Summary

Amber Wardell addresses men who harbor misogyny and spend time antagonizing women online, questioning their motives and suggesting they leave women's spaces if they despise them so much.

Abstract

Amber Wardell, a psychologist and author, confronts the paradox of men who express hatred towards women yet consistently engage with women-centered content online. She discusses the daily barrage of sexist and demeaning comments she receives on her social media platforms, which have a significant following. Despite the negativity, Wardell emphasizes her resilience and the strategies she employs to maintain a positive online experience, such as blocking and ignoring hateful individuals. She challenges these men to consider why they fixate on women they claim to despise, suggesting that their behavior is rooted in a need for control rather than genuine dislike. Wardell extends her argument to other forms of bigotry, noting that those who oppress often feel compelled to dominate the groups they hate. She encourages marginalized communities to continue speaking out against oppression and invites those who respect women to engage in constructive dialogue.

Opinions

Wardell believes that men who hate women often can't resist engaging with women-centered content, revealing a need to control and demean rather than a genuine disinterest.
She asserts that the men who spew hate online are not of high value, as their fragile egos are threatened by women's unapologetic existence.
Wardell points out that bigotry, whether in the form of sexism, racism, homophobia, or classism, is often about exerting control over the hated group.
She emphasizes that marginalized groups are tired of being silenced by belligerent individuals and are adept at ignoring hateful rhetoric.
Wardell encourages constructive engagement from men who love and respect women, inviting them to join the conversation on her platforms.
She promotes her work, including her blog on Psychology Today and her presence on various social media platforms, as spaces for openness, empathy, and equity within feminist discourse.

Dear Men Who Hate Women: Have You Considered Just Leaving Us Alone?

Heads up. If you couldn’t tell from the title, this one’s going to be a little antagonistic. But honestly, some of y’all deserve it.

I have dedicated every single social platform I own to centering women’s issues. I talk predominantly about marriage, motherhood, and mental health, but I also branch out to just about any topic that affects women. I’ve recently become a contributor for Psychology Today where I run a blog called Compassionate Feminism: Centering Openness, Empathy, and Equity in the Feminist Conversation.

While my work centers women, I always ask men who love and respect us to join the conversation. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with thousands of men who want to smash the patriarchy and build something better for us all.

That said, the duality of creating women-centered content online is that, while it does attract many incredible men, it also attracts the very worst: the sexist, misogynistic, ignorant, vile men who despise women and any form of media that shows concern for their needs and interests.

Daily, my social accounts, which tally over a million followers in total, are drowned in comments from such men. My punishment for daring to center women in my content is to have my intellect, my appearance, my qualifications, and my worth critiqued by men who I outmatch on basically every one of those axes. Not because there is anything particularly excellent about me (though I consider myself to be pretty remarkable, as we all should!), but because men who treat women this way are never the “high value” men they think they are. Any man whose ego is so fragile that he must spew hate at a woman for existing unapologetically is, by definition, not a high-value man.

But here’s the thing: I can take it. I’ve been doing this a long time. I learned years ago how to stop internalizing the cruelty these men so poisonously lob my way.

I don’t like these men, so I steer clear of them. I scroll past their posts when the algorithm fails to read the room and sends their content my way. I block fragile and childish men who try to interact on my page. For all intents and purposes, I am crafting an online experience that makes those men completely invisible to me.

Because I don’t like them.

So, my question for these men, naturally, is: why, if you hate us so much, do you spend so much time in our spaces?

If you despise women, prefer to ignore our needs and interests, and find us generally insufferable, have you considered leaving us alone?

Like, honestly, just fucking right off?

The answer, of course, is that they can’t.

Men like that need to control what they hate. It’s not enough to despise our existence — they must put us in our place.

This goes the same for:

Racists who obsessively leave hate on the pages of people of color.

Homophobes and transphobes stalking the comment sections of queer folks.

The criminally rich shitting on people who require food stamps to survive.

It’s not enough to hate. The point is to control.

And honestly, I wish these people would just let it go already. Those of us who are fighting axes of oppression that those folks will never dream of fighting are all done being bullied into silence. We’re sick of belligerent oafs feeling entitled to our spaces.

We’ve learned how to ignore you.

What’s stopping you from doing the same?

Amber Wardell is a doctor of psychology and author who speaks on women’s issues related to marriage, motherhood, and mental health. Subscribe to the free newsletter to get exclusive content delivered to your inbox and to never miss an upload.

Check out her blog called Compassionate Feminism on Psychology Today to join a feminist conversation centered in openness, empathy, and equity.

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