No misogyny: We understand that you might feel bitter from previous bad experiences with women, but misogyny will not do you any good. Harboring a general sense of contempt for an entire group of people is mentally unhealthy as well as unethical, and will not be tolerated on this site. You're free to express any reasonable frustrations about anonymous individuals, but please refrain from expressing any hatred or contempt for women as a whole. The only exception to this rule is if you're constructively discussing your misogynistic views with an honest and open-minded intent to fix them.

I also blackballed new moderator applicants who called themselves anti-feminist, and frequently went head to head with other community members and leaders who disagreed with my budding feminist (aka just not misogynistic) views.

Regardless of what I did, it was too late.

I had no power over the other websites and their forums, and the momentum of misogyny was in full swing in the collective manosphere.

I thought the manosphere and the PUA community were supposed to be about men bettering themselves, discovering their masculinity, becoming their authentic selves, and becoming more attractive. It quickly morphed into something monstrous instead.

And then a bunch of bad things happened.

Eventually, feminist writer Laura Bates did a ton of research into the manosphere and the bad things that came out of it, and released a book called Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All.

Predictably, many men from the manosphere had some negative reactions to the book (mostly from those who never bothered to read it, of course).

I, however, picked it up as soon as I learned of its existence (ironically through one of the manosphere forums I was trying to market my book to). I thought it was stupid how manosphere members would avoid reading this book; it's literally about us and our communities!

Why wouldn't we want to gain more perspective about a topic we're interested in?

Haven't we all learned to have a growth mindset, to habitually push ourselves past our comfort zones?

Have we devolved into such an echo chamber that we would fervently shut our eyes and ears to opposing views that could potentially expand our horizons and make us into better men?

As Bates has found, yes. Yes, we have.

From time to time, we all need to take a good, hard look at ourselves to evaluate whether or not we're living in accordance with our core values. If the manosphere members of today actually took a moment to reflect on how their hateful views actually stem from fear, many of them would realize that they're not living in the way they are called to live by their masculine nature.

Allowing fear to dictate your beliefs and actions runs counter to many - if not all - masculine core values.

Men Who Hate Women is an extremely important book that every manosphere member - and every man - should read. It helps us take an objective look at what our communities have become, and the damage they have caused.

It opened my eyes to where all the vitriol was coming from, and how politically motivated actors used deceptive means to trick countless men into supporting purposefully inaccurate messages and ideologies.

The book helps snap you back into reality. You might assume that the feminist author espouses pages upon pages of personal opinion in a bid to turn the world into more of a "gynocentric social order." You'd be wrong. It's just journalistic reporting of the facts, based on real events and statistics. You would be surprised to learn about these real events and statistics since the manosphere will often insulate you from them.

I do have a couple of gripes with the book, though.

Frankly, I can only speak critically about the parts Bates wrote about PUAs since that's the only manosphere community I hail from.

My main grievance might seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things if we look at the horrendous consequences that came out of the manosphere, but it's a persistent issue nonetheless.

"If PUAs admitted to the shy teenagers who stumbled across their websites that their lack of romantic experience was not due to ignorance of some complex psychological technique, but simply a normal rite of passage likely to pass with age and maturity, no longer could those PUAs rake in thousands of dollars for imparting the secrets of tricking women into bed." - Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women

Heterosexual dating is a very gendered experience in which men and women generally have very different struggles. It's actually much harder for a man to navigate dating and all the things associated with it than a woman might think.

For many, many of us, lack of romantic experience never feels like its just a "normal rite of passage."

It's often an experience that feels alienating and invalidating to the point that it could severely damage our self-esteem if we're left without guidance.

Add onto that the fact that the patriarchy constantly pressures us into attaching our sense of self-worth to how well we can sexually "conquer" women, and you'll realize how extremely rare it is for that rite of passage to simply "pass with age and maturity."

It's no exaggeration to say that, if not for PUA material and the hope and love it helped me to realize, I would not be here today. I actually would have - as the incels say - "roped."

I was once desperately lonely. Thanks to all the PUA teachings that helped me to develop myself into a more attractive version of myself, I am now truly happy and Never Lonely.

Yes, there are many problematic teachings and marketing tactics used by PUAs as outlined in Men Who Hate Women. And there are many PUAs who have done horrible things and deserve to be in jail. I hate that those problems exist and persist in our communities.

However, boys and men need some sort of guidance when it comes to dating and relationships.

They need resources that can help them find love in a way that uniquely speaks to members of their gender and orientation. And, in my definition, anything that has to do with helping men become more attractive to women in any way falls under the umbrella of "PUA."

Oh, and just one more nitpick: Bates bashes my buddy Richard La Ruina and his Super Seducer video game series because the games present harassment scenarios. I get that it would be problematic if such representations were used purely as a joke, but in Richard's defense, those scenarios were presented as wrong answers that would punish the player.

Other than that…

Due to fragile masculinity,

I know that Men Who Hate Women will rub a lot of men the wrong way. Bates presents the facts so clearly that it will feel condescending if you're on the opposite side.

You know how when an idiot on the internet makes a stupid rant that's obviously a thinly veiled rationalization of sexual frustration?

You know how you immediately recognized the stupidity and bad-faith nature of each point and just ignored it?

You know how, every now and then, a clearly more mature adult replies to each point in his post, pointing out each and every fallacy?

Men Who Hate Women reads like an adult sitting down to reasonably explain every illogical or immature point in a child's tantrum.

But there was probably no other way to write it.

I know that the possibility of being shown that you're wrong is scary. I know you'd rather sit comfortably in only the echo chambers that massage your ego. But remember one of our community's oldest and most sacred of dogmas, as said by Neil Strauss in his PUA days:

The comfort zone is enemy territory.

Check out Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates for yourself here. (not an affiliate link - I just think it's a good book)

And while you're at it, grab my book, too, if you haven't already!

This article was originally published on Medium.