15/11/2025
One thing you may have noticed from those of us online who spend much of our time combatting misogyny and the manosphere is our shared dislike of Scott Galloway who, as a marketing professor and a brilliant (at marketing) professor has marketed himself as the liberal alternative to the Andrew Tates of the world and somehow become the face on these topics despite pushing extremely toxic takes that are, at their core, the exact things we are combatting.
The reason we all dislike him is because he is not an alternative to the manosphere, but simply three manospheres in a liberal trenchcoat. As an argumentation professor, the rhetorical strategy he continually uses is to sandwich his misogynistic takes between arguments that sound like he “gets it.” 75% of the things he says are things I agree with, so the 25% that sound horrible must not be so bad, right?
I want to give you three examples of exactly how he does this from his appearance on Liz Plank’s podcast “Boy Problems.” And to be clear, I like Liz. I think she does great work, this is not a critique of her and she actually called him out on this early in the show. But he does it for the entirety of their interview and on nearly every other guest appearance I’ve seen him make.
So Liz asks Scott about why men are so afraid to approach women, and Scott starts talking about how women express fears about dating men. And here’s where Scott does his first sandwich.
He starts by acknowledging that 2,500 women a year are murdered by men, and he says “that is unacceptable” and “until zero, it needs focus.” Great! Sounds like he gets it, right? He’s acknowledging the problem. He’s saying it needs to be addressed. We’re on the same page here.
But then, he immediately says “Having said that, 40,000 men will kill themselves this year. So the guy you’re on a date with is 16 times more likely to go home and hurt himself than hurt you.”
First off, women aren’t just afraid of being murdered on dates. They’re afraid of being assaulted, of being r***d, of being drugged, of being stalked, of being harassed, of having their boundaries violated in dozens of different ways that don’t end in death but absolutely wreck their lives. So reducing women’s legitimate safety concerns to just “murder stats” is already minimizing the actual scope of the problem.
One in six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One in six, Scott. One in three women experience sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetime. Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. And 90% of adult r**e victims are female. There are 5.3 million incidents of intimate partner violence among U.S. women aged 18 and older PER YEAR. Only including the murder rate in that discussion was a specific choice meant to minimize the fear of women.
Because when the women I know say they’re worried about going on a date with a stranger, they’re not not only worried about murder statistics. They’re doing a risk assessment based on lived experience (theirs and every other woman they know). It reminds me of a chilling comment I received during the “Man or Bear” discourse a few years ago: “I choose the bear because the worst thing the bear can do is murder me.”
But here’s the bigger issue that is straight out of the manosphere playbook. Scott bringing up male su***de rates in response to women’s safety concerns isn’t advocacy for men’s mental health. It’s a deflection.
Male su***de IS a real problem that we should absolutely address. I’ve made dozens of videos about toxic masculinity harming men and keeping them from seeking help. About how patriarchal systems hurt everyone. About how we desperately need better mental health support for men who are taught from childhood that expressing emotion is weakness.
But you know what doesn’t help address male su***de? Using those deaths as a rhetorical weapon to silence women’s safety concerns.
This is like if someone said “we need to address homelessness” and you responded with “well actually more people die from car accidents.” Both are problems! Both deserve attention! But bringing up one to dismiss the other isn’t advocacy.
If you want to talk about male su***de? Let’s actually talk about it. Let’s talk about how the same toxic masculinity that tells men they can’t express emotions, can’t be vulnerable, can’t ask for help, or, the thing that Scott has pushed in multiple other interviews, if they aren’t the toughest guy in a room then they are a failure, that’s the same ideology keeping them from getting mental health support.
The same systems that tell women “your safety concerns are unfounded” are telling men “seeking therapy is weak.” These aren’t competing problems, Scott. They’re the same problem. They’re both symptoms of a society that devalues emotional wellbeing and treats women’s concerns as trivial.
So this “men are 16 times more likely to hurt themselves than hurt you” stat is not just minimizing women’s fears, it’s revealing that you’d rather use men’s pain as a rhetorical shield than actually address what’s causing it.
Because real advocacy for male su***de rates is talking about how to get men into therapy, how to break down the stigma around mental health, how to create support systems for men that don’t rely solely on romantic partners to be their entire emotional support system. But instead, you’re using those statistics to tell women they’re being irrational about their safety.
When you use male su***de as a counter to women’s safety concerns, you’re not just dismissing women’s fears. You’re also preventing us from actually addressing male mental health. Because now, any time someone tries to talk about su***de prevention, it’s contaminated. It’s associated with this dismissive, bad-faith argument. You’ve weaponized men’s pain, which means you’ve made it harder to actually help them.
You want to know how many young men have heard these statistics used this way and then felt like they couldn’t seek help because doing so would somehow be betraying other men? Like their struggles have been turned into ammunition in a culture war they never signed up for?
When you use men’s suffering as a rhetorical shield against women’s concerns, you don’t help men. You just ensure that their pain becomes a talking point instead of something we actually address. You make their mental health struggles into a weapon, which means you make it harder for them to see those struggles as something deserving of care and attention rather than something to be deployed strategically in online arguments.
That’s not advocacy, that’s exploitation.
Okay, so that’s deflection. That’s move number one in the playbook. Let me show you how he does move number two in the sandwich technique because this is where Scott really shows his rhetorical skills (and I am not saying that as a compliment).
So earlier in the interview, Liz pushes back on Scott and says, essentially, “men built the system we’re in, men are in charge, so why aren’t men fixing the system that’s hurting them?”
And Scott responds by talking about his own privilege. He says he was born a white heterosexual male in sixties California and jokes about it being “the smartest decision I’ve ever made.” He talks about how all the prosperity from 1965 to 2005 was funneled to white heterosexual men. He admits that when he was raising money for startups in the nineties, it never even occurred to him to ask why there were no women or Black people raising money.
Self-aware king! He’s acknowledging his privilege. This is great, right? He gets it!
But then, and watch this transition because it’s BEAUTIFUL in how sneaky it is, he asks, “Should a 19-year-old male who has an education system biased against them pay the penalty for MY privilege?”
And suddenly we’ve pivoted from “I had advantages” to “but young men today are the REAL victims.”
He goes on this whole tangent about how boys are suspended twice as much as girls, how school promotes behaviors that are “easier for girls” like sitting still and being organized, how 70-80% of primary school teachers are women who “naturally champion people like themselves,” how boys are “18 months less mature” and their prefrontal cortex doesn’t catch up until they’re 25.
Now, this is a much more nuanced discussion that deserves it’s own essay, but I do want to address a few things before moving forward. When you gender basic life competencies, you don’t help boys who struggle. You just give them an excuse to never develop them. You tell them that their failure is inevitable, biological, not their fault. And sure, that might feel good in the moment, but you know what happens to men who never learn organizational skills, who never learn to sit with discomfort, who never learn to regulate their attention? They struggle in college, in careers, in relationships, and in life. They seek out easy answer to complex questions that are the centerpiece of why these manosphere dating coaches are so appealing to young men. It’s the underlying belief that says that men have a biological imperative to punch things and to f**k things. That emotional intelligence is a woman’s trait.
Second, when teaching was a male-dominated profession, somehow nobody was worried about whether male teachers could effectively teach girls. And I know this because I am a tenured college professor and over 70% of professors in STEM are men, yet we aren’t ever having those discussions regarding why there aren’t more women pursuing careers in STEM. But now that it’s female-dominated, suddenly we’re supposed to believe that women teachers are the problem? But now this idea that having mostly women teachers disadvantages boys is essentially saying that women are incapable of teaching or supporting boys effectively. Like, I’m not putting words in his mouth, he said that they “naturally champion people like themselves.” Because why think critically about this when we can just blame women. Moreover, maybe if we treated our pre-k through 12 teachers with the dignity and respect they deserve, more men would return to the field, but I digress.
But here’s where it gets REALLY interesting because you can ignore everything I said in the previous two paragraphs and just listen to Scott defeat his own argument. After spending several minutes painting this picture of young men as these deeply disadvantaged victims of a system designed to hurt them, after telling us that boys are being discriminated against at every level of education, that they’re not going to college, that everything is stacked against them…he casually drops, “Women under the age of 30 are now making as much and sometimes more than men under the age of 30 in urban centers. They own more homes. Single women own more homes than men. Once a woman has kids, she goes to 77 cents on the dollar.”
Wait. Hold on. Scott. SCOTT.
Did you just...did you just accidentally prove that your entire argument is wrong?
You spent all this time telling us that boys are being suspended, they’re not going to college, the education system is rigged against them, their teachers don’t support them, but then you admit that DESPITE women supposedly having every advantage, DESPITE women going to college more, DESPITE women apparently having this system that’s designed to work perfectly for them...men and women still end up in basically the same place economically until a woman dares to have children.
Do you see what you just did there? You just proved that even with all these educational “disadvantages,” men still end up with equal pay by age 30. Which means those disadvantages aren’t actually disadvantaging them in the job market. Two decades of disadvantages for men in our educational system results in...equality? But only for 4 or 5 years because if a woman chooses to have a child (which 86% of women eventually do) something that men face absolutely zero career consequences for…immediately tanks a woman’s earning potential by 23%.
This is the sandwich, everyone. This is exactly what I’m talking about. He starts with “I had privilege” ( the agreeable top bun). Then he fills the middle with “but men today are victims of reverse discrimination” - the problematic meat. And then he quietly admits “oh by the way women still face massive systemic discrimination” as the bottom bun, said so quickly and moved past so fast that he hopes you won’t notice it completely undermines his entire argument.
If the system is so rigged against men, Scott, why do they still end up making the same amount as women? Why are they still able to own homes? Why do they still have equal economic outcomes despite supposedly being discriminated against at every turn?
Make it make sense.
The answer, of course, is that the system ISN’T rigged against men. What’s happening is that women are ALSO succeeding now, and that feels like discrimination to people who are used to having less competition. As the saying goes, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
He’s so close to getting it. He’s SO close to understanding that the real problem is that our society still punishes women for having children while rewarding men for the exact same choice. That we still don’t have adequate parental leave, affordable childcare, or workplace structures that support working parents.
But instead of saying “wow, we really need to fix how we treat parents in this country,” he uses it as a footnote to his argument about how hard men have it. It’s infuriating. And I find it extra infuriating because I KNOW he is smart enough to see what he is doing. This isn’t an accident.
You’re seeing the pattern now, right? Acknowledge something true, bury something harmful in the middle, move on quickly before you can process what just happened. But it gets worse. Because at least those first two examples were about systemic issues where you could maybe convince yourself he’s just misguided. This next one? This one shows you exactly how little he thinks of marginalized people when there’s something in it for straight men.
And now we come to what might be the most Scott Galloway moment of this entire interview. After spending an hour talking about empathy and respecting women and being a better man, he gives what he calls a “pro tip.”
He tells straight men that if they want to “punch above their weight class” and meet women, they should get a gay friend and go to a gay bar. Because, according to Scott, at that gay bar will be “a bunch of the gay man’s cool friends who like to dance” and “just being there makes you an aspirational male.”
He literally says “I used to go to gay bars all the time with my friends in New York and the odds, anyway, it was incredible.”
Do you hear yourself?
You’re literally telling straight men to treat gay spaces, which exist specifically because LGBTQIA+ people needed SAFE SPACES away from straight people who harassed, discriminated against, and committed violence against them, as hunting grounds for women.
You’re telling them to use gay men as accessories, as props, to make themselves look “aspirational” to straight women.
This has been called out by the q***r community for YEARS. For DECADES. Gay bars aren’t your dating service. They’re not there so you can look cool and progressive to straight women.
Gay bars exist because for centuries, LGBTQIA+ people couldn’t safely be themselves in straight spaces. They couldn’t hold hands with their partners. They couldn’t dance with people they were attracted to. They couldn’t exist authentically without risk of violence, arrest, or social destruction.
The Stonewall Riots, the event that kicked off the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement, happened at a gay bar because police were raiding it. Because even in their own spaces, q***r people weren’t safe. And Stonewall wasn’t unique. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, police regularly raided gay bars, arrested patrons for “crimes” like wearing clothing that didn’t match their assigned gender at birth, publicized the names of those arrested in newspapers to destroy their lives and careers. The raids were violent. People were beaten. People were killed.
And we like to pretend that things are different and that we are so much more evolved now, but we literally just celebrated in shock last week that the Supreme Court didn’t overturn gay marriage, so let’s not pretend like we are living in a utopia here.
Gay bars exist not as entertainment districts for straight people. Not as strategic dating locations. As refuge. As community. As one of the few places where LGBTQIA+ people could be themselves without fear.
There is a monumental difference between what you said that you did in organically having gay friends as a young man and going to bars with them AS AN ACTUAL FRIEND and you giving the pro-tip of “hey straight dudes, seek out gay friends solely so you can invade those spaces leverage their identity to pick up women.” That’s not allyship, that’s exploitation.
I’ve been to gay bars with my gay friends. We had a great time. But I went because THEY invited ME to THEIR space. I went to be a supportive friend, to celebrate with them, to be part of their community in the way they welcomed me and I recognized my position.
I didn’t go because I saw it as a strategic move to meet women. I didn’t go to instrumentalize their identity and their community for my romantic benefit.
The fact that Scott presents this as dating advice presents q***r people simply as tools to make yourself more interesting to potential romantic partners. Which is wild considering that earlier in this same interview, he talked about how he became friends with Kara Swisher and suddenly le****ns started feeling comfortable approaching him. And he frames it as this beautiful thing about acceptance and community.
Only to follow it up with, “Hey straight dudes, you can exploit this for dates.”
Do you see the difference? It’s not subtle.
He starts every conversation by saying the right things. He acknowledges his privilege. He says women’s safety matters. He talks about empathy and kindness and being better men.
But then, in the middle of all that progressive language, he tells men that women’s fears are overblown, that young men are the real victims of discrimination, and that they should use q***r spaces as pickup strategies.
The top bun. The meat. The bottom bun.
In many ways, this is even MORE dangerous than the Andrew Tate’s of the world. Tate is obvious. He’s a caricature. He’s so cartoonishly toxic that even people who might be susceptible to manosphere messaging can often spot him for what he is. He’s the poison that announces itself, that makes you gag on the first sip. Even conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson have said that his takes are sh*tty and problematic.
But Scott? He’s got credentials from the Stern School of Business. He’s got TED talks. He’s got op-eds in the New York Times. He sounds REASONABLE. He sounds EDUCATED. He sounds like someone who’s really thought about these issues and come to BALANCED conclusions. It’s Jordan Peterson’s schtick repackaged.
He’s the poison in a wine glass at a faculty dinner. The kind you sip slowly, that tastes sophisticated, that makes you feel smart for drinking it. And by the time you realize something’s wrong, you’ve already internalized his arguments. You’ve already started using them yourself. You’ve already become the guy at the party explaining to women why they’re overreacting about their safety concerns, why boys are the real victims of the education system, why it’s totally fine to use your gay friend as a prop.
And the worst part? You think you’re being PROGRESSIVE while you do it. Because Scott said all the right things first. He acknowledged privilege exists. He said women’s safety matters. He’s best friends with Kara Swisher. So clearly you’re not being sexist or homophobic or anti-feminist. You’re just being REASONABLE. You’re just being BALANCED. You’re just acknowledging that men have struggles too.
Except you’re not. You’re just repeating manosphere talking points with better vocabulary.
This is how the discourse gets poisoned. Not by the Andrew Tates who announce themselves. But by the Scott Galloways who sound so reasonable that you don’t realize you’re being radicalized until you’re already there. Until you’re already the guy in the comments section explaining why, actually, women should be grateful that men only murder them 2,500 times per year.
The manosphere doesn’t need to convince you that women are the enemy. It just needs to convince you that men are the victims. And once you believe that, once you’ve internalized that frame, everything else follows. Every women’s safety concern becomes an attack on men. Every advancement in equality becomes discrimination against you. Every space that wasn’t built specifically for you becomes evidence of your oppression.
And Scott Galloway is out here handing out that framework, wrapped in academic language and progressive posturing, to thousands and thousands of men who think they’re too smart, too educated, too liberal to fall for manosphere bu****it.
But guys, and I’m talking to the men who nodded along to Scott’s arguments, who found yourselves agreeing, who maybe even used these talking points yourself…you’re not too smart for this. Nobody is too smart for sophisticated propaganda. That’s why it’s sophisticated.
The question isn’t whether you’re smart enough to see through it. The question is whether you’re willing to admit you were wrong. Whether you’re willing to actually LISTEN when women tell you about their experiences instead of immediately jumping to “but what about men?” Whether you’re willing to be a genuine ally instead of someone who uses marginalized identities as accessories.
Because here’s the thing about being a better man (and I mean ACTUALLY better, not Scott Galloway’s version where you acknowledge privilege and then immediately explain why you’re the real victim), it requires sitting with discomfort. It requires accepting that you have advantages you didn’t earn and disadvantages that aren’t anyone’s fault. It requires listening more than you speak. It requires prioritizing other people’s safety over your own comfort.
It requires not falling for the sandwich.
And Scott? I know you’re probably never going to read this, but I hope you do. I hope you sit with it. I hope you think about whether the harm you’re causing–and you are causing harm–is worth the book sales and the speaking fees and the reputation as the “reasonable” voice on men’s issues.
Because right now, you’re not helping men. You’re just giving them more sophisticated ways to avoid growth. More academic-sounding excuses to dismiss women’s concerns. More respectable-seeming permission to exploit marginalized communities.
You’re not the alternative to the manosphere, Scott.
You’re just the manosphere for men with graduate degrees.
To everyone else reading this, when someone starts a sentence with “I’m not saying women don’t have problems, BUT...” pay attention to what comes after the but. Because that’s what they actually believe.
