The Contradiction between Claimed Feminist Beliefs and Women's Revealed Preference
Much of the justification for misandry today—and yes, sometimes feminists and their apologists explicitly defend "misandry" in this context—comes back to male violence. Discussion of legal and social discrimination against men is dismissed with lines like "women won't sleep with men, men kill women" or "women are rude to men, men are violent towards women."
The more dramatic claims of male-on-female violence (92% of Zoomer men use coercion to get sex; 25% of women are raped in college by men, 1 in 4 American men attended a rape academy, etc.—a grizzly bear is less likely to kill a woman in an encounter than a man) come not from any claims that have been subject to an adversarial process or even reported to authorities, but usually from self-reporting by the alleged victims. I was recently told on Reddit, "Ask any woman you know; they will have experienced male violence." Any objection to self-reported victimization is seen as hyper-skeptical and misogynistic.
But the edgier objection, which is never answered, is that modern women's behavior in no way aligns with these beliefs. It is not consistent with living in terror of all men at any time. It's not consistent with the analogy that dealing with men is like eating a bag of M&Ms where several are poisoned.
-You see women migrate to dangerous cities from the suburbs for work.
-You see large numbers of women having casual hookups with unknown men.
-You see lots of social activity, often while intoxicated and therefore vulnerable, at clubs
-You see single mothers have strings of boyfriends whom they entrust with their children.
-you'd see a woman stranded in the woods for days flee in terror when a random guy comes across her and not beg for his help (lol, someone should make a comedy bit on this, riffing off of man v bear)
If we had these astronomically high rates of violent men,
-you would see women become extremely reclusive.
-You'd see near-zero casual sex
-You'd see single mothers exercise extreme caution in dating. -You'd see them demanding fathers and brothers escort them in public.
So, to conclude, the constant cudgel of self-reported astronomical rates of male violence toward women is not truly believed by feminists. The feminist you are interacting with on Reddit *does not actually believe what she or he is saying about men in this context*. She (or he) is doing a post hoc rationalization to justify hatred of men. It is extremely important to recognize these types of arguments as bad faith and deceptive. You will pull your hair out otherwise. It is a guilt-trip tactic but is not grounded in reality.
To preempt an argument against this—to deny that behavior implies beliefs—I would use some other examples. One major belief system is religion. -Is anyone going to say that some peak corrupt medieval pope fully believed the teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church? -Does a mid century southern politician who dotes on his interracial love child truly oppose interracial unions? Or is he lying to win votes? -Does someone claiming to be invincible to bullets like Papa Doc Duvalier—yet still has an army of bodyguards—actually believe he is invincible?
Potential objections: To stake the maximalist position of "your behaviors are not downstream from belief" would entail saying all of the people mentioned above were true believers. It is simply inconsistent to recognize they were not true believers but then state feminists are so
Feminists versus 'normal women'- it certainly is possible hardcore feminists behave more consistently. Although this may mean they are not engaging in bad faith, it still poses problems for their position. Why are women more generally not behaving consistently with this proported astronomical phenomena of male violence ?
*final note: i say "women" here not to bash women as a collective. Feminists invoke "women" as a whole as having had these experiences. I am looking at their behavior *as a whole* to debunk it. Women who engage in the behaviors i described yet don't make contradictory claims have done nothing wrong.
"Every sinful act is an effective denial of belief in God's Omniscience" -Jonathan Edwards, recognizing you cannot truly fully believe something while behaving counter to it.