Peter Coates
2 min readJul 6, 2024

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I'm skeptical of the EJSP article, but I agree with you that there's something new going on in misogyny. I don't think we've ever had a climate in which a typical man and woman had so much difficulty coming together. A person used to be competing for attention among dozens or possibly hundreds of people. Today, they're competing for attention among tens or even hundreds of thousands. And the social world incessantly beats this drum about how you can do better. Abominable phrases like "high value mate" etc. are everywhere. I think you are absolutely right that among the strata of men who are left behind, known by that other abominable term, "incels," a nasty strain of misogyny flourishes. But among the privileged men who get a lot of access, for some, almost unlimited access to women, the value of women is cheapened, since another woman who is superficially interchangeably attractive is always around the corner. What social media and mass media have done is truly horrifying. Reciprocally, there has never been a time when hatred of men has been so rampant and semi-officially encouraged. Men are openly despised and demonized from kindergarten on. Some men do some bad things, and so do some women. But most people are pretty OK. I'm old, but I have sympathy with young men who are angry and bitter about being damned and belittled for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers. And of course, exactly the same kind of illiberal demonization of women goes on too. Men today deal with levels of rejection and belittlement that were literally unheard of when I was young, and we naively thought it was already fraught back then. The whole concept of "swiping" right of left is horrifyingly trashy for both sexes. I'm actually surprised that people bother to try to couple anymore.

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Peter Coates
Peter Coates

Written by Peter Coates

I was an artist until my thirties when I discovered computers and jumped ship for a few decades. Now I'm back to it. You can probably find some on instagram.

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