Why are sexist men all using the same empty arguments? And why do they work so well?

Why is it that silly, fallacious, fact-indifferent arguments are so effective when men weaponize those arguments against women?

For two years now, I’ve been writing a series on the weapons sexist men use to get out of household labor, parenting, and showing any form of support or love to their partners. To me, a long-time observer of the rhetorical emptiness of misogyny, these arguments ring hollow. I’ve heard stories of thousands of men making them, then promptly switching to something else—or even to the original argument’s opposite—when the first excuse doesn’t work.

For a lot of women, though, the series was revelatory. It was the first time they realized that their husbands were making the exact same arguments as other husbands, even when the argument made no sense at all.

For example, in a recent survey, women breadwinners whose husbands stay home with their children relayed this to me: Their husbands often tried to get out of household labor by insisting that they, the husbands, were the providers and had a job. In spite of the mother being the only one with the job.

Excuses for sexist behavior don’t even have to align with the facts for men to make these excuses. It’s as if they just reach into the patriarchal ether and grab the first sentence they can find.

That’s because they do.

Misogyny is the water in which we all swim. It floods every aspect of our existence, whether we choose to see it or not.

This means that excuses for misogyny, however weak they may be, are built into gender socialization. From birth, we raise girls to over-value men’s opinions, to see men as individuals worthy of love and the benefit of the doubt, and to derive much of their worth from how men treat them.

Men are taught to see women as a collective—not really very different from one another, to under-value women, to never sacrifice for them, and to consider women’s opinions inherently invalid. If a woman says it, it immediately carries less weight. Maybe that’s why so many men repeat the things their women colleagues just said, and are met with praise and acclaim, while women who point this fact out are treated as shrill monsters.

This extends well beyond heterosexual marriage. In the workplace, the courtroom, on the street in random interactions, in friendship, and just about anywhere else men encounter women, they engage in the same bad behavior—condescension, stealing ideas, aggression, overt violence, exploiting labor—and make the same pathetic excuses.

Understanding how and why these excuses are so effective can help you better understand the way misogyny affects your daily life. Each and every excuse men makes leans hard on a stereotype about women. Knowing this can help you deflate some sexist arguments. It can also make clear that you’re not being attacked as an individual; you’re being attacked as a woman.

There’s power in realizing that it’s not just you, and that men across the globe are doing the exact same things to just about every woman you know and every woman you don’t.

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