If the questions here reveal a familiar pattern, you may be in love with a misogynist -- a man who loves you, yet causes you tremendous pain because he acts as if he hates you. Rosalind was 45 when she met Jim. She is a striking woman, tall, with auburn hair and a trim figure, which she works hard to keep in shape. She has a distinctive style of dressing that shows off her height and her artistic flair. She owns an antique shop and is a successful dealer, collector, and appraiser of advertising art, which is her specialty. Rosalind was married twice before and has a grown son. She was excited about meeting Jim because she’d heard so much about him from her friends. They took her to hear him play with a local jazz group. Afterward, when the four of them went out for a drink, Rosalind felt very drawn to Jim, who was tall, dark, and extremely good-looking. The band’s defenders will often point to the bawdy humour in their songs. The big-breasted, thunder-thighed women and hopelessly horny boys that inhabit them bring to mind saucy seaside postcards and Carry On films. In 2004, in an interview with Sylvie Simmons for Mojo magazine, guitarist and band founder Angus Young remarked, “We’re pranksters more than anything else,” while his brother Malcolm noted: “We’re not like some macho band. We take the music far more seriously than we take the lyrics, which are just throwaway lines.” But if the band members are merely pranksters, then women are their punchlines. Bob was 40, working as a sales representative for a clothing manufacturer. He told Laura he had been divorced the year before. Within the first month of their relationship, he and Laura moved in together and he began to talk about getting married. When he introduced her to his two young children, they all hit it off immediately. Bob’s obvious devotion to his children made Laura feel even closer to him. It’s this context that, in the case of AC/DC, renders their lyrics daft as opposed to damaging. In seeing the band for what they really are – a bunch of archly sex-obsessed idiots with sharp tunes and some seriously killer riffs – she might just grow up to love them critically, but love them all the same.

These matters came to a head when the band announced a new tour and my daughter asked if we could go to see them together. It would be her first stadium gig and I couldn’t have been more delighted. And then I started to panic. And this stuff filters upwards through friendly media and middlemen such as far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, so that men at the top can speak in code to their supporters. When Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed for the Supreme Court despite allegations of sexual assault, Donald Trump said he supported “men and justice”, a clear dogwhistle to the misogynist demographic that believe they are victims of a vast feminist conspiracy. Boris Johnson, meanwhile, called David Cameron a “girly swot”, implying that women are to be despised for learning, and wrote of the “hot totty” at a Labour party conference. As Bates shows, moreover, sexism and anti-immigrant rhetoric often go hand in hand, via the conspiracy theory that foreigners challenge the rightful supremacy of the white male.I opened my door and saw this incredibly handsome man standing there. He just smiled at me. The first words out of his mouth were, “Can I use your phone?” I blinked and said yes, and he walked over to the phone and called the guy who had introduced us and said, “John, you were right. She’s everything you said she was.” That was only the beginning of the evening! Bates agrees that the phrase is problematic, but, as she wryly asks towards the end of her book, why should she and her sisters have to do all the work of detoxifying language, and men themselves? Perhaps we men who don’t hate women can make a small start by replacing talk of “toxic masculinity” with something more appropriate to Johnson, Trump, and their acolytes – perhaps, say, “pathetic man-babyism”?

I am a proud feminist, and a sizeable proportion of my work as a journalist is about combating sexism. I try, where possible, to encourage my daughter to think about how women are represented in art, music, film and everyday life. Together we have looked quizzically at the acres of pink in children’s clothes shops and at the miniature cookers and plastic cupcakes aimed at little girls in Toys R Us. We have talked about why so many of the female characters in classic kids’ books are dismissed as bossy, or cry a lot, or play second fiddle to the boys. We have had tentative conversations about sex, physical autonomy and body image. I try to be frank with her at all times, but even I’m not quite ready to give her a full breakdown of the body shaming, objectification and dehumanising of women in the AC/DC oeuvre. A warning that there might be trouble ahead came early for Rosalind, too, but she failed to notice the signal for what it was. Jim was 36 when he met Rosalind. He was as carried away as she was by their romance; she was the woman he’d been looking for all his life. As he later told me: I had gone to make a phone call and when I returned to our table there was this very handsome man sitting there talking to my friend. He had noticed me and was waiting for my return. There was electricity between us from that first moment. I don’t think I was ever so attracted to anyone before in my life. He had those flashing eyes that I just can’t resist. I was so turned on by him that I couldn’t wait to go to bed with him.Plenty, but not all. There’s an unpleasant sneering quality to Bon Scott’s assertion on Carry Me Home: “You ain’t no lady but you sure got taste in men/That head of yours has got you by time and time again.” In Let Me Put My Love Into You, Johnson sings: “Don’t you struggle, don’t you fight/Don’t worry cause it’s your turn tonight”, a grim rape fantasy with the payoff: “Let me cut your cake with my knife.” In this superb self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward draws on case histories and the voices of men and women trapped in these negative relationships to help you understand your man’s destructive pattern and the part you play in it. It’s because of moments such as this that I’ve made a point of offering my child an alternative narrative – one in which women can be proud of their bodies, exist apart from the male gaze and not just reject but hoot with laughter at the moronic archetypes presented in advertising, the media, film, TV and music. It’s worth noting that none of this – at least so far – has come at the expense of her enjoyment. She will roll her eyes at the teeny-weeny waists and bulging eyes of Disney heroines, but will still happily watch the movies.

The fantasy, of course, is that we’re going to feel like that forever. We’ve been told all our lives that romantic love has magical powers to make us whole and happy as women. Literature, TV, and movies help to reinforce this belief. The paradox is that even the most destructive misogynistic relationship starts out filled with just this kind of excitement and expectation.My client Laura’s whirlwind courtship started out literally “across a crowded room.” At the time, she was a successful account executive for a major cosmetics firm, a very pretty woman with light brown hair, dark almond-shaped eyes, and a slender figure. She was 34 when she and Bob first met. She was out one evening with a woman friend at a restaurant: The next day I thought about him constantly, and when he came over that night it was wonderful. After dinner I put on the music to A Star Is Born, being the romantic nut that I am, and so there we were, dancing to this music in my living room; he’s holding me so close and the world is just spinning around me. Here’s this man who really likes me, who’s strong, who’s willing to work on a relationship. All this stuff is flashing through my mind while I’m floating away with him, feeling so terrific. It was the most romantic thing that ever happened to me. He told me that all the other women he’d been involved with only wanted to know, “What can you give me?” But what he found so special about me was that I was interested in what I could give to him. He said it was as if I had been born, shaped, and existed only to take care of him. All the other women had been taking and taking, all gimme gimme gimme, there for the good times but running from the bad ones. I was different. The first indication Laura had that there might be trouble came soon after she and Bob had begun living together. Very important and much needed...This how-to book could be a lifesaver." -- Abigail Van Buren, "Dear Abby"