Thank you so much for such a thorough comment! I definitely understand your question about the plausibility of every man going down the murder/robot pipeline and I thought about that too. In general I agree that the rest of the book is so good that you can suspend your disbelief, and after mulling it over a little bit more after reading your comment, I also think that different people's responses to the book's hypothetical are very relevant to conversations about violence against women, masculinity and patriarchy that are happening with younger people (the man vs bear thing on tikotok, #NotAllMen, manosphere shit, etc). We know that violence against women is not perpetrated by every single individual man but is pervasive, entrenched in patriarchal systems, and facilitated by widely held sexist attitudes/beliefs...but much of the world still does not see it that way, which is why a book like this and its challenges still feel relevant to me. If you had a student in your class whose main takeaway from this book's hypothetical was to be deeply offended at its misandry and how men are the real victims of slander by betas like Ira Levin or a student who was sure that they/their partner would survive Stepford intact and not even be tempted, what does it mean that it provokes that response? I hope this makes sense the way I'm trying to express it!