Lillian Graham

“the boy was a plan and a gun in his hand/well he was looking for somebody to love” –the 1975

boys and young men are turning to the internet for answers about the universal experience of hormonal angst (ex: how do I get the people I’m attracted to to like me?), and what they get—instead of helpful and constructive information—is all these adult men indoctrinating them into a cycle of hate. when all those young boys are looking for is to figure out how to love and be loved..

I wanted to stop here and keep my review short, but there are many other important takeaways in this book.

Ultimately, the manosphere, this collection of men hating women groups, is way bigger than we think, and growing. There are figureheads encouraging them: men who can grow followings and thus monetarily exploit and gain. Step one: these manosphere influencers benefit from telling men that there is a huge conspiracy—that the world is actually run by, and benefitting mainly, women. It is ingenious, a simple inversion of our true reality. 

Step two: because of this “reality”, men will never succeed, unless they become macho-uber men who make women submit to their authority, no matter the costs, to the women or themselves. 

Step three: men become isolated and full of hate, as their rejection becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Surprisingly, hating women alienates them from you! 

Step four: now able to see themselves as victims, they feel that only this community gets them and is on their side. So this is the perfect moment to pressure them to donate to the cause!! And if that money ends up in the influencer’s pocket, and does not in any way help with the actual difficulties facing these men, then that’s what you get! You’re a man and the world is stacked against you! Right?

Why should we be surprised that capitalism is at the heart?

So next is step five: increased political control. trump has allowed manosphere rhetoric and behavior to become insanely normalized and acceptable in mainstream media. This, in turn, creates a ripple effect, as the validity of the behavior grows. If the man in the highest seat in the land can act and talk this way, then why can’t they? His rhetoric perfectly fits in with theirs as well, as the manosphere mostly overlaps with the alt-right anyways.

And because of the utter destruction of national media (due to deregulation and ouralgorithmic content economy which dictates that the outrageous stories get the most exposure), all sense of journalistic integrity seems to be thrown out the window. So, step six: Misogynists and misogynistic ideas are absolutely acceptable for as many eyes as possible, with no interrogation of the ideas necessary. Our media literacy crisis means that people are mindlessly scrolling, accepting everything that their eyes see as fact, no need for follow up research. 

And, as any one with clear eyes would tell you, there is rampant sexism everywhere in our society anyways. The internal bias we all have densities us. Our superheroes have skin-tight uniforms, women make 86 cents on the dollar, and so on. The violence women experience is the fabric of society. The fact that is flourishes online is no surprise. But we would do well to fear the inoculating effect of constant prevalence more.

Step seven: of course, powerful people are using data gathered from social media—which they then can purchase control of (looking at you, TikTok!) They do so in order to push content out which indoctrinates more people. Because, again, as we all know, our society loves to hate women, and there are casual misogynists everywhere, ready to have their dark fears confirmed. 

Throw another step into the cycle, that these groups of men are absolutely excited and interested in enacting violence against women, from the mass murder incels, to the trolls who can be mobilized to dox and physically and psychologically threaten. They want to intimidate women, to silence them for having the audacity to ask for equal rights. Because, to the privileged, any loss of dominance feels like oppression. And these men don’t want to have to confront the statistics that women are doing fine on their own, and that it is men who are struggling to keep up. The cards were stacked in their favor and they still somehow failed.

And, again, as an online movement, these groups are targeting and indoctrinating young men. Which is why so many young men are going right, why there is a “male loneliness epidemic”. They were fed a lie about reason for the issues facing them, and a lie that the solution is to hate women. 

We are just starting to see some of those young men age into adulthood, and therefore the wave is only just starting. Social media sites are benefitting these men because these young men MAKE the social media sites. They know exactly how to indoctrinate, because they went through it. And you can’t argue that this isn’t true when you look at the statistics of who makes and runs these companies. Or, you can look at how Facebook was created. The dehumanization of women was the point! From the start!

The fact that this book is from 2020 is made incredibly stark in the social media section, which has harrowing statistics of daily phone and social media use by teens OVER five years ago, but has no mention of TikTok. NONE. Or AI for that matter. We, as a society have only got more isolated and addicted to our phones, as well as the untold damage Covid did on our societal psyche. The reality of the situation is far from imparted on us fully. The problem is just beginning to be seen.

if the internet had not fostered groups upon groups of men that hate women, what kind of life would we lead now? if men were encouraged to process and understand their emotions, what kind of world would we have? how do we move forward as men’s educational rates are plummeting, as the political allegiance between young people veers sharply off course? as men use artificial intelligence to supplant actual human connection? as the disappearance of third spaces, and normalization of isolation mean less people interact face-to-face. These are questions we must confront as a society.

Anyways, thanks for reading!