What’s behind online sexist hate?

Sexist Andrew Tate has over 10 million followers on social media website X (Pic: Wikimedia commons)

The right are incensed that the government has released a report that refers to online sexist extremism.

The Sun ­newspaper argued that there is no equivalence between “Islamist extremists” and “yobs frothing online” and that the Home Office must have become “infested with left-wing radicals”. The right wing Policy Exchange think tank conceded that misogyny is “unpleasant” but questioned whether focusing on it would take resources away from tackling Islamic extremism.

The government’s Prevent anti-terror strategy will not stop misogyny.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real threat to women. Or that we shouldn’t be sounding the alarm about the far right’s use of sexism to grab new recruits.

The “manosphere” is a subculture of YouTube videos, Discord servers and dedicated websites populated by sexists. It’s a broad term used to describe everyone from the “involuntary celibates”, known as “incels” to the “pick up artists” who share tricks on how to seduce women.

These spaces are particularly popular with lonely, angry young men who are searching for answers to their insecurity, isolation and unhappiness.

Ideas about women in the manosphere are an extreme form of the “common sense” in a sexist capitalist society.

Online influencers spread the idea that women’s primary role in life is to be obedient wives and good mothers. Often, this is wrapped up in all sorts of pseudoscience about the so-called “natural order” of gender roles.

Why are the ideas becoming popular now? The rise of online misogyny is not just because more people have access to the internet. It is rooted in the way neoliberal capitalism has reshaped men’s and women’s lives.

Young men grow up in a world that teaches them it is their destiny to be a “breadwinner”, a provider, a good husband and father. In the past, men were told that their birthright was a partner and kids and a family home—alongside a decent wage that would support them all comfortably. Today, they end up struggling in precarious jobs, often living in shared housing or with their parents into adulthood.

The dream of dominance has turned into a nightmare.

But the manosphere is also shaped by the way women’s lives have changed. Women today tend to want more than being a wife and mother, but also face the pressure of expectations to have a family and a successful career.

One of the central claims of a figure like Andrew Tate is that feminism has gone “too far” and women now have the dominant role which causes a crisis of masculinity.

The incels and pick up artists might seem like very different people. But these men share some of the same underlying ideas, that women are inferior to men, that a successful man should be able to find a partner and that if women resist their advances it is the fault of feminism.

It’s not surprising that ­virulent racism is a recurring feature of these spaces. The prevailing logic in the manosphere is that white men have been knocked off their perch, not just by women, but also by black men. Here, the sexism of the manosphere and the racist language of the far right ­intersect with each other.

For instance, fascist Tommy Robinson’s X/Twitter account reacted to January’s Women’s Marches by saying, “Well done to all the ideologically captured lonely spinster females who are so full of hate.”

“You too can become lonely, evil, barren misandrists by listening to dried up feminists angry at the world. Or you could embrace tradition, have a husband, kids and live a ­fulfilling life as nature intended.”

Robinson invokes age-old ideas about the role of women that have seen a resurgence online through the “tradwives” phenomenon. The ideal tradwife embraces Christianity, obeys her husband, gives up paid work, produces her own food and births a seemingly endless supply of children.

It’s an online phenomenon, rather than a significant ­demographic shift. But it nevertheless shows how the ideas of the manosphere and far right can overlap.

Other far right figures are prepared to go even further, and use the specific language of the manosphere. Maximilian Krah is a Member of the European Parliament for German fascist group Alternative for Germany (AfD). He regularly spews his filth on TikTok, posting in a video last summer, “One in three young men in Germany has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them?”

What’s the answer, according to Krah? “Don’t watch porn, don’t vote green, go outside into the fresh air. Be confident. And above all don’t believe you need to be nice and soft. Real men stand on the far right. Real men are patriots. That’s the way to find a girlfriend!”

In a neoliberal society people can look to collective responses to their problems, or they can turn to individualistic solutions to the erosion of their status in the family home and in society. Fascist politics offer one such solution. 

But the direction of travel between online misogyny and far right politicians is extremely important to understand. Online misogyny and offline politics can interact and reinforce each other. But it’s not the case that sexism is cooked up on online forums and escapes into the “real world”.

Laura Bates argues in her important exploration of the manosphere, “Men Who Hate Women,” that “shadowy online communities have managed to perpetrate the mainstream consciousness”.

She writes that “the men who help to usher trends from the fringes of internet extremism onto our airwaves and into our living rooms” do two things at once. They “appeal to the denizens of online communities, hitting the ideological keynotes that will come with trolls and members of the manosphere”. Simultaneously, they ­“package their message behind a veneer of ‘reasonable’ debate and respectable (if unpopular) opinion for public consumption”.

But these online communities are ideologically led by incel figureheads and far right organisations who hope to grow in size and influence. They are not simply an organic expression of sexist individuals. For instance, immediately after rapist and manosphere hero Donald Trump was elected in November, the phrase “your body, my choice” was plastered over the internet.

This wasn’t a spontaneous reaction to the result—the phrase was popularised by famous fascist Nick Fuentes, who has a huge following. “Guess what, guys win again, ok,” he tweeted. “Men win again… There will never ever be a female president.” Two days after the election, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank said mentions of “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” had increased by 4,600 percent on Twitter/X.

Right wing politicians will look to elements of the manosphere for support at the ballot box.

But the AfD and Trump are enjoying huge success not because they are manosphere stooges, but because the political system is crumbling and they appear to offer a solution.

The young men drawn into the manosphere have the potential to post the most violent and awful things. But the ideas of the manosphere only have purchase because they appear to offer simple explanations for the genuine problems people face.

The manosphere doesn’t sit outside of society, instead its ideology builds on sexist ideas in wider society and takes them to a more extreme form.

But there are already contradictions woven into the relationship between online misogyny and the offline world. Most men will have relationships with women in the real world that come into sharp conflict with the ideas they encounter in online communities. They will have female co-workers, mothers, sisters, friends or partners.

These contradictions help point the way to how best to challenge the manosphere. The reality is, most of human society is organised in a collective way—not in the individualistic, isolated nature of online discussion.

If you want to have your voice heard in the offline space, it generally means uniting with others. Sometimes that takes the form of a protest or strike, but it can also mean simply the action of a collective complaint against a boss.

Struggle challenges the ideas that people take for granted. The act of fighting together forces people to confront the contradictions between their abstract beliefs and the reality of the real world.

Some projects aim to teach online literacy to teenagers or offer resources to teachers to challenge the views they encounter in the classroom. But there are limitations to these strategies.

The problem lies in a sexist capitalist society and it will take collective struggle to overthrow it.