In February, Daryush Valizadeh, a self-proclaimed seduction guru better known as Roosh V, made international headlines when he planned men-only gatherings across dozens of cities. He had won fame (and venom) for penning pick-up guides like “Bang Ukraine: How to Make Love to Ukrainian women in Ukraine” and “Don’t Bang Denmark: How to Make Love to Danish women in Denmark (if you must)”. Most controversially, he argued that legalising rape on private property would help control it—a view he later insisted was satirical. Ultimately, he cancelled the in-person powwows, citing security concerns. (A band of female boxers had promised to visit the Toronto meeting.) Roosh V’s webpage, Return of Kings, is among the most popular of something called the manosphere. What exactly is meant by this term? The manosphere is a loose agglomeration of blogs, websites, and forums dedicated to men’s issues. Not a concrete umbrella organisation so much as a concept, the manosphere contains groups whose ideologies sometimes coincide and clash. Father’s-rights activists argue that men are discriminated against in family court. The Men Going Their Own Way movement believes that marriage is a bad deal for men: why give up your sexual freedom when your wife will probably divorce you, taking your children and assets with her? AVoiceForMen.com seeks to reveal to people that the world is gynocentric—it is men, not women, who have it toughest.

Many of these groups see the world as divided between Red-Pill thinking and Blue-Pill thinking. In “The Matrix”, a sci-fi film, if Neo takes the blue pill, he will wake up in his bed, blissfully ignorant of the powerlessness of humanity. If he takes the red pill, he will stay in “Wonderland” and discover “how deep the rabbit hole goes.” In the manosphere, “Blue Pillers” are those who uncritically accept that women are discriminated against. “Red Pillers” know it’s actually the other way around.

To support the Red-Pill philosophy, its adherents often cite gender gaps in prison sentencing—America’s male criminals do 63% more time than female felons on average—and enrolment in college, where women out-number men. Some manosphere groups also rail against domestic-violence services, which often focus on women, and rape laws, which they believe are unfair to defendants. Many of these groups have tens of thousands of members. Some observers view the rise of the manosphere as a backlash against modern equality. As the liberation of women increases, the number of people inhabiting this corner of the internet may yet swell further.

Dig deeper: