What I Learned On The Net And Wish I Had Not...

I picked up Sheri Tepper's Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1996) to look for a specific reference and got stuck re-reading parts of it.  I remembered the way I felt about the book when it first came out:  It seemed exaggerated in ways it did not intend and the misogynists in it came across pretty artificial in the things they said.  Indeed, I was uncomfortable with that book, thinking that it went too far.

But when I re-read some of it recently the statements she put into the mouths of the woman-hating villains in the book sound familiar and natural!  That's because I have now come across them on those "manosphere" hate sites.

This suggests to me that either life imitates art or (which is more likely) Tepper by 1996 had seen enough misogynistic statements to know how they sound.  Given that she worked for a well-known and well-hated women's health organization  the latter is more likely.