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Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism

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The revelatory and urgent story of how an explosion of misogyny is driving a surge of mass and far-right violence throughout the West—from an internationally recognized extremism expert and media commentator

What two things do most mass shooters, terrorists, or violent extremists have in common? Most of us know the they are almost always men or boys. But the second? They are almost always virulent misogynists, homophobes, or transphobes—even if they are also motivated by racism, antisemitism, or xenophobia. The antigovernment militiamen charged with plotting to kidnap and execute Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer used language saturated with misogyny, with one telling an FBI informant, “Just grab the bitch.” The men who killed scores at Virginia Tech, the Pulse nightclub, and a Maryland newsroom all had prior reports of stalking, domestic violence, or harassment of women. And in dozens of other incidents—from North America to Norway to New Zealand—an increasing number of misogynist incel (involuntary celibate) and male supremacist attackers have explicitly targeted and killed women, blaming feminism or sexual frustration with women as motivation for their attacks.

Yet, despite all evidence, the bright red thread of misogyny running through these attacks is barely acknowledged by the media or even experts—and this failing leaves us powerless to stop the violence. In Man Up, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a leading expert on extremism, addresses this crucial oversight head-on, revealing how an epidemic of misogyny—both online and off—and a patriarchal backlash are driving an exponential rise in mass and far-right violence. She also offers essential strategies that all of us—including parents, teachers, and counselors—can use to fight the rising tide of violence, beginning with recognizing the misogyny that pervades our everyday lives.

344 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

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About the author

Cynthia Miller-Idriss

13 books65 followers
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is associate professor of education and sociology and director of the International Training and Education Program at American University. Her books include Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany.

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5 stars
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23 (18%)
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
41 reviews
October 12, 2025
It's a book drawing on Kate Manne's Down Girl and the ways of misogyny, which helped me while reading it a lot, and yet I was extremely disappointed. Not that there isn't a good overview of our times and how it's tied to violent ways of manhood - it's just so liberal through and through.

Unshakeable belief just better education, better policies by policymakers, and man thinking how to work against it in their own life. The trust in a functioning state that would be open to do this is the failure of the liberal class to come to terms in what times the US is living now.

She is pointing out book banning and repression of gender discourse *done by state institutions who are captured* and yet has enough trust to somehow be able to return it. If this is what you bring to the fight under Trump 2.0, better give up right away.

An astonishing work that seems to totally misread the Zeitgeist, rehashes well known talking points (and real problems!) and has nothing to offer outside of a call to speech acts.

Again, if that is what liberal America is believing and relying on, they are doomed.
Profile Image for Dani.
173 reviews3 followers
November 18, 2025
It's a good book, but it reads more introductory and surface level, with a lot of repetition.
If you're any way active online or have read on this topic before, most things discussed herein will be very familiar to you.
Profile Image for Grace McGehee.
17 reviews2 followers
January 28, 2026
A long time coming bc I only read this book on company time! This was a work-provided book but I was happy to read it. The essential takeaway: “The mobilization of violence on the extreme far right is enabled by rising misogyny and hostile sexism in the mainstream.” Super specific and sometimes gory/shocking details clouded the smaller but just as important takeaways and made it slightly less engaging to me, but I think this is such an important topic and appreciate the focus on it here.
36 reviews
December 14, 2025
Honestly, this was a massive let down. My biggest issue was that Miller-Idriss bought into a lot of cultural myths that, as an academic, she should have known better than to take at face value. The two myths that bothered me the most were male loneliness (stats show that men and women experience loneliness at similar rates) and the idea that mass rape occurred on October 7th. Side note - I'll never understand why extremism researchers are so pro Israel when Israel has been committing acts of terror since its inception.

In addition to the lax fact checking, it felt like Miller-Idriss had a fairly surface level understanding of the feminist theories she cited, although that may have been because the book was meant for a mainstream audience. The death knell for this book was the author's liberal politics. Her personal politics really hampered her analysis, especially because so many of the theories she cited are not liberal. This ideological clash sapped a lot of the explanatory value from the book.
7 reviews1 follower
February 9, 2026
Interesting read but if you’re interested in this subject matter, you’re probably already familiar with most of the topics discussed here by Cynthia.

It honestly lost me right at the end with the “what can policymakers do” section in the epilogue. Policymakers got us in this mess! Libs continuing to rely on playing by the rules 🥲

But I applaud any effort to shed light on this, great introductory book
85 reviews2 followers
November 27, 2025
“Across all mass shootings in US in 2018, 83% had of perpetrators had a *recorded* history of gender-based violence”

“There are examples of expressed misogyny or domestic violence in the personal histories of *nearly all the perpetrators* of the worst terrorist incidents and mass killings in recent years” - UN advisors

Feels like a lightbulb moment of a book.
Profile Image for Sarah Jensen.
2,092 reviews191 followers
August 3, 2025
Book Review: Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism by Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Rating: 4.7/5

A Groundbreaking Exposé of Misogyny as the Engine of Extremism
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a preeminent scholar on extremism, delivers a luminous and troubling account of how patriarchal backlash fuels global violence. Man Up meticulously traces the bright red thread of misogyny linking mass shooters, far-right terrorists, and incel attackers—from Michigan militias to the Pulse nightclub massacre—while critiquing systemic failures to name this pattern. Her analysis bridges everyday sexism and spectacular gender-based violence, arguing that dismissing the former enables the latter.

Emotional Resonance and Personal Reflections
As a reader, I was both galvanized and unsettled by Miller-Idriss’s unflinching case studies. The FBI informant’s testimony about the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (“Just grab the bitch”) viscerally illustrates how dehumanizing rhetoric precedes action. Her dissection of incel ideology—where sexual frustration metastasizes into lethal entitlement—left me reflecting on how platforms like 4chan normalize hatred under the guise of male grievance. Just today, I read an article on Apple News about the application "Tea" that created an extremely dangerous mechanism for perpetrating the violence discussed in this book. I think this happens more than any of us could imagine. I hope this text will be required reading in sociology classes nationwide.

The book’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to silo misogyny from other extremist motivations. By framing it as the lifeblood of hate-fueled violence, Miller-Idriss reveals interconnected systems of oppression. Yet, her prose remains accessible, blending academic rigor with the urgency of an MSNBC column (where she regularly contributes).

Constructive Criticism
-Intersectional Gaps: While the book excels in linking misogyny to white supremacy, deeper engagement with how race, class, and disability intersect with gendered violence would strengthen its framework.
-Global Scope: Case studies focus heavily on the U.S. and Europe; including more Global South perspectives (e.g., Latin American femicide movements) could broaden its relevance .
-Solutions Section: Though the final chapter offers strategies (e.g., media literacy programs), concrete policy recommendations for legislators feel underexplored.

Summary Takeaways:
- The Silent Spring of gendered extremism—a book that names the poison in our political bloodstream.
- From incel forums to militias, Miller-Idriss maps the ‘manosphere’ with the precision of a bomb squad expert.
- Essential reading post-#MeToo: proves misogyny isn’t just toxic—it’s the foundation of terrorism.
- A flare in the darkness for parents, teachers, and policymakers fighting the rise of violent masculinity.
- Kathleen Blee meets Malcolm Gladwell: a page-turner that rewrites how we understand hate.

Gratitude
Thank you to Edelweiss and Princeton University Press for the advance copy. Miller-Idriss’s work—praised by experts like Rachel Louise Snyder as “a new discipline that could not be more urgent”— and I wholeheartedly agree that this is a clarion call to action. I hope that this book is the first of many in the genre by this author. There is so much more to explore that would benefit from the voice provided in this book.

Final Verdict: A transformative, if occasionally narrow, study. Docked 0.3 for missed intersectional depth, but a must-read for its field.

Why Read It? To confront the uncomfortable truth: We cannot interrupt extremism without grappling with patriarchal systems.
Profile Image for José Pereira.
392 reviews22 followers
December 28, 2025
All over the place, incredibly repetitive, and with little that’s new or clarifying.
I can’t tell which central claim Miller-Idriss is trying to make. If it is that right-wing extremists are always, among other things, misogynistic, that’s a platitude. If it is that misogyny is a stronger or more prevalent gateway to or instigator of public violence than other forms of bigotry, she doesn’t produce the necessary arguments.
In fact, and although we get heaps of info, I came away with no more clarity when it comes to the dynamics of the phenomenon. Does misogyny (small c) cause right-wing extremism? Like a start-at-home thing where you commence by hating girls at school and, liking the taste of hate, jump into racism, xenophobia, etc.? Or is misogyny a glue or common denominator between otherwise incompatible right-wing factions? Could it be that, because advances in feminism were the main drivers of the recent right-wing backlash, women, by association, became the main target? Or is it that identity is now more than ever a central means for people to make sense of their lives, and the identity “man”, when it has misogyny, has public violence too? Many of these are silly, and they can’t all be true at the same time. But Miller-Idriss clumsily bounces between all of them when stating her diagnosis.
To make things worse - and despite this not being the central theme of the book -, we get a mom-and-pop answer to the question “why now this increase in sexism and misogyny?”. It’s just that guys are sad and there’s a lot of bad stuff on the internet.
Profile Image for Milo Carey.
43 reviews
November 4, 2025
If you have been paying attention for the last 5-10 years this book may feel a little stale to you as it did for me. This one may be more appropriate for a parent who doesn’t fully understand the ins and outs of online misogyny and wants an intro course to the characters and subgroups.

I came to this book from an NPR interview from the author. She sounded well informed in the interview so I wanted to snag it to get her perspective. I’m not sure if the scope was too broad or if it was something else, but it just did not deliver the depth I was looking for.

This book relitigates some of my biggest pet peeves on this subject; it implies that violent video games lead to real world harm, something that has been proven false time and time again. Or, implying that porn consumption leads to real world harm or an increase in misogynistic behavior - which again has been shown to be incorrect across the vast majority of studies. This book also conflates several subgroups - linking together the tendencies of incels with those of trad family values or alt right militias. These are all distinct groups with distinct beliefs and aims - conflating them isn’t helpful in solving the issue of increased right wing violence.

I think this book is a great intro but if you’re looking for nuance, a well researched new perspective on male violence in the modern era, or new information this unfortunately didn’t deliver.
Profile Image for Taylor.
187 reviews8 followers
January 26, 2026
This was a little repetitive in parts, but I feel the message is strong and needs to be heard/shared. Especially those raising boys. I’m once again realizing that everything I/the US is going through as a country is all connected: Christian nationalism, white supremacy, extreme violence toward women and minorities and marginalized groups, you name it.

I’ve always thought that perhaps men’s hyper sex drive in comparison to women was what drove most of their violent and abusive behavior. Like, sex is that powerful of a thing for men? But after reading this I feel like it’s a number of things, namely a need for connection (which we all have as humans) and perhaps having been abused themselves as children. The hurting cycle continues when men see their fathers modeling and demonstrating that it’s okay to belittle women, abuse them, whatever.

And of course the internet doesn’t help with finding like-minded individuals who hide behind the veneer of their keyboards and screens. 😫

I don’t know what the magic answer is to alleviating this mentality, but I feel like even as a non parent, I can say with confidence that it starts in the home.

59 reviews
October 19, 2025
Overall I think it was quite interesting but it is a little surface level if someone is knowledgable about the topic.

I think she does a great job of connecting misogyny to anti-LGBTQ+ hate and properly contextualizes how the sort of gender based extremism is not a distinct phenomenon but is simply the more extreme version of things that are found across society more broadly.

Some sections of the book I found less convincing, for example, the discussion of the abuse of children and the association to the far right and the far-rights use of women for financial motives. In the first case, she provides no quantitative evidence to demonstrate that this is more prevalent, it may reflect general trends of abuse across wider society, and in the second case some of the examples had more to do with organized crime groups that while are white supremacist, are not ideologically motivated.

Overall it is an important book to write and to be out there in the world.
Profile Image for Lynn A..
6 reviews
October 12, 2025
man-Up by Cynthia Miller-Idriss is an eye-opener for those of us trying to understand the increase of violence and oppression against women in the world in recent years. The book is well researched and supported by fact based information from limitless sources. The fact that women increasingly support and promote white male dominance is appallingly but not surprising. Ms. Miller effectively and factually states the reasoning behind why quite clearly in this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about the increasing violence and hate directed at women, minorities, and LBGTQ+ people. Her recommendations in the epilogue and following resources section will help guide teachers, parents coaches, religious leaders etc… to discuss misogyny online and in social media platforms. Highly recommend reading it!
38 reviews
January 19, 2026
Overall, this is a strong and timely book. I appreciate the author’s attention to current issues and the accessible overview it provides on gender‑based violence.

That said, the scope of the topic is enormous, and at times the book feels stretched by trying to cover so many components at once. A more focused deep dive, perhaps centering on one section, such as containment, might have allowed for richer analysis. There were moments when the discussion felt somewhat surface‑level, and I found myself wanting more detailed exploration of the ideas raised.

I also noticed that some arguments leaned heavily on edge cases, even though there are many broader, ongoing events that could have offered more representative insights.

Still, I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a general introduction to gender‑based violence and a clearer understanding of how patriarchal structures shape and perpetuate harm.
377 reviews2 followers
November 1, 2025
“More than 94% of far-right violent and non-violent extremists in the US between 1948 and 2021 were men. Men commit 98% of mass shootings and and least 94% of sexual abuse.” As a sociologist the author has studied this and the growth of misogyny not only in the US but abroad. The book is a little repetitive and frankly I think if you read the introduction and a few selected chapters you would get the gist of her thesis that their are five major strategies used by both conservative and extreme right members that are aimed at reasserting patriarchy: containment, punishment, exploitation, erasure and the enabling the support of white women. Worth my time.
Profile Image for Katelyn Brown.
73 reviews1 follower
February 7, 2026
While I think this book is very important and I am glad I read it, it was repetitive at times and didn’t flow very well. It was dense and read more like a dissertation than an informative book. I appreciate the argument that misogyny is linked to extreme violence, however, I was being asked to go read other authors works on why and how this is true. Instead of going into more detail, I was simply told “ there is massive amounts of evidence.”
31 reviews
October 8, 2025
A look at white supremacist misogyny in the United States. The author has not grappled with men and women having 'gender', not just transgender persons, and as much a right to it, and the analysis is stuck in the shallows as a result, which also stifles the suggested methods to curb and end misogyny.
Nikki Zakocs does a good reading.
Profile Image for Ariel Carison.
79 reviews11 followers
October 16, 2025
This is one of the most important books I’ve read in years. Miller-Idriss doesn’t just analyze statistics; she humanizes them, showing how misogyny festers and transforms into radical violence. Her writing is sharp, empathetic, and backed by extensive evidence. Man Up isn’t just a warning it’s a call to action for a safer, more equitable world.
Profile Image for Matt.
445 reviews13 followers
January 31, 2026
This is such an important book. Misogyny is the soil from which most/all extremism grows. It's a practice ground and accelerant for other extremisms. I also appreciate the detailed analysis of the methods of oppression and extremism: containment, punishment, exploitation, erasure, and enabling.
Profile Image for Pat Louden.
4 reviews2 followers
September 29, 2025
The epilogue has earned this book an additional star. If only the whole book were as nuanced and thought-provoking.
Profile Image for Emily Klein.
Author 7 books12 followers
October 17, 2025
Probably one of the most important books I have read in years.
Profile Image for Anya Vedantambe.
71 reviews
October 29, 2025
Some of the content of the book was familiar, but Miller-Idriss raised some great new points for me, and I liked how she incorporated personal experience. I raced through it!
Profile Image for Douglas.
460 reviews5 followers
January 29, 2026
A book length argument for intersectionality having been first invented by the enemies of progress, equality, and justice.
Profile Image for Leah.
52 reviews14 followers
February 4, 2026
Tough but deeply important read. Foundational for more intersectional research on the far-right.
Profile Image for Rashe.
56 reviews
January 16, 2026
published a week after New Age of Sexism, but has mostly the same information
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews

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