How to Piss Off Men: 109 Things to Say to Shatter the Male Ego

In my neverending search to broaden my horizons, I got suckered into reading How To Piss Off Men, by Kyle Prue. It claims to be focused and funny, but it is neither. It consists of about a hundred insults from women to men, one per page, with maybe a sentence under each one explaining how to employ it, or why it could be effective. There is far more white space than black. It is a terrible waste of paper.

I lowered my standards to circle some of the better insults for you, but the pickins are slim. The formula seems to be pick on some aspect of dress or comportment, and try to humiliate the man with it, using irony or sarcasm.

This gives rise to such great insults as “Nice blouse.” Or “I love your moped,” to a man with a Harley.

As show more clever as it gets is “Sorry, I don’t have any change’” to answer jerks catcalling a woman. Which of course would only make them laugh and yell louder.

But the insults are also unfunny as in “You remind me of James Corden.” “Were you homeschooled?” And “Have you ever left the state?” Very sophisticated.

The level of creativity here is close to nil, matched by the level of humor. Not a page of it is the least bit funny. If a woman said any of these to me, I’d just think she was a classic example, and walk away. Who needs this?

At the very end, Prue finally tells us what it’s all about: “I wrote this book because I think it’s time for men to take our cultural medicine. To let our anger inform us of our hurt, and finally heal from it.” This explains everything, doesn’t it?

I am continually amazed that these kinds of books find publishers, while well-researched, hard hitting books are forced to self-publish. In this case, these insults apparently were highly successful in social media somewhere, so they were collected in a book. This is actually my usual primary warning sign, and if I had any indication they came from social media, I would not have agreed to review it. But I keep having to learn the same lesson, over and over.

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I had so much fun reading this. The well thought out rationale behind these carefully crafted insults is the best part. Number 31 is Lord of the Rings themed, and it is devastating.

For women, most of the 109 ways to put a man in his place are downright hilarious. But if you get past the very quickly described list, you learn this book really is meant for men. The point the author (a man) makes is that if one of these comments makes the man mad or uncomfortable, he needs to take a step back and do some serious introspection. The audiobook has a final chapter with the author and his mother interviewing one another. An entertaining twist. But I’d probably prefer an ebook or a book. First, the list read quickly is impossible to remember, and some comments on the list are worth remembering. And second, and I pre-apologize for being a voice snob. The author reads the book for us, and his nasal voice was hard for me to show more take. (A very Willie Nelson-like voice, whose music I can’t tolerate for its nasal quality. So if you like his voice, you’ll be just fine.) show less

In a Nutshell: I expected a funnier book. Then again, ‘funny’ is a subjective term, so this might be a good gag gift. But most of this content was boring to me.

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It is very easy to guess why I requested this book – the title was almost like a fishhook that grabbed me and didn’t let me go. I was also curious that this was written by a man. So would it be a realistic expose on what men are truly afraid of hearing, or would it end up patronising women into thinking that they can do better with their barbs? The tagline was also interesting. 106 things not to hurt male emotions, or make them introspect, but to “shatter the male ego” – a strong claim.

Sadly, the potential was not met.

There are various show more reasons why this didn’t work for me. I won’t say it ‘did not live up to my expectations’ because I didn’t have any expectations in the first place except of finding an entertaining read. But in all honesty, I think the main reason is that we women are, in general, better at sarcastic barbs than men are. (Not something to boast about, I know.) But this isn’t a review about women or their talent for hitting where it hurts most when someone pisses them off, so let’s return to the book.

The comebacks herein are quite lacklustre. Most of the content aims to channelize reverse psychology into breaking a man’s confidence, but the retorts feel mostly juvenile. The author admits in his initial disclaimer that some of these retorts are easier for him to say as a cis white man. I think that defeats the point of the book to a great extent.

The responses are also highly situation-specific, with some situations being once-in-a-way encounters such as watching MMA or talking to a man who is explaining to you the concept of a secret identity. Thus, while there officially are “106 things to say”, the practical application of these is minimal.
(Note:The NetGalley, Goodreads, and Amazon covers have been updated to say that there are 109 retorts in this book. My cover and book had only 106. I didn't bother to check if three more comebacks have been added to the ARC as they wouldn't have saved the book anyway.)

The pop culture references are exclusively American, so this is certainly not a global advisory. There are a multitude of US-specific concepts and abbreviations such as JROTC or Kohl's Cash, which went over my head. (Not the author’s fault that an Indian reader gave his book a try. So the benefit of the doubt in this round goes to him.)

Obviously, we don’t read such books for actual implementation of the barbs but for laughs. However, I barely cracked a smile during this entire book. Only two of the retorts actually felt clever. The rest were mostly meh to my ears, and after a point, the whole thing felt repetitive.

On the pro side, it’s not offensive or condescending or patronising towards woman – I’ll give the author credit for this. I also loved the line in the opening note: “Women want to be loved, and men want to feel important.” Then again, this is something I already read in “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, so…

The most heartfelt content (honestly, I wasn’t expecting heartfelt content in this book, so this took me by surprise) is the final chapter titled “Why to Piss Off Men”, which is not at all what it sounds like. This chapter was brilliant (patriarchy having put both men and women in boxes – excellent analogy!), and while I might not agree with the rest of the book, I respect the intent of the author the way he has explained it in this section.

Basically, humour is quite subjective. So this book might still make some other readers guffaw. The author is supposedly a known online personality, actor and comedian, but I am not so much into movies these days (and I have no legal access to Tiktok), so I have no clue about his work. Maybe fans of his stand-up comedy would enjoy this better as some jokes are better heard than read.

I can advocate this as a light-hearted book to be borrowed from the library and read for entertainment value, or it could work as a prank gift. (But I am not sure whom you could gift it to.)

A shoutout to the cover pic – I love the expressions of the women in that artwork.

2 stars.

My thanks to SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) for providing the DRC of “How to Piss Off Men” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Connect with me through:
My Blog || The StoryGraph || Instagram || X/Twitter || Facebook || show less

In a Nutshell: I expected a funnier book. Then again, ‘funny’ is a subjective term, so this might be a good gag gift. But most of this content was boring to me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is very easy to guess why I requested this book – the title was almost like a fishhook that grabbed me and didn’t let me go. I was also curious that this was written by a man. So would it be a realistic expose on what men are truly afraid of hearing, or would it end up patronising women into thinking that they can do better with their barbs? The tagline was also interesting. 106 things not to hurt male emotions, or make them introspect, but to “shatter the male ego” – a strong claim.

Sadly, the potential was not met.

There are various show more reasons why this didn’t work for me. I won’t say it ‘did not live up to my expectations’ because I didn’t have any expectations in the first place except of finding an entertaining read. But in all honesty, I think the main reason is that we women are, in general, better at sarcastic barbs than men are. (Not something to boast about, I know.) But this isn’t a review about women or their talent for hitting where it hurts most when someone pisses them off, so let’s return to the book.

The comebacks herein are quite lacklustre. Most of the content aims to channelize reverse psychology into breaking a man’s confidence, but the retorts feel mostly juvenile. The author admits in his initial disclaimer that some of these retorts are easier for him to say as a cis white man. I think that defeats the point of the book to a great extent.

The responses are also highly situation-specific, with some situations being once-in-a-way encounters such as watching MMA or talking to a man who is explaining to you the concept of a secret identity. Thus, while there officially are “106 things to say”, the practical application of these is minimal.
(Note:The NetGalley, Goodreads, and Amazon covers have been updated to say that there are 109 retorts in this book. My cover and book had only 106. I didn't bother to check if three more comebacks have been added to the ARC as they wouldn't have saved the book anyway.)

The pop culture references are exclusively American, so this is certainly not a global advisory. There are a multitude of US-specific concepts and abbreviations such as JROTC or Kohl's Cash, which went over my head. (Not the author’s fault that an Indian reader gave his book a try. So the benefit of the doubt in this round goes to him.)

Obviously, we don’t read such books for actual implementation of the barbs but for laughs. However, I barely cracked a smile during this entire book. Only two of the retorts actually felt clever. The rest were mostly meh to my ears, and after a point, the whole thing felt repetitive.

On the pro side, it’s not offensive or condescending or patronising towards woman – I’ll give the author credit for this. I also loved the line in the opening note: “Women want to be loved, and men want to feel important.” Then again, this is something I already read in “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, so…

The most heartfelt content (honestly, I wasn’t expecting heartfelt content in this book, so this took me by surprise) is the final chapter titled “Why to Piss Off Men”, which is not at all what it sounds like. This chapter was brilliant (patriarchy having put both men and women in boxes – excellent analogy!), and while I might not agree with the rest of the book, I respect the intent of the author the way he has explained it in this section.

Basically, humour is quite subjective. So this book might still make some other readers guffaw. The author is supposedly a known online personality, actor and comedian, but I am not so much into movies these days (and I have no legal access to Tiktok), so I have no clue about his work. Maybe fans of his stand-up comedy would enjoy this better as some jokes are better heard than read.

I can advocate this as a light-hearted book to be borrowed from the library and read for entertainment value, or it could work as a prank gift. (But I am not sure whom you could gift it to.)

A shoutout to the cover pic – I love the expressions of the women in that artwork.

2 stars.

My thanks to SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) for providing the DRC of “How to Piss Off Men” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Connect with me through:
My Blog || The StoryGraph || Instagram || X/Twitter || Facebook || show less

Written by an author/comedian and subtitled 109 Things to Say to Shatter the Male Ego, this short book is filled with questions, quips and retorts to help combat toxic masculinity, along with commentary by the writer.

Given the title, how could I resist this selection? A very quick read, it had me repeatedly laughing out loud and I have to say it takes something very good to make me do that. A humorous break from some of the heavier reading I have been doing, it was a delightful read. I am going to try to remember some of the lines and hope I get to use them sometime.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Sourcebooks for the DRC.

A delightful and quick read with just a sprinkle of analysis to why any of this might work. Recommend for anyone who enjoyed his tiktok series on the same subject, or to check out the series for a couple more examples. I do appreciate Prue's acknowledgement both of his privilege (and how that might affect his ability to be able to say some of these things) and how some would absolutely, and have, worked on him. It's a nice level of self-awareness to possess when deciding to publish a book like this one.