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DiscussionWomen know more about men than we ever have in history
Does anyone else think that having access to the internet was the catalyst for a deep societal change in the way women perceive men? Women in the past went into relationships with men completely blindly. They’d never seen the statistics on male violence. They didn’t know 1 in 3 women have been subjected to intimate partner violence. They’d never seen the horrific stuff that men write about women online. And porn has never been more violent and degrading. Of course, women in the past were never completely clueless about misogyny, but there’s no way they could’ve been as hyper aware of it as we are. There’s been talk of a crisis of men and masculinity, but is it really a new phenomenon or just the fact that the way men behave has been exposed by the internet? I’m not surprised straight people are having less sex. I’m not surprised men feel more “emasculated” and less catered to than before. Women are more aware of men’s depravity and rightfully wary than ever, and it’s not necessarily because of feminism. We now have access to mountains of evidence that men on average are considerably more violent and sociopathic than women. Even if trans ideology managed to completely erase the notion of femaleness and finished derailing the feminist movement into something unrecognizable, there’s really no way to put the cat back in the bag. Women are constantly exposed to misogyny, not only in real life, but also 24/7 online. We know what men are like, we know know more about them than we ever bargained for. The myth of men’s superior respectability and righteousness is forever tainted.
I started thinking about this not long ago. Glad other women are noticing.
Dear men,
You did this to yourselves. You were all so cocky as to think that you’d always have us under your control, and that we’d always be so desperate for affection and companionship that we’d forever be putting up with your BS. But the truth is that this is your view, as it’s typically men who cannot stand being single. You all made your bed, now lie in it.
Sincerely, A woman who loves living a single, independent life.
Absolutely! Seeing how men speak on sites like reddit fundamentally changed my view of men.
But you know what, I think our grandmothers' and great-grandmothers' and great-great-grandmothers' generations knew the truth about men's misogyny and violence towards women. But for them, their legal status meant that keeping silent, covering for men's violence and keeping appearances for men was more exigent than speaking the truth.
Somewhere around the time that women finally won their rights after a century of fighting for them, society started the narrative that men are willing to give women their rights. They aren't. They never are, not in enough numbers to matter. Nothing that we have is thanks to them.
And I think on the internet, you can watch it happen to other women. In real life, men very deliberately target women individually, alone, or often in front of other men but alone from women. If your boyfriend shoves you in an argument, you might start spiraling- oh he's usually so loving, I have trusted him with everything, both our names are on the lease, if we break up then who gets to keep the dog, maybe I was just as bad, a shove is not a hit after all, I guess we can make up. But if you see a man hit his girlfriend on the street, you don't care what they are arguing about, you can clearly see it's WRONG. Seeing misogyny online is like that.
That's a big thing because men have never really hidden their misogyny. Old-school men (and since we are on the internet I must clarify, I don't just mean boomers, I mean parents and grandparents of boomers) were very open about their misogyny. Boys, popular athletic boys, boys with girlfriends, regularly talked like incels before the internet was even a thing in peoples' homes. It has never been secret. But it was always of the utmost importance to cover for men and deny the truth.
On the internet you can clearly see all the "locker room talk" there in print, you can see men target women you don't even know, and you can probably talk to the woman about it.
I agree, though I think the time line is related to class and culture. I'm well into grandma age now, and grew up quite sheltered in middle class academic US culture. I had no idea, and I think my father and mother had no idea how common and insidious male abuse of women was and is. As a result I was easy prey to the first emotional abuser who took an interest in me.
My father's mother probably knew, but her not-good-for-much husband was gone early in my father's childhood, and silence on those topics was pretty universal. Similar on my mother's side.
I've often thought that if I'd had access to the internet as an adolescent I might well have been less naive and more able to defend myself.
Yes and no. Think male depravity is more public, but a lot of the worst of it can be off the beaten track and hard to find unless you're actively searching for it...or go down a rabbit hole. Meanwhile, much more is increasingly normalized, to the point where things that would have been shocking recently are things many have become desensitized to. You may see some deeply unsettling "kinks," but they're likely to be in a context of everyone validating them and enthusing over them, negative responses not welcome, to the point where you feel like you're losing your mind if you don't fall into line with it. And men are solidly the deciders of what is and isn't permitted speech on the internet, to the point where real consciousness-raising, criticism, and open comparing of notes among women often gets derailed, shut down, or censored very quickly, while naïve or male-pandering women's viewpoints get boosted. Outside of radfem-leaning spaces like Ovarit, I've heard far more frank discussions of the dangers of men from normal, not-particularly-political older women (when men aren't around) than what platforms like Facebook or Twitter tend to even allow (never mind a libfem platform like Jezebel). And there's a funhouse mirror quality to the anonymity that the internet often affords, women pretending to be men and men pretending to be women even outside of a 'trans' context, so in many places you might never know who you're reading or speaking to; is that aggressively, crudely sexual 'woman' really a woman? When you anonymously ask for women's advice in dealing with something, is it really women who answer, even if they all say they are? I've seen so many women being advised on courses of action that might work for men but are almost certainly terrible approaches for women to take, especially advising women to confront men exhibiting serious red flag behavior.
What I see more of is a lot of women and girls who are being pressured from every direction to think men are harmless and their worst behavior is still more or less acceptable, and being led to believe that our rights, wellbeing, and consent are respected/a priority, and that they have working avenues for remediation if things aren't 'fair,' and who seem to end up very isolated if they learn through painful experience that those things aren't true. Unless they find a hidden-away space like this one, or have other women with real-life experience they can talk to privately about it (especially offline).
Yup definitely agree. What really opened my eyes was finding out not just that there are misogynists, not just that violence against women is high, but seeing how men ccordinate against us with shit like the PUA, "redpill," and incel communities. They actively coordinate with one another for finding the best strategies to break us down and abuse us, and I'm sure they always have been offline, as well.
Another one? Reading true crime helped me realize that there is no hard line between "kink" and abuse. There are many horrible violent men, including murderers, who have used the language of kink in order to produce their victim's compliance. And the kicker? On articles with open comments, every single one of these assholes had people replying with "this was consensual. She knew what she was getting into," even when the victim had been fucking kidnapped from the side of the road, or was literally a child. When a man says "it's just a harmless kink," this means absolutely nothing. The constant stream of "a guy just tried to 'choke' me during sex, am I wrong for feeling uncomfortable?" posts on reddit have helped me to realize that sexual abuse has become the norm during heterosexual sex. It's not just "rare bad apples," the whole bushel is fucked. There's a systemic problem with men.
But yeah, it's also been a huge eye-opener learning that bisexual women face the most violence of any orientation. Men would have us believing that being a bisexual woman is a "privilege" because they find it "hot," as if being fetishized has ever protected any woman from anything, ever. The world is upside-down, and now we've learned to see it.
The coordination thing scares me. They’re rapists trading notes with each other on how best to prey on women. And if you call them out as the rapists that they are they get offended.
They are basically toxic to women. It’s best if we avoid them and work against them like they do to us. Prince Charming is a myth.
Yes, men are telling on themselves all over the internet. Things are vastly different now and most women have woken up to men's true nature. Even the women who were somewhat wise to it before did not realize how widespread the depravity and hatred of women is and how deep it runs. Now it's in our faces and impossible to deny.
Source: I was born in 1967
I’d say it’s more that the Internet has made men worse. But yeah, the virgin-wh*re dichotomy was easier to maintain before. If you were a good girl (as defined by them) they wouldn’t let you see the depravity, and if you were a wh*re then your feelings about what you saw didn’t matter.
men constantly sending me dick pics online since I was 14 made me automatically have a visceral reaction whenever I see a penis. they look weird and gross. unless I'm actually attracted to the man it's attached to and trust him, it's gross.
even straight women in general don't like how dicks look. they're not turned on by seeing naked men. I'm bi and neither am i.
Yes.
I often get told to get offline and stop being on the internet when I talk about this.
No thanks.
I agree with the comment about women knowing and treating it like the weather. I've been reading Lady Glenconner's reminiscences in the DM, and it's really true--they were taught this was just the way men were and they had to put up with it. If you haven't caught that series, here's links:
Absolutely, and I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. As a girl, I was taught that deviant, misogynistic, and perverted men were rare, but thanks to the internet, women have now learned that even “respectable” men are closer to predators than protectors. We have also learned just how many problems gender roles and heteronormativity have caused. They extend beyond policing gay/bi people. The real reason that men used religion and conservatism was to control women, not because it’s “for the greater good” or whatever.
There is just no going back from learning these truths…
This has occurred to me, thanks for writing it out, it's an interesting thought for sure.
I wish I saw this before! Yes I suspect that not just women’s but particularly teen and preteen girls’ access to putatively all male spaces through the internet is what is turning the tide in the battle of the sexes. The image of the princely man is shattered. Girls are learning earlier, from direct experience, which is crucial, that the heterosexual fantasy is a myth. Men don’t respect or love or “connect” to women. They tolerate us at best for access to sex and the status of having a (insert derogatory word for woman here).