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jenmangler's review against another edition
4.0
I thought I was pretty well-informed about misogyny. Was I wrong. The manosphere is so much bigger and scarier than I could have imagined. Also, between the pandemic misinformation proliferating on YouTube and reading this book I have had my eyes opened to the menace of YouTube. They need to do much, much better. Reading this was a real wake-up call.
katrinaas's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
what_anwen_read's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
erinlovestoread's review against another edition
dark
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
3.75
While the message of this book holds importance and value, I found myself questioning the approach of framing it as a problem that can be solved simply by kindness and understanding. This perpetuates a notion of victimhood that seems to overlook systemic issues. Despite efforts to promote kindness, we still witness rising violence, which threatens the safety of girls at the hands of men and boys. Instead of focusing solely on being nice, a more effective solution to confront this issue would be to actually acknowledge that they are causing harm and having them take accountability for once.
kimchifairy's review
Not wholly meritless, but sufficiently lacking in genuine insight as to be quite infuriating. Bates takes a consistently liberal, politically conciliatory tone throughout; as such there's no real argument, just long lists of examples separated by adverb-heavy, mixed-metaphor condemnation, as though the awfulness of contemporary misogyny is so self-evident that all we need to defeat it is merely to see enough of it. It's not bad as a survey (although it's a little odd that, say, after spending over a year infiltrating incel spaces, Bates has learned nothing about them that can't be gleaned in five minutes on Wikipedia), but I think it's genuinely quite alarming that Bates has no real political or theoretical vocabulary with which to dismantle most of the (obviously appalling) positions she engages with. She settles throughout for painting misogyny as a form of 'extremism' - if only there was more moderate misogyny around, if only we could all compromise on a non-zero level of misogyny - and the final nail in the coffin is her endorsement of Barack Obama as a shining example of benevolent masculinity. Sure, he has the blood of thousands on his hands, but hey, at least he can cry in public. Finally a bit of balance.
geskerna's review against another edition
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0