‘Manosphere’ has become the buzziest word in the media ever since the roaring success of the Netflix series ‘Adolescence’. In part one, we ask the big questions: What does it mean? What does it claim about women? And how has it shaped what women are saying about men? Yes, there is indeed a ‘Femosphere’.
Editor’s note: In part two, we look at whether there is any difference between the manosphere and patriarchy as usual—especially in the Indian context. We also map the mainstreaming of the manosphere—where toxic internet rhetoric is now becoming just “boy talk”.
Manosphere: Wtf is it?
It’s a riff on a much older word—blogosphere—that dates back to the early days of the internet. But the ‘Manosphere’ is much bigger: it encompasses a range of websites, blogs, online forums and communities. What they all share in common: Toxic masculinity. The term clubs together all varieties of women-loathing—old and new. These include:
Men’s Rights Movements: also known as Men’s Rights Activism (MRA). These groups date back to the 1970s—formed as a backlash against the women’s rights movement in the US. The MRA worldview frames men as victims:
The MRM in the United States operates with the conceptualization of the white man as the new ‘victim’, often taking offence at policy issues such as divorce and alimony laws, and benefits provided to single mothers etc. as discriminatory and penalizing men even while some of their arguments on alimony are not supported by evidence.
The Indian equivalent can be most commonly found on X—ranting about dowry and divorce laws.
Pick-up artists: Men treat women as sexual objects that can be acquired—by deception and manipulation. Self-styled gurus borrow from Neuro Linguistic Programming—which focuses on how words shape human thinking behaviour. Its core promise: “Simply put, change is possible — all you need is a desire to change and a willingness to learn new ways of being…with yourself, your thoughts and with others.”
You can see how attractive that premise would be to young men struggling to attract women. The PUA culture went mainstream with the publication of Neil Strauss’s The Game in 2005—which sold 2.5 million copies:
It introduced a generation of men to the murky, underhand world of pickup artists and their nefarious tactics, such as negging — insulting a woman to undermine her confidence, and make her feel as if she has to seek your approval — or peacocking, where you dress flamboyantly as a talking point to hit on women.
The aim is not to form a connection or even have sex, really—but to ‘score’.
Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW): gives up on having any kind of connection with women—and opts instead for separatism. It urges men “to separate themselves from women, built on the belief that feminism has corrupted society.” MGTOW (pronounced ming-tau) embraces a twisted form of feminist rhetoric—blaming the other gender of crippling their lives:
The MGTOW philosophy is… “a statement of self-ownership, where the modern man preserves and protects his own sovereignty above all else”. Drawing on snippets of quotes and newspaper clippings, the site claims that MGTOW dates back to great men, including Schopenhauer, Beethoven, Galileo and “even Jesus Christ”. Women are essentially portrayed as parasites riding on the coattails of men, who have, throughout history, been responsible for “far greater miracles of science, discovery and human endeavour”. By shaking women off, it is explained, men will be free to pursue ever higher achievements.
Point to note: The PUAs have very little time for MGTOW—calling it “a cult for lonely virgins.” After all, without women—who would you gaslight or abuse?
The incels: That’s short for Involuntary Celibates (Incel). Irony alert: the term was invented by a female queer student—and started as an online subculture of those struggling with sex and romantic relationships. It has since spawned forums on 4Chan and Reddit that incite violent rage against women. Among the early incel heroes is Elliot Rodger who killed six people in 2014—even publishing a ‘manifesto’ before the act:
In the document, he described himself as the "ideal magnificent gentleman" and could not comprehend why women would not want to have sex with him. He planned his murderous rampage as a "Day of Retribution" and said he had "no choice but to exact revenge on the society" that had "denied" him sex and love.
The Red Pill: The term is borrowed from ‘The Matrix’—where Neo is given the choice of a blue or red pill. The first will keep him enslaved in a simulation—the latter will show him the true nature of the “real world” run by machines. In this case, women are the overlords:” Red-pillers awaken to the ‘truth’ that socially, economically and sexually, men are at the whims of women’s (and feminists’) power and desires.”
Point to note: The ‘Red Pill’ analogy is not limited to women-haters. It is used by all kinds of conspiracy theorists. It can be feminists secretly controlling the world—or George Soros or Jews—and these communities often overlap:
They’ve tied so much of their self-worth and identity to beliefs that feminism is ruining their lives, that people of colour are trying to take their rights away, and that Jewish people are running an underground power, that entertaining something contrary could destroy their self-worth, and so it’s kind of a defence mechanism.
Language of the Manosphere
Men can fall into any one of these Manosphere categories—but they all share a common vocabulary of hate.There are the well-known Alphas and Betas—one gets the “babes,” the other does not. A newer variation are called Chads and Stacys:
Chads are the “ultimate alpha” — the ultra-masculine, virile, powerful and sexually attractive man to whom Stacys and other women flock. The term “gigachad” refers to the most alpha of alpha males. Stacys are an idealisation of femininity — a hyper-attractive, sexually desirable, promiscuous but vapid woman. She is ultimately unobtainable, especially to men who are not Chads.
Moving on to ‘cucks’: or cuckolds—men who allow ‘their’ women to have sex with other men. In the Manosphere, the term becomes a handy portmanteau for white supremacy and misogyny:
“Cuck” became widely used after a 2014 controversy in which women working in the video-game industry were subject to a campaign of harassment, and a far-right media personality called one whistleblower’s husband a “cuck.” The epithet then proliferated in explicitly racist subreddit channels and took on the added implication of “white genocide” or a “great replacement,” in which a “Jewish cabal covertly encourages white women to have children with non-white men in order to eliminate the genetic purity of white men,” Kosse writes.
Finally, AWALT: This is a perversion of the ‘Not All Men’ phrase—used to indicate that not all men rape, abuse etc. AWALT stands for “all women are like that”:
Awalt is used to suggest women are all vapid, insincere, sexually promiscuous, driven by emotions rather than rationality, motivated by financial gain and more. Awalt is also deployed to emphasise the claim that men are everything women are not — moral, rational, intelligent, loyal, honourable and individualistic.
Say hello to the ‘Femosphere’!
In our polarised world, every extremist ideology births another. ‘Femcels’ represent a “feminist” backlash to feminism:
In the femosphere, as in the manosphere, there’s an overarching belief that life is about survival of the fittest, that men will always hurt women and that will never change, so strategies are needed to conquer the opposite gender.
It’s the ‘pink pill’ that every woman needs to take—and accept that traditional girlboss feminism has betrayed them. Women are stuck chasing men who reject them—making less money than men—and yet caught in the ‘second shift’ grind—both working and raising children.
The Femosphere solution: is to become female versions of pickup artists—manipulating and trapping men into paying the bills:
[Dr Jilly] Kay saw beliefs discussed and shared in online forums and via social media influencers that echoed the logic of the manosphere — particularly when it came to dating and relationships. “Ideas like men are the gatekeeper of relationships and women are the gatekeepers of sex,” she said. “So women’s currency in the sexual marketplace resides in her withholding sex from men, and you diminish your value if you have casual sex.”... rather than fighting for pay equality, a man should provide for a woman financially, and women must “embrace feminine energy” to secure a husband.
The best example: of this philosophy is a Reddit forum called Female Dating Strategy. It promotes a six-point ideology that presents men as sex-driven and lazy, and encourages women to only seek out men who can provide for them financially.” Its podcast claims to be “about the ruthless advancement of women.” As some experts describe it, the Female Dating Strategy has an “anti-hope structure”—where any hope of large-scale social change is discarded. Ergo, if the system won’t change, each woman has to learn to work the system for herself.
The Manosphere effect: on most women can be summed up in one word: despair—which has brought two seemingly opposite versions of feminism to the same place. Orthodox feminists seem to have given up on ever ridding the world of male violence:
Those who insist that men aren’t in a position to know better are in denial of what men have seen and heard. Men have chosen not to listen because it has suited them not to do so, because the norms of masculinity dictate that their pleasure takes priority, because all around them other men have been doing the same.
Yet the Manosphere also offers evidence why women should seek male protection—according to ‘dissident’ feminists like author Louise Perry:
[R]ape is not, as liberal and radical feminists supposedly claim, a product of patriarchal social conditioning but rather an evolutionarily ‘method by which males can reproduce — it confers, in some situations, a selection advantage’. For Perry, in other words, men are antagonistic to feminism not just by choice but by their very nature. In light of this profoundly despairing view of men as a natural threat to women, she proposes that the task for ‘practical feminists’ is to incentivize men to protect ‘their’ woman from other men. How? By reviving marriage in a most socially conservative form.
Warped by the toxicity of the Manosphere, present-day versions of ‘dissident’ and orthodox feminism share the same premise:
[E]ach contributes to a feminist culture in which it is both ‘popular’ to extract insights about man as a general social category by making use of the manosphere, and in which the idea that men and feminism are necessarily antagonistic is central. Each participates, in other words, in a representational project wherein ‘man’ poses a fundamental threat to ‘woman’.
The bottomline: In part two, we will look at whether there is any difference between the Manosphere and patriarchy as usual—especially in the Indian context. We also trace the mainstreaming of the Manosphere—from an internet silo to becoming boy talk.
Reading list
This 2020 Guardian essay explains the culture of MGTOW—while BBC News profiles incels. The Conversation offers a guide to the vocabulary of the Manosphere—while The Standard offers a guide to references in ‘Adolescence’—including the awful Andrew Tate. The Guardian and Fast Company are best on the Femosphere. Also read: Finola Laughren’s research essay: ‘The unpopular (manosphere) men of popular feminism’—which makes a provocative argument about the link between classic and ‘dissident’ feminism.
