I’m known for gathering abusive men’s secrets and turning them over to the other side. A couple of people have said to me, for example, that having a copy of Why Does He Do That? is like getting your hands on the other team’s playbook.
So now I’m going to do it again. And this secret is a pretty big one:
Men’s bad attitudes towards women don’t come from their experiences with women; they come from their experiences with men.
Yup.
Men who are negative about women love to blame it on women:
“I don’t trust where females are coming from because so many of my partners have cheated on me.”
“I have a chip on my shoulder against women because I was abused by my mother.”
“I see what women are all about because my ex-wife tried to take my money and my kids.”
How to I know that his explanation isn’t the truth?
First of all, as I’m fond of telling my audiences when I’m making presentations, I’m a former boy. I remember how much negativity I was exposed to about females — and I grew up in surroundings where I actually was around less of that stuff than most boys are. I’m not just talking about resentments or annoyances towards females; I’m talking about profound disrespect that bordered on hatred. As boys, we heard so many messages that dehumanized females, turned them into servants for men, and that justified sexual assault and physical violence toward them.
Secondly, I’ve known countless men who have been burned by individual women, whether by their mothers or their school teachers, or their dating partners, and they didn’t turn those bad experiences into excuses to look down upon the entire female sex. .
Third, there’s research about it. For example, one study specifically compared men who had been abused by their mothers to men who had not, to see if the two groups on average had significant difference in their attitudes. The findings? There was no difference between the two groups in their attitudes towards women.
Now let’s come at this question from a different direction. Think for a moment about white people whom you’ve encountered in your life who were very racist, and you were bothered by their beliefs about people of color. Did you say to yourself, “Wow, this person must have had really bad experiences with people of color”? I bet you didn’t. I bet your thoughts went much more along the lines of, “This person either grew up around white people who were racist as hell, or else that’s who they’re hanging out with now.”
And you’d be right. White people develop their attitudes towards people of color from their experiences with white people. Any negative experiences they have with people of color are just excuses for the outlook they have already absorbed and adopted.
Plus, once we know a white person is racist, we don’t really trust what they have to say about what their interactions with people of color have been like; we suspect — again, quite correctly — that their attitudes have deeply distorted their perceptions and their memories of what has happened between them and non-white folks.
Why should our thinking be any different regarding men who look down upon women? Men who are anti-female got that way through the influence of the key men in their lives, beginning when they were young and often continuing into their adult peer relationships.
In short, bigotry is always caused by the group that is bigoted, not by the targets of that bigotry.
I’ll write more soon about the various ways in which this key insight matters, but for today I just want to choose one point to underline:
You can’t fix a guy’s bad attitudes towards women by being good to him. It doesn’t matter how kind, loving, honest, and patient you are with him; none of your heartfelt contributions will have any impact on his outlook on women. His attitudes didn’t come from women being mean to him, so they can’t be cured by women being good to him. Men’s bad attitudes towards women only change when they are confronted by women and men — especially by men — about their attitudes. Again, it’s just like what happens with racism.
Steer as clear as you can of anti-female men, and don’t pour a lot of energy into trying to get them to improve their misogynist outlook. Men are really the ones who have to do the work of changing other men. I recognize that it’s tempting to try to be an ambassador for women, but it’s a dead end. You have much better things to be doing with your time and spirit.
I talk about this with many of the victims I work with and they really don’t seem to get it until I say the word “entitled”. That is when the light bulb goes off. When they start thinking about the attitude they encountered with their partner or former partner as a feeling of being entitled to treat her the way he did…..then they get it and they begin to talk about that. Then they start to put the puzzle together as I aske a series of questions like “so the more you did to make him happy….did that satisfy him or did he want more?” “When you acted the way he wanted you to act did that satisfy him or did he change what he wanted?” “Did you get the feeling or did he say he could be like that because he had the right to be like that?” If the women had interactions with their abuser’s family then I ask how his dad acts toward his mom. More often than not the behavior is the same.
WOW. this is so powerful – amazing metaphor about racism & sexism, i never considered it. thank you for your work. PLEASE consider writing a blog about the rise of “incels” (so-called involuntary celibate men), MGTOW (men going their own way, essentially the same as incels), and other hateful online groups. do you believe that young men exposed to all of the hatefulness can be this way IN SPITE of healthy relationships and self-esteem? that is, isn’t there also a connection between self-hatred and hatred of women (or people of color, gay people, etc.)? thank you for what you do. i sent this to all of my friends!
hi lundy,
your books have helped me amazingly, to understand a lot of my husbands behaviour. i worked through should i stay or should i go and i finally realised i can stay, with firm boundaries i am not too limited with him. but my main concern is my children.
especially my oldest daughter, i am very concerned with how he treats her. i have not come across any good advice or books or even who to speak to when the father is possibly abusive/controlling to the kids, can you reccommend any and what are the first steps i can take?
thank you
What are your thoughts on on long term adultery with porn, massage both types, is this learned to the way women are considered in the betrayers life?
Thanks
Working on recovery of 29 year acting out H
Thanks
Sadistic, Chauvinistic, Missoygnist, Narcicistic, Improperly Parented, Iconic desire to have you act as tho he is god, because he can only be god–if you play the slave Fantasies. And if he’s really a piece of work –he will tell you all the reasons you should accept that he is your god. You’d think if he has to provide you with continual reasonings maybe he’d try another character.
You must object immediately, or else he will feel envious of you that you have your own mind and don’t need his validation. In extremely dangerous cases, he will kill you for not agreeing with him. Or just threaten you repeatedly, deceive you, demean you, exploit you, ridicule you and encourage everyone that you both know that they must report to him if they want to be lavished with gifts. Most women don’t care, or men, how they deceived another to obtain rewards. They may have complied not to get out of his good graces: “FREE MONEY” spends and the fact that if he steals from you in a manner that is illegal is if no consequence to them. They will fight you to keep the channel open and flowing. He’ll steal your paycheck to establish how easy it is, and as a reward to the other to teach them never have respect for anyone! Only me because playing god is his job and establishing superiority, helplessness and frustration is his business. He then closes by planting the seed, ‘you’re only hurting yourself! You asks yourself, now how in the world can that be?
Dear Lundy! Thank you so much for your great work! Your book helped me and my three children get out of the trap! My ex-husband is an abuser and he will always be… I feel so inspired with my life now when I’m free from his pressure. In Russia the problem of women abuse is also acute. Thanks to your books our world gets better. All the best to you!!!
Dear Lundy! Thank you so much for your great work! Your book helped me and my three children get out of the trap! My ex-husband is an abuser and he will always be… I feel so inspired with my life now when I’m free from his pressure. In Russia the problem of women abuse is also acute. Thanks to your books our world gets better. All the best to you!!!
Woah!!! This almost went over my head. So happy I kept reading. Completely logical. Thank you.
Spot on.
In high school, i had the pleasure of sitting right next to a guy who was extremely misogynistic. Almost everytime he talked about women, he would refer to them as “bitches”, this is how many rappers and hip hop singers in that time period would refer to women in their songs. In the last couple months of the school year, this same guy one day randomly lifted himself up from his chair and air hupped the air right near my head. I’m mad that i didn’t get up right then and there, give him a nice blow to the head with my back pack, and go report the incident to the prinicple. This guy ws disgusting.
This is another story that proves what Lundy has said about how what we believe matters; this guy certainly believed women were inferior(else he wouldn’t of refered to them as bitches and done what he did) ans this believe showed itself.
I have been in a marriage for 37 years to a mental, verbal and emotional abuser, and put up with it! My question is to myself and other women is, why do we stay? There are many reasons, the main one being, we always think we can do better, and we keep trying. I did try to leave him 20 years ago, and caved in at the last minute, why, I think because a great many of us don’t want to cause pain to someone. Even if they have caused us pain, somehow we think we deserve it! Back to this particular blog. The abuse started with verbal assaults of derogatory language toward me and women in general. I would catch him occasionally under his breath saying, “you bitch”, or “you’re a f…..ing c….” I realized then that he has a great hatred, obvioulsly of women? We did go to counseling, but it was not nearly for long enough. He can controls his language better, but I still know when he walks away from me, he is thinking to himself, “you f….ing bitch”. This is never going to change, I do not believe, with any amount of counseling. Besides the fact that I am way past caring. Your book, Why Does He Do That, was a life affirming read for me. I could highlight almost the whole book!! Thank you Lundy!! I am taking steps now, after 37 years to remove myself. I also take to heart, his potential for violence. He threatens it, by fists in my face, and did back me one the sink once with his hands around my neck. I know the potential is there. Your article on how to tell if he could be violent, I read and understand. Thanks everyone for letting me vent on here!
Thank you so much for this post. It is spot on. For years, I have been obsessed with online misogynists, and what makes them tick. They like to talk about how women are incapable of introspection, yet they share stories about how every woman they were with cheated on them, and conclude, not that they were the common denominator, but that “all women are like that.” I have white privilege. I accept that as a fact, but I also know that I often don’t see it. I think it must be the same for men, for men who are making an effort to deal with their entitlement, men who are just trying to get through the day, and, most certainly, for misogynists.