Episode 29
· 31:11
Whenever they say the fitness stuff, they're always like, and if you don't do this, either implied or directly, you're less of a man. That doesn't sound like self improvement to me. That sounds like judging. That sounds like an idea that the people on the other end of that, the people that are coming into your ears think they're better than you and will always think that they're better than you. That's not self improvement.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:That's bullying.
Dr. Sonia Kang:It seems like the term manosphere is everywhere these days, from news headlines to documentaries. On the surface, some of these online spaces can look like they're simply about self improvement. There's content about dating, fitness, money, men's rights, but actually, the manosphere is much more than just a self improvement space. In this episode, we'll unpack what the manosphere is, what's behind its rise, and why this self help content can become an entry point to misogyny and harmful ideas about what it means to be a man. I'm doctor Sonya Kang, academic director at GATE.
Carmina Ravanera:And I'm Carmina Ravineira, senior research associate at GATE. Welcome back to Busted, our podcast that debunks myths that get in the way of progress on equality through conversations with researchers.
Dr. Sonia Kang:There's been a lot of buzz around the manosphere recently, from documentaries like Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere to the Netflix TV show Adolescence to news headlines about the masculinity crisis and manfluencers. So what exactly is the manosphere, and what does research tell us about its impacts?
Carmina Ravanera:To help us answer those questions, I spoke to doctor Luke Cusino and Jillian Sunderland. I'll let them introduce themselves.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:Yeah. My name is doctor Luke Cusino, and, I'm appointed in the school of health and human performance at Dalhousie University. And my research focuses on people's involvement in masculinist and men's rights communities and how online misogyny is coming off of the Internet and finding its way into particularly educational and youth spaces.
Jillian Sunderland:I'm Jillian Sunderland. I'm a PhD candidate just finishing up my dissertation. So my research broadly looks at masculinities across a range of institutions and websites, just how masculine ideals are circulated and how men kind of respond and react to those ideals through practice. So I've done research on kind of the white supremacist movement in cells, and now my dissertation looks at the RCMP.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So let's get clear on what we mean when we say the manosphere. How do our experts define it?
Dr. Luc Cousineau:I like the understanding of the manosphere as kind of a loose collection of groups that share some common ideas and common interests. And so those common ideas and common interests are generally some kind of misogynistic view, so ideas that men are superior in some way to women, anti feminism. And these things appear in different ways in different communities. And, certainly, these are communities mostly by and for men. So they're not exclusively men, but they are certainly focused on men, and they are mostly men's communities.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And so the communities that fall into this group that we have collectively started calling the manosphere, they include things like men's rights groups, pickup artists, red pill communities. And over time, groups like incels, and now we might talk about, manfluencers or masculinity influencers online. They're part of the manosphere. Looks maxing is something people might know, because that's been in the news more recently. But these kinds of men focused, often masculinist communities, but they have different areas of focus and different ideas.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:But we sort of collect them together, and they collect themselves together much of the time, into this thing we call the manosphere.
Jillian Sunderland:So it's best not to think of it as a single group or website. It's actually kind of a collection of broad, websites, podcasts, you know, YouTube videos. So it includes a lot of anti feminist communities. So that would include like incels who you may be familiar familiar with, men's rights activists, pickup artists, men going their own way. And a newer branch of kind of this online ecosystem is influencers who offer advice about fitness, money, dating, wellness, and appearance.
Jillian Sunderland:So while it's a distinct kind of group, there is some conflict and contestation. But researchers clarify that what kind of unites this group is typically a red pill understanding of gender, or the belief that men are losing status because society privileges women and feminism. So that kind of, you know, bounds the kind of whole group around an anti feminist ideology. A lot of the manosphere provides young men with kind of simple solutions to more structural problems. So in my research on on on online masculine movements, I talk about how these communities want to construct a sense of we ness by defining themselves against another group.
Jillian Sunderland:And a lot of times in the man manosphere, that other group is women and girls, and they are seen as the source of men problems. Even if those problems that men are facing originates, let's say in the economy, housing, or mental health, this is a community that has really decided that their focal adversary is women and young groups. So they focus on kind of attacking abortion rights or maybe mobilizing against prominent women, or even doing harassment campaigns on the Internet. So that's also an important feature, is this kind of uniting around this anti woman sentiment kind of unites distinct factions of this group.
Carmina Ravanera:The manosphere is not just one thing and it's not simply online communities where men and boys gather. It's a network of online spaces including forums, videos and podcasts connected by a focus on reinforcing gender hierarchy. Misogynistic content in the manosphere argues that men should have more status and power than women. Sometimes that message is explicit, Sometimes it's implied. And often, feminism is presented as something that has harmed or disadvantaged men.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. And those ideas can be dangerous. If you repeatedly hear that men have been wronged by women or feminism, it can shape how you understand your own experiences. Jillian mentioned incels, which is one example. Men or boys who've deemed themselves involuntary celibates and blame women for their inability to find a romantic partner.
Carmina Ravanera:The manosphere also promotes an internal hierarchy. The idea that some men are superior to other men. A lot of these content creators and manfluencers tell men they need to change themselves to become alphas which are the right kind of man. They might tell them they need to be wealthier, more muscular, more confident, more romantically successful, more sexually active and that's where the self help piece comes in. Advice about money, fitness, confidence, or dating can be what initially draws someone in.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:Lots of the influencers, lots of the content, lots of the communities have this really and easily accessible, content. It might be about how do I get a better body? How do I get better at speaking in public? How do I get better at my side hustle? Right?
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And these are all sort of seemingly really benign easy things to to get into. We can go way back to the early history of the hemisphere and talk about Jordan Peterson, for example. Well, one of Jordan Peterson's rules for life is clean your room. This is not a contentious idea. The challenge, of course, is that if that's the first layer of exposure that we have, oh, this is just about physical fitness.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:It stops us from understanding that there are a bunch of other layers going on here, and there's a bunch of other ideological content that's kinda hiding underneath those point what I call points of soft entree, those, like, easy access points. And so I think for people who have not been very exposed, haven't spent a lot of time in it, and aren't necessarily a young man or a boy who gets fed this content through their social media, they might say, oh, this is just about fitness or this is just about side hustles. But really quickly, see this underlying content that's about misogyny. It's about male supremacy. It's about often sexualized violence.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:It's about all of these things, and that's hiding not very deep, under the surface. And I think that that's a real challenge with this because the surface level content often isn't all that contentious, but it doesn't take long to get into that really, contentious and sometimes quite dangerous content.
Jillian Sunderland:So we kinda see the rise of manfluencers or masculinity influencers, And we find a lot of young boys and young men are just kind of encountering these self improvement videos that are tagged motivation or mindset, or try to become an entrepreneur. But a lot of this advice feeds into the broader manosphere narrative, because it's centered around gender hierarchies and also hierarchies between men themselves. So a lot of some of this supposedly self help advice is framed around kind of political ideologies that say in order to be a dominant or an alpha man, you need to be richer, more attractive, sexually successful, emotionally invulnerable. And in this kind of broader, quote, unquote, self improvement rhetoric, women kind of appear as lower status and basically as tools, to affirm men's masculine status. And if women don't do that, there's negative a lot reaction and kind of the misogyny ends up creeping out.
Jillian Sunderland:So what can seem like just neutral self help or neutral going to the gym is often framed as a way to achieve dominance over other men and also dominance over women. It's also transitioned more into a market where these self improvement gurus who draw on this ideology are kind of selling things like supplements, coaching, how to get rich quick. So there's a real consumer demand that has now become baked into the broader manosphere that can seem just like neutral self help, but actually can feed into more harmful ideologies.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. So some of this content is, as Luke says, an easy access point to misogynistic and harmful ideas. Take a video about how to get fitter. On its own, that might sound completely harmless, but some of this content goes further by promoting a very narrow idea of how men should look and act, suggesting that men who don't meet that standard are inferior or, in manosphere terms, betas. Luxemaxing videos, for example, focus on promoting workouts, grooming, and even cosmetic surgery to, quote unquote, help men and boys optimize their appearance according to a very specific standard of manliness.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Or take dating advice. A video that looks like it's just about dating advice might actually imply that women are meant to be won or conquered by men. We put some links to research in our show notes if you want to learn more.
Carmina Ravanera:We can see how this is a slippery slope. Many of these videos and podcasts can seem innocent on the surface. They might start with something useful or relatable, but alongside that advice can come messages about inequality, resentment, or hostility toward women. And as Jillian mentioned, there's often a profit motive within Menosphere content. Content creators and manfluencers are not just trying to help other men out.
Carmina Ravanera:They're profiting off of men's and boys' insecurities and uncertainty, so there's an incentive to keep people watching.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Let's get into that a bit more. Even though its content is harmful, the manosphere is really broad and wide reaching now. According to a 2023 survey done by Equomundo, forty percent of young men in The US report that they trust one or more online misogynistic voices. But how did the manosphere become so influential in the first place? What's drawing in so many men and boys?
Carmina Ravanera:I asked Luke about this, and he said there isn't one simple cause. One factor is the rise of social media as people's trusted sources of information.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:So this is, I think, a pretty complicated question because it has more than one answer at the same time. So they're not two there's not two or three different things going on independently. They're all happening together. So the first one is a really technical one. We, more and more and especially as you go lower and lower in age more and more people are getting most or all of their news, social, and world content from their social media platforms.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And those social media platforms, they are private businesses whose bottom line is the most important. It's not about getting out factual information. It's about keeping people's eyes on that content. And so that's the first thing. And we have really clear evidence from really great research by Common Sense Media, Movember, the UN a wide variety of groups, like, example, that show us that these algorithms are pushing, especially young men and boys, into this content very consistently.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:They can't get away from it even if they want to get away from it. So that's the first piece.
Carmina Ravanera:There's also the fact that many people turn online when they're trying to figure out who they That creates an opening for content creators who promise answers, especially when someone is feeling insecure, uncertain, or lost. And because attention equals profit, there's an incentive to keep people hooked.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:The second piece is a little bit less technical and a little bit more social, which is young people, everybody, are looking to figure out who they are as they grow up. And that might be at 12, but it also might be at 25 or 30. And because of this feed, this technical content feed that young men and boys are getting in particular, it's really, really easy for them to answer the questions they have. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to grow up in the world that I'm living in right now?
Dr. Luc Cousineau:How do I be successful, and what does successful even mean? All we are all looking for answers to that as we're young people, and they get those answers really readily in these communities. And if you don't have another source of answers for that, it's really, really easy to look at those answers and go, well, these must be the right answers. And then third, and I think another kind of social thing here, is that we don't do a great job of having conversations in our offline worlds about what's real in the online world. And we have to remember, as I think as as older people involved in these conversations, I put myself in that category, that I take for granted sometimes that I understand that the manosphere, all of the elements of it, are in some ways a business.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:It might be a grift. It might be a, quote, unquote, legitimate business, but that's a business. And it's really difficult if you don't have somebody in your life to help you understand that, especially as a young person, that all of this is happening in a business context. These people are looking to make money. And so those three things together and it's a long answer, but it's important that it's that long because all of those things are working independently and together to make this a really appealing place to be.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And if you're a young a young man or a boy in particular and you're looking for what does it mean to be a man, and the answer is laid out in front of you, And that answer is if you do it right, you will have money and power and privilege and all of the things that some parts of the world tell you that you should have, that's really alluring. That's really, really attractive.
Carmina Ravanera:We also see a lot of attention today placed on terms like the masculinity crisis or male loneliness and how that's led to incel culture. But Jillian told me that framing can be too simplistic when we think about what men and boys are experiencing.
Jillian Sunderland:Well, a lot of public conversation, like if you see in newspapers all the time, the crisis of masculinity or the male loneliness epidemic, those are kind of dominant terms that are circulating in the media, but they don't really get out kind of the structural route that men are facing. Because a lot of times it's attributed to feminism and women not partnering with men. But I would avoid this kind of crisis masculinity narrative to really frame it in really structural terms. So a lot of young boys and young men are encountering real pressures, economic insecurity, unaffordable housing. They are encountering loneliness, but also uncertain employment, and few durable sources of community.
Jillian Sunderland:So what we're experiencing is kind of there used to be a traditional script of how to be a man. You become a breadwinner, you become a homeowner, a husband, a successful entrepreneur. But a lot of those dominant norms of how men were raised to achieve manhood or be a successful man, the structure reality doesn't correspond anymore because we're in a place where there's been a lot of changes in the economy, changes in rates and home ownership, changes in instances of romantic partnership. So there's a real structural underpinning that is incompatible with the dominant norms of how to be a man that young men have grown up with. And manfluencers selling how to be a man or take this supplement to get a nice jaw, they kind of fill this gap when the structural reality has kind of withered away in terms of achieving those ideals.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. So it's not just one thing. Norms about gender, lack of community, rapidly changing economies, men's and boys' uncertainty around their place in the world, and the rise of technology all play a role. And then there are platforms and algorithms that can keep feeding people more of the same content that captures their attention. So all of these forces together have contributed to the dangerous rise of the manosphere.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So what needs to change? How can we address this problem?
Carmina Ravanera:There are a lot of possibilities that our experts talk to me about. One is that we need to keep talking about these rigid ideas about what it means to be a man because that can help change them. Those expectations can be incredibly restrictive, and they can hurt people of all genders.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:This is a big social problem that also itself had has to have a big kind of social answer. One of the things that we have to do is continue to take the really important lessons of feminist theory and feminist practice and apply it more broadly. And so I think one of the things that we can really learn from feminism is that understanding the world in a gendered way is really important, and it actually gives us a lot of tools to really sort of look at the experiences of men and boys in particular to help us understand why it's so alluring. We just talked about that. But then also how we might make that particular version of the world less alluring.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And so one of the ways is that we can do better at understanding that there isn't one way to be a man. There isn't one way to do masculinity. We've always known this. And when I say we've always known this, every human that has existed has looked around them and seen men who were different, malehood differently. And for about forty years, we've had really, really, really good sociological theory and psychological theory that demonstrates that there's just different ways to be a man.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And it's always been that way, and it's okay. We need to understand it that way. And we need to do a better job collectively of understanding that the idea of traditional masculinity, and I'm doing air quotes there. People can't see me. But that traditional masculinity, it's made up.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:We've never had a singular way to be a man. That's never existed. And so if we can do a better job of collectively understanding that that's made up, then we can do a better job of helping people understand that when they go online and they look at this, that might be attractive, but it's not the only way to do it. And it's never been the only way to do it, and it never will be the only way to do it. And so if we can do that, that right away should make that sort of one way of doing things less attractive.
Dr. Sonia Kang:We need to challenge the prevalent idea of traditional masculinity that tells men and boys they need to be dominant, not only over women, but also over other men. We need more ways for boys and men to understand masculinity, success, strength, and belonging.
Carmina Ravanera:Those conversations need to happen in homes, but also in our education system. Education plays a big role in teaching kids from a young age about gender and what it means to them, and giving them tools to question the messages they're seeing online.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:A secondary thing that I think is really important is we need to talk about this. And I think, programs like this are really important, but just generally, generally, are we in our homes with young men and boys in particular, but also young women and girls, everybody? Are we talking about like, there are different ways to be a person. There are different ways to exist. It's always been that way, and it's and that's okay.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And in some places, we're doing that, and in other places, we really aren't. And in some places, in Canada, for example, in the educational system, we are actively working to remove the ability to talk about how there are different ways to be in the world from the classroom. There are other places where they're doing really good work. For example, there's new curriculum just introduced in Nova Scotia that allows for better conversations about this. But we need to be really careful because we have been moving in this direction and in a in a positive direction, but we can move backwards, which is happening in other places.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And so I think those are two things that we can that we can do positive work, here, but it's it's a big, big thing that needs to have big, big solutions.
Carmina Ravanera:Gillian also mentioned to me how the manosphere has structural causes, and that means it needs structural solutions. If the causes are structural, the solution can't just be telling individual boys and men to make better choices. That means thinking about things like education, employment and opportunities for connection. It also means asking what responsibility technology platforms have when they profit from people's vulnerability.
Jillian Sunderland:Because it's at its core a structural problem, we need to kind of reinvest in access to stable employment for young people, better access to housing, education, and meaningful routes to adulthood. So we need also to develop more cultural rhetoric around treating emotional openness and care as a human capacity, rather than just something confined to femininity. Young people also need access to mental health support that is accessible. But schools can start providing better gender education and digital literacy. So young people should learn critical digital literacy, so they should learn how influencer economies work, how algorithms amplify grievance, and advice that a lot of supposedly neutral dating or fitness advice can carry political assumptions about women in power.
Jillian Sunderland:And relatedly, again, more structural point is that platforms should also be held responsible for recommendation systems because they're profiting off of this insecurity, because aggrieved and very angry videos do really well in the algorithm. So young boys and young men are increasingly seeing this very, very polarized content. And removing an influencer here or there because they become very, very toxic isn't ideal because the next one kind of crops up in its place.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So we've unpacked the manosphere and how it's definitely not just content for men's self improvement. But if someone were to describe it that way, what's one thing I can say to challenge that perception?
Carmina Ravanera:Let's hear what our experts had to say.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:The question I love to ask is, what about the other stuff? And the answer you're gonna get likely is, what do you mean? And so I will say, oh, well, when I watch that stuff, I see a lot of messages about how men are always better than women and women are incapable and women are dumb and men that don't work out are less valuable and men that aren't rich are less valuable. What about all that stuff? And, generally, I think the people that go, oh, well, this is really just about physical fitness and male improvement go, well well, that's that's just they just say that sometimes.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:That's not really the message. Well, that clearly is the message because if you watch enough of the content, they say that stuff way more than they say the fitness stuff. Or whenever they say the fitness stuff, they're always like, and if you don't do this, either implied or directly, you're less of a man. That doesn't sound like self improvement to me. That sounds like judging.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:That sounds like an idea that the people on the other end of that, the people that are coming into your ears think they're better than you and will always think that they're better than you. That's not self improvement. That's bullying, really, to use a loaded word. But is that really a space that you wanna be in? Because there are more positive there are spaces that are about physical fitness that aren't about breaking you down or breaking down others.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:And so that's that's a question I like to ask. Like, what about all the other stuff? And you gotta be ready to say what the other stuff are because they'll they'll they're gonna say, well, I don't know what you're talking about. But what about all the other stuff? Also, I like to say, I don't really like the violence part of this.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:It's great. Yeah. I could do let's do a lot of push ups. But do we need to do the violence too? Because there's not often a very good answer to that.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:We like to take on the idea that we have to defend the idea that these are not places just of self improvement. We don't have to do that because we know an objective look, and there's lots of scholarship about this, an objective look at these communities is they're not just about that. An objective look at these communities demonstrates that they are about violence and misogyny and supremacy in a in a variety of ways. And so it's not on me to argue that they're not about that. I want it to be on the person saying, oh, it's just about self improvement.
Dr. Luc Cousineau:I want them to prove to me that it's just about self improvement because they can't, because it's not.
Jillian Sunderland:I would ask self improvement toward what end? At who expense and who gets paid? So if becoming a better man requires distrusting women, outranking other men, and purchasing solutions from people who are incentivized to prey on your insecurities, then we're not dealing with simple self improvement. We're dealing more so with an ideology and an industry that kind of profits on men's kind of insecurity and worry about the future.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Both suggest challenging people with a question. If someone says that the manosphere is just online self improvement spaces for men, you could ask, what about all the other content that promotes inequality and violence? Or if this is self improvement, what idea of an improved man is being promoted, and who gets diminished in the process? At whose expense is this improvement coming? That's the key distinction.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Fitness advice or dating advice isn't inherently harmful. The problem is when that advice becomes a vehicle for teaching men that their value depends on dominating women, outperforming other men, or conforming to a rigid ideal of masculinity.
Carmina Ravanera:And with that, this myth is busted.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. We'll be back soon with a new episode.
Carmina Ravanera:In the meantime, happy myth busting. Gates Busted podcast is made possible by generous support from BMO. If you liked this episode, please rate and subscribe to Busted. You can also find more thought provoking podcasts from the Institute for Gender and the Economy by searching for Gate Audio wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.
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