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youhatewomen:

This Blog:

Misogyny in the US is as prevalent today, as it was yesterday. Without the entire societal structure holding it up (thanks to legal protections and women who fought hard to change our culture), anti-feminist misogyny in the US (defined for the purposes of this blog as “anti-women sentiment that seeks to reverse gains for women or portray women as less-than”) has fractured into small movements, scattered about the internet and in real life. For the purposes of this blog, I will be writing both about religious and non-religious misogyny and defining them as such.

This blog seeks to write about anti-feminist misogyny as it exists online and in life, shedding light on the fringe that is moving more and more quickly towards the center of the national discussion on women.

Me: 

In 2000, my home got the internet. I was 12. By 2002, reading anti-feminist websites (specifically religious anti-feminist websites) was one of my favorite things to do. Raised religiously myself (but also a person who - at 5 - declared that her husband would take her last name because I liked my last name!), the religious framework of this type of misogyny fascinated me. I was fascinated by a group of people who felt that they were bound by an extreme set of rules and that these rules would help them to structure their lives in a way that not only made sense to them but was pleasing to God. 

The first site I became obsessed with was called Ladies Against Feminism (which still exists today). It existed, in 2002, as a independent blog where women (writing under the naming structure: “Mrs. FirstName LastName”) would share tips on gardening, dressing modestly, and their opinions about their specific, Christian-tilted concerns around courtship, Biblical womanhood, and living in a male-headed household at the turn of the millennium. Their 2004 article “Should Women Vote?” remains one of my favorites.

LAF underwent a site redesign in 2011, producing less original content and linking to other Christian blogs more often than they produced their own work. As a result, I lost interest in the site, for the most part. By this time, I was hot on the trail of reading about secular anti-feminist misogyny: Pick Up Artist (PUAs), Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), groups of men online who felt that the world had made them celibate against their will (”incel”/”involuntarily celibate”), men who eschewed the company of women entirely (”Men Going Their Own Way”/”MGTOW”), and men who felt that they saw the world - and more specifically women - as they are (”The Red Pill”/”TRP”).

I’ve been reading and tracking anti-feminist websites online since 2002, when LAF was founded. It occurred to me that this equates to about 14 years of collected anti-feminist knowledge.

There are already great sites, like We Hunted the Mammoth, that track online misogyny in real time, but the jargon that they use can be hard for an outsider to parse. I hope, in a small way, to open people’s eyes to the “philosophies” of these various groups. 

As the types of rhetoric that these groups espouse (religious and non-religious alike) moves closer to the center of our national dialogue, it seems to me an immediate imperative to shine a closer light on these groups.