No Easy Answers: The men of the moment
- Andrew Conroy
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Unusually for a broadcaster whose work has been so well received over the years, Louis Theroux’s big Netflix debut, Inside the Manosphere, has been subject to some interesting criticism, much of it focused on what the film didn’t do. Where were the meaningful interviews with the women behind the men in the spotlight? Should the focus have been less on manosphere influencers than the young men who make up their audience and who are supposedly most vulnerable to their dogma?
Although it’s hard to imagine it coming as breaking news to regular viewers of Theroux’s work, Inside the Manosphere was nevertheless eager to point out that all is not well with young men. In a rapidly changing world, yesterday’s certainties have evaporated, creating, so the narrative goes, a forgotten generation that’s been left to rot in a murky existential void. And whether it’s in the shape of the performative cruelty and aggressive misogyny of the YouTube influencer or respectably dressed up in a shirt and tie, a saturated landscape of gurus and self-appointed ‘coaches' are only too happy to step into the breach and offer easy solutions to this apparent lack. Dominate. Be powerful. Take control. Activate your essential masculinity. Leverage your advantage. Know your enemy. Against the unholy alliance of algorithmic capitalism and rage bait, UN Women - the wing of the United Nations dedicated to shifting laws, closing the gender gap and building an equal world for all women and girls - have certainly got their work cut out.
Although the sheer loudness of the manosphere might suggest that we’ve experienced a sudden and unexpected turn, one where New Men, Metrosexuals and other more ostensibly ‘progressive’ versions of masculinity have been shoved aside by an angry and intimidating sibling, the notion of men experiencing some sort of ‘crisis’ is not new. In a 2003 article on the rise of men’s lifestyle magazines, Bethan Benwell pointed out how ‘the view that masculinity is currently ‘in crisis’ is a popularly prevailing one.’ A few years earlier, Ronald F Levant asked: ‘is masculinity in crisis and in need of ‘redefinition,’ or ‘reconstruction’? Jumping even further back, in 1854, Henry David Thoreau claimed that the ‘mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’. So although the manosphere advocates for a return to ‘traditional’ modes of masculinity, hankering for a mythical time when ‘men were men’, the golden age it pines for is more product of wishful thinking than land of milk and honey.
Equally, nothing, of course, that we’re seeing inside the manosphere is happening in a vacuum or without precedent, and its sense that women’s empowerment has had a direct causal impact on men’s struggles is another old record. Bethan Benwell also noted how various commentators suggested that:
recent shifts in patterns of production and employment, as well as the progress made by second-wave feminism, have unsettled traditional gender formations and led to changing gender roles which have tended to be seen as bolstering the social position and psychic security of women at the expense of the confidence and self-justification of men.
Her article emerged in a period when so-called lad culture was still making waves in the UK. Spearheaded by the likes of Loaded and FHM magazines and characterised by a hedonistic passion for beer and sport and sex, the New Lad was also subject to much criticism, at best seen as a knowing backlash to his rather more chaste New Man older brother, but more typically as a ‘nostalgic retreat into infantile forms of behaviour.’ Anna Tippet is less charitable, suggesting that lad culture:
was the embodiment of the hegemonic masculinity of the 1990s and early 2000s; unashamedly sexist and recklessly hedonistic, with ‘ironic’ misogyny serving to normalise its sexually charged, sometimes aggressive, tones.
But if lad culture emerged in the context of a UK that was giddy on the Cool Britannia optimism of Tony Blair’s initial time as prime minister and a period of relatively stable geopolitical relations, the mansophere both reflects and is shaped by a far more precarious and seemingly unmanageable political backdrop. It thrives on a sense of grievance but has little interest in engaging with the causes and drivers of structural inequalities, instead aggressively scapegoating women as an ‘enemy’ to be defeated and dominated. The internet provides both infrastructure and accelerant for this, allowing resentment to be popularised, monetised and normalised as common sense for those who are eager to buy what the manosphere is selling. While many will continue to argue that masculinity is in crisis, what the manosphere ultimately seems to reveal is not something new, but the persistence of old anxieties, repackaged for a platform economy that thrives on attention and outrage.
Is masculinity in crisis? Why does this idea seem to recur across different historical periods? What is it that is so seductive about the manosphere? Can its portrayal of women shape the way its audiences understand relationships and gender roles? These and other questions will be under the spotlight in the next edition of No Easy Answers, a monthly discussion group that provides all OCA students with a space to have their say on some of the hot topics and critical issues of the day. We’ll be getting underway at 6pm UK time on Wednesday 20th May.
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