Some ideas about women are so ugly that it often feels healthier to ignore them than to confront them. Maybe we avoid calling out the perpetrators of these ideas because we don’t want to give them more publicity. Or maybe—understandably—we worry that speaking up will make us a target for online and real-life abuse.
But the sinister elements that make up the so-called manosphere must be named, opposed and rejected if we want all genders to coexist in mutual respect and safety. If you’ve been looking the other way, it’s important to take a deep breath, inform yourself and do what you can to counter these insidious ideas.
The manosphere is an umbrella term for websites, social media accounts, videos and other online content using misinformation and disinformation to assert that feminism has taken men’s rights away and that men are superior to and therefore should dominate women. (We refer here to straight, cis-gender women and men; the manosphere is an aggressively heterosexual place.)
Manosphere content creators idolize wealth, power physical fitness and attractiveness as qualities of “real” men. They reject emotional vulnerability and see women as objects to be used for sex and controlled. Many even advocate violence against women.
If you want to learn more about the terminology and approach of the manosphere, you can look up terms like “red pill/blue pill”, “incel”, “alpha/beta male” and “hustle bros”, but prepare yourself for unpleasantness, perhaps even shock. Be careful with your own mental health if you choose to arm yourself by reading more about the reprehensible Tate brothers, or watching the outstanding, if unsettling, Netflix drama series Adolescence.
It’s easy to feel so nauseated and overwhelmed by the manosphere’s hateful content that we disconnect, feeling there’s nothing we can do when boys and young men are attracted by such hateful ideas. If we remember, though, that these contentions hurt all genders, we may be able to find the strength to counter them.
Here are some suggestions for engaging with boys and young men in your life, whether they are your children, grandchildren, students or friends:
- Talk to them to see if they’ve encountered the tentacles of manosphere and if so, how that made them feel. Gently ask how they think of women and girls, connecting their perceptions to real people in their own lives.
- Encourage them to express how they feel by creating an atmosphere that doesn’t judge or shame.
- Ensure they have real-life, multi-faceted male role models to learn from. When they see men who nurture others and show up for the women in their lives, it’s a powerful antidote to the manosphere’s crudeness.
- Offer other ways to think about what it means to be a man from sources like Next Gen Men, a Canadian organization working to change ideas about masculinity.
- Treat everyone else with dignity, respect and compassion so that boys and young men see all people, including themselves, as having value.
No doubt you can think of other tools to use, too. Ignoring the manosphere won’t make it go away, but we can do everything possible to prevent its ideas from spreading further. Equality and kindness are the best hope for all of us, regardless of gender.
By Nancy Payne
