His recent Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere follows several social media personalities and podcasters who appear to be making a killing selling a mix of misogynistic hyper masculinity and embrace of Trumpian politics to a generation of young men who feel left out of the economy, mass culture and the sexual marketplace.
It’s not just about working out, becoming your own boss, and gaining the confidence to attract many women. It’s about breaking free from an authoritarian system that confines men in an emasculating world of 9-to-5 drudgery, equality with a monogamous female partner, and a society that constantly shames them for being a man who enjoys sports, steaks, and fast cars.
They tell you to go to college to become some soyboy cuck when you could be a warrior or a rugged farmer working the fields while your wife cooks and has your babies.
The manosphere has “millions” of followers online around the world, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, which describes this world as a “melting pot for anti-feminist narratives,” with content ranging “from manipulative dating advice to political demands aimed at weakening the social position of women to outright misogyny,” boiling down to a “fundamental rejection of equality between the sexes”.
Theroux is a renowned filmmaker–his recent BBC documentary The Settlers took viewers up close to the religious fanaticism of the illegal settlement movement in the West Bank.
While some scenes in Inside the Manosphere reveal who these individuals are and expose their more peculiar lifestyle habits, such as one-sided monogamy (the man can sleep with other women, but the girlfriend or wife must remain loyal), the documentary falls alarmingly short on a topic that is truly central to the right-wing political threat women, sexual minorities, and many others currently face.
Firstly, the Manosphere focuses solely on these media personalities, without highlighting the dangers they pose to society. Part of this failure lies in the fact that no victims of the manosphere are interviewed.
In an interview with UN News, Kalliopi Mingeirou, chief of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Section at UN Women, laid out the problems of this online community.
“Women and girls are feeling less comfortable to be exposed to the risks and threats when they engage in digital platforms – and we often see women journalists, women politicians who tend not to engage, because they are afraid of the impact it has on them,” she said, adding that “We have growing evidence that in some of the community mass shootings or extreme incidents against the community, very often the perpetrators were also heavily engaged in such misogynistic online platforms, conveying messaging connecting with broader ideologies that puts all of us at risk.”
The “manosphere frames violence as a way of asserting their masculinity when there are no other resources to do so, restoring an identity that they feel has been lost through a lack of sexual and romantic success”, according to the Sociological Review.
The CBC reported that the manosphere also poses a danger to men. In particular, looksmaxxing, the physical act of trying to make their bodies appear more masculine, is damaging boys’ self-esteem and encouraging them to take risky measures to alter their bodies.
“Botox, drugs such as hormones and steroids, surgeries on the jaw, eyelid, nose, brow ridge and teeth,” the broadcaster reported, noting that some enhancers “suggest leg-lengthening surgery, a procedure in which the bones are broken or cut in the leg and the gap is slowly extended so bone will fill it, resulting in a height increase after healing”.
There’s also bonesmashing, “which involves intentionally hitting bones — usually in the face, sometimes with a hammer — in order to create small injuries in the hope that the bone will grow back stronger and more pronounced”, the CBC said.
Hearing from victims of this online community of demagogues would have highlighted the danger these individuals pose.
But it’s not just that focusing on the personalities of the manosphere misses the societal problem; these people are neither original nor very entertaining on camera.
Justin Waller, one such manosphere guru who built his image on being a self-made man with fast cars and flashy clothes, is reminiscent of 1990s self-help scams–picture Tappy Tibbons in Requiem for a Dream.
Myron Gaines’ now-defunct Fresh & Fit Podcast drew from the shock jocks of American terrestrial radio. Harrison Sullivan’s on-camera admission that everything he does is about turning every experience into a viral clip that can be monetised exemplifies petite-bourgeois alienation, in which all earthly activity is reduced to a series of business dealings.
This can lull the viewer into disregarding these men as disingenuous grifters. While that’s not untrue, they collectively act as a vessel for the MAGA and far right movements in the United States, which dominate both culture and politics, tearing apart civil rights, the health care system and economic justice.
While Theroux does expose Gaines’ Antisemitic comments, this is treated as a sidebar to the manosphere rather than a central feature, leaving us to believe that this is just edgelord performance for attention rather than an active part of fascist propaganda.
In fact, spend enough time in these circles, and you’ll find that the system they’re railing against is a Jewish one. It’s rehashed Protocols twaddle.
However, through economic control and sponsorship of pornography, feminism and homosexuality, the devilishly smart but physically un-macho Jews have manipulated Western men into submission, allowing the minority group to take hold.
It’s common talk in the Christian nationalist commentariat, but other online hyper-masculine personalities like Dan Bilzerian showcase Jew-bashing extremism as well.
Fascism is central to the manosphere because bodily purity, rigid natural hierarchies and rugged individualism are under attack from the usual suspects: modernity, democracy, equality and an international left-wing threat that of course is controlled by you-know-who.
The problem with the manosphere isn’t that it’s offensive or that it causes tension. The manosphere is central to the anti-democratic and authoritarian wave of politics that is tearing apart civil and human rights from the United States to Hungary.
With the rise of MAGA comes political payoffs. The manosphere slogan “Your body, my choice” isn’t just rhetoric with Roe v. Wade having been overturned. Abortion rights and trans rights are under attack.
No one should be surprised that there is a large market for turning the anger that young men feel into conspiracism and hatred towards others oppressed by the same exploitative system.
It’s a shame Theroux didn’t take his audience down this path more pointedly.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
