Feminists Sounded the Alarm on Manosphere Decades Ago, But Were Ignored
For decades, feminists have been raising urgent warnings about the growing threat of the manosphere—a toxic online ecosystem of misogyny—only to be met with dismissal and disbelief. As Laurie Penny notes in a powerful reflection, the response from mainstream culture was often a helpless shrug, treating the issue as trivial or separate from real life.
The Early Days of Online Misogyny
In the early 2000s, angry and alienated men began engaging in recreational misogyny on the internet, targeting women and girls with threats, harassment, hacking, and revenge porn. At the time, many dismissed these actions as mere online antics, arguing that social media was not real life. Penny recalls being told by police that nothing could be done about death threats she received as a young columnist, with advice to simply get offline if she didn't like it.
For early targets, it was clear this was something new and dangerous. They foresaw how these tactics could escalate and be deployed elsewhere, a prediction that proved tragically accurate.
Escalation and Mainstreaming
In 2014, the terrorist Elliot Rodger killed six people, bringing global attention to incels—young men radicalised by sexual resentment. Just months later, Gamergate erupted, a coordinated campaign of online harassment against women in the video game industry. It started with attacks on game creator Zoe Quinn and spiraled into a firestorm of abuse disguised as concern for journalistic ethics.
Gamergate served as a proving ground, uniting disparate strands of the manosphere: pickup artists, Christian nationalists, incels, and furious fans. This congealed into an ideology of aggrieved entitlement, with its own language like escaping the matrix and taking the red pill. The rage of men abandoned by post-crash capitalism was channelled into a common cause, ripe for exploitation by far-right actors.
Political Co-option and Normalisation
Mainstream media continued to underestimate the manosphere, but the fringes of the right did not. Steve Bannon, co-founder of Breitbart News, saw potential in this cohort and later helped run Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. Trump's persona, crowing about sexual violence, embodied what the manosphere admired, normalising its ideas at the highest levels of power.
Throughout this period, feminists and others trying to raise alarms were told they were exaggerating or couldn't take a joke. Identical arguments were used to dismiss the rise of movements like Maga until it was too late. Politicians and pundits often declined to take a firm stand, fearing alienation of their base.
Current Threats and Future Challenges
As the manosphere expanded into the 2020s, funnelling recruits toward racist ideas, it became fashionable to cast social justice warriors as the real danger. The #MeToo movement was often criticised as proof feminists had gone too far. Today, Trump openly courts the manosphere, and many young men are veering toward the far right.
There's a clear line from Gamergate's social vandalism to modern male supremacists scamming followers with promises of a world where women are mere objects. This weaponised misogyny continues to gnaw at the heart of power, as seen in recent incidents involving figures like Stephen Miller and Elon Musk mocking diversity in media.
Penny argues that until society refuses to tolerate this nonsense, the manosphere will keep demanding we cater to its petty whims, with devastating consequences for all.
