there is no off-ramp from misandry
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If a boy becomes misogynistic, he has myriad incentives to mend his ways before it’s too late. Not many people in the real world approve of misogyny, at least not any of the extreme versions of it that one comes across online. There are many good reasons for culturally discouraging hatred, especially such a damaging form of it, and no bad reasons. Misogyny is bigotry, and bigotry is bad.
I was once—not all that long ago, but a while ago—basically the misandrist equivalent to whatever lies beyond the red pill. I was terrified of men, hated them, viewed them as subhuman, had a difficult time empathising with them at all. I spiritualised my misandry. Eventually I became so afraid of men that I tried to avoid public spaces (this was during lockdown, so, it was possible and encouraged most of the time). I was open about my prejudice too! I meant every word.
And I received praise for my misandry.
People in liberal spaces, wherein I tend to move, ate it up. Although I’m politically to the right of most people in the ivory tower and its adjacent social domains, my misandry hit hard and cut deep and won me progressive approval. I don’t know how many people over the years clocked that my misandry was sincere, while everyone else’s misandry was generally just a performance among friends before going home to their husbands. Some misogynistic humour is this way too, bear in mind. People say insulting stuff for social clout or humour all the time without meaning it. Those among my friends who were well aware that I was a sincere misandrist seemed fine with it, even envious.
As miserable as my misandry made me and as bad as any bigotry is, though, there was no incentive to stop and reconsider my thought patterns regarding men. Everything in my surroundings at best permitted, at worst encouraged my hatred to flourish. The people online who I saw complaining about man-hatred were usually busy accusing women who don’t hate men of hating men and hardly came off as good-faith opponents of bigotry. They were not a real off-ramp. I didn’t talk to many men in person, for obvious reasons, and it was unbearably terrifying to talk to them even if I tried. Socially and politically, in general, it would’ve seemed cringeworthy to say that I wanted a way out of man-hating.
When I did suddenly lose my misandrist steam, it wasn’t because a concerned friend said “Hey, you sound androcidal, which is vile, and you seem to make yourself anxious by misreading my male friends’ demeanours as hostile, which is concerning; neither of these is good.” It was because I got on anti-anxiety medication. Yes, hypothetical reader, the energy behind my misandry was just an anxiety disorder finding a target.
For personal reasons, it wasn’t random that my anxiety landed on men. More to the point, it wasn’t random that misandry became such a fixture of my anxious life. When I was terrified of driving, there were obvious reasons to get over it. Now I like driving. But being terrified of men, and manifesting the terror as snarling hatred, like a wounded animal? Yassss queen.
To clarify a few things, which I shouldn’t have to do, but this is the internet: I think bigotry is bad regardless of statistics — I’m making no claim about the relative impact of misandry on humankind, as opposed to other forms of bigotry. I’m also not claiming that I didn’t have resources to inform me of the reality that most men aren’t serial killers. Especially by the time I hit adulthood, I should’ve known better, and that’s on me. However, that also doesn’t mean that whole swathes of educated society should enable the hatred in any misandrists’ hearts.
Even in left-wing spaces, I think casual-but-intense misandry has become less trendy. Even so, it crops up, and everyone still likely assumes it’s not a big deal, or that it’s a joke. But for someone in the room it might not be a joke at all, and she would benefit from realising misandry is not alright. Nobody else in the room is likely to say so. Please do.
The way things stand now, I feel fairly confident that if I were the one in a mixed-gender group who noted that misandry is bad, I would be seen as some combination of (1) a scold, (2) a man trying to tone-police a woman (and therefore a misogynist), (3) a man denying the badness of men (and therefore a misogynist), and (4) an example of fragile masculine ego. I try not to actively validate the misandry when it crops up, but as far as actually rebutting it goes, given how the board has been set up in 2026 I think this is one where women have to lead the way (as you are doing, here).
Even setting aside the social incentives, online misandry as a construct is built to resist any kind of external scrutiny. Every rebuttal to it gets repurposed as further proof of male frailty. Innocuous phrases like "well, actually" or "not all men" - things you might naturally say if you're providing counterexamples to an unfair generalization - become memes about how tedious and obtuse men are. Asking for further elaboration isn't possible because "it's not their job to educate you", etc etc.
This barely affects my life in any way (because of course I'm "one of the good ones"); rather, I think it's mostly self-sabotaging for the women who participate in it. It's bad enough that it opts them into a delusional mythology about gender relations, but also, it assumes that women have to play by ezmode rules when defending an ideology. I don't think women are at any natural disadvantage in the arena of ideas, yet this kind of misandry holds its adherents to lower intellectual standards, which obviously makes them worse off.
To clarify, I acknowledge that a lot of men get performatively offended by misandry, and by contrast, my objection here isn't that it's personally hurtful - just that it's stupid. Men don't really feel group identification or solidarity in the same way that some persecuted groups might, and so I don't buy it when someone's kneejerk response to misandry is to be a bitchbaby about it. One of the subtle ways that maladjusted men take up undue emotional space is by taking offense at trivial slights - which makes sense, since men don't get as many opportunities in society to claim victim status. This is one area where the misandrists have a fair point: there are some annoying behaviors that men do more on average, and it's fair to make observations about them, so long as you have the right amount of tact and social IQ.