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I saw a thread about Louis Theroux's manosphere documentary. OP relates his teen daughter's alleged words and experiences to make a point about healthy values and teen male behaviours. The current verdict is that boys should have their screen times monitored or limited so they don't get corrupted by the manosphere, and raise them with feminist values. Okay. I agree with some of this. There are certainly incel adjacent online spaces that spiral into nihilism and hate. There are teenage boys with zero offline male role models to mainline this stuff and end up emerging more bitter than buff. Parental gatekeeping of violent porn, gambling apps, or extremist political content seems like basic risk management. If your heuristic is “anything that makes my daughter feel existentially unsafe is bad for my son too,” the monitoring prescription follows naturally. And yes, the generational digital literacy gap is real. Parents are often shocked their kids know the lore. I'd go further, I'm in favour of a blanket social media ban until they (both boys and girls) turn 16.
That being said. This comes just one day after Clavicular's recent clip with Leela Saraswat went viral. FWIW the "boyfriend" commented on Instagram that it was an old prom pic and they weren't dating. But are we allowed to question what message women's questionable dating choices (made of their free will with no external pressure) send to young boys and girls? We have a clip of an (allegedly) attached woman melting for a high value male on camera, yet the discourse pivots to “protect boys from the manosphere”. Here's the truth nuke: Clavicular is not an incel. He is living proof of the sexual marketplace the manosphere describes, which is heavily determined by looks, money, height, race, social status, etc. He pulls taken women with minimal effort. Young men are not “corrupted” into noticing these patterns. They notice them first (through lived failure) and then find the subculture that names the pattern instead of shaming them for noticing. So what is the problem with the manosphere? That it spreads dangerous lies and radicalises young men into subjugating and even killing women? Or that the rhetoric makes women look bad?
If it's the former, I need to see some evidence. Netflix's "Adolescence" made waves last year for catching the so called andrew tate problem that's apparently radicalising 13 year old boys into stabbing their classmates. Never mind the fact that homicide rates in the UK have been trending DOWN over the years, particularly against females. Are we allowed to discuss the harm caused by manufactured hysteria? If it's the latter, then you’re not protecting boys. You’re just delaying the day they notice the discrepancy between official feminist sermons and observed reality. And when they finally do notice, they’ll be angrier for the wasted years. And manosphere critics would tell us they've been "corrupted".
Lastly, since #notallmen was mentioned as a gotcha, can I point out how this "collective guilt" only flows one way? If every man should feel ashamed about the manosphere because we share genitals with them, what about the (overwhelmingly male) miners, linemen, firemen, welders, construction workers, road workers, steel workers, etc etc who commit to physically intensive and dangerous labour everyday to keep your lights on? Do we all get a collective male labour paycheck for that too, simply because we share genitals with the workers in these vocations? You don't need to hold yourself to consistent principles if you have sufficient social capital, like feminism does.
Neither of those things. The manosphere Is Problematic because it convinces young men to get off the path of contributing to society in the way that society wants men to contribute to it, when it is easiest to get started on that path of filling the male role in society. Yes, feminism does the same thing for women and the double standard exists, but two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, there are legitimate issues the manosphere points to- just like feminism, which really did call out some bad stuff- but most of it is whining and secession from public contribution. Society needs young men to study for career skills, work hard, join the army, etc. Young male activities which seem pointless but which society is largely pro(such as team sports) largely do push towards these goals at least somewhat.
Fair enough but I was posing that query to the anti-manosphere folk, not a TheMotte user. I agree with what you say, but that is not what the usual critics regularly write screeds about. Nor are they the champions of healthy male bonding activities like team sports. Au contraire, it's the same folk who believe (or flock with people who believe) that the Boy Scouts was exclusionary for only allowing boys. The subject of their concerns is always women and being palatable to women.
They wanted access to the boy scouts because the girl scouts suck, and they're seemingly pretty happy with the gender-segregated compromise. They may not be championing team sports but they're more than happy to point to them as good when the situation calls for it, and they aren't complaining vocally about it either.
The manosphere complaints are taken seriously by the powers that be for the reasons I just outlined, and not for 'protecting women and girls' reasons. That's BS, tPtb don't care about that- see also, Weinstein. 'Protecting women and girls' is, however, a potent meme for getting nice, middle class moms onboard, and you cannot run a campaign of adolescent-targeted censorship without parents, China is failing at it let alone the west.
While yes, feminism is running a very similar campaign with very similar effects towards girls and young women, that's completely true. I'm not claiming there's not a double standard here, but the powers that be are also very concerned about lower class defections from feminism resulting in shit they have to eat the bill for(like teen pregnancy). That's why the FLDS got raided despite not really having child welfare concerns(Texas CPS basically said they couldn't find a reason, and nobody likes the FLDS)- because they're all doing welfare fraud without engaging in the appropriate political machinery. Like it or not, lower class defections from feminism tend not to wind up as happy 50's larping stepford due to the reactionary impulse not itself providing any alternative to feminism. Organized groups with some alternative lifestyle who either support themselves or form political machines to cover their welfare fraud? Anglosphere governments don't really care all that much.
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