What Is the Manosphere? An Investigation Into Why It Appeals So Much to Men, and How It Impacts Women and Girls
Spend 90 minutes watching Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, Inside the manosphere on Netflix, and you’re bound to leave with a few questions – and probably a deep sense of dread. Before you even look, you may be wondering: what East the manosphere? Is this a real place? And how to get out of it?
Theroux’s documentary explores the extreme end of the spectrum, interviewing Harrison Sullivan (HSTikkyTokky), Myron Gaines and Justin Waller, all of whom have made careers in the so-called manosphere. It turns out you don’t have to be a so-called millionaire influencer to access the manosphere; it’s right under our noses, all the time.
Here, Charm explores the origins of the manosphere, explains why it is so attractive to men and boys and, most importantly, what impact it has on women and girls.
What is the manosphere?
The manosphere refers to a loose network of digital spaces that claim to address men’s issues, from fatherhood to body image and mental health. In reality, these online communities often promote harmful attitudes and ideologies, which position feminism, that is, the pursuit of gender equality, as a direct threat to men’s sociopolitical status and well-being.
The manosphere can be understood as a set of “anti-feminist online communities that have developed online in recent years,” explains Cécile Simmons, author of CTRL HATE DELETE: The new anti-feminist backlash and how we fight it. “A few years ago, you could easily follow manosphere forums. Today, it’s difficult to really know what we’re talking about when we talk about the manosphere online because these ideas circulate everywhere in more or less diluted forms.”
But it’s not just individual influencers who are responsible for the damage to the manosphere; it’s the tech companies that help them go viral. “The rise of the manosphere is often presented as a cultural crisis caused by a handful of toxic influencers,” explains Seyi Akiwowo, author of How to stay safe online. “But the deeper truth is that it has grown within digital platforms whose business models reward outrage, humiliation and conflict because these emotions drive engagement.”
Think about it: why does content depicting “possessed” or “humiliated” women go viral so easily? Andrew “Bernie” Bernard, an educator who runs masculinity workshops with men and boys, previously said Charm“It’s the perfect tool, isn’t it? There’s this idea that feminism has gone too far, so let’s see the manosphere drag them down. Let’s invent something that says men are being targeted by feminism, and then let’s see men fight back.”
As Akiwowo puts it: “When the humiliation and scapegoating of women leads to cheap engagement, the humiliation becomes part of the platform economy that the platforms have built.
“The manosphere, then, is not just a fringe subculture, but the predictable result of the incentives created by tech platforms themselves. These systems harm everyone: women who are targets of abuse, and boys and men who are drawn into increasingly extreme content ecosystems. Yet the platforms that benefit from these dynamics are far less policed than the individuals caught up in them.”
UN Women identifies the following (non-exhaustive) categories of manosphere communities:
Involuntary Celibates (Incels): “Believe that men have a right to sex and that women deliberately deprive them of it.”
Men’s Rights Activists (MRA): “We often take an academic tone to assert that feminism and women’s rights – to vote, to education, to leadership positions – have disadvantaged men. »
Men Go Their Own Way (MGTOW): “It suggests that society is rigged against men and that women, and even society in general, are best avoided.”
Pick-up artists: “Teach members how to coerce women into sex and make fun of the idea of sexual consent. »
