The manosphere to man, is as feminism to women

[Breadandsticks]

And isn’t that scary! I believe that some of the people (I sadly know females that also carry some of these beliefs) that are deep rooted in the manosphere believe that the beliefs are equivalent to what the feminist movement is for women.

The difference is, feminism is rooted in a genuine need for change for equality for women and girls and includes law changes, system changes, increased support to achieve a level of equity.

Whilst the manosphere is actually about stroking men’s egos. It’s more about the women you date and the cars you buy over actual help and useful life advice.

It doesn’t seem to be about systemic changes for a fairer “male experience” such as encouraging mental health support (which is happening but not as a plea from the movement), or supporting dads to be equal in childcare. Or even helping boys do better at school (on the back of the stat that girls tend to be higher achievers younger).

This might be simplistic (and over said) but it’s scary that such a movement is brainwashing boys and men.

Plus they need to feel that they will rise up the ranks as a matter of course, as a given, so that even young ones at the bottom expect to gain some status.
Social stagnation and no progression seems to affect them worse than women.(IMHO of course)

Thanks, this is interesting info re the kinds of stuff that reinforced manosphere ideas etc I agree that reality TV etc did escalate crazily in those years & I can see how that would play into manosphere. Obviously shows like Big Brother, Love Island now etc had male contestants, male producers often etc but it's true women were often flagship figures, probably as pp said partly due to young, sexually attractive women attracting coverage.

Mary Harrington has an article about how women often include themselves when posting, say, a picture of a book online, and that men accuse them of narcissism due to this. She notes that it's generally only young, fairly conventionally attractive women who do that, mainly because they know including their face will get them more likes. Similar principle for a lot of things. A parallel could be Berlusconi use of 'veline' (showgirls) during his tenure as king of Italian reality TV. This wasn't engineered by women particularly, and while some took advantage of it, it didn't have positive effects on status of Italian women in general.

Re the 'young Asian women' thing, it's true that figures like Naga Munchetty, Reeta Chakrabarti, Mishal Husain, Babita Sharma, Dalia Sinha did become more prominent in early 2010s/they were only promoted for that reason. But that doesn't necessarily mean there was some push for that to happen. The BBC did start to focus more on diversity then, but otoh most of these women were in mid-30s at least by then (so not super young - unless you meant others?), and had been there for some time before, Husain and Chakrabarti since 1990s. And there were still many prominent male presenters: Clive Myrie, Simon McCoy, Gary O'Donoghue, Huw Edwards..

That's a good point about the levels.
It goes for other stuff as well - I think that competitive people tend to get competitive over everything. And we live in a society where the media etc is literally telling men in particular that they should be competitive/strive to reach the top. So it's not just jobs/money/status. Also success with women/families. Hence someone who can't get a date will be angry. Someone who can get a date will be bitter they don't have a more attractive date. Or aren't dating multiple women simultaneously. Which feeds into this bitterness/angry mysogyny.

But even men almost "at the top" don't seem that happy. Eg Billionaires want to be trillionaires. Or are complaining about how they don't get to run things even though they have loads of power. And still come across as quite bitter at the world. It's not healthy.

Oit of interest, how.old.were you at the time you were most embedded in the "manosphere"
you don't have to answer if you don't want- I certainly don't want to make people give away personal details.
I just have a personal theory (based on my own observations of people in my life) that many of the most unhappy, very much online men int why general space were middle aged.or older. Whilst a lot of focus was on disempowered young men/incel teenagers. But I could be completely wrong.
I think it's normal for men (and women) to hit a speed bump in the late 30s especially when you aren't super young any more and bits of culture stop making sense/seeming reasonable (usually because it isn't). I think that the whole manosphere area was quite fertile ground for that. And of course, it's understandable because a lot of changes to culture are stupid and unhealthy. But I think it's easier to blame women/feminism because they just are there...

Well, I'm about to turn 62, and this was up to 10-15 years ago. FWIW, it came at the end of my ongoing insecurity with the opposite sex from a young age. An easy coat to slip on. It didn't dominate my every moment but was a bit of a backdrop biasing my interactions and feelings I wasn't always in control. And nothing like weaponised incel culture today.

Thanks. That fits quite well with my experience of family members (who I always got on well with but it was odd when they went down their rabbit hole of being extremely angry at women because I'm a woman so it was a bit challenging). I think young men can struggle too. It's just interesting that there's an assumption the online groups are always angry young men.

Yes...I mean, from what I've seen on my forays into the Men's Rights subreddit, a lot of men on there are older. This ties into the issue pp mentioned of perception of custody bias towards women, this was an issue for many I saw too.

I say perception because I don't doubt that many men were treated unfairly but I have also read (and know personally) of many cases where contact was pushed at all costs with abusive partners despite distress to the child. Maybe the family court problems are not biased against either sex, so much as just signs of general deep flaws?

Usually the courts try to let both parents have contact with a child. They have to be really really bad before it's completely blocked. Extremely bad. That doesn't mean one (or both) parent won't feel ill treated because they don't have the level of custody they want. But any story of a father unable to see his child because of a biased court will have a LOT of details missing. It's instantly suspicious. A more believable example is courts granting custody/visitation and one parent not cooperating meaning the other parent has to go through a lengthy process just ot have the original decision enforced. But if one parent keeps being uncooperative the end result is they lose custody to the other parent. Not that the courts say tough shit, she doesn't want you to see your kid.
There was parental alienation syndrome which was first invented by a psychiatrist who had previously argued that paedophillia wasn't always harmful. When that got push back he switched to saying that mother's often made up stories of paedophillia/abuse or used mind control to make their children allege it. Hmmmmmmm.
Parental alienation is completely disproven as a theory but continued to impact court decisions and public perceptions. It's not that mother's are always right. But it is still in some people's heads as a massive thing that happens and it isn't. It was invented by someone who was at best paedophile sympathetic.

As a high profile example- I think we can safely say Mia Farrow had a point about Epstein. But for a long time she was seen by many as the guilt parent.

Many fathers are excellent, and dad's have an important role to play in their children's lives. That should be celebrated. But I don't think the level of resentment.towards courts for being female biased in the family courts is at all justified.

I agree strongly with this. Parental Alientation Syndrome is dreadful, it's disgraceful it's been still used in courts for a long time. I do think parental alienation can happen (by a parent of either sex), but nit in the way the theory proposed.

Otoh, I'm not certain re Mia Farrow being a stainless parent. She was definitely right about Epstein, and probably about Woody Allen himself. But transracial, transnational adoption is often questionable at the best of times and I think there are valid questions about how well she treated Soon-Yi during her childhood. Imo it was a case possibly of out of the frying pan, into the fire, possibly.

Allen's oeuvre certainly has a preoccupation with his stand-in character getting involved with very young girls (Manhattan for one,,where Mariel Hemingway said he made a pass at her), unsurprising he and Epstein got on so apparently well...

Oh I agree about international adoptions. And I am not saying Mia Farrow was a saint/mother of the year. But she also wasn't as far as we know, a paedophile or someone who repeatedly hung out with paedophiles.
If she was a terrible parent to Soon-Yi or even an inadequate one then if anything that makes the fact her step dad later married her worse not better. It makes the argument that there was no grooming, they just fell in love as legal adults, even less believable.

"deep rooted in the manosphere believe that the beliefs are equivalent to what the feminist movement is for women"

I think hink that's a flawed hypothesis / comparison. A more apt comparison would be with the tradwife movement...

Yes, definitely. On Soon-Yi, from what I've read it definitely seems like Allen played on her unhappiness in Mia's care to groom her. Allen of course whined a lot about his media treatment but honestly he seems to have been very leniently treated until pretty recently, even after the Dylan allegations he were initially made.

Soon-Yi's apparent words to Epstein about MeToo are both depressing & unsurprising.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/soon-yi-previn-jeffrey-epstein-emails

And yet a lot of the best literature in the world has been written by men, and so it’s not that they are not as good at English.
Perhaps they just get on track slightly when they are slightly older maybe?

Men who wrote classic literature in past times weren't the majority, but I agree with your wider point.

It is true that despite boys being outperformed at school, they still tend to earn more and achieve higher positions, for various reasons, which would fir with getting on track later. Though Gen Z young men apparently earn less than Gen Z women, so that may not hold at least at the moment.

The manosphere is a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.[1] Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists (MRAs),[2] incels (involuntary celibates),[3] Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[4] pick-up artists (PUA),[5] and fathers' rights groups.[6] While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men).[7]* *

From Wikipedia.

In a sense 'The Manosphere' is similar to feminism from the viewpoint of a demand for self determination & what they claim is feminism's attempt to subdue it.