The rise of online misogyny: How worried should we be about the manosphere?
What’s sucking boys into the manosphere vortex – and how worried should we be? Senior Herald writer Joanna Wane delves into the online world and asks the experts what we can do to help our sons.
As the credits rolled on the final episode of the TV show Adolescence, Tess* fell to pieces. Overcome with emotion, she crawled into her son’s bed, held on to him tightly and cried.
It wasn’t that she saw her own Auckland family reflected in the disturbing story of a boy so lost in the dark alleys of cyberspace that he kills a girl from school.
She found the programme harrowing; the rise in misogynistic attitudes among some young men with a distorted view of masculinity worries her.
But the intense emotions Tess felt that night were a mix of grief over her son leaving home and anxiety over the complicated world he was heading into.
The mother of three sons in their teens and early 20s, she’s seen all of them struggle in different ways to find their place.
A lifelong advocate for equality and women’s rights, she says the tidal wave of negativity towards young men can be dispiriting. As a parent “just trying to raise decent human beings”, it almost feels as if it’s become shameful to be male.
It’s fascinating watching how the extremes of the #MeToo purge continues to reverberate and alienate.
Mothers now fear their sons will be accused of sexual assault more so than they are fearful of their daughters being sexually assaulted!
There is no forgiveness now in the awkwardness of boys and girls, men and women becoming sexually attracted to each other.
The fumbles, the grey zone interaction, the once forgivable foibles of human nature are all recentered and weaponised as patriarchy rape culture.
The Holy Trinity of woke Identity Politics is:
- All white people are irredeemable cross burning racists
- B-E-L-I-E-V-E A-L-L women, A-L-L MEN ARE RAPISTS
- Anyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans community
This dogma fuelled the social media Lynch mob cancel culture and between 2014-2020 when the Woke activists ruled Twitter and Facebook until the social media hate algorithms took over and the culture war ammunition our middle class woke activists generated for the Right swung back in devastating backlash culminating ion Trump’s spectacular election victory.
The Woke now live on Bluesky which has zero social media clout and is the equivalence of screaming into a padded echo chamber.
Good, please Christ let the Wellington Woke stay there.
I don’t think we have a toxic masculinity problem, we have a wounded masculinity problem that creates toxic behaviour.
Toxic masculinity reduces all aspect of masculinity as evil.
Wounded masculinity acknowledges the damage without tainting all masculinity as the problem.
Andrew Tate is a toxic misogynist prick because he is a toxic misogynist prick, he isn’t a toxic misogynist prick because he is male.
Many young men are lost and alienated, pushing them further away by framing all men as the problem drives them into the arms of those who would manipulate their identity crisis.
The worst thing about identity politics is when men start seeing them selves as the victims.
What do Trump-voting men want from women? Probably not what you think
The US presidential election seemed to mark a backlash to changing gender roles. But most Trump-voting men say they don’t want to return to the past.
President Donald Trump’s reelection seemed to mark a cultural turning point on gender – a backlash to #MeToo and other progress for women’s rights, and a return to a time when men could be men.
His campaign told men that they had lost their status in American society and that the Trump administration would restore it. Vice President JD Vance reiterated the point at a gathering of conservatives last month: “Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive.”
It’s a message many Trump-voting men want to hear: Republican men are more likely than others to agree that Americans have negative views of manly men. Nearly half say that’s true, compared with a quarter of people overall, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted during the campaign, findings that have been reflected in other polls.
But survey data, academic research and interviews with Trump-voting men suggest that most don’t want to return to a more traditional masculinity either, one that requires men to be aggressive, dominant or stoic. Instead, they want Americans to have a different take on masculinity – one that is positive instead of negative, and broad instead of narrow.
Overall, respondents were more likely than not to say American society places too much emphasis on traditionally masculine traits like physical strength and risk-taking. A majority thought there wasn’t enough emphasis on being caring or open about emotions.
And a majority – including a majority of Republicans – said certain behaviours by men were unacceptable, like talking about women in a sexual way, drinking too much or throwing a punch.
That is not always the message from the president – who has been found liable for sexual abuse, said he’d “protect” women “whether the women like it or not”, and was instrumental in ending abortion rights nationwide – or from members of his administration or right-wing influencers.
The president “is delivering results to improve the lives of women across the country”, said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, including by hiring female senior staff and through executive orders to expand in-vitro fertilisation access and ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
Trump-voting men don’t necessarily share macho or sexist beliefs, the survey and interviews show. Instead, many think progressives have gone too far.
…apparently the intersectionist woke dogma that painted all heteronormative cis males as toxic masculinity was a tad alienating.
The truth is wounded masculinity is doing more damage and labelling them as toxic is deeply counter productive.
Boys growing up without dads are in crisis, report says
- By the age of 14, almost half of first-born children do not live with both natural parents, compared to 21% for those born in 1970
- Boys are now more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their dad
- Boys are struggling in education, more likely to take their own lives, less likely to get into stable work, and far more likely to be caught up in crime
- As the likelihood of a masculine presence in the home diminishes, young men are seeking new modes of masculinity, like the controversial social media personality Andrew Tate
- Lawrence Dallaglio, the former England rugby union captain, backed the report, stating: “We have been so careless in our downgrading of the traditional masculine virtues that we are in danger of leaving a whole generation behind.”
It costs less money long term to fix hurt boys than angry men but the woke weren’t interested in that, in 2016 when they suddenly gained cultural power via social media, middle class woke identitarians plus Fourth Wave Feminists plus non-binary activists were too busy labelling all masculinity as toxic to even consider the knock on effect of all that hashtag activism and woke cancel culture.
To them, ALL men and boys were so toxic that they must be constrained and muzzled and leashed and denigrated.
Patriarchy was defined as all men and everything male, it was all toxic and Me Too allowed a social media Lynch mob that generated immense cultural backlash.
Due process was heteronormative white cis male privilege, the new evidential threshold was anything women said on twitter and into that new world parents raising sons feared their boys would be accused of rape more than they feared their daughters of being raped which is insane because women are in far greater danger of that being true.
You know shit just got real when even the Guardian starts wondering if the middle class woke Identitarian cancel culture Lynch mobs of 2016 were really such a good idea after all…
The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
…Trump’s incendiary victory off the backs of resentment seeded by woke dogma demands the Left learn the lessons of toxic identity politics.
Imagine if the Woke, BLM, Trans and MeToo movements had listened to the 1990s Rainbow Community on how to build solidarity instead of their own alienating intersectionist subjective rage?
Imagine if MeToo hadn’t mutated into a Salem witch trial where the new evidential threshold becomes ‘whatever a women says on Twitter’.
Imagine if BLM acknowledged that far more white people were shot by Police than black people and instead of rioting had progressed their argument with solidarity?
Imagine if the Trans community had not been so screamingly militant?
Imagine if the woke hadn’t started cancel culture deplatforming?
Imagine if the entire Identity Politics movement had sought to build class solidarity rather than alienating bullshit?
It’s not a witch hunt men feared from METOO because there clearly were monsters out there, what men feared was a witch trial, and that’s what it quickly descended into because due process became heteronormative white cis male privilege.
It was as if ‘To Kill a Mockingbird‘ was never written.
Last month at a school I am very familiar with, a young male student committed suicide.
They had become the source of gossip and accusations of sexually assaulting a female student.
These accusations had depressed the young male student.
Their father was attending a school meeting calling out the schools lack of ability to stop this bullying and while they were making their complaint at the meeting, the Father was informed they had to hurry home because their son had committed suicide.
The Father rushed home and returned the next day to scream and scream and scream at the school outside the Principles office.
I have no idea how we repair, heal or even attempt to learn anything from this explosion of social media vileness and gender identity anger.
We told a generation of young women that every man would try to rape them and told a generation of young men they were rapists.
This is the unforgivable mass of humanity we have boiled into.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
This is a job worthy of Thich Nhat Hanh – who specializes in ‘cooling the flames’.
Many of these problems are worsened by class issues. The majority of young kids quite rightly see that the controllers of the international finance capitalism who rule over us see no role for them- after all, ‘New Zealand citizen’ (lol) Peter Thiel doesn’t even care if human beings survive, as long as there’s a few twinks around for him to transfer blood from, bum, and push off balconies. If you don’t have power, that leaves you fighting to take some back, from somewhere.
If you do have power… maybe you’re related to a bunch of cops or the son of an actor from the Matrix like the guys from the ‘Roast Busters’… then it gets even nastier.
“The worst thing about identity politics is when men start seeing them selves as the victims.”
May be it’s not ‘seeing’ but actually being victims of,
Take the children abuse
Deny child access abuse
Family court abuse
Financial abuse
Verbal abuse
Emotional abuse
Dramas abuse
False accusation abuse
Disrespected abuse
Jokey denigrate the dads abuse
Don’t hit the woman back abuse.
All that shit. Be a man just take it. Suicide you loser.
Remember a generation ago women said ” a womn needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”
Now Alpha boys are telling older males they were too soft on the women.
The pendulum has swung in the war of the sexes.
I have a feeling of deja vu. People work away in NZAO for decades doing forward-moving stuff but only just tolerated by the complacent, smart-alick middle class who regard getting material things and a good education being important above all.
Celia Lashlie – this RadioNZ collection is back to 2012. Has anyone got behind her findings and advice? She sadly was carried off with disease when getting somewhere.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/collections/parenting-boys-the-celia-lashile-collection
Her book He’ll Be OK. https://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/author/celia-lashlie
Celia Lashlie Collection
A researcher and social commentator, Celia Lashlie worked for 15 years within the prison service, starting in December 1985 as the first woman to work as a prison officer in a male prison in New Zealand. Celia, who had a degree in anthropology and Maori, went on to work on a number of projects, all of which were linked to improving the lives of at-risk children and empowering families to find their own solutions to the challenges they were facing. Celia Lashlie is the author of the bestselling books The Journey to Prison: Who Goes and Why, He’ll Be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men and The Power of Mothers: Releasing Our Children. She passed away in 2015.
He’ll Be Ok 20th Anniversary Edition $39.99
Celia Lashlie – Paperback Release Date 04.06.2025
I dare you to buy the book And ead It. Then look at some heartening things you can do for young fellers, and also run some long weekend adventure camps that possibly all the family can go to and Mum and Dad or caregiver can talk to others and have some informed speakers (don’t know if Nigel Latta is actually practical and helpful, and the boys can enjoy some learning – how to do sport, some attempts at making things with wood or learning how to solder, and how hot the flux has to be and how to change an oil filter on a car etc. Something real, and don’t forget to learn some music, maybe ukeleles, but some choice, and then an impromptu concert for the learners alone so they can enjoy it and not worry about smart alicks.
He’ll Be Ok : Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men
Unity Books https://www.unitybooks.co.nz › products › hell-be-ok-gr…
3 Jun 2025 — He’ll Be OK offers parents – especially mothers – practical and reassuring advice on raising their boys to become good, loving, articulate men.
NOTE: On TradeMe there are good looking 2ndhand books from $5-$9 and a bunch from $10-$15. Post/courier is usually about $7.
And Norm Hewitt – applying himself to water safety for children. Mike King? Don’t know and Harry Tan also don’t know but Denis O’Reilly has been battling the wilfully ignorant for decades.
Good influences? I look at the film listings, there may be 5 warnings on some, violence, language, sexual references, suicide etc; our minds are filled with negatives. It would be good if we looked at bad things that are real and form opinions about what we can put up with. Life isn’t a passing film parade, so being there and being protective from a young age with some standards would help kids growing up in a world too dishonest to admit how sleazy it can be. The guys in Christchurh doping women’s drinks so they could rape them was disgraceful. But the women who don’t act adult and protect their core spiritual being while l\looking for someone to live with or even mate with, need to stop and look at their own behaviour, ie getting drunk every week on Friday nights.
If people go to religion there are likely to be up-tight rules of ‘proper behaviour’ – but that’s not core Christianity about soul and respect and good principles. Religion is the middle class finishing school for those who want a nice place to belong. But most religious don’t want to branch out into thinking about the reason for our habits and ways and which religious rules are good, and some not.
Damn straight.
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