The Manosphere and it’s anti-women sentiments

Jeroen

I recently noticed some new kinds of links appearing in my YouTube feed, interviews with people like Jordan Peterson and Rollo Tomassi. I innocently thought I would have a look since it mentioned some kind of Red Pill, a reference to ‘The Matrix’. I found the interview indigestible and instead had a look on Wikipedia what it’s all about… I read the pages on “Red pill”, “Manosphere” and “alt-right pipeline” before getting thoroughly sick of it.

It seems there are quite a few influencers out there who are trying to convince people to move to the right in their politics, and who seem to be convinced that men are being discriminated against, strange as it may seem. Anti-women sentiments run rampant in this group. I find it quite worrying that these people seem to have a wide reach on YouTube to suck in folks who don’t know any better.

Now I know many Buddhist groups are still men-first, and have a ways to go in terms of gender equality, but at least they are not moving in the wrong direction! This whole process of using the internet to radicalise especially young people seems to me to be something to beware of.

zorro

Trump's "Save America" act would be a first step to ending women's vote. The act requires documentary proof of citizenship, and if one's married name doesn't agree with the name on their birth certificate, they don't have that. Presumably women could get around this by providing documentation of the name change, but this would be very difficult for some women. Not everybody has a copy of their birth and marriage certificates, and it can be quite difficult for some people to obtain them.

Their is a faction of MAGA that doesn't believe women should vote, especially married women, whose husbands should speak for them. They are quite open about this.

RobinH

Men are sometimes discriminated against and anyone who cares about fighting discrimination should not ignore or try to discredit that in favor of putting the emphasis on another group, my view is that if a problem in society affects a 100 people and out of that 100, 99 shares similar characteristics, it's still not a problem of 99 people, abuse for example doesn't stop being a problem of just a few, things are interconnected and if we treat someone badly we can expect that harm to affect more lives in some ways. So I think there are legitimate issues mens' rights groups raise, but the way these are raised are not always constructive (just like feminist groups aren't always constructive in their communication, optics and politics distort messages as well) and yes, sadly much of these get weaponized by charismatic individuals to further burn bridges and recruit men in a cult-like manner, offering them control over their own well-being, while isolating them further and often radicalizing them. I don't think this is unique to the manosphere, but it's an ideal farming ground for alt-right figures to divide the nation further. And it doesn't take bad intentions to fall for the tricks, I'll be the first to admit that I've got charmed by Peterson when he first appeared in the headlines, because he seemed to be a voice of reason against blind flock mentality, at least it was framed that way by many, including himself. But I'd much rather focus my energies on people who are working to reach common grounds in a highly polarized society. Not necessarily as public speakers or debaters, maybe just regular Joes and Janes showing a bit of kindness to those around them.