The real world 'manfluencers' among us

Jamie whimpers for his dad, wets his pants and looks frightened and bewildered in the opening scenes of Adolescence. Just as we’d imagine a little 13-year-old boy might react to a swarm of masked, helmeted, armed police confronting him in his bed in the early morning. A vulnerable and innocent-looking figure arrested on suspicion of murder, leaving behind a bedroom with its galaxy patterned wallpaper and colour-matching duvet, a soft toy and a stunned mother, father, and older sister.

From this inconceivable beginning Adolescence leads us through the aftermath of a murder, committed by a child. It shows us the ripple effects on his family. (We can only imagine the impact on Katie, the murdered girl’s family.) In the process, the story lightly but effectively uncovers a troubling social-political undercurrent influencing the way some boys and young men see the world and their place in it. An undercurrent that is fuelling violence against women and girls.

This Netflix series is powerful, because it shows us parts of our social world that are otherwise virtually unseen. It is a world that is literally invisible to some of us, who don’t know it exists and find it hard to believe. For those who inhabit that world, or parts of it, they might not see these trends as anything noteworthy because they have become such a pervasive and normalised backdrop to their everyday digital lives.

These different ways of not-seeing are partly tied to age and generation.

One of my favourite scenes unfolds in episode two. Detective inspector Bascombe and detective sergeant Frank are pursuing their murder investigation in the school where both Jamie and Katie were students. Bascombe’s son, Adam – also a pupil at the school – diffidently takes him aside to offer him some help.

Their relationship is awkward. Bascombe presses Adam on whether he knows anything about the murder weapon. But Adam’s intel has nothing to do with the whereabouts of a knife. “It’s not going well ‘cause you’re not getting it”, Adam tells his father, “You’re not reading what they’re doing. What’s happening.”

He’s talking about messages on Instagram. DI Bascombe doesn’t speak the local emoji dialect, and Adam has to translate, explaining how the young students’ coded conversations reference the online world of incels and the ‘manosphere’.

The ‘manosphere’ refers to “a loose network of anti-feminist and male-supremacist men’s rights groups and communities”. And it is flourishing, according to researchers around the world.

Research from the Dublin City University Anti-Bullying Centre using fake accounts on YouTube and TikTok found that all the accounts identified as belonging to a boy (16-18 years old) “were fed masculinist, anti-feminist and other extremist content”. The authors observed that “much of this content rails against equality and promotes the submission of women”. It may be slipped in through the door of content on mental health or ‘motivation’ or ‘self-improvement’. In this Irish study, recommender algorithms fed boys misogynist content within less than half an hour of the experiment running, whether or not they sought out male supremacist-related themes. That is, this content will reach boys whether they want it or not.

While ideologies circulating in the manosphere have been linked to murder in real life, they have also been linked to more everyday corrosive forms of gender-based harassment that have, for example, driven some women teachers out of the classroom. Australian researchers interviewed women teachers and found evidence of “the emergence of a regressive masculinist supremacy among large cohorts of boys”. Teachers described boys drawing on prominent self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate’s ideology and tropes to provoke and undermine them and to legitimise gender inequality. They also observed an escalation of sexual harassment against women teachers and girls.

Tate, who is facing criminal charges relating to trafficking and sexual violence and abuse, shares dark-age views about the nature and role of women. But the main focus of his written content is ‘masculinism‘, which Monash University researchers described as “the ethos or ideology of masculine superiority”, noting it “lays the foundation for misogyny to be legitimised”. They describe Tate’s influence as ‘misogynist radicalisation’.

But as Adolescence sparks public commentary and recommendations about what we in general, and parents in particular, can do to help interrupt the harmful influence of ‘manfluencers’, it’s worth recognising that these issues are not purely generational.

The messages spawned within the ‘manosphere’ are not locked away in the proverbial dark corners of the internet, accessed only by teenage boys in their bedrooms. It is important to also consider the role of other figures and forces within the broader patriarchal ecosystem in which these online influencers operate.

The aforementioned Irish study on social media algorithms found that in the content delivered to boys on TikTok, Andrew Tate was way out in front. Besuited elder statesman of the manosphere, Dr Jordan Peterson, came in next. But the third most featured person was Donald Trump.

Manosphere content chimes closely with statements, policies and actions of the MAGA regime. The new era of ‘brutal power politics’ in US is led by men who seem to worship masculine primacy and dominance and peddle sexist tropes that belittle and denigrate women, particularly those who stray from a narrow version of approved femininity.

Prior to the US presidential election last year, the man who once boasted that his star power meant he could “Grab ’em [women] by the pussy”, and who has been subject to multiple claims of sexual assault and voyeurism, – promised (threatened) that as president he would protect women “whether the women like it or not”.

US Vice President JD Vance has been described as often sounding like “a two-bit incel”, exhibiting an “insecure, backward-looking, and grievance-driven” version of masculinity. US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, projects a kind of strong-man masculinity that would surely have seemed satirical in former times. He has been described as “fully part of a conservative movement that wants to relegate women to a specific – and ultimately inferior – role in society”. And the list goes on – and on.

Powerful followers and enablers of the regime echo the same sorts of messages, even recruiting Mark Zuckerberg to jump on the masculinist bandwagon. It is as if any lid of liberal decency has been lifted, releasing a surge of manospheric pressure to saturate our social atmosphere.

Moves this year to dial back content moderation policies on Meta platforms, to “restore free expression”, as Zuckerberg put it, gel with the values that guide manospheric thinking. As a result, platforms effectively welcome more hate speech into online spaces, enabling further abuse of women, LGBTQ+ people and other groups . (Meanwhile, directives from federal agencies in the US seek to censor scientists using certain terms related to gender and sexuality.)

These cultural trends are matched by Handmaid’s Tale-esque laws, policies and enforcement practices that are repressing women’s reproductive rights, leading to potentially devastating, sometimes fatal, yet too-often neglected, consequences.

I loved Adolescence – as compelling drama and for its thought-provoking social commentary.

As we join conversations the show has sparked about how to respond to the harmful online influences on boys and young men, let us also notice how the very same masculinist ideology is espoused in the words and actions of powerful adult men on the world’s largest political stages.

It is coming from the bottom up and the top down, online and offline. It is normalising dangerous ideas and inspiring and emboldening boys and men. (Not all, thankfully.) We must see this insidious social demolition for the regressive and harmful force it is and figure out what on earth we can do to counter it.