The New Age of Sexism

How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny

By: Laura Bates

Narrated by: Laura Bates

We like to believe we're moving closer to equality, riding the wave of technological progress into a brighter, fairer future. But beneath the glossy surface of innovation lies a chilling truth: new technologies are not just failing to solve age-old inequalities—they're deepening them.

In The New Age of Sexism, acclaimed author and activist Laura Bates exposes how misogyny is being coded into the very fabric of our future. From the biases embedded in artificial intelligence to the alarming rise of sex robots and the toxic dynamics of the metaverse, Bates takes listeners on a shocking journey into a world where technology is weaponized against women.

This isn't a dystopian warning about what might happen. It's a harrowing account of what's happening now and the dangers we face if we don't act. With clarity and urgency, Bates reveals how these advancements are dragging society backward, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, and jeopardizing decades of progress in the fight for gender equality.

Eye-opening and empowering, The New Age of Sexism is a rallying cry for awareness and action in a world where the battle for equality has entered a dangerous new frontier.

©2025 Laura Bates (P)2025 Tantor Media

Horrifying, Eyeopening, important

I feel like this book opened up my eyes to information I was aware of but not to a full degree. Not only does it cover the stress of AI and horrors of sexual appetite being satisfied by the robotic “women,” but the overall impact of sexism built into a new and growing system and the ways in which these problems could be rectified. Fantastic read, would recommend.

scary but necessary

No one can invoke the level of urgency and relevance to our lives that Laura Bates can. I wish I could encourage all my friends to listen and understand the direction Sexism is taking.

Boiling the frog

When it focuses on harm to real women and girls, this book is a spotlight on the horrible power imbalance that women already face and which are following them into new tech venues. It makes powerful points about misogynistic power imbalances and the near future. Attacks against women which are 'only' virtual can have some of the same psychological impacts on their victims as some physical encounters.

There's also a dark side to this book. It's also filled with claims regarding supposed abuses which don't affect another person. These are backed with impassioned arguments by flimsy claims that victimless crimes will lead to crimes against actual people. These claims ring hollow to anyone raised during eras of pearl clutching moral panic which assured us that [rock music, movies, violent video games, every imagined horror simulating violent crime] is creating a generation of criminals. Which is to say: every generation ever. Those chapters run purely on the ick factor. They're based on emotion, bad faith leaps of reasoning, and over reliance on logic that starts with 'if this is the only way...' -- it's not and no one is claiming it's the 'only' anything.

The recurring fallacy: if it’s wrong in real life, then it’s wrong to pretend. She makes a more nuanced case for this of course, but many of her claims are little more than this at their heart. I'm not against this book and I really admire when she speaks out for the victims which will be swept under the run in the name of profit. I'm obviously sour about the bait and switch when she conflates genuine damage verses something that's just gross and then she constructs justifications about why the gross thing is actually wrong.

Her ending thesis makes up for a lot of the downsides. While the holistic conclusion doesn't erase previous infractions, it is greater than the sum of its parts and I'm inclined to let some things slide in service to the overall points.

I'm impressed at the narration. I've listened to a ton of author-read nonfiction. It almost always comes in one of 2 flavors: the author is a performer and the narration is great. Or the author isn't a performer and the narration is barely even passible. This is one of the very few instances where a non-performer narrates extremely well.

Every man should read this book

We need to inform ourselves (men) about the incredibly unjust ways in which current and likely future technologies facilitate the abuse of women. Hopefully, it’ll make us reconsider the path of technology and act to change it.

ouch

informative, thorough, good points, made me think and rethink many of my views about technology