I tried to teach men about sexism. They taught me instead.

How violent, angry men taught me that misogyny is way worse than I could have imagined.

For the last month, I’ve run a series, Deconstructing Masculinity, that speaks to men. This was a direct response to the hundreds of men who have asked me to put together a curriculum that helps them become better husbands and fathers while rooting out their sexist ideas.

The responses to this series replicate the misogyny I see in real life: aggression from the overwhelming majority of men, and deafening silence from the self-appointed “good” men. The reaction to this series has been shocking, and confirms for me that it is impossible to overstate how bad things really are. Every day, in response to this series, my inbox and social media feeds flood with men unapologetically defending violence against women, discussing how much they abhor women, and endlessly depicting themselves as victims.

I hoped to teach well-meaning men about women’s experiences in the world. I’m not sure I did much of that. But men definitely taught me that, however bad I previously believed the problem to be, it’s much worse than that. Men are increasingly comfortable bragging about their misogyny, while claiming the feminist pendulum has swung too far.

Here’s what my [mostly failed] attempt at educating feminist men has taught me.

Patriarchy renders men incapable of telling a logical, consistent story about themselves

Patriarchy is a system of extraction—not a logical, coherent philosophy. Baked into patriarchal thinking are numerous inconsistencies: the belief, for example, that men are natural leaders who also cannot be expected to do any critical thinking at home; the notion that men are vital for children’s well-being, but that demanding equal parenting is unfair; the idea that men “need” sex, but that expecting them to do anything to make sex tolerable for women is unreasonable.

So it should come as no surprise that patriarchal thinking undermines men’s intelligence and critical thinking. Men claim to object to my work because it depicts men unfairly. They tell me, “Not all men!” and scream about how it somehow harms men for women to share their stories of abuse. They demand the benefit of the doubt. They insist they are good guys.

And then they turn right around and prattle on about how women deserve violence, or laugh at women’s stories of violence, or tell us no one cares about our rapes.

So which is it? Are most men good guys trying their best? Is feminism mean to good guys by painting all men with the same brush? Or is it that women are obnoxious monsters who deserve abuse?

They don’t care. They’ll lean on whichever argument gets us to shut up so they don’t have to be accountable.

Most men do not want any form of accountability or self-reflection

Men asked me for a feminist curriculum. So I gave it to them.

The men who asked me for the curriculum remained completely silent. Most never subscribed to pay for the content, let alone read it. Almost none engaged with the work by sharing their reactions and experiences.

But I got plenty of feedback from random Internet men, all of whom were outraged that I dared to ask men to consider how they make women feel.

These are the very same men who prattle endlessly about how women in abusive relationships need to be “accountable” (read: stay in abusive relationships forever as punishment). They think physical violence is a fine form of accountability for the women they claim not to be oppressing. Yet asking men to reflect on their own behavior is going too far.

The overwhelming majority of men do not want any form of accountability, because such accountability would require them to confront their many unearned privileges, and perhaps even give them up.

Many men see an invitation to reflection as an act of abuse

My Deconstructing Masculinity series was a mere invitation to self-reflection—nothing more. Yet men consistently responded to it as if it were an act of physical violence. They posted long rants on my pages. How very dare I suggest they think about how they make women feel?

One man went on and on for pages about his main grievances with women’s “abuse,” which primarily centered around: women expecting him to bathe; paying for dates; women expecting him not to sexually harass them. He suggested that these ghastly behaviors warranted an all-out war on women.

He is not alone.

I think this is what a majority of men actually think. At least, that’s what they’re telling me they think: Women sometimes inconvenience men in small ways by not totally submitting to everything men want. Women therefore deserve every terrible thing men do to them and more. Be less annoying and then maybe men won’t have to rape, murder, and attack us.

Inviting men to reflect on feminism invites most men to advertise their misogyny

I expected that most men would respond to my series by telling me how good they are. They’d talk about all the housework they do, all the times they haven’t raped women, all the ways they are good dads. I was prepared for this, and prepared to push back on it.

I was not prepared for the near-unanimous response I got: When I asked men to reflect on feminism, they instead openly and publicly advertised their misogyny. Thousands of men posted on my page telling me women deserve rape, murder, and violence. Thousands more told me women exist for men, to please men, to serve men, and that women will only ever be fulfilled when we become men’s literal slaves.

These weren’t red pill lunatics, at least not outwardly. They had active profiles, often endorsing leftist and progressive causes. They had daughters and wives. They seemed normal. Yet when pushed even a little bit to acknowledge women’s humanity, their desire to hurt women came bubbling to the surface.

No wonder so many women find that, when they draw clear boundaries with their male partners, those men respond with escalating abuse.

‘Good’ men stay silent in the face of other men’s abuse

A small number of men responded to my prompts in good faith. Good for them, I guess.

These men were completely and totally absent when men became abusive or threatening on my page. Over the course of the month, I received more than 10,000 threatening and abusive comments on social media from men who read my work. In not one of these instances did I see a single good man speak up. They didn’t respond to any of the comments, let alone take any of the protective measures I saw women undertaking to protect each other.

Misogyny is everywhere, yet “good” men claim to never see it—maybe because they don’t want to, maybe because they know abusive men are dangerous to them too, or maybe because they simply don’t want to acknowledge that they’re uninterested in risking anything to protect women.

Over the course of my life, hundreds of women have stepped in to protect me against men, in ways small and large. I can recall exactly two times a man has done the same—and hundreds of instances in which a man was present but looked away.

They can’t even speak up online. So we know they’re not going to ever protect us in person.

Men only protect and provide for patriarchy—not women.

Men see themselves as victims—and they see no amount of victimization of women as undeserved

The number of men who came to my page to tell me the terrible ways in which they have been victimized by women is difficult to overstate. Not one single one cited an actual instance of abuse. Instead, these men viewed it as abuse when women didn’t give them what they wanted immediately:

• Not having sex with a man is abuse.

• Asking a man to wash his ass is abuse.

• Asking a man to care about a woman’s feelings is abuse.

• Criticizing a man’s ideas is abuse, and entitles men to remain silent in response to misogyny.

These men were very clear that these acts of fake abuse justified limitless abuse against women. They openly told me that they thought women deserve to suffer whenever they hurt men’s feelings.

Of course they feel that way. Patriarchy teaches them to do whatever they have to to get what they want. In patriarchy, men’s desires are considered needs, and women’s needs are considered selfish.

Other men insisted to me that they felt “terror” about sharing their experiences or thoughts with women. For these men, mild criticism in a public setting is comparable to the violence women constantly endure at the hands of men. That reveals a lot, doesn’t it?

Men find violence against women hilarious

The most heartbreaking thing I saw over and over was women publicly sharing their stories of abuse. We’ve taught women that they have to humanize abuse survivors by trotting out their own trauma for public consumption. Supposedly, this will make men care.

But it doesn’t. Over and over, men laughed at these women. They called them ugly. They told the women they deserve this abuse.

Men are openly confessing to thinking women deserve violence, and yet women are considered unreasonable for fearing men.

Women will take accountability for men, always

Deconstructing Masculinity was a series targeting men. Yet who do you think did the most introspection in response to the series?

Women, of course.

I watched women post daily about their own internalized misogyny. I watched them take accountability for small microaggressions as men sat silently, or justified actual violence.

I watched white women use the prompts to think about racism and other axes of supremacy culture.

I saw women taking accountability for men’s behavior, too, suggesting they may have done things to trigger their partners’ misogyny.

Women, over and over, were willing to reflect and grow.

Men showed up angry, aggressive, and unwilling to ever look at themselves.

This month, thousands of normal-seeming men confessed, publicly, to thinking women deserve violence. They laughed at women who survived violence. They threatened me and other women.

Yet these same men think we’re misandrists for calling them exactly what they are: abusive, violent, and lacking in value. This is how bad things have become. Men can openly endorse violence against women and still demand that we give them the benefit of the doubt.

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