'Women have an accountability problem.' Debunking Manosphere Lies

In the manosphere, accountability means being abused forever without complaint.

“Women actually do have a significant accountability problem.”

It’s the confident, assertive, and completely false claim I see on just about any feminist post I make these days. In the misogynist imagination, confidence and just-so stories are a great substitute for truth. Men’s word is enough, and the mere fact that a man says something makes it true.

We’re supposed to ignore the overwhelming data showing sky-high rates of violence against women and a near-total lack of accountability, legal or otherwise, just because Jonathan on the Internet is thumping his chest about women’s “accountability problem.”

When misogynist men yammer about accountability, it’s little more than a rhetorical cudgel to deflect their own accountability. They want women to be accountable for all of the things men do so they don’t have to be.

So what’s behind this nonsense about women’s lack of accountability? And how should you respond when you hear it?

This piece is part of a series, Debunking Manosphere Lies, in which I tackle the lies right wing propaganda tells young people, and which it repeats over and over again until they seem like the truth. In this series, I cover ideas such as the notion that men build everything, and that red pill men have more luck in romance. I’ll be devoting more time to this series in the coming weeks. You can find all topics in this series here. To learn more about the manosphere, how feminists can counter it, and how it harms men, click here, here, here, or here.