The manosphere is taking over. Here’s how we can fight back against extreme misogyny

Everyone knows Andrew Tate now. In 2022, the extreme misogynist made world headlines after amassing millions of followers online and recruiting thousands of young men into his online ‘academy’, a scamming operation where these men were paid to recruit others. Tate went viral by spreading an aggressively misogynistic discourse – he described married women as men’s “property” – and speaking to young men’s grievances, as well as selling false ‘solutions’ to their problems.

Since Tate hit the headlines, hundreds of influencers like him have sprung up and are shaping young men’s views. Misogynistic podcasts are receiving millions of downloads per episode. In the space of a few years, the ‘manosphere’ to which Tate belongs – or male supremacist ideology as I and other researchers call it – has travelled from the depths of the internet into the mainstream. Research has shown that men online are only a few clicks away from content telling them there is a plot to destroy them. 

• I went looking for incels – among all the hate and bile, I found some signs of hope
• A quarter of young men think feminism is harming society. It’s proof of a growing Gen Z divide
• We must change our relationship with masculinity to stop vulnerable men turning into Andrew Tate

This has personal and political implications. From the harassment of girls in schools to new forms of online violence such as deepfake pornographic images, men’s desire to reassert their dominance over women results in everyday violence and humiliation. The consequences also play out politically.

Across the global north, men and women’s worldviews are also moving apart, as young males increasingly vote for far-right parties and authoritarian leaders, while women favour liberal parties. From South Korea and Argentina to the last US presidential elections, candidates ran campaigns based on overtly misogynistic dog whistles and the promises to curtail women’s rights.

The male supremacist slogan ‘Your body, my choice’, which spread online hours after Donald Trump’s election showed that many men voted for a man accused of sexual misconduct not despite, but because of, who he was. Virtually every election now sees abuse and harassment campaigns directed at female politicians and public figures, designed to silence them and restrict their participation in public life.

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For the last few years, I have worked for a think tank that studies radicalisation and extremism. I have spent long, coffee-fuelled days following extremist communities down their various rabbit holes. I have tracked lies about climate policies, followed the rise and fall of QAnon – the pro-Trump conspiracy theory which claims that satanic elites are harvesting the blood of children – and witnessed how Covid-era health conspiracies have taken on new shapes. 

Of all the conspiratorial and extremist communities I have followed, the manosphere has felt the most perniciously dangerous, because it exploits men’s real pain and struggles, and directs their anger towards women, encouraging coercion, control and violence towards one half of the population. It is also because anti-feminism is often the entry point to other forms of radicalisation, and it has been consistently underestimated by governments, decision-makers and law enforcement.  

My new book Ctrl Hate Delete examines how male supremacist ideology is spreading, aided by social media algorithms, social isolation and economic precarity. Combining personal stories with bigger-picture data, it charts the different ways in which male supremacist discourse is reaching men – and women – and influencing public discourse. 

As a policy researcher, I have been asked many times by journalists: what can we do about the problem? I have spent a lot of time arguing for tech platforms to be accountable and for governments to regulate them. In everyday life, having seen male friends fall down rabbit holes, I have realised that the responses often put forward are insufficient.  

Yes, we must push for greater accountability from social media platforms, which encourage anger and polarisation and reward the most incendiary content. Recent months have shown that tech giants are unwilling to address the issue.

While Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has allowed previously banned influencers like Tate back on its platforms, Meta has announced a rollback of its fact-checking team and sweeping changes to its content moderation policies. Yet the design of social media platforms could be changed in simple ways to reduce online harassment and hateful speech without hitting their profits. And the public has a part to play in putting the pressure on. 

But to fight back against male supremacism, we need to do more than just regulate tech. Through interviews with influencers, activists, social workers and psychologists, in Ctrl Hate Delete I explore how we can reverse the tide and offer men alternatives to misogynistic online communities and make women safer. From encouraging men to step up and provide support to other men, to greater public investment in community spaces, which have been affected by years of budget cuts, the answers to online radicalisation often lie offline.

Ctrl Hate Delete: The New Anti-Feminist Backlash and How We Fight Itby Cécile Simmons is out now (Bristol University Press, £9.99).You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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