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To go 'ER' is now terminology used to denote if the poster is planning to carry out a terror act in the name of inceldom. Ever since Rodger's attack in 2014, there have been multiple copycat killers across the Global North, from Toronto (2018) and Plymouth (2021). Alek Minassian, the perpetrator of the Toronto Van Murders in April 2018 who killed ten people and injured 16, admitted after being interviewed by the police that online radicalisation and his status as an incel motivated his acts. The Plymouth shooter Jake Davison also likened himself to an incel, who used Reddit to express his vehement hatred for his mother, Maxine, his first victim, and frustration at being unable to find a girlfriend. "Maybe the business owner might go bankrupt twice … but guess what – he had a wife and kids to support him. Does incel or virgin get that? No. Imagine failing at everything in life and having absolutely no support whatsoever.” While all three of these men committed real-world terror acts that resulted in the death of many innocent civilians, they are only a very small portion of what makes up the online manosphere. Most men who are part of the manosphere will never be spree shooters, even if they regard the spree shooters as heroes. The men of the manosphere are brothers, friends, boyfriends, and fathers. Most of them go to work, they go to school - the majority are not the stereotype of men in their late twenties, hauled up in their parents' basement and never seeing the light of day. They all are living, breathing human beings - but while they go about their day-to-day lives, they hold an extremely harmful ideology toward all women around them. Though possibly the most sinister thing is that many of these men do not know that they hate women.

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© Brennan, Neasa
Email: nessibrennan@gmail.com

To cite:
Brennan, N. 2023. "Fighting the manosphere - An ideology, rather than vocation", SEXTANT: Masculinities, Sexualities &, Decolonialities, Padlet. Vol 1, Issue 1: 19.

SEXTANT: Masculinities, Sexualities &, Decolonialities
ISSN 2990-8124
University College Dublin, Ireland
https://sextantnotes.com

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SEXTANT is an online journal which navigates the lenses of masculinities, sexualities, and decolonialities.

SEXTANT aims to shift our understanding of these subjects while looking at the ways they intersect, especially in areas that are often overlooked.

SEXTANT features the work of students, activists, artists, and scholars, welcoming submissions in a wide variety of mediums, such as research papers, book reviews, creative writing, visual art, and digital projects.

.

/ˈsɛkst(ə)nt/
noun

an instrument with a graduated arc of 60° and a sighting mechanism, used for determining the angle between the horizon and a celestial body such as the Sun, the Moon, or a star, used in celestial navigation to determine placement.

SEXTANT: masculinities, sexualities and decolonialities
ISSN 2990-8124
University College Dublin
sextant@ucd.ie

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SEXTANT is an online journal which navigates the lenses of masculinities, sexualities, and decolonialities. SEXTANT aims to shift our understanding of these subjects while looking at the ways they intersect, especially in areas that are often overlooked. SEXTANT features the work of students, activists, artists, and scholars, welcoming submissions in a wide variety of mediums,...

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hateful meme made by the online alt-right to mock the appearance of online feminists 

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Social Justice Warrior (SJW) -- A derogatory term to describe someone who openly expresses socially progressive views. SJW tends to be a synonym for feminists, queer people, and ethnic minorities who advocate for civil rights. Previous to the 2010s, it was viewed as a positive or neutral term.

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Alpha male - A term used to describe the dominance hierarchy system, usually referring to animals such as wolves. The manosphere's definition describes successful men or 'chads.' According to incel groups, women only want to have sexual relations with alpha males. Pick-up artists also generally refer to themselves as alpha males.

Beta male - The opposite of an alpha male.

Alpha fux/beta bux - According to a post on r/AskWomen in 2014, this theory "describes how women sexually desire alpha males but rely on beta male providers (~80% of male population) for financial resources. It is generally thought that women are fixated on alphas in their 20s, and "settle" for a beta male as a spouse in their 30s (when their looks start to decline), when they need someone reliable to: stay in the relationship and provide financial resources for her and her future children."

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Post from reddit r/braincels which was a common forum for incels 

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Femoid - A common term used to refer to women within manosphere communities. A combination of humanoid and female, sometimes shortened to 'foid.' This term further dehumanises women.

Cuck - This term originally refers to a man whose wife or girlfriend has been sexually unfaithful. Within the manosphere, it describes a 'weaker' man - those who have either moderate or liberal views on social issues.

Normie - A mocking way to describe someone who is 'normal', i.e. average looks and intelligence. While it is a derogatory term, incel's often referring to normies with a tinge of envy.

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Chad - A derogatory term used to refer to conventionally attractive men who have sexual relations with women.

Stacey - A derogatory term for conventionally attractive women who are sexually promiscuous and usually engage in sexual relations with Chads. Stereotyped as unintelligent, superficial, and unfriendly.

Becky - A generally inconsistent definition, but usually describes a woman of average looks and intelligence. The female 'normie' will still seek out 'chads' or rely on feminism to cope with being unable to attract the same men that 'staceys' can.

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Pepe the frog - common used meme amongst alt right spaces

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Meme - Online images or short videos are shared online as a form of humour. Different communities and different social media platforms have their own memes unique to them, though often there is overlap across multiple communities.

Snowflake - A reference to the film Fight Club (1999), which has been adopted by the online alt-right and manosphere. It refers to left-wing or liberal people whose online far-right belief is 'too easily offended.'

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Red pill - Referring to a pop culture-wise iconic seen in The Matrix, when Neo is propositioned between taking the blue pill (where he chooses to live in ignorance of the world around him) or the red pill (where he chooses to see the world for what it truly is.) Despite the Matrix being made by two transgender women, the manosphere has adopted the term. Being "red-pilled" represents the anti-feminist 'truth' that men are oppressed within contemporary society.

Blue pill - The opposite of the previous definition. The blue pill represents mainstream feminism and through the eyes of the manosphere - conforming to a world where men are oppressed.

Black pill - While the blue and red pill are direct references to the Matrix (1999), the black pill was a term that was invented by the manosphere which refers to believing that the world is broken and there is no hope in fixing it. Men who engage within the manosphere often refer to themselves as 'black-pilled' before committing suicide.

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Edgelords, gamer culture, and internet trolls

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Edgelords, gamer culture, and internet trolls

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This subsection of the manosphere also interconnects with the general online far-right as a whole. The oxford dictionary defines Edgelords as "a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online (typically used of a man.)" 'Edgelords' may not initially seem harmful, but they are probably the most visible members of the manosphere, even though they hide in plain sight. Unlike incels who are generally confined to specific forums or websites, edgelords invade every social media platform, from comments on YouTube videos to gaming chat rooms or servers such as discord. Harmful internet jokes serve as Trojan horses for the online far-right. While they may seem vaguely innocent on the outside, beneath edgy memes is spreading extremist ideas, serving as a form of hate-fueled propaganda. Edgelord's ideology is ultimately born from many young men feeling emasculated and responding to it through a nihilistic worldview that actively harms minorities. Often being an edgelord serves as a dual identity for other subgroups in the manosphere, as MRAs are known to 'troll' feminists by sending them hateful messages or leaving death threats beneath posts. Often edgelords who align themselves with manosphere ideology tend to gather in 'geeky' online spaces, such as gaming platforms and anime forums but while this is a valid observation, geek culture and trolling are mutually exclusive. While edgelords tend to go under the radar, it is crucial to remember that often these men are responsible for hate campaigns against women such as the #gamergate controversy of 2013.

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While the original men's rights activism movement was in response to feminism, expressing how men also suffered beneath the western patriarchy, the contemporary one expresses a true hatred for feminism and believes that the empowerment of women has led to a loss of male power within society. MRAs encompass nearly everything that the manosphere stands for, and while they are an individual community, nearly all subgroups within the manosphere could also be categorised as MRAs. This subsection of the manosphere indoctrinates young men into believing that feminism is an unnecessary evil that plagues society, ruining men's lives with false allegations of domestic violence and rape accusations. It is a reactionary movement to feminist and multicultural activism, as they believe this is the cause for the diminishing status of the heterosexual, cisgender white man at the top of the social food chain. In my opinion, MRAs possess more of a political ideology than other subgroups in the manosphere, which would be a more personal identity.

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Men Going Their Own Way are linked to the manosphere by the same misogynistic philosophy that connects other branches, but how they differ is instead of seeking out women to either harass or attack, they completely avoid women. They're a male supremacist community, where often men post pictures of themselves finding joy in their solitary and masculinised lifestyle. Bates (2020) discusses the doctrine within the MGTOW communities and that there are four levels that are essential to following the true rejection of women from their lives. Level 0 represents taking the 'red pill', level 1 is rejecting long-term relationships, level 2 is avoiding short-term relationships, level 3 requires economic disengagement in order to fund the lifestyles of alpha males or single mothers, and finally, level 4 is social rejection entirely. While MGTOW encourages complete disengagement from women and society completely, they are equally as misogynistic as other members of the manosphere and are often known to rejoice in female suffering.

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Andrew Tate - social media podcaster who falls under the classification of a pick-up artist

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Pick-up artistry has now become a booming industry within the online space though has bled into the real world, hidden behind boot camps, personal trainers, and YouTubers giving advice on how to attract women. Laura Bates (2020) in her book Men Who Hate Women discusses how to Pick Up Artists blend more into society, being dismissed as simply 'cheeky womanisers.' However, they still hold extremely misogynistic ideology and much incels, playing into the 'alpha male' idea and viewing women as little more than objects without their own free thought. While it may appear that incels and PUAs are vastly different groups, being polar opposites basing it off one side actively engaging in sexual relations and the other side not, both groups hold beliefs that fundamentally dehumanise women. Pick Up Artists are also known to exploit other men, especially incels that haven't been fully 'red-pilled' yet - charging them high prices for teaching them how to stalk, harass, and sexually assault women under the guise of teaching them how to become an alpha male.

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Incels -- Incel stands for 'involuntary celibate,' and thousands of men around the world identify as one. The term incel comes from 'invcels' which was originally coined by a Canadian woman, Alana is the mid-1990s who was in her mid-20s and struggling to find love. She started a mailing list and created a website called Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project. This community grew over time as a place for men and women alike to share their anxieties surrounding dating. Alana drifted away from this community when she began to have more luck with dating. She also completely disowns the term as it has become virtually unrecognisable from a small forum that was just people venting frustrations about their love lives. The incel movement that gathered both attraction and attention during the 2010s is predominantly men, though some women align themselves with the movement as 'femcels.' Though often men who identify themselves as incels do not believe that women can be involuntary celibates as they believe that women have complete control over the dating pool and simply only want to date men who are supposedly more attractive than them. One of the key theories within incel spaces is the '80/20' rule, which is based on the idea of 80% of women only wanting to date 'chads' or the top 20% of the most physically attractive within the male population, and the further 20% of women who rank at the bottom of the attractiveness scale will date men less attractive than chads but still more attractive than the bottom 20% of women. This means that incels will have no women interested in them, thus, being cursed with inceldom. Due to this shared ideology, incels often call for the legalisation of rape and the general belief that they are entitled to have sex with women because they are men.  Often, on incel forums, many young men either fantasise or actively plot violent revenge on women. The majority of men who were radicalised by the manosphere into committing real-world atrocities would have either identified themselves as incels or at least aligned themselves with incel ideology.

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Carl (25) is a man who still appears to have the remnants of the manosphere still engrained in his psyche. When asked about feminism, he believed that online feminism was 'too strong', and he also said he does consume content from Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, who are both popular content creators well regarded within the manosphere as well as the online far-right as a whole.

" [Joe Rogan] he gets a lot of hate, and I don’t know why. I know it’s something to do with sexism, misogyny, all that stuff. I never really looked too deep into it. [...] Like Ben Shapiro at an open mic when people would come up and ask questions, and he would just shit on them with logic."

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Keith (25) offered an insightful comment about how easy it is to slip into the manosphere or engage with the online alt-right as he initially found the communities through engaging with New Atheist content on Reddit, which would advertise itself as being a progressive space for liberal thought. However, it functioned as an echo chamber that only allowed for black and white thinking without many nuances.

"I mainly got into it because I went to a catholic primary school and a religious boy’s secondary school, and I never got religion. I ended up on r/atheism, and all the militant atheists were a precursor to those kinds of communities. [...] One of the kinds of standpoint traits that I’ve noticed about them, especially in hindsight, is they’re so stitched together by a common idea that it becomes automatic, like by default, contrary to anything that appears to be in line with anything that they don’t like. Like there was no recognising any sort of good element of religion or even someone who was religious. You had to be anti-that all the time. "

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Marcus (27) talked about how the language of the manosphere is so normalised, but you are only aware of the insidious origins if you were 'in' that community.

"It is so clear that these things aren’t happening out nowhere, and they are coming from that thing we heard about years ago.. like why is this humour I am seeing in these alt-right groups familiar to me? Oh, it is because I knew a guy who made jokes like that back in the day; you can see the DNA of it."

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Daniel (25) mentioned how he watched the decline of previously harmless online spaces into the far-right. He used the example of the MGTOW subreddit. Much like how the term incel became hijacked by extremists, plenty of other online spaces fell deep into the manosphere when they were previously created to offer a safe space for struggling to find connections in their life offline.

"I remember there was a subreddit called ‘Men Going Their Own Way.’ When it started, it wasn’t just a women bashing subreddit, but I remember scrolling one day and coming across these posts. I was like, ‘ah, I haven’t been on that in a while’, so I clicked in, and it was all sexist bullshit. People hating women for being women. Then I realised, ‘oh shit’, this isn’t funny; it has gone too far. Incels had got in or whatever. [...] I remember seeing posts earlier on when there were just tens of thousands of people subbed to it like ‘I got out of an abusive relationship with my wife’ or whatever, just like people trying to better themselves in the same way incel subreddits were kind of like that. They were just people who wanted a sense of community and felt ostracised or whatever. But very quickly as these things tend to happen on Reddit, the male majority of internet users take over and then – [...] Because it’s a validation of these ideas that guys have – that women have it easier and it’s so hard to be a straight white male – they get really, really, resentful. It’s weird."

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Kyle (23) was never swept into the manosphere due to his interest in social issues from an early age but spoke about how it affected his friends. He also brought up how he found it difficult to connect to many young men his age due to his lack of interest in edgy humour and antifeminism.

"I was never hugely involved in any myself, but everyone around me was. I’m not trying to paint myself as some kind of angel or whatever, but I always did find it off-putting. I did actually find it harder to get along with other people my age because of it. [...] It was sort of hard not to have involved to a certain extent, even if you weren’t posting stuff. When it comes up for you automatically and when it's being shared everywhere. Again moreso, there was pressure to a certain extent. When everyone around you is doing it, and you’re the odd one out who’s a killjoy who can’t have a laugh."

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Jim (23), who ran a popular Facebook meme page during the height of rising of the online far-right in the mid-2010s explained in his own words why a lot of young men turn to the manosphere;

"I think it is important to remember a lot of the people who use these sites or fall into the manosphere pipeline are people who have been bullied, and they are generally straight, white males who are being bullied while in school – I am not justifying it – but they are getting put down in school, and a lot of them are very nerdy and geeky as well. A lot of them won’t be classically handsome or whatever either. When you’re getting put down and at the same time, you’re being told, especially by American media, that you’re going to get a lovely wife, a lovely house – you’re sold this capitalist dream. When that dream isn’t being realised, you want to look for a scapegoat. [...] A great deal of people are bullied, more bullied than bullies, not all of them are going to fall down this pipeline or into inceldom. But for those who do, it gets reinforced online. They can vent this frustration – they might not even have a good home life, not be in a stable house, and then when they go outside, they’re also being attacked. The only place they can demonstrate power is in these online communities, where they have full anonymity and they can lie and say, ‘I’m 6’2, I’m massive and gonna beat you up’ or whatever. [laughs] when they could be some spotty, little 14-year-old. It’s a way to try and gain control over their lives in what little ways they can. A lot of this can be manifested through depression, loneliness, anxiety, and they don’t know how to channel them properly. Mental health in general, especially in Ireland, is quite poorly treated."

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Alek Minassian, the perpetrator of the Toronto Van Murders in 2018

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One of the original faces of the manosphere is Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old man who, on the 23rd of May, 2014, killed six people and injured 14 others during a misogynistic terror attack in Isla Vista, California, before killing himself. Before the attacks, he had written an over 107,000-word diatribe titled 'my twisted world, the story of Elliot Rodger' and published a series of youtube videos or 'vlogs' in which he often talked about his difficulty with women. The final one, where he talked about his plans for the Isla Vista attack, is no longer easily available online though parts of it have been documented through news outlets like CNN. His manifesto stated, "Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, perfect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people in this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world."

To most people, the content within Elliot Rodger's manifesto is both ludicrous and disturbing simultaneously. However, this man is regarded as a hero amongst the 'incel' subsection of the manosphere. [see subsections of the manosphere section of this blog to grasp the loosely connected groups and their titles.]

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From gamers calling pink-haired girls 'twitch thots' to young men committing acts of femicide for the reason of not having sex - the manosphere is everywhere. It is in discord servers, subreddits, and Whatsapp chats and has infiltrated the minds of young and old men across the globe. This brochure will mainly focus on the manosphere that is evident within the Global North, but it is crucial to note that it is a transnational issue and is present across the Globe.

The manosphere is an interconnecting web of online groups that share a vehement hatred for feminism and believe that male privilege is under threat from minority groups, particularly women. It is absolutely a subsection of the online far-right, and it should be taken as seriously as other Alt-right groups that have made it into the public eye. While the manosphere may not have a real-world representation of the size and power it holds, such as the events of Charlottesville, Virginia's Unite the Right rally in 2017, behind every spree shooter who commits misogynistic acts of violence, there are thousands of young men cheering him on.

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This blog section provides a glossary of some of the most used terms within the manosphere. These sub-communities have adopted their own language in order to communicate their ideas. Often these terms have not been properly defined by officially dictionaries, and sometimes they sound ludicrous to listeners who are not well-versed in internet lingo. Though it is crucial to remember that language is one of the most important tools for indoctrination, while these terms may seem silly, they have a sinister undertone to them. For this glossary, a lot of these terms have been taken from Jacob Johanssen's text Fantasy, online misogyny and the manosphere (2022), pages xxxiii - xxxiv.

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The manosphere is a vast range of internet subgroups and cultures connected by their shared hatred of feminism and belief that western masculinity is under threat at the fault of women. While this shared ideology links them together, they are not a united force nor should they be viewed as one. This section of this brochure will list some of the most well-known subgroups within the manosphere and provide some information on them.

While other communities fall within the online manosphere and intersect with the far-right, these are the most prominent and most easily exposed to young men on social media.

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During my research for my final portfolio, I conducted six interviews with men between the ages of 23 to 27 who volunteered themselves for research. Each of these men had experienced first-hand the manosphere or seen how it affected their male friends around them during their teenage years. All of their names are changed to protect their own identity, and they have consented for me to use the transcribed quotes from our conversation for this blog.

Each of these men has very different lives, and as far as I am aware, none of them knew each other. However, they all have come across the manosphere within some capacity while they were online during their teenage years through to their early 20s, whether through their friends or through their own online adventures. None of these men or their friends was violent incels that actively sought to harm women. However, all of them knew to a certain the real-world ramifications of online edgy humour fueled by the manosphere, and they saw how it could affect the minds of young men in a negative way.

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My name is Neasa, I am a 24 year old woman, and I have spent the latter half of my teenage years battling the manosphere in her daily life. When I was 17 years old, I had a heated conversation over text with my boyfriend at the time, desperately trying to explain to him that rapists weren't always creepy old men in white vans, and why he shouldn't say racial slurs. When I heard my younger brother use the word 'SJW' when he was only 13 years old, I sat him down and gave him a talk about the dangers of the 'edgy' rabbit hole - a talk that he later has since thanked me for. I had an exhausting conversation about the need for feminism in 2016 with a male friend, while I was dismissed as just another 'snowflake.'  I watched kindhearted young men fall into the depths of misogynistic subreddits, laugh over harmful (edgy) memes, and worship the ground Joe Rogan walked on. Some of my male friends went on to cause real-world harm to the women in their lives, while I saw some of them look back at their 'edgelord' phase with embarrassment and remorse. This online brochure serves as a warning to all genders, ages, and races as a beginners guide to recognising the dog whistles of the manosphere.

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I have complied a few accessible resources to help further educate on the manosphere. While academic reading is important to assisting in furthering ones knowledge on important social issues such as the online far-right, I found these resources the most accessible for someone beginning to learn about it the manosphere.

Contrapoints's videos on Incels and Jordan Peterson are well researched, entertaining, and offer a perspective on the manosphere through the lens of a transgender woman.

F.D Signifier has recently made two videos on the manosphere, dissecting the manosphere and connecting the manosphere. He has a background in sociology, as well as being an educator in various American high schools for ten years.

Laura Bates's book Men Who hate Women was a revolutionary text that came out in 2020. She also founded the everyday sexism project.

Angela Nagle's Kill all Normies (2017) is a short book that documented the online culture wars during the 2010s.

Jordan Theresa's pick me boys, nice guy syndrome, and incels video essay provides a good summary on how misogyny is prevalent within young men today.