Louis Theroux’s recent documentary on the “manosphere” has brought attention to the disturbing culture – and those making money from it. Ignoring the issue won’t make it go away, says Far Right expert Matthew Sharpe…
MATT SHARPE
ACU National Head of Philosophy
The manosphere has seen renewed international attention following Louis Theroux’s latest Netflix documentary. The subsequent watercooler conversation is welcome and sorely needed.
As Theroux’s patient interviewing of several “influencers” draws out, what passes for life advice in the manosphere is horrifying to contemporary progressive thinking and sensibilities.
Its quasi-scientific bases, mostly distorted snippets of evolutionary biology and psychology, are also deeply intellectually flawed.
It is therefore clear enough why many contemporary liberals have been inclined to ignore the online material produced by self-designating “incels” (involuntary celibates); “men going their own way” (MGTOWs); “pickup artists” (PUAs); men’s right’s activists (MRAs); and others.
It is easy to condescendingly scorn the millions of followers whom manosphere influencers have won around the world as a harmless, deluded, pernicious minority.
But “the enemy you underestimate is always ahead of you,” Sun Tzu warned, long ago. It is a caution echoed in different wisdom traditions.
Whilst our tendency to avoid engaging with the manosphere is understandable, it is unwise.
Policymakers, educators, and commentators not taking seriously the appeal of the many hateful ideas that have “gone viral” online over the last decades, have not made these ideas go away.
It has better enabled their champions to “sell” their content unchallenged, to growing numbers of impressionable young people.
“The prescription here is to work out, change one’s diet, as well as…invest in get-rich quick schemes endorsed by the influencers”
Please consider supporting The Klaxon here
Louis Theroux interviews a series of influencers in “Inside the Manosphere”. Source: Netflix
What the manosphere teaches
Manosphere influencers teach men that mainstream society, under the influence of feminism and other progressive forces, demonises masculinity, making men unable or ashamed “to be real men.”
Women are faithless, status-obsessed creatures whose natural desirability means that they do not have to suffer or work hard to succeed in life (unlike men), and who should be re-made subservient.
In some of the more fetid chatrooms, women are given dehumanising “in-group” terms like “foids”: a condensation of “females” with “humanoids”.
The “right” of men to heterosexual sex, or even to rape women whom they want, is openly advocated. Users trade “field reports” of their sexual exploits, egged on by others in the most lurid language, verging into celebrations of sexual violence.
Men who are “red pilled” accept the “hard truth” that 80 per cent of women give sex and love only to the top 20% of “high value” “alphas” (the 80-20 rule).
In response, “pickup artist” (PUA) gurus teach “game”, that is, the “art” of picking up women and accumulating a large “body count” (total of people slept with) by unashamedly treating seduction as a “numbers game”, and women as little more than sex-dispensing machines with an evolutionary-based code that the PUA can teach you how to crack.
PUAs describe seduction less as an amorous process involving two human beings, than a soulless technical, hunting, or military operation.
One should “bait and switch” one’s “target”, obtain “compliance” (via “indications of interest” (IOIs)) and then “escalate”, through “negging” (making disparaging remarks about the girl, showing your high standards) and “demonstrating [one’s] higher value” (DHV), thereby deactivating “the target”’s “bitch shield”, and so on.
Other manosphere influencers promise young men that, if they take the “red pill”, they can become “alphas,” and escape from the drudgery of 9-5 work of “normies” stuck in “the matrix” of mainstream society.
The prescription here is to work out, change one’s diet, as well as—per the case of manosphere influencer, Harrison Sullivan, whom Theroux interviews in his Netflix documentary—invest in get-rich quick schemes endorsed by the influencers.
Online phenomena, real world impact
Whether we like it or not, manosphere tips on “taking the red pill”, “asserting dominance”, boosting one’s “sexual market value” (SMV), even “looksmaxxing” (improving one’s SMV by altering one’s appearance through diet, gym, or cosmetic surgery) are increasingly finding mass audiences, and having real world impacts.
The most extreme of these is the over a dozen mass shootings in the USA carried out by self-professing “incels”, led by Elliot Rodger.
Humiliated in his search for sexual love, Rodger styled himself online as “the supreme gentleman.” He then massacred six people and injured fourteen others in an act of indiscriminate vengeance against all the women who had rejected him.
Rodger continues to be celebrated in incel fora, where users evoke a coming “day of reckoning” in which “betas” like themselves will violently overthrow society, and make “Stacys” (attractive women) and “Chads” (sexually successful men) pay for their immiseration.
“There are increasing reports from female high school teachers of their being harassed…by adolescent boys ‘asserting their dominance’”
Thankfully, such horrors have not yet manifested in Australia. But there are increasing reports from female high school teachers of their being harassed and subjected to misogynistic gestures and coded sexual messages by adolescent boys “asserting their dominance”.
Youth advocate, Daniel Principe, warns that “[i]n every school and every postcode, rape jokes and rape threats are completely and utterly normalised.”
One study by Maeve Slonim of The Flourish Journey and Marimba Wilkie from The Big Sister Experience found that nearly half of the girls they surveyed said that the growth in adolescent boys’ consuming manosphere content made them feel scared to be female.
Louis Theroux’s latest documentary has put the spotlight on the “manosphere” Source: Netflix
And they have reason. Manosphere teachings systematically objectify women and verge at every moment into the most hateful misogyny.
They directly undermine the ability of young men to form respectful, lasting relationships with women, let alone build stable families.
Manosphere influencers teach that monogamy is good for women but not binding on “high value men.” The latter should freely pursue sex wherever and whenever they can find it. (Louis Theroux is especially appalled by this double standard).
“Nearly half of the girls surveyed said the growth in adolescent boys’ consuming manosphere content made them feel scared to be female”
Then there are the psychological effects on vulnerable young men who fall under the spell of toxic influencers like Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed “misogynist” presently facing charges of rape and sexual assault.
Manosphere icons like Tate picture all life as a ceaseless Darwinian struggle for sexual and material success.
Young men looking for life advice are primed to constantly compare their looks, their physiques, their sex lives, their bank balances, their material possessions, and more, with others, and rank everything into hierarchies.
Tate and others (usually topless) present deeply unrealistic, shallow images of flourishing which associate social and sexual success with owning designer watches, glamorous jewellery, expensive sports cars, and luxury yachts that are out of reach for all but a tiny minority.
Consuming manosphere content is hence a recipe less for any young man to grow in self-confidence and social maturity, than for supercharging insecurity, paranoia, and low self-esteem.
As one former manosphere consumer explained: “If women don’t want you, [you’re told], ‘You are a beta. You are not manly enough. You’re too much of a nice guy.’”
“Consuming manosphere content is hence a recipe…for supercharging insecurity, paranoia, and low self-esteem”
Finally, there are the very real political implications in today’s growing reach of the manosphere. Young men who are drawn into its ideologies may initially be apolitical, looking for personal help.
Yet, manosphere influencers coach them to blame their private sufferings on the advances of feminism, and to revile contemporary society as irredeemably rigged against them.
In this way, the manosphere serves as an “onramp” for vulnerable users into a range of radical political orientations which choose other targets than feminism and women as to blame for men’s issues:
Within Redpill communities [in the manosphere] are ‘Thought Leaders’ like Jordan Peterson, Gavin McInnes, Stefan Molyneux, and others, who embed Islamophobic, … antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQAI narratives with male empowerment or self-improvement …
One recent study for example shows how neofascist groups like the Proud Boys in the US are “a new face of far-right extremism … that recruits through shared precarity and male grievances.”
“The manosphere serves as an ‘onramp’ for vulnerable users into a range of radical political orientations”
Theroux’s documentary has sparked “sorely needed” public discussion. Source: Netflix
Facing the manosphere
What then can be done about this dark undercurrent of global culture which is making its way, via YouTube, chatrooms, gaming platforms, and social media, into our homes, our classrooms, our adolescents’ peer groups, and even recently into the bizarre dehumanising language (“lethalitymaxxing”) that the Pentagon used to advertise its military operations in Iran?
The manosphere is not a stand-alone phenomenon. It is certainly not “the truth at last” pronounced by its profit-taking heroes.
The manosphere is one symptom of wider challenges we now face. It feeds off the increasing uncertainties facing young men in a period of endless, rapid-fire technological and cultural changes.
These changes, too often blithely celebrated as “all good,” are leaving entire cohorts of people feeling left behind, or left out of any future that they can see themselves flourishing in.
Every effort needs to be made to listen with genuine empathy to the reasons that men give for their conversions to the noxious online content of the manosphere—which is not the same as condoning the “solutions” they have embraced.
Wherever possible, educational initiatives to challenge the extreme claims of manosphere influencers, based in evidenced argumentation, need to be presented to potential converts, alongside positive, nontoxic models of masculinity.
Ideally, this should happen before adolescents have had the chance to be “red pilled”, and thus to dismiss all criticisms of their heroes as part of the society-wide conspiracy against “men being men.”
“The wider societal and technological ‘push factors’ which are leaving so many young people vulnerable to online radicalisation need to be clearly identified and concertedly addressed”
At the same time, the wider societal and technological “push factors” which are leaving so many young people vulnerable to online radicalisation need to be clearly identified and concertedly addressed.
The present government’s social media ban for under-16s is one step in this direction. But it is barely a start in ensuring that social media does not continue to trend profoundly un-or antisocial, giving birth to deeply troubling phenomena like the manosphere.
Associate Professor Matthew Sharpe is National Head of the School of Philosophy at ACU. He writes on ancient philosophy, philosophy as a way of life, philosophical psychology, and the history of ideas including the Far Right.
Independent journalism is vital. Please consider supporting The Klaxon for as little as $10 a month, or by making a one-off donation here. Thank you for making a difference.
Anthony Klan
Editor, The Klaxon
