Male Supremacy and the Manosphere

The manosphere is the neighborhood next door where women are not welcome and good guys know they don’t belong.

For those readers who do not live inside the social media circus tent, the manosphere is not a physical place nor any specific set of websites. It is a virtual web involving numerous platforms of growing complexity connected by male supremacist and anti-feminist ideologies that often veer into hatred towards women. It is not a safe place for growing boys or men.

A Story About Neighborhoods
Sexist ideas, male bigotry and aggrieved entitlement are nothing new, but the manosphere neighborhood is rapidly threatening good men and good women and targeting their children. This is a neighborhood we should reject on all levels.

Neighborhoods in the real world often exist because of our biases and social intolerance, not that different from the digital meeting place of the manosphere. The difference is that good people can agree to work against injustice and tear down the fences. Let me share with you a story of two such neighborhoods.

As a young boy I lived on a nice street in a small east coast city. It was nice because I was able to ride my little bike up and down the sidewalk all the way from one end of the block to the other. My school was three blocks away, and so I had several friends nearby. But at 8 years old, my parents prohibited me from walking around the corner. Even then I figured out that Black folks lived on the other street, and that this was the reason I was prohibited from walking there.

So my Black friends and I would climb the rickety fences that separated our backyards and play together. Their parents were always very nice and mine just didn’t say anything. As children, we could not figure out why my parents were so concerned.

Later, after we moved to a mostly white town nearby and I grew into a twenty-six inch bike, I began riding along the main avenue that connected my old neighborhood with the new one, and I’d go check in on my old friends. My parents believed I rode my bike around our local park, but with my own set of wheels, I rode wherever I wanted to ride.

Eventually I realized the distorted reasoning behind my parents’ concern. The old neighborhood was becoming increasingly African American and classic white flight ensued. Okay, I understand that my parents wanted to raise us kids in what they perceived as relative safety. But obvious 1960s racism aside, this is not a commentary on my parents, who were in most ways very generous people. Today the old neighborhood is a mix of Black, Pakistani and Salvadoran families.

In the internet age, virtual neighborhoods are not always safe, and some are overtly dangerous.

The Encroaching Manosphere Neighborhood
I am not an expert on the manosphere, nor am I a frequent visitor. I am a good guy who is concerned about the wellbeing of boys and men. While I realize that I could just avoid the manosphere, I also realize that its presence is beginning to encroach on my good-guy neighborhood.

As recent research has pointed out, the coded language of the manosphere groups has begun to seep into the everyday speech of young men ages 14 to 24. Fourteen years old was about the age I began quietly defying my parents by riding back to the Black neighborhood to visit my friends.

Clearly these young men are getting something crucial from their manosphere experiences for which there is nothing comparable in their everyday lives. What are they getting? Misogyny and hatred, mostly. Plus some useful thoughts on becoming successful men and occasional segments featuring flashy sports cars.

“Leaders will use material displays of power such as money and fancy cars to show that their ideologies have led to success, which promotes the idea that they can help other men gain power, money, and access to girls and sex.” 

More specifically, as described by several prominent researchers, four main groups are frequently cited: men’s rights activists (MRAs) promote men’s rights while supporting harassment and abuse towards feminists; men going their own way (MGTOW) argue that women are so toxic that men should avoid them altogether; pick-up artists (PUAs) teach men seduction strategies to gain access to sex while mistreating women; and involuntary celibates (incels), hetero men who argue that they cannot find a willing sexual partner, and in their resentment often resort to violence, physical abuse and even murder.

There are a slew of purveyors of this highly disturbing material including Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, although not all are equally blatant or violent in their messaging. Politically, most are aligned with the Alt-Right or extremist Right.

French (2024) makes a convincing argument that teaching lifelong virtues to young people has fallen out of favor among parents and schools, and that these influencers fill this gap by offering alternative virtues on how to be a man. But we should also remember that by age fourteen, most boys have survived a good ten years of peer abuse on how to act - and not to act - like a man. Commonly known as the “man box” crucible, this experience sets them up for further indoctrination into the antisocial and misogynistic elements of the manosphere.

So why does any of this matter?
The social media platforms which host most of this material are immediately available to young men, and leaders are eager to fill the void left by the lack of positive virtues from parents or teachers. How do I know young men are so eager? Well, I was once a young man, and I remember all too well the eagerness and confusion regarding becoming a man. But we had only comic books and sanitized TV shows as our guides.

I believe that good men of every generation should be concerned about the encroachment of the manosphere neighborhood. Young men are so vulnerable to the entreaties of adult leaders, especially men. Let’s face it:

These misogynistic messages make sense to young men desperately trying to locate their gender identities and understand the sexuality of the men or women (or boys and girls) whom they so desire.

How enamored I was with the original television Superman and the crew of the starship Enterprise. These characters largely taught me how to be a good man (although I was lucky to have a good-guy father) and were at least as impactful as my parents and teachers. Why do we think the situation is any different for young men today? Only the media platforms and content have changed.

The Link to Abuse and Violence Against Women and Queer Folks
Manosphere influencers present their programs as safe spaces for young men to vent their anger toward women and girls, or in fact to vent anger for any reason. They also suggest that men may take from women what they feel they deserve, while denying women the right to say “No.” Queer men and women are just objects of scorn and derision.

Beyond misogyny, the manosphere also tolerates, amplifies, and breeds discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community. Intertwined with manosphere messaging are frequent homophobic and transphobic references, including gay and trans slurs. The latter are used as insults for men who are weak or allegedly not alpha males. And the attitudes are becoming popularized.

To take just one example, the word “simp” is a degrading comment most frequently used to demean a guy who is too attentive of or submissive to a girl or woman. Recent use of “simp” and “simp-ing” by manosphere influencers has led to these terms becoming part of popular culture and contributing to a growing attitude that equality and non-violence in relationships are forms of weakness.

Men’s participation in the manosphere is linked to recent increases in physical and verbal abuse of women while dating. There is also a proven connection between the manosphere ideologies and violence, with many mass casualty events, sexual assaults, and other forms of harassment attributed to self-identified members of these groups.

The manosphere agenda is unsafe for participants and everyone with whom they come into contact. Even more frightening, the manosphere neighborhood is encroaching on the rest of us. Its large online presence makes it seem like everyone holds these beliefs.

Fortunately most people do not.