My friend's mother is a misogynist. Women being misogynist is nothing new, but the way she has attempted to justify it is interesting. For context she stopped having children after she finally had a son, which is the only kind of child she really wanted, and has constantly told her daughters (my friend included) that men and boys are just better than women.

Arguments she makes:

- women are manipulative and want things that are complicated, while men are simple and honest about what they want

- women are competitive and cruel, while men have true friendships and are generous

- sex for men is a physiological need, but for women it isn't, it makes sense for men to sleep around but if women are doing it something is wrong with them, they are probably being manipulative

- men are intellectual and capable of higher pursuit, while women are grounded in reality and not suited to thinking abstractly because they are always scheming how to get things and manipulate others

- men are more intuitive and sensitive than women, and don't use these abilities for evil like women do

- men and boys are basically incapable of subterfuge, while it is a defining characteristic of girlhood and womanhood

- etc, I think you get the idea

It seems like she's inclined to infantilize men, like they are simple pure children or vulnerable animals, open and giving, and even when it's something like sexual assault, well, men need sex! It's like a man eating or drinking, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with his character. It's women's responsibility to manage this social dynamic, and if they don't, they probably wanted it. Somehow this supposed childlike purity also means men are the better choice to lead families and society. Basically, every man is a Golden Child, an Indigo Child, an embodiment of some kind of selfless prophet. Anything bad that men do to women is a result of women manipulating them into it, crying wolf, playing up victimhood.

My friend said that her mother had been sexually and physically brutalized by men in the past, but seems to remember more the torment laid on her by female schoolmates. She's highly educated, not religious, and when I've met her she mostly seems normal if somewhat awkward.

Is this woman just nuts, or is this kind of attitude part of our larger cultural misogyny?