Chapitre 4
Men Going Their Own Way: Isolation as Ideology
MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way, pronounced "mig-tau") represents a different response to the "red pill" philosophy. Rather than plotting revenge like incels or pursuing predatory tactics like PUAs, MGTOW adherents choose to completely avoid relationships with women.
Their website dramatically announces "THERE HAS BEEN AN AWAKENING. CHANGING THE WORLD. ONE MAN AT A TIME," presenting their philosophy as a revolutionary movement. While members implement this isolation to varying degrees - some maintain platonic relationships with women, others have casual sex or visit sex workers, and some ("going monk") abstain completely - the core principle is one of separation from women and often society at large.
MGTOW follows a four-level doctrine: Level 0 is taking the "red pill," Level 1 rejects long-term relationships, Level 2 avoids even short-term relationships, Level 3 requires economic disengagement (minimizing taxes to avoid supporting "elite alphas" or "single mothers"), and Level 4 involves complete "social rejection" where a man essentially disappears from society. Those achieving this ultimate isolation are revered as "ghosts," though most members seem to hover around Level 2.
The community is driven by fear, particularly of false rape accusations. As 18-year-old member David Sherratt explained, "There is a lot of risk... We do not know how many false accusations there are." This reveals the dual assumptions that the only meaningful relationship with women must be sexual, and that women are so dangerous that complete avoidance is the only safe option.
The ideology fundamentally views women as parasites who have contributed little of value to society while riding on men's achievements. MGTOW rejects the idea that historical discrimination prevented women's contributions, instead arguing that women are simply inferior and should be grateful for whatever "scraps" men provide rather than demanding equality.
Despite claiming to be about men going their own way, the movement paradoxically remains obsessively focused on women, creating a fundamental contradiction at its core. As David Sherratt, now 22 and no longer involved with the community, explained, the initial appeal was finding friendship, positive reinforcement and feeling part of something "progressive" - revealing how extremist communities can attract vulnerable young men through a sense of belonging and purpose.
MGTOW ideology has penetrated mainstream culture, particularly following the #MeToo movement. Many men in professional settings began avoiding one-on-one meetings with women colleagues, leaving doors open during meetings, or declining to mentor women - behaviors directly reflecting MGTOW philosophy. This phenomenon reached the highest levels of government with Vice President Mike Pence's refusal to dine alone with women other than his wife (the "Pence rule").
A 2019 University of Houston study found 27% of men avoid one-on-one meetings with female colleagues and 21% are reluctant to hire women for jobs involving close interpersonal interactions with men - workplace discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The mainstream acceptance of these practices demonstrates how extreme manosphere ideology has infiltrated everyday professional life under the guise of "reasonable precaution."
Chapitre 5
The Men's Rights Movement: Co-opting Legitimate Concerns
The Men's Rights Movement (MRM) presents itself as advocating for men's wellbeing on issues like workplace safety, mental health, and parental rights. However, the movement has largely targeted feminism rather than addressing the underlying causes of men's issues. At an MRM conference I attended, speakers repeatedly blamed women and feminists for men's problems, while offering few constructive solutions.
While some dismiss the Men's Rights Movement as a dying throwback to 1970s sexism, evidence suggests it's actually growing, fueled by backlash against #MeToo and Trump's assertion that "it's a very scary time for young men in America." Australian MRA marches have drawn up to 1,000 people, with organizers noting conversations previously held "around water coolers" are now "coming out into the open."
The tragic irony is that MRAs have identified legitimate issues but targeted the wrong culprit. The real problem isn't women or feminists but rather society's constricting version of masculinity. Yet when the American Psychological Association released guidelines acknowledging "traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful" and addressing the very issues MRAs claim to care about (male suicide, shorter life expectancy, harsher school punishments), the manosphere erupted in outrage. Jordan Peterson called the guidelines "reprehensible" while AVFM declared them a "war on masculinity."
MRAs aggressively defend the very traditional notions of masculinity that prevent men from seeking mental health services, essentially sabotaging solutions to problems they claim to want solved. As psychologist Joseph Pleck observed in 1981: "How people continue to believe so fervently in values and norms according to which they can only be failures is an awe-inspiring phenomenon."
Chapitre 6
Online Harassment: Coordinated Attacks Against Women
The relentless barrage of online abuse feels like drowning in slow motion while nobody else sees the water. Looking back at my first experience with coordinated harassment (known as "brigading"), I now recognize references to 4chan and 9gag "turf" - my terror was merely a game board between warring online abusers, each glorying in escalating fantasies of destroying my body, with victory sought through forcing my withdrawal from the internet and my job.
We cannot stop these crimes without confronting the root ideologies and online incitement that encourage them. The 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre by Brenton Tarrant exemplifies this connection. Tarrant, a far-right, white-supremacist extremist, planned his attack within online troll culture, livestreaming the killings in first-person perspective like a video game. Before beginning, he referenced PewDiePie - an in-joke for the "extremely online" community - while his manifesto mixed genuine extremist beliefs with shitposting and memes.
Though media correctly identified Tarrant as a white supremacist, they rarely mentioned misogyny despite its centrality to his ideology. His manifesto's first words - "It's the birthrates" - reflected "replacement theory," which isn't just racist but deeply misogynistic, positioning white women as breeding vessels being "stolen" by immigrants. Similarly, Anders Behring Breivik, whom Tarrant cited as inspiration, combined white supremacy with fathers' rights rhetoric, anti-feminism, and manosphere beliefs about emasculation and female promiscuity.
When I once wrote back to a troll who had threatened me, I discovered he was ex-military, religious, and obsessed with "traditional" gender roles. His fury stemmed from beliefs about women "feminizing" men and destroying the nuclear family - rhetoric straight from the manosphere. When I asked how he'd feel if someone sent similar messages to his daughter, he never replied.
Trolls expose the hypocrisy at the heart of the movement: women must be protected, they claim - just not women who challenge their worldview.
Chapitre 7
The Connection Between Misogyny and Violence
Men hurting women isn't an anomaly - it's an epidemic and public health catastrophe. Over a third of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, with 137 women killed daily by family members. The manosphere both emerges from this inequality and represents a furious backlash against efforts to reduce it.
The manosphere's core ideology - seeking a patriarchal utopia where women are subjugated as sexual objects and servants - closely resembles the power dynamics of domestic abuse. Both are about establishing control through violence. Domestic abuse functions as a form of everyday terrorism, with abusers using violence to enforce traditional gender roles within relationships.
Strikingly, many mass shooters and terrorists have histories of domestic violence. Rachid Redouane, Khalid Masood, Omar Mateen, Devin Patrick Kelley and numerous others abused women before committing acts of mass violence. Studies show at least 22 mass shootings since 2011 involved perpetrators with histories of domestic violence, and in 54% of mass shootings, victims included intimate partners.
Despite this clear pattern, media coverage systematically downplays white male violence, especially misogynistic extremism, while amplifying coverage of Muslim attackers. White attackers receive sympathetic framing focused on mental health ("angelic boy," "good boy"), while Muslim perpetrators are labeled "evil" and "barbaric." This bias extends to the justice system, which rarely charges white supremacist attackers as terrorists.
Media coverage of misogynistic killers like Elliot Rodger consistently avoids terms like "terrorism" or "extremism," instead portraying them as victims of bullying, loneliness or mental health issues. The New York Times profiled Rodger as "emotionally troubled" and "very innocent," quoting teachers who called him "our Elliot" while minimizing his explicitly violent misogynistic manifesto.
This framing persists despite these attacks meeting the legal definitions of terrorism. Only once has an incel-motivated attack resulted in terrorism charges. This reveals society's desensitization to violence against women and lack of awareness about online male-supremacist communities.
Media reporting on domestic violence similarly humanizes perpetrators and implicitly blames victims. Headlines like "BBQ dad killed 6 over wife's affair" or "Life for husband driven to double murder by jealousy" suggest women provoke their own murders. The criminal justice system often reinforces these narratives, with judges giving domestic abusers second chances despite high recidivism rates.
If we took domestic abuse seriously as the warning sign it is, we might prevent both women's murders and subsequent mass killings. Women are the canaries in the coal mine, but we've normalized their deaths so thoroughly that we miss the alarm they sound.
Chapitre 8
The Pipeline to Radicalization
The manosphere's most dangerous figures are those who bridge the gap between fringe internet communities and mainstream platforms, smuggling extremist ideology into public discourse behind a veneer of "reasonable debate." These influencers perform a delicate balancing act: using coded language and dog whistles to appeal to online extremists while maintaining plausible deniability for mainstream audiences.
Some exploit these communities for profit without genuine commitment to their causes. Daryush "Roosh" Valizadeh claims religious awakening while selling pickup books. Milo Yiannopoulos collaborates with neo-Nazis while publicly disavowing the alt-right. Their disavowals ring hollow, yet they continue to profit from vulnerable men seeking support.
These figureheads carefully craft their rhetoric to appeal to extremists while avoiding explicit hate speech. They use "irony" and "satire" as shields, allowing them to spread hateful ideas while positioning critics as humorless. This approach neutralizes opposition, appeals to hardcore believers, and serves as a gateway for new recruits, as white supremacist Andrew Anglin admitted with his "non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism."
The Daily Stormer's leaked style guide reveals these calculated tactics: mix hate speech with humor to attract newcomers, make racist jokes seem "half-joking," and never explicitly promote violence while subtly glorifying it. As the guide states about mass murderer Anders Breivik: "forever refer to him as a heroic freedom fighter...people think you must be joking. But there is a part of their brain that doesn't think that."
Beyond these direct manosphere figures, certain politicians have pushed these ideologies into mainstream discourse. Donald Trump's election emboldened these communities with his misogynistic rhetoric about women being "fat pigs" and "dogs," his boasts about grabbing women "by the pussy," and his racist comments about immigrants. Research by Professor Brian Schaffner found Republicans became more willing to express sexist views after Trump's election, with effects persisting into 2018. One in six American women reported feeling physically less safe after Trump's "grab them by the pussy" comments.
Other politicians serve as conduits for manosphere ideology. UK Conservative MP Philip Davies has repeatedly voted against measures addressing violence against women, spoken at MRA conferences, and used classic MRA rhetoric claiming the justice system discriminates against men. Australian senator Pauline Hanson promoted the false manosphere narrative that women routinely lie about abuse in custody battles.
Jordan Peterson exemplifies academic legitimization of manosphere ideas. The Canadian psychology professor promotes traditional gender stereotypes with academic veneer, claiming "men have to toughen up" because "women want it," that "healthy" women seek men who "outclass" them, and that men and women are biologically suited to different roles. His arguments about the immutability of gender roles mirror incel fatalism.
With over 2 million YouTube followers (80% male by his own admission), Peterson openly boasts about monetizing controversy: "I've figured out how to monetize social justice warriors...if they protest me, then that goes up on YouTube, and my Patreon account goes WAY up." The harassment of Channel 4 News anchor Cathy Newman after she challenged Peterson in an interview - resulting in "thousands of abusive tweets" including death threats that required police involvement - suggests a troubling connection between Peterson and online trolls, even if entirely one-sided.
Chapitre 9
Solutions: Breaking the Cycle of Hate
Like the Guinea worm parasite that infects unsuspecting victims through contaminated water before causing painful blisters a year later, the manosphere's ideology infiltrates minds undetected before eventually causing great harm. Addressing online misogyny requires a slow, patient approach rather than quick fixes.
While we're finally recognizing white supremacy and the alt-right as forms of online extremism, we continue to overlook virulent misogyny as extremism. Government counter-terrorism efforts demonstrate this blind spot clearly. The UK's 15,000-word "Counter-Extremism Strategy" mentions Islam/Islamist terms 52 times and neo-Nazi references 14 times, but never once mentions misogyny, incels, or masculinity.
These killers clearly meet the definition of terrorists - Minassian even described himself as "radicalized" by incel forums, called Rodger a "founding forefather," and admitted wanting to inspire "future masses" to join his "uprising." Despite this, government agencies remain largely unaware of this threat.
The most powerful antidote is taking concrete action against these threats: challenging rigid masculine stereotypes, addressing problems MRAs exploit but don't solve, confronting gender stereotypes about childcare, demanding workplace flexibility, campaigning for better parental leave, supporting male survivors of abuse without undermining services for women, and funding mental health services accessible to men.
Education plays a vital preventative role, inoculating boys against online grooming before they encounter it. This means teaching critical thinking about information sources, addressing gender stereotypes, and discussing healthy relationships. Parents and teachers must first understand the online world young people inhabit and recognize red-flag terminology like "red pill," "blue pill," "cuck," "triggered," "feminazi," or "SJW."
To protect boys from manosphere recruitment, we must acknowledge how current conceptions of masculinity fail them by forcing emotional suppression and preventing supportive relationships. The manosphere offers isolated, vulnerable young men a sense of belonging, purpose and emotional validation that traditional support services fail to provide. Creating meaningful offline spaces for boys to socialize and addressing social divisions through diverse friendships could significantly reduce vulnerability to extremist recruitment.
Law enforcement must also improve its response to online misogyny. Despite laws against online rape and death threats, thousands of such crimes go unpunished daily. Police often lack training and understanding of online crimes - when the author reported death threats, officers didn't know what a Twitter handle was and couldn't trace IP addresses.
Social media platforms bear significant responsibility as well. YouTube's algorithm has been described as "one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century," yet the company prioritizes profit over safety. Studies show stark disparities in how platforms handle different forms of extremism - one revealed that while 1,100 ISIS accounts were suspended on Twitter during the study period, only three white-nationalist and four Nazi accounts faced similar action.
The question of no-platforming extremists remains complex. While there's concern about driving these communities underground to unmoderated spaces, evidence suggests that de-platforming high-profile extremist leaders effectively reduces their audience and influence. When Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter, his influence was greatly reduced, while Alex Jones lost "a zero off his regular viewing figures" after being de-platformed.
Beyond immediate platform-level actions, we need long-term investment in civil society groups representing marginalized communities and increased diversity in STEM fields, where women make up just 12.6% of board members and minorities just 8.5% of senior leaders in the British technology sector.
The mainstream media must also change its approach, as it has amplified extremist messages through controversy-driven coverage, framed hate speech as legitimate debate, trivialized feminism, and failed to recognize misogynistic terrorism.
There's a need for a fundamental shift in our approach to masculinity itself. When feminists discuss "toxic masculinity," we're critiquing damaging expectations that men must show strength while hiding weakness, dominate relationships, suppress emotions, avoid seeking support, and value career and status over personal fulfillment. This damages not just women and children but men and boys themselves.
Creating physical spaces for these conversations is equally important. Former incel Jack Peterson notes that male loneliness is taboo to discuss outside anonymous forums, forcing men to "either keep quiet or go on some of these online forums." With youth club funding cuts, young men have fewer outlets for their energy and emotions, making them more susceptible to online radicalization.
Individual men challenging misogynistic messaging can be particularly effective. When scientist Andrew Chael realized MRAs were using his name to discredit his colleague Katie Bouman's work on capturing the first black hole image, he immediately used Twitter to reject "sexist vendettas" against her. Men like Professor Green, Doc Brown, Grayson Perry, and Robert Webb continue using their platforms to explore nuanced masculinity.
Confronting online misogyny requires acknowledging its existence and severity. The author reveals that researching this book led her to discover forum discussions fantasizing about raping and murdering her specifically. Despite fears about the book's publication potentially triggering more threats, she sees writing it as "an act of resistance" to expose a problem many don't know exists.
The author concludes with a hopeful example from a school that successfully tackled entrenched misogyny through comprehensive intervention. Rather than implementing a single approach, they combined student councils, assemblies led by male staff with visible support from leadership, small-group discussions exploring gender stereotypes and mental health, concrete actions against harassment, counseling support, and parent education. This gradual but meaningful change demonstrates that addressing misogynistic extremism is possible - not overnight, but through sustained effort on multiple fronts with male role models taking responsibility.
