The 4 Reasons Misogynists Become Misogynists, According to Misogynists

A misogynist is someone who hates, dislikes or is prejudiced against women, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Unfortunately, those same people are usually unaware that their bias against women exists, which probably makes their misogyny grow. It also means that you rarely get a peek at what makes them tick. Until now.

In a post on Quora entitled “What does it feel like to be a misogynist?” (inspired by the previous thread called “What does it feel like to be a misanthrope?”) three men what appears to be two men and a woman have offered their answers that very question. Given the aforementioned tendency that many people who harbor prejudices have of not being aware of their prejudices, it’s unsurprising that the post has been up for a week and there are so few responses. But despite the paucity of information, the post still has a few takeaways.

They have Mommy issues

I know about myself that I’m a very sensitive and complicated person with a lot of emotional needs, perhaps more than is typical. And my mother was not able to meet those needs very well. I know that my “love languages” are touches and words of affirmation, but the only “language” she felt comfortable speaking was service. She did that extraordinarily well, and I am grateful for it. Yet it wasn’t enough. I deeply love and respect my mother, and it was hard for me to acknowledge these things, but I think it was necessary for my own self understanding and emotional healing.

They’re frustrated by the narrow definitions of what modern masculinity and femininity are

If [sic] feels like no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never really be as good as a man. It feels like resenting other women for acting “girly” or “feminine” because they’re undermining your struggle to be taken seriously by those you work with. It feels like blaming women (rather than the institutions that determine gender roles) for being weak, and it feels like being angry that your gender means you’ll be associated with weakness. It feels like mistrusting women who conform to cultural expectations, as those expectations are suspect, and it feels like mistrusting those women who challenge the same expectations, because they’re women, and can’t be trusted.

They’ve experienced lots of romantic rejection from women

[I had a series of] very long, agonizing series of rejections by women—I would estimate about 30 or 40 of them—which never got any easier. I’m not going to bore you by recounting these episodes, except to say that each of them further reinforced my own feelings of inferiority and my negativity and cynicism toward women. I was irresistibly drawn to these women and always hurt by them. I have been asked, “Why were you like this? Were you a masochist? A glutton for punishment?” I think a better way to think of it is that I was like a shipwrecked man, floating in the ocean a life raft, parched with thirst. He keeps trying to drink the water that’s all around him, but it’s salty and bitter and only makes him thirstier. Not a fun place.

They don’t get it

Although I don’t consider myself a misogynist but I am routinely called one. Especially when I meet “wimmen” who around whining about being victims for just being women. I often tell them that men have had it bad too and more men are victims of violence than women, but they rationalize it saying that since it is men hurting other men, its OK. I ask them about centuries of conscription including in the 1970s Vietnam war, when at the height of the feminist movement, only men were forced to get killed, they say that men started that war and must die for it. And when I ask why don’t we have a more equal distribution of war casualties, I’m called a woman-killer.

I have come to despise feminist groups (not all, but most) for their absolute disregard for the value of men. I have no love for the MRAs either who usually are usually women hating gay men.

And no I don’t hate women in general, just some of them like the gold-diggers, false rape accusers, blackmailers and feminazis who think men must be eradicated. I’ve been fortunate to have many nice women in my life.