We need to stop treating the manosphere like it’s just a weird corner of the internet. It isn’t fringe anymore, it’s podcasts with millions of listeners. It’s “self-improvement” and reels that slide into anti-feminist talking points. It’s teenage boys being told that their loneliness is women’s fault. The manosphere, is a loose network of Men’s Rights Activists, incel forums, “alpha male” influencers and reactionary commentators, it is built on a simple, seductive message: men are under threat, and feminism is to blame.
Researchers like Debbie Ging, writing about the masculinities of the manosphere, show how these online spaces construct identities around dominance, hierarchy and resentment. What begins as advice about dating or confidence can quickly harden into something darker, a worldview where women are manipulative, shallow, or biologically inferior. And what’s worse is that the algorithms love it!
We see it too often, outrage spreads and conflict trends. The more provocative the claim, the further it travels. A boy looking for gym motivation can within minutes, be fed a steady stream of content telling him that women only want “high-value men,” that equality has “gone too far,” that empathy is weakness. The pipeline is subtle, but yet it is so powerful.
What about the consequences? These don’t live in the abstract. Women and girls are already living with the fallout. Online misogyny has become normalised to the point of exhaustion. Abuse, threats, sexualised insults background noise. According to UN Women’s reporting on digital gender-based violence, women, especially women of colour and LGBTQ+ women, face disproportionate levels of online harassment. Many withdraw from public conversations to protect their safety. When voices disappear, democracy weakens.
However as if it wasn’t enough, the damage doesn’t stop with women. The manosphere is also failing the boys it claims to protect, our grandchildren, children, nephews, brothers…Instead of offering emotional literacy or meaningful community, it offers blame. It tells young men that vulnerability is humiliation and that power is the only form of security.
In The Will to Change, bell hooks wrote that patriarchy has no gender and that it demands emotional silence from men and submission from women. The manosphere doubles down on that silence. It packages emotional repression as strength, we’ve all heard that saying haven’t we? “boys don’t cry”. The manosphere promises them power but delivers isolation, in offering certainty but discouraging curiosity about themselves and others.
Instead of teaching boys how to navigate rejection, loneliness, or insecurity with honesty, it frames those experiences as proof that the world is rigged against them. In doing so it quietly narrows their emotional lives. The perception of strength is there, but underneath it is a fragile idea of masculinity that cannot tolerate vulnerability, care, or interdependence. What does it mean for a generation of boys to be told that empathy is weakness and connection is a threat to their authority?
Black queer feminist thinkers have long warned us about systems built on hierarchy. Audre Lorde famously wrote that there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1977 that liberation must address interlocking systems of oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, class inequality together. These frameworks matter now more than ever. The manosphere doesn’t just promote sexism; it often reinforces racism, homophobia and rigid ideas of heterosexual dominance. It imagines freedom for a very specific kind of man and only at the expense of others.
Feminism, particularly Black queer feminism, offers a radically different vision. Not dominance but dignity away from hierarchy and moving into humanity. It challenges the idea that power must be taken from someone else in order to exist. It insists that gender equality benefits everyone including men trapped in narrow definitions of masculinity.
The real question isn’t whether the manosphere exists. It does. The real question is why it resonates. Why are so many young men finding belonging in spaces built on resentment and anger? What social failures make that narrative convincing? And why do platforms continue to profit from rage-bait content? If we dismiss the manosphere as ridiculous or extreme, we miss the cultural influence it has. Ideas repeated often enough become normal and inherited. Jokes become beliefs and beliefs become policies. The next generation is learning about gender not just in classrooms or at home but in comment sections and livestreams.
This is not about vilifying boys. It is about recognising that unchecked misogyny reshapes society in ways that hurt everyone. If we want a future built on mutual respect, we cannot afford to ignore the digital spaces shaping how young people understand power, love, and identity. What makes the rise of the manosphere even more unsettling is how quickly it threatens to erode progress that took generations to build.
Women did not stumble into the rights many of us now consider “normal.” They fought for them relentlessly and often at great personal cost. The right to vote, the right to own property, the right to education and he right to work without legal dependence on a husband. These were not gifts from a benevolent system. They were victories won through protest, organising, imprisonment, and social backlash.
The manosphere is not just an internet trend. It is a warning sign.
