I Read Feminist Books and Didn’t Die

We were supposed to be making progress.

Women had gained the right to vote. They entered the workforce. They became presidents, Nobel Prize winners, astronauts, CEOs. We had decades of feminism, equal rights legislation, social movements, and slow but tangible change. For a while, it really felt like the world was moving forward.

And then came the backlash.

Today, in 2025, the loudest voices influencing young men aren't philosophers or visionaries. They're grifters like Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed alpha male whose view of women swings between commodity and punching bag. In Slovakia, we have Filip Sulík—less global, more local, but cut from the same cloth. These men aren't marginal anymore. They are mainstream for a whole generation of angry, insecure boys searching for meaning in a world that no longer guarantees them default dominance.

We're seeing record levels of online misogyny, coordinated harassment campaigns, and reactionary politics where male entitlement is disguised as "traditional values." From Tate's podcasts to Sulík's social media rants, the message is clear: feminism went too far. Women asking for rights is now seen as a threat.

So how did we get here—after all this progress? And what the hell is actually going on?

Instead of just getting angry about it online, I decided to do something I probably should have done years ago: I actually read some feminist books.

The World I Thought I Knew

Now, I want to be clear about something before we go on: I'm not writing this as an expert. I'm not here to lecture, convert, or pretend I know what it's like to live in a woman's body. For most of my life, I called myself a liberal. I believed in equality, nodded along to all the right ideas—but still, I carried around a lot of the same stupid opinions as the rest of society.

I thought I understood sexism. I thought it was mostly solved, except for some backwards countries and a few assholes. I thought rape was something that happened in dark alleys by strangers. I thought the pay gap was probably complicated and maybe women just chose different jobs. I thought feminism was important but maybe getting a bit... much?

I was wrong about almost everything.

Leave It to the French

Leave it to the French to once again drag me culturally forward—this time, not with wine or cinema, but with unflinching feminist fire.

I started with Virginie Despentes' King Kong Théorie because someone told me it wasn't a polite book. They were right. Despentes doesn't ask for your comfort. She opens with her own rape story—and then proceeds to tear apart every assumption society holds about sex, gender, desire, and violence.

I never realized how society views rape until I saw it through her eyes. Rape isn't classified as a violation of a person—it's treated as a violation of property. In many legal systems, historically and even now, what matters isn't the woman's trauma. It's the man's honor. Society only recognizes rape when it fits a specific narrative: a poor man attacking a respectable woman in a dark alley. But a famous actor coercing a 19-year-old fan in a hotel room? We ask what she was wearing. We ask why she went there.

We ignore the violence when the rapist has status.

Reading Despentes was like someone had been describing colors to me my whole life, and suddenly I could actually see them.

Then I read Annie Ernaux's L'Événement—her account of getting an illegal abortion in 1963 France. It's not just a memoir—it's testimony. I had no idea what a woman truly endures while getting an abortion until Ernaux laid it bare: quietly, brutally, honestly. The stigma, the shame, the physical danger, the isolation. And this was just for making a choice about her own body.

In her Les Années, Ernaux charts not just her own life but the collective experience of women in postwar France. She captures the invisible: what it feels like to live as a woman in a world that's always trying to define you. The subtle humiliations, the lost dreams, the expectations placed on women that I'd never even noticed.

These women didn't just show me their struggles. They showed me the world I was actually living in.

The Pay Gap Isn't Just About Money

After reading these books, I started paying attention to things I'd never noticed before. Like the pay gap—which I'd always thought was probably exaggerated.

Šárka Homfray and Lucie Václavková capture it brilliantly in Pay Gap: Kratší konec provazu—women are pulling on the shorter end of the rope. Always. And the numbers back them up:

• Slovakia: Women earn about 20% less per hour on average—one of Europe's highest gaps
• European Union: Women's gross hourly pay is 12% less than men's on average
• United States: Women earn about 83% of what men earn

But it's not just the money. Many women earn less on top of working another unpaid shift at home—cooking, cleaning, caregiving, emotional labor. EU data shows that 28% of women work part-time largely due to unpaid duties (versus only 8% of men).

This isn't a personal choice—it's structural conditioning. The financial penalty follows women for life: lower incomes, diminished pensions, reduced autonomy.

And yes—there is progress. Some EU countries have narrowed wage gaps to under 5%, proving it can be done. But in most of the world, the message is still clear: be a great worker and a perfect mother. Be soft but also strong. Be ambitious, but not threatening. Be everything—effortlessly.

No wonder they're tired.

What We All Actually Gain

One of the most persistent myths about feminism is that it's a threat—especially to men. That it takes something away. That giving women more somehow means giving men less.

But here's what I learned: when women have rights, we all live better lives.

This isn't a political slogan. It's measurable. The OECD estimates that closing the gender employment gap could raise GDP by as much as 12% in some countries. McKinsey put a number on it—$12 trillion in potential global growth by advancing gender equality.

Every time a woman is able to study, earn, lead, or create, it adds something—to her family, to her community, to her country. More income means more purchasing power, more tax revenue, more innovation. And it means fewer people stuck in poverty, fewer women forced to stay in abusive relationships because they're financially dependent.

Countries with higher gender equality tend to have lower domestic violence rates, better mental health outcomes, longer life expectancy, more trust in institutions. People are happier. Families are healthier. Societies are more stable.

What's striking is that feminism doesn't pick sides. If you believe in capitalism, this is untapped market potential. If you believe in socialism, this is structural fairness. Whether you worship the invisible hand or the welfare state—both get stronger when women aren't excluded.

This isn't just about individual women succeeding—it's about whether we can build functional societies at all. When half the population is systematically undervalued, underpaid, and underrepresented, the entire system becomes less capable, less innovative, less resilient. We're not just wasting talent—we're weakening civilization itself.

And for men? It means less pressure to be the sole breadwinner, the lone protector, the emotional rock. Feminism doesn't just help women—it helps everyone escape rigid roles that don't fit.

Why the Backlash Now?

So if feminism helps everyone, why are we seeing this massive backlash? Why are young men flocking to figures like Andrew Tate?

Because some men simply cannot accept that a woman can say "no" to them—and mean it.

This isn't just about sex or dating—it's about the loss of automatic deference. For centuries, men could expect to be listened to, obeyed, respected by default. Now women can reject their ideas, their authority, their advances—and there's no social mechanism forcing women to be polite about it anymore. That terrifies some men more than anything else.

The internet has made it worse. Algorithms feed on outrage, and insecure masculinity is lucrative content. Platforms reward men who scream that women are gold-diggers, liars, attention-seekers. Meanwhile, they pitch themselves as the antidote: "real" men with discipline and purpose.

It's seductive—especially for young men who feel lost, economically powerless, emotionally isolated. The tragedy is that their pain is real. But instead of being taught to understand it, to grow through it, they're told to channel it into misogyny. To blame women for not sleeping with them. To call them "feminazis" for expecting respect.

This crisis of masculinity is not caused by women. It's caused by a system that told men their worth depended on dominance—and then pulled the rug out.

When your self-image is built on the idea that you're supposed to lead, to earn more, to be desired by default, feminism feels like an insult. Not because it hurts you—but because it tells you you're not entitled to anything just for existing.

What I Learned About Myself

Reading these books forced me to confront uncomfortable truths about my own assumptions. How many times had I dismissed a woman's concerns as "emotional"? How often had I interrupted women in meetings without realizing it? How many times had I expected to be listened to simply because I was speaking?

I started noticing things I'd never seen before. Like how I would instinctively explain things to women that I'd never think to explain to men. How I'd assume a woman was being "difficult" when she pushed back on ideas, while calling the same behavior "leadership" in men. How I'd tune out when women talked about workplace issues but pay attention when men raised the same concerns.

I realized I'd been living in a world designed for me—and I'd never questioned why it was so comfortable.

This isn't about guilt or self-flagellation. It's about opening your eyes. You don't have to understand everything. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't—and choose to stand beside someone anyway, without trying to explain it all away. You don't need to fully comprehend what it's like to fear walking alone at night, or to be talked over in every meeting, or to have your competence questioned because of your gender. You just need to believe women when they tell you it happens.

A Plea for Dignity

I didn't write this to preach or convert anyone. I'm still learning. I'm still making mistakes. But I've learned enough to know this:

This isn't a war between men and women. That's what the worst voices want us to believe. That there's only so much space, so much power, and that if women rise, men must fall. But dignity isn't a resource. Freedom isn't finite. The more of it we share, the more there is for everyone.

You don't have to be Andrew Tate. In fact, the world doesn't need another man like him. It needs men who can listen. Who can stand beside women without trying to stand above them.

For men like me, it's about letting go of ego. About resisting the instinct to rationalize every discomfort. About realizing that sometimes, the most decent thing we can do is stop explaining—and start supporting.

This isn't about being perfect. It's about being better. A better friend. A better partner. A better listener. A better human being.

So what does that actually look like? For me, it means paying attention to who's talking in meetings and who's being ignored. It means not explaining things to women that I wouldn't explain to men. It means believing women when they describe their experiences, even when—especially when—those experiences are invisible to me. It means voting for people who understand that women's rights aren't a "special interest" but a basic requirement for a functioning society.

It means recognizing that this isn't a favor I'm doing for women—it's a responsibility I have as someone who benefits from an unfair system.

Because if you strip away all the arguments, all the statistics, all the culture wars—what's left is simple.

Nobody deserves to be treated like they matter less.