Not only had she been beaten and raped by her father at age eleven, but she had also had to watch her father beat her mother. In reaction to her father beating her mother, Lisbeth poured gasoline into her father's car while he was inside it, and then threw a match in the window. Instantly his clothes and skin caught on fire, but unfortunately, this only scarred him and made him vengeful. At age twelve, she was put into a mental institution, and at age eighteen, she was deemed "legally incompetent " (Larsson 179) and has since needed a guardian to manage her finances. It is these events that led to the unusually early formation of agoraphobia, as well as her hatred toward men.
We soon find out that all of Lisbeth's guardians have been males, but to both our surprise and likely Lisbeth's, Lisbeth has grown to love her guardian as a patriarchal figure, despite her deep-rooted hatred toward men. Unfortunately, he grew old and ill, and was replaced by a disgusting man that Lisbeth despised. Not only did he treat her as if she were an incompetent piece of meat, but he also forced her to perform oral sex so that she could buy a new laptop, something her job as a hacker required. Later on in the novel, he chains her to a bed and anally rapes her. Lisbeth's old guardian was the only man in her life that she loved and the only man who completely respected and cared for her, and he was now replaced by a masochistic rapist. Since he forced her to perform oral sex so that she could get something she needed for work, her seemingly safe and non-social job has now turned into another source of agoraphobia and hatred, despite her feelings of comfort within it.
It seems unlikely to find sufficient comfort in a job, but for Lisbeth, her work is one of the only things that she can feel safe in doing. The world of the hacker is driven by codes and numbers, with logic at its very core; a characteristic more often associated with men than with women, making this job especially unorthodox for a woman.