"What is ’the manosphere’?" I ask Paul Elam around three one morning. This is not a factual question. It’s an existential one.

I already know that "the manosphere" refers to an online network, nascent but vast and like the universe constantly expanding, each twinkling star in its firmament dedicatedobviouslyto men. Men and their problems. Usually with women. Some galaxies of the manosphere are composed of self-declared "pickup artists" (PUAs) who want to help ordinary guys trick women into bed; other solar systems deal earnestly with child custody and the Adderallization of rambunctious boys. There are constellations of MGTOWs, "men going their own way," separatists and onanists and recluses. There are hundreds of websites and blogs, many openly hostileSlutHate, Angry Harry, The Spearhead, NiceGuy’s American Women Suck Pageand many more that are brutally lewd. For instance: Return of Kings, published by the author of a series of popular country guides such as Bang Ukraine: How to Sleep with Ukrainian Women in Ukraine.

As the flagship political site of the movement (it had just shy of 9 million site visits last year), Elam’s A Voice for Men functions as the closest thing there is to a center, an intelligence, a superego to the bloggy manosphere id of lust and fury. Just how big the whole thing is, nobody can say. More than fringe, less than mainstream, but at 3 A.M., sitting with Elam in his hotel room, I’m not looking for numbers. Size doesn’t matter. What I’m really asking is, What does it all mean?

Elam has just wrapped up a conference. "An eye popper," he says, the first time he’s brought A Voice for Men off the Internet and into the flesh. He likes to say, "You can’t fight titty hall," but that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s fucking shit up. That’s his slogan: "Fuck their shit up." "They" being feminists. Six eight, 290 pounds, with the beard of John Brown and the rumbling voice of James Earl Jones, Elam, whose name happens to be "male" backward, wants to be a provocateur. Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he’s doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand. So he draws a map of the manosphere, alluding to its origins as he sketches: its roots in the men’s liberation movement of the 1970s and ’80sauxiliary to the much larger women’s movementand the New Agey men’s movement of the ’90s, its coming of age online, when Elam first started posting under the name Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey’s midlife-crisis character in American Beauty, its explosive growth since he founded A Voice for Men in 2008. Refuge, reaction, and fantasyland, practical advice and political calculation, identity and secret identity, cold fact and hot ambition. It’s so complex not even Elam can map it neatly:

He holds up his rendering. The semblance is clear. "A dick and balls," I say.

"Yes," he says, chuckling, "I guess it is."

If you’ve heard of the manosphere, it may have been in the context of Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old self-described "supreme gentleman" who on May 23, 2014, in Isla Vista, California, murdered six people. In a YouTube video he posted the day he stabbed to death three men in his apartment and opened fire on a sorority house at UC Santa Barbara, he declared the slaughter a "Day of Retribution," revenge for the world’s failure to provide him "the beautiful girlfriend I know I deserve." Rodger was a student of several manosphere philosophies, but his most active connection was through a forum called PUAhate. Most of its members embrace MGTOWdom after trying and failing to adopt the ways of the pickup artistshence the "hate"at which point their bitterness brings the angriest of them to the politics of Elam. Some of A Voice for Men’s biggest web traffic days followed Rodger’s murder spree. The media attention surrounding the Isla Vista shootings was a twofold gift for the group, driving new recruits to the movement and allowing A Voice for Men to present itself as the moderate middle. Some men tried to distance themselves from Rodger with a hashtag, #notallmen. Many more womena million within daysresponded with #yesallwomen, as in, yes, all women have experienced variations of the misogyny that led Rodger to his crimes. The manosphere did not like this. "Men are your benefactors, your protectors, and your providers," a writer at A Voice for Men explained. "So the next time you trend a hashtag about us, maybe you say ’thank you’ instead."