Are most men secretly misogynistic but don’t want to admit it, or do I just need to get off Reddit where the redpill/manosphere cesspool congregates?
Before I get attacked for making generalizations of men, I’ll just put this disclaimer: I know, not ALL men. I am aware that men are individuals and there are still good men out there.
I’ve always known that some(depending where you look) men are generally shallow (focusing on the external appearance of women is hardwired into their biology moreso than women) and misogynistic, but on Reddit/online it seems as though the grand majority of them are.
Groups specifically for men are often the worst (I can’t name which ones because I don’t want my account to be banned). Someone will make a post asking about women and hoards of men will say the most degrading, insulting, hateful, and misogynistic things straight out of Andrew Tate/Redpill communities. Like how women start to lose their worth and value after age 25 (a lot of comments about “hitting the wall”), degrading women who have a body count (ew I hate that term) over 1 (even tho they themselves often have a body count in the double-digits and don’t see a problem with it), promoting trad-wife culture, making fun of women who chose not to have kids, immediately blaming women for any divorce/breakup, etc. If you scroll through the comments section of any of these posts, you will see hundreds or thousands of upvotes on the most unhinged hateful things, which makes me fear that the majority of men truly believe that cr*p.
The men in my family are not like this (at least not outwardly and they’ve never said anything like this) so it’s kind of shocking to see how many men are. My ex was a redpill misogynist who cheated on me throughout the relationship and used a lot of redpill terms/tactics (negging me to make me feel insecure, rated me as a 6/10 on a scale despite me asking him not to, generally saw women as lesser than, got a kick out of emotionally manipulating me, admitted to liking Trump/redpill content towards the end of our relationship). He was also on Reddit a lot and learned a lot of the game/pick-up artistry stuff (to which I was completely oblivious about until I dated him) on Reddit forums. (Side note: unsurprisingly, he was also the least attractive man I’ve ever dated, which is something I was initially blind to/willing to look past because he love-bombed me and I fell for him. He was 5’7” with a less than average equipment, I but anyways…I digress!). I thought he was just an oddball, not representative of the majority of men, but not I’m not so sure anymore.
Seeing all the terrible hateful comments men have to say about women behind the secrecy of an anonymous account online, I am starting to become paranoid that most men truly do think this way but are afraid to admit it because they know it makes them look bad. I’m feeling super disillusioned with dating and men in general and fear that my previous optimism about men in my teens and 20s (most men are generally good people and don’t think this way) was just youthful naivety. Also, maybe I had a better perception of men back then because (let’s face it) men are generally much nicer to women in their teens and 20s than 30s+. I am feeling pretty pessimistic about men today and I’m not sure if I’m finally waking up to reality after decades of ignorance or if I’m just seeing the worst of the worst and need to get off the cesspool of the Reddit manosphere. Or maybe a bit of both.
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I don’t know, but my (46M) belief is that most men are not misogynistic.
I think what can happen, though, is that men and women frequently miscommunicate, due to different assumptions we bring with us, and even an underestimation of how different our backgrounds really are.
Allison Armstrong (In Sync With the Opposite Sex, The Queen’s Code) has a lot of literature around this idea, and the Dadvocate has an Instagram channel where she explores similar ideas.
Working through this material with my partner (43F) has really helped us a lot to have productive discussions when we aren’t seeing eye to eye.
I have no real data to back this up and it’s just anecdotal experience of being a young man and have a lot of friends that are young men. The internet especially biases towards giving voices to the crazies. They use it the most and since they tend to be socially stunted or ostracized they also have the most dumb shit to say. I’m convinced a lot of them are addicted to the feeling of being angry and expressing their hatred makes them feel good in some twisted way.
I’ve met a few people who you can just smell the misogyny on but of the men I’ve known it’s been a significant minority. Maybe it’s worse now than when I was closer to 18 (I’m going on 27) but I’ve seen hands thrown and asses kicked over people saying out loud some of the insane rhetoric people spout online.
I also think a lot of non misogynistic men tend to not talk about women’s issues extensively online. They probably should to be honest but they don’t, which leaves the crazies the floor. No normal person goes on prejudice tirades every time they see a woman or black person post online. But the crazies do and the algorithms incentivize it because engagement is the only thing that matters. It’s a cultural failing but also a biproduct of how these social media spheres are engineered.
The majority of people aren’t on reddit or other media sites. In real life I rarely encounter bad behavior but it’s noteworthy when it does happen. No one runs to the internet to report run of the mill interactions or behaviors but they do post multiple times about asocial despicable interactions and behaviors. Basically the internet info is skewed and doesn’t reflect what many experience in real life.
I think a ton of people operate in an extremely normative mindset that they barely know how to question.
They come to a relationship, interaction, whatever, with an idea already in mind of what the other person wants. What they like. What they are willing to endure, what they object to, what they value, what they scorn.
When the other person violates those expectations, the first person interprets everything as a challenge: they should have liked what I said, but they didn’t because they want to fight. They should have agreed with me about that, but they didn’t because they like being difficult. That sort of thing.
People who legitimately hold different foundational values don’t exist to them.
It’s almost a quasi-religious mindset.
The vast majority of human societies throughout history are patriarchal which naturally leads to hatred and exclusion of/towards women in different ways.
If societies are this way, then it’s because most of the people are this way or else the society would be different.
At this point you would basically have to found a new country or completely rewrite a country’s constitution to explicitly not be patriarchal and then you would have to hold the country to those laws over the course of several generations before I think we’d ever see a society where the majority of men were not misogynists.
It’s not just Reddit; it’s the problem with all social media that the most extreme views are the ones that are presented the most.
So not only is Reddit more misogynistic then the norm the posts and comments that get the most play are the more controversial ones.
That being said a lot of men I associate with have different variance if casual misogyny. Some of them you can see the mask slip. As a 40 year old man I can’t really speak for the teens but the extreme redpill Tate following I’ve never personally seen so I think that level of extreme isn’t quite as common place (yet) as you’d believe being on Reddit.