[b6]

I'm not talking about what women want, I'm saying that I know firsthand that many men I know love the women in their lives very much, much more than life itself. That's all.

There certainly are men out there who hate women, but it doesn't seem to me to be very many. Try it, enumerate the men you know and ask yourself, or even ask them directly, if they love the women in their lives. What fraction of women haters do you find? I think you'll find it's very low. And that's my point, that we are not actually facing an epidemic of misogyny ("hatred of women"), that it is actually something else, or at least much more complicated.

Personally I don't find it hard to come up with another explanation: miserable people want other people to be miserable too. And to make people miserable, you do whatever will be effective. Over the internet, mean words work a lot better against women than against men.

[bloak]

Your last paragraph is totally correct, in my opinion.

(It is probably also true that many people who use "racist" insults are not really being "racist"; they are just insulting in an effective, target-specific way. If they couldn't come up with a racist insult, but the target has glasses, they'd probably resort to "four-eyes". I'm talking about the UK here, by the way.)

[mirimir]

If someone is being "just insulting in an effective, target-specific way" that comes across as racist, then they're being racist, no matter what they may really feel, or what they may think that they really feel. And it's the same for sexism or any other *ism.

[bloak]

You may choose to use words in a way that deliberately obscures an important distinction in the real world but please accept that other people may choose not to.