Navigating the manosphere

I’m working with Campaign Lab and the Digital Anthropology Collective to better understand the impact of far right and misogynistic social content on some boys and young men. This type of messaging, the people creating it (and the audience they attract) have become such a key part of contemporary culture that the entire space has been given a name – the “manosphere”.

This term was coined in 2009 as a play on the word “blogosphere”. But while it may have originally been meant as tongue-in-cheek, the word has now become shorthand for a whole host of problematic opinions. From the Netflix hit Adolescence to Gareth Southgate’s Dimbleby lecture to warnings from the NCA (National Crime Agency) in its latest report, we’ve been hearing a lot about the manosphere and its impact this week.

Online misogyny has been cited as a factor in innumerable cases of violence against women and even mass killings such as those in Plymouth (2021) or Bushey (2024). According to the NCA, a number of cases have been identified in which girls as young as 11 have been coerced into serious sexual or physical harm of themselves or others, with some even encouraged to take their own lives.

The impact on children is especially worrying. This year for the first time, the campaign group Everyone’s Invited published their first list of primary schools where sexual abuse was reported. There were more than 1,600 schools on the list. Meanwhile a recent report from the University of York found that teachers are increasingly concerned about misogynistic attitudes being expressed by boys. The vast majority of teachers feel that schools urgently need teaching materials that address online misogyny.

Misogynistic mentors

Content creators in the manosphere use specific methods to draw people in, often using relatively anodyne content to make an initial connection. The language is direct, intimate, emotional and accessible. They tap into deep anxieties, addressing genuine fears of many boys and young men, and playing on insecurities. One problem, explained Ed Davies, policy director at the Centre for Social Justice (speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today), is that influencers take on the role of online mentors:

“The really interesting thing about Andrew Tate is that 50 per cent of what he says is actually great. He says things like stop looking at pornography, go the the gym, make something of yourself, take responsibility – but it comes with this side order of unbelievable toxicity”.

Today’s manosphere may well have emerged from a perfect storm of easily-accessible violent porn combined with traditional (handed down) sexism. Variations of what might be termed toxic masculinity come from mainstream media as much as from Discord servers or Porn Hub. Whether it’s the Daily Mail focusing on female leaders’ legs, Andrew Tate offering a Spotify course in how to traffic women or Ye (formerly Kanye West) flaunting his apparently naked wife at the Grammys, all these things can be seen as symptoms of the same root problem.

As game designer Adrian Hon has argued, the answer doesn’t lie in a blanket banning of mobile phones or encouraging children to read life-affirming books. The factors underlying this situation are complicated and nuanced. Like Netflix’s Adolescence, the brilliant Disney series, Social Studies, or BBC Radio 4’s Boys, it’s clear that the issues impacting young people, both boys and girls, are multiple and complex. Everything is connected – it’s an entanglement, as anthropologists like to say.

The appeal of othering

One of our key tasks is to understand the appeal of this particular type of messaging to some young men and boys. I’m not in this demographic but I’m pretty sure I can see why this content may be attractive. Othering has always been a great way of making you feel good about yourself while putting all the blame on someone who looks (and quite possibly acts) differently to you. It feeds into our primal (but also learned) fears. Also ties in nicely with most world religions which follow a saint versus sinner, heaven or hell duality.

So instead of taking responsibility and acceptance of our own flaws, we simply project them onto other people. We don’t need to take accountability for our actions or situation, because anything bad is always somebody else’s fault. As we all know, everything was fine and dandy for Adam in the garden of Eden until Eve persuaded him to take a bite of that apple.

Othering makes things oh so easy. We can kid ourselves that just by subjugating and vilifying others, our natural role in the hierarchy will be asserted, enabling us to live long and prosper. But as many scholars have observed, the patriarchy can be just as damaging to boys and young men as it is to girls and women.

My fellow UCL anthropology graduate, Amir Massoumian has done some interesting research around Patriarchies in Practice. He spent many months carrying out doctoral fieldwork in certain pubs in London’s East End, where he found that a key factor for men supporting far right movements was shame – read more about Amir’s work in my blog post here.

Time to heal

Richard Reeves, a former advisor to Nick Clegg, set up the American Institute for Boys and Men. He says the lack of narratives about positive masculinity have created a vacuum. Speaking at this panel event in 2023, he said:

“If there are real problems in a society faced by a group and they don’t see and hear those problems being addressed directly by mainstream institutions, they can turn into grievances, and grievances are weaponized […] We have a responsibility to take those problems seriously.”

Reeves is the father of three grown-up sons. He argues that while there has been a great deal of investment in projects encouraging women and girls to take up careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), there has been little parallel investment supporting boys and men to look for roles in HEAL (health, education, administration and literacy) – where traditionally women have been more likely to find work. As so many industrial-age, blue collar jobs typically belonging to men have disappeared, it makes sense that other types of role should be made more accessible

Lost boys

It’s sad but maybe not surprising that a report published this month by the Centre for Social Justice concludes that boys and young men are in crisis. Lost Boys: State of the Nation has identified reverse gender gaps in a number of key areas. In the following areas, boys (especially those from poorer backgrounds) lag behind girls: 

• GCSEs and A levels: girls are doing better
• Universities: the student ratio is 60:40 women to men
• School exclusions: boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be excluded
• NEETs: 16-24 year old men are much more likely to be unemployed or not in education than women
• Earnings: 21-24 year old women have a higher median (although graduate men in this age group still earn more) 
• Suicides: the rate for 15-19 year old boys and men is three and half times higher than for girls and women

Our project

While there is material within the manosphere that might appear relatively innocuous, its overall ideology and more extreme aspects are clearly having a negative and dangerous social impact. They are also affecting voting behaviour among men, both here and in the USA.

That’s why we’re working with data scientists at Campaign Lab to analyse content from 20 different influencers over one month, and planning to interview a number of young men who fit their target demographic. We’re creating an ideological map, hopefully extending to include reactive counter movements like black divestment and toxic femininity. We’re looking to apply anthropological theories and tools to give us a richer understanding of the space.

We don’t know what the answers are but hopefully, somewhere along the line, we will at least be able to better understand the problem.

Photo: iStock

Kicking off 2025 with a Campaign Lab hack day