But the manosphere doesn't need to be a symptom of those problems. That's a choice.

Another choice could be that men band together to identify the real problems and address those.

For example. In the manosphere, women are considered gold diggers. Well, because of the patriarchy, men are told that it is their job to provide, and that their value is tied to how well they provide. So you have men who think it's their job to provide money, and then are complaining when women see them as a source of money. This is stupid. Men could stop trying to be providers, and instead try being people who are interesting to talk to and nice to be around. That would solve both the golddigger problem and the loneliness problem. It would also start to address some of the capitalist problems, where people are willing to self-exploit, just to get a little more money than their neighbor.

But the manosphere doesn't need to be a symptom of those problems. That's a choice.

Another choice could be that men band together to identify the real problems and address those.

For example. In the manosphere, women are considered gold diggers. Well, because of the patriarchy, men are told that it is their job to provide, and that their value is tied to how well they provide. So you have men who think it's their job to provide money, and then are complaining when women see them as a source of money. This is stupid. Men could stop trying to be providers, and instead try being people who are interesting to talk to and nice to be around. That would solve both the golddigger problem and the loneliness problem. It would also start to address some of the capitalist problems, where people are willing to self-exploit, just to get a little more money than their neighbor.

When you go on social media almost all discussion concerning men is about how they are the root of all evil, and everything they do is wrong. It's a never ending stream of shaming with no clear way out. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't: If you try to defend yourself or talk about your own problems as a man, it is labeled as misogyny. "Be vulnerable and open up" they say but if you do it's "don't center men you privileged fuck" or "you're being a crybaby".

This is a sentiment often repeated by manosphere influencers and there’s no actual tangible evidence it exists and I think that’s the real issue. The influencers aren’t at all a symptom of a problem men are facing, they are selling men on a problem that doesn’t exist (for money).

I have never at any point in my life (which encompasses the entire lifespan of the internet) been subjected to any significant amount of misandry online or in person. When men talk about experiencing misandry online, it’s almost always in the context of them making comments on content geared towards a women’s issue and invalidating the women’s issue while simultaneously making it about themselves.

You mention being a progressive at heart, forced to cloak yourself in more perceived masculine features as if they are at odds with each other. I too am a progressive and I have never felt like that’s been at odds with my masculinity. I’ve never had a problem taking leadership roles, using force to solve problems, even violently when necessary, and I know how to put my emotions aside in order to get things done. At the same time I have no problems sharing my feelings or being vulnerable with the people I love and trust. I’ve never had an issue following a woman or being in an equal partnership like my marriage is. You can be all these things and my experience with women is that the right ones love you for it.

The real issue is solely man-created and exists solely in the mind, and the manosphere exists to tell you in its not in your mind, that’s it’s real, and that it’s everyone’s fault but your own. They monetize your attention, they sell you supplements and books, none of which are actually designed to help you solve your problems, because if you escape your cycle of self destruction, the money stops.

You mentioned that you’re dating a woman and you feel like you have to hide who you are for her to love you? My friend that’s not you being masculine, nor is it you being “progressive”.

Real masculinity, the kind that these influencers refuse to sell you, is having enough self respect to be yourself. If you want to open up and share your feelings with someone then that’s what you’re damn well going to do. And if she isn’t ok with that then she can find someone else.

In my experience the problem isn't the masculinity influencers. Those are just the symptom of misandry in media and a near-total lack of support in society for men, especially young men. When you go on social media almost all discussion concerning men is about how they are the root of all evil, and everything they do is wrong. It's a never ending stream of shaming with no clear way out. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't: If you try to defend yourself or talk about your own problems as a man, it is labeled as misogyny. "Be vulnerable and open up" they say but if you do it's "don't center men you privileged fuck" or "you're being a crybaby".

All this pressure is an impossible equation to solve for a young man who has been pushed by misandrists into insecurity and longs to be accepted in his community. Not just because society's demands are internally inconsistent, but because they clash with patriarchal ideals among the typical women you'll meet IRL.

I'm past 40 and while in my head I still consider myself progressive, I used to show it much more when I was younger. I was honest about my insecurities, I would try not to take up too much space as a man, would try to split responsibilities equally, and so on. At every turn this has caused me problems in relationships, not least with my wife of 10 years who left me for some muscular macho guy because she "doesn't feel like I can take care of her".

So now, while I wish society was different, I try to balance on the needle of acting like I'm not as progressive as I am so women don't "get the ick", while not tripping into what would be labeled misogyny. It's an extremely difficult game to play and it frustrates me to no end that this is where we're at. I'm moving in soon with a woman who I've been dating for a couple of years and it's clear that she desires that I take a leadership position in the home, whereas I'm just longing for a partner who will share the burden with me instead of becoming my subject. But I feel like I have to play that game or she'll eventually lose interest. Too many women want someone to replace their dad.

Bell Hooks wrote about this already in 2003. But somehow it is completely lost on these UN Women pundits that nothing will change unless everybody (including women) change. You can't just blame it on "masculinity influencers". Why are these influencers gaining popularity? Because they offer some way out, some positive message for young men who are completely starved for positive role models.

I am convinced that a woman's voice will count 10x more than the manosphere, if it offers compassion and guidance rather than hate. But such voices are extremely rare.

FWIW, the "men's health awareness month" has brought me some hope in this. It's the first time in a decade that I've seen women in media stand up to defend and show compassion for men, and I think young men will suck that up like a sponge.

When you go on social media almost all discussion concerning men is about how they are the root of all evil, and everything they do is wrong. It's a never ending stream of shaming with no clear way out. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't: If you try to defend yourself or talk about your own problems as a man, it is labeled as misogyny. "Be vulnerable and open up" they say but if you do it's "don't center men you privileged fuck" or "you're being a crybaby".

This is a sentiment often repeated by manosphere influencers and there’s no actual tangible evidence it exists and I think that’s the real issue. The influencers aren’t at all a symptom of a problem men are facing, they are selling men on a problem that doesn’t exist (for money).

I have never at any point in my life (which encompasses the entire lifespan of the internet) been subjected to any significant amount of misandry online or in person. When men talk about experiencing misandry online, it’s almost always in the context of them making comments on content geared towards a women’s issue and invalidating the women’s issue while simultaneously making it about themselves.

You mention being a progressive at heart, forced to cloak yourself in more perceived masculine features as if they are at odds with each other. I too am a progressive and I have never felt like that’s been at odds with my masculinity. I’ve never had a problem taking leadership roles, using force to solve problems, even violently when necessary, and I know how to put my emotions aside in order to get things done. At the same time I have no problems sharing my feelings or being vulnerable with the people I love and trust. I’ve never had an issue following a woman or being in an equal partnership like my marriage is. You can be all these things and my experience with women is that the right ones love you for it.

The real issue is solely man-created and exists solely in the mind, and the manosphere exists to tell you in its not in your mind, that’s it’s real, and that it’s everyone’s fault but your own. They monetize your attention, they sell you supplements and books, none of which are actually designed to help you solve your problems, because if you escape your cycle of self destruction, the money stops.

You mentioned that you’re dating a woman and you feel like you have to hide who you are for her to love you? My friend that’s not you being masculine, nor is it you being “progressive”.

Real masculinity, the kind that these influencers refuse to sell you, is having enough self respect to be yourself. If you want to open up and share your feelings with someone then that’s what you’re damn well going to do. And if she isn’t ok with that then she can find someone else.

Yes, so you can see how that would be a problem

Nah, I can attest. Misandry has populated a lot of online spaces with most content that even mentions men painting them in a terrible light. (Man or Bear is the most prominent example). The fact that teens are growing in this ambiance that hates them just for being CIS male is going to be terrible for them. Modern feminism has lost most of their male supporters because they've just gone down the deep end instead of keeping with their originals ideals of equality. Tho, I geniely believe that feminism should have ditched the name for equality, in the 2015s. It's more associated with misandry than equality right now among other men.

This is a sentiment often repeated by manosphere influencers and there’s no actual tangible evidence it exists and I think that’s the real issue.

This is why I feel there is such a disconnect. I just have to open TikTok to see this, so if researchers are not finding evidence then I'm very curious how that's possible. Heck, you just need to look at the same masculinity influencer content they are talking about to see it, because it's not just them making shit up from nothing - they will often use clips of misandrist women to get their point across. So they basically find the evidence for you.

During men's mental health awareness month this has been particularly easy to encounter as there was a trend of women making as much noise as possible with the caption "me when it's time to take a moment of silence for men's mental health".

I'm glad that you never felt being progressive was at odds with being masculine. But many men, especially younger men, are struggling with this. The fact that you don't doesn't change that.

The gender equality narrative got too focused on excluding men

As a man, I've never been made to feel excluded by gender equality in any way whatsoever.

The gender equality narrative got too focused on excluding men

As a man, I've never been made to feel excluded by gender equality in any way whatsoever.

Bill maher touched on this last night on his show, and i cant believe im seeing more of it.

He argued men are shat on far to often in todays media with female leads taking more lead roles.

He also brought up countless movies starting in the 80s that pushed the dumb dad/male narrative that persists today.

Does he have a point? Yeah idk really.

Nah, I can attest. Misandry has populated a lot of online spaces with most content that even mentions men painting them in a terrible light. (Man or Bear is the most prominent example). The fact that teens are growing in this ambiance that hates them just for being CIS male is going to be terrible for them. Modern feminism has lost most of their male supporters because they've just gone down the deep end instead of keeping with their originals ideals of equality. Tho, I geniely believe that feminism should have ditched the name for equality, in the 2015s. It's more associated with misandry than equality right now among other men.

Personally, I don't mind seeing when comments are heavily down voted. If an opinion is unpopular, that's ok, especially in some areas where you generally know there's a likely bias in the audience.

What annoys me is seeing comments removed / silenced by mods when the comments dont align. If the comments calling for explicit violence or using overt slurs, by all means censor. But many online spaces will eliminate even respectful / neutral comments simply because they aren't in line with that narrative.

I think it's far more fundamental than that.

You've got a generation of young men who did what they were supposed to culturally: went to school, got good grades, went to college, never broke any laws, and their choices in life are permanent debt and struggling to afford a roach-infested studio apartment, living with their parents, or joining the military to survive. Here in the United States minimum wage won't even buy you a cup of coffee in large swaths of the country. (And 2/3 of the states still use that as their standard.)

The social contract has been broken, and for the first time, you've got a generation who are not going to live more fulfilled and enriched lives than their parents largely by no fault of their own.

Of course they're pissed. Governments should be addressing this, but it's more fashionable to blame young men instead, and the right-wingers are the only ones willing to admit there are fundamental economic crises for men.

I can attest that that isn’t at all true. Your perception has been warped by these influencers very much on purpose to see conflict where there isn’t any. Society, or women, do not “hate men” just for being men. And this persecution complex and victim mentality is what’s destroying the minds of these young men today.

Believe me, when you give up looking for ways to feel victimized on a daily basis, you’ll stop finding them.

You've got a generation of young men who did what they were supposed to culturally: went to school, got good grades, went to college, never broke any laws, and their choices in life are permanent debt and struggling to afford a roach-infested studio apartment, living with their parents, or joining the military to survive. Here in the United States minimum wage won't even buy you a cup of coffee in large swaths of the country.

And? Why should they be special? You’re arguing that because young men were given special status before we should bend over backwards by sacrificing others to their success? Women should continue to be underpaid, undervalued, treated as secondary to men’s success? Nevermind the barriers to any sort of professional and societal success as a woman to begin with.

What social contract? Again, the one that puts male wants and needs ahead of others?

That is what you’re arguing, no?

I just have to open TikTok to see this, so if researchers are not finding evidence then I'm very curious how that's possible.

TikTok is incredibly algorithm driven and ultimately driven by the content you consume and interact with. When you go online and “see something everywhere” you have to look at it under the lens of what’s being targeted at you, vs what you encounter in more neutral spaces. When you open TikTok, the percentage of misandrist content you encounter is not representative of all content on the internet. No matter how niche or rare any given subject is, your algorithm will find it and server it to if it thinks you’ll engage with it, positively or negatively.

My TikTok contains zero misandrist content, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all either. In order for the researchers to experience what you experience, they’d have to build an algorithm profile tailored to that content. But that would be useless, because it would prove nothing. It’s a question of “Is the world full of misandrists out to get men” or “have the men surrounded themselves with misandrists”.

You have effectively done the latter. Both online and in your personal life. Now when I say this is “your fault” I don’t mean to say that you’ve gone and done this on purpose. The algorithms have a heavy hand to play in this of course and that’s a real issue. But at the end of the day, how the algorithms target you is a result of your engagement and behavior. The more you rail against your perceived world of misandry, the more the algorithm is going to inundate you with it. “Society” hasn’t done this to you, nor have women as a group of people.

I don’t want to delve too much into your personal life here, but you’ve shared that you’ve intimately connected yourself with a woman who you don’t trust will accept you for who you are. I won’t call your girlfriend a misandrist, but you’ve painted her as one of the women who are part of the problem you’re perceiving. You live with her now, so you have to experience that frustration every single day of your life. But like… is she holding you against your will? Should I contact the authorities? If not, then this is another example of you imposing this issue on yourself. You’ve literally surrounded yourself with someone who you perceive to be part of a problem that has deeply and negatively affected your life. Why would you do that, and how is that very personal decision you’ve made society’s fault?

What these manosphere influencers have done, is taken a very personal issue with young men, and instead of addressing the problems these young men have, it expands the issue into a global, societal one that doesn’t exist. And because these men now blame society, they won’t work on fixing the actual issues they have, which only makes their problem worse, and cements their negative world even further. It’s a giant pit of quicksand and the more you struggle the faster you sink.

The difference is that, typically, the lack of women in male-dominated fields is due to them being actively pushed away from things they want to do, while the lack of men in female-dominated fields is due to those fields being less prestigious/well-paid (often due to being traditionally female) and them not wanting to pick them in the first place. But when they do decide to enter those fields, nobody's actively trying to stop/discourage them.

Superficially there may seem to be similarities in circumstance, but the amount of agency men and women have to enter opposite-gender-dominated careers is vastly different.

You're straying from the point which is that this content exists, is widespread, and is ultimately the root cause. This isn't hard for a serious researcher to see if they could just be bothered to sit down with the people they are "researching" and actually discover what their online life looks like. Whatever opinions you have on my personal life and choices are irrelevant. The reason I brought my personal experience up is that I think it is representative (and at odds with what UN Women is saying) and an obvious reason why men seek their refuge in masculinity influencers. You can criticize my life all you want, but as far as I'm concerned that only underscores my point.

The misandry is also not limited to algorithm-heavy outlets like TikTok - when I talk about media I mean all social media including Facebook, Reddit, Instagram but also old media such as newspapers. When the #killallmen and #ihatemen hashtags were popular on Twitter the women promoting it were given their own columns in newspapers and a platform in podcasts by national state radio, at least here in Sweden. One popular "feminist" profile, Natashja Blomberg, would for example publicly say "I wonder if it's a daughter or an abortion" when she was pregnant. She garnered support and was platfformed both by prominent political party leaders and news outlets. She was given her own column and given space in podcasts, where she could complain how disgusting she found her own son to be and how nobody is interested in what men think.

You can't just let this go on for years, without being challenged, without offering alternative positive messages, and believe that men will just shake it off. They're turning to these influencers because they were pushed there. I whole heartedly disagree with your assertion that the problem is only in people's heads, but even if it is, society has a responsibility to help those people and it doesn't.

There are 2 issues here that are being mixed.

One is women not being allowed to positions of power.
The other is with women being underrepresented in certain fields (e.g., stem).

The second issue is what I am talking about and I don't think at all that men "choose" not to try certain careers in the same way women don't "choose" not to study stem and pursue stem careers.
For both, social pressure and expectations, an existing field dominated by the other sex with all its implications are factors of discrimination.
Strict gender roles are damaging for both men and women, and this is a perfect example.