The latest feminist panic (at least if The Guardian is any gauge) is the “Manosphere” – a shadowy online fraternity of red-pilled gym bros, bitter divorced dads, men’s rights activists, pickup artists and incels. The online network they frequent is primarily focussed on traditional gender roles, a reassertion of masculinity, and above all, the audacious notion that modern feminism hasn’t quite delivered the utopia it promised. While many facets of such a network are undeniably admirable: fitness, stoicism, and the adoption of responsibility, critics argue that the Manosphere is inherently misogynistic, promoting dominance over women. Undoubtedly there is more than a grain of truth to this. On the other hand, there is certainly some truth to the theory that feminism has come at the expense of men, and that the Manosphere is simply ‘course correction’.
As I argued many moons ago in Banalysis: The Lie Destroying The West, there is a curious mistrust of men congregating in the absence of females, particularly those that might scandalously be having a good time:
“When he’s not shanting it up in the sewers or down the mines, there are increasingly few places for the sullen male to retreat to should he be desirous of isolation, or the company of his own. If he is fortunate enough to find such a place, modern man is fully aware of the ridicule he must endure for doing so. While it is considered perfectly normal for women to spend time alone in any part of the house, a man doing the same is retreating to his man cave. The wife may enjoy herself in the garden, hubby must content himself with ‘the shed! She’s off to her sister’s, he’s off ‘down the pub’.
Not only does the practising of masculinity necessarily involve the ignominy of pejorative overtones, it is also becoming something of an endangered pursuit. Perhaps the feminists think men will start getting ideas if left alone or allowed to congregate too often… A woman wishing to be alone or with the sisterhood is ’empowered’, a man wishing to do the same is invariably seen as a ‘misogynist’. Men are, therefore, continually forced to come up with more and more ingenious ways to avoid the Matriarchy. One such male holiday camp is prison…”
Far from misogyny however, there is a reason the Manosphere exists. The attack on men: white men, western men, decent men is relentless, and men perhaps unsurprisingly have had enough. As I wrote elsewhere:
“Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: men are useless. They can’t iron, can’t ask for directions, can’t cook, and can’t even piss straight. Even when they finally get good at something, they’re rarely praised. Men receive little credit for their impressive suicide conversion rates, their domination of the homeless market, or their early achievement of heart attacks.
Instead, the alliance of those wishing to beat young men into submission is overwhelming. It’s not just the feminists. From the advertisers who demean us, the female-dominated schools which give us poorer grades, drug us up on Ritalin, or routinely exclude us, the courts that sentence us unfairly and refuse to grant us custody, the shops that stick us upstairs out of the way, and the armies that conscript us.”
Whether it’s patriarchy, toxic masculinity, misogyny or the convenient umbrella term ‘Manosphere’, the term is applied with curious selectivity. Genuine, throat-slitting misogyny, the kind practised under sharia law or in the no-go zones of certain European cities, tends to get a polite pass. Radical Islam, after all, is a protected species in the hierarchy of victimhood. What cannot be tolerated is the suggestion that the average British husband, father or son might have a point when he notices that the deck is stacked against him in family courts, university admissions or the workplace. Better to label him a danger to women than admit the obvious: that the real threat to female safety is not the bloke who opens doors and pays the mortgage, but the imported medieval attitudes our own elites have spent years importing by the boatload.
What makes this both hilarious and faintly terrifying is that the loudest voices railing against the Manosphere belong to the very people who helped create the problems it exists to address. Feminists – or at least the loud, Twitter-active strain that now sets the cultural tone – have spent decades campaigning for policies that have made women objectively less safe. They cheered the admission of biological males into women’s sports, changing rooms and prisons. They waved placards for “refugees welcome” even as reports of mass sexual assaults in Cologne, Rotherham and countless other places piled up. They insist that criticism of mass immigration is “racist”, while simultaneously declaring that the greatest danger to women comes from white men who quote Marcus Aurelius and deadlift. It is a masterclass in voting against one’s own interests.
As a case in point, let’s consider the 2024 general election. Almost a quarter of women aged 18-24 voted for the Green Party – roughly double the number of young men who voted for Reform UK. Naturally, it was the young men who were derided for their adoption of ‘far-right’ attitudes. In reality, it should have been the young women getting the attention. Recent polling suggests that an absurd 44% of women aged 18-24 intend to vote Green – that’s the Green Party by the way, whose own former Deputy Leader claims it has been “infiltrated by Islamists” and poses a “danger to society”.
The pattern is now too consistent to be accidental. Feminists have worked assiduously to banish competent, decent, protective men from every sphere they can reach – the military, policing, academia, even fatherhood, only to discover that the vacuum is being filled not by enlightened non-binary allies, but by men whose cultural attitudes towards women make a 1950s British husband look like Germaine Greer. The result is the slow-motion spectacle of Western women campaigning for their own replacement, by people who genuinely believe in throwing acid or enforcing veiling as social policy. If the aim was ever to “smash the patriarchy,” congratulations: you’ve replaced it with something rather worse.
I’m not particularly interested in defending the Manosphere, and certainly don’t think it should be beyond critique. Some, no doubt lots of it may be either puerile or beyond the pale – perhaps it was ever so with young men. What I would like to defend, is the right of young men to congregate, to speak, to seek advice, and to fight back against an over-feminised society which rejects and deplores them, while simultaneously decrying their inability to commit, and their unwillingness to sacrifice all for King (preferably Queen) and country.
Why don’t feminists just be honest? Admit you despise these white Western men and want them replaced by anyone else. The irony is that it is precisely these men – and only these men – who have historically been willing and able to save women from their own most reckless choices.
Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report Substack.
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