I came across these sentences in Katie Roiphe’s collection of essays “In Praise of Messy Lives” (a great title):

“Saul bellow shared Updike’s interest in sexual adventuring, in a great, splashy, colorful comic-book war between men and women. Moses Herzog, he writes, ‘will never understand what women want. What do they want? The eat green salad and drink human blood.’”

We tend to forgive Herzog his misogyny, because he is so charming.

A friend recently said to me: “Men will never forgive their mothers for their own birth, that’s why they hate women.”

We should not underestimate sexual rage and frustration, but perhaps misogyny boils down to this: the refusal to accept that you exist. Some males understand their own existence as a crime and they blame women for it.