UW-Madison professor Mariel Barnes conducted research into how and why the “manosphere” took political hold, and described her findings and its impacts on politics.
 

Mariel Barnes
Professor, UW-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs

• The “manosphere” is a term for an online movement of men who hold misogynistic views that has entered mainstream politics over the past decade along with President Donald Trump’s campaigns for the White House. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, Barnes and fellow researchers tracked websites where disgruntled men with grievances against women developed and grew through the years as social media and podcasts provided broad platforms for misogyny.
• Barnes: “In our paper, we talk about the “manosphere” as a collection of websites, blogs that look or put forward a particular perspective that advocate hatred for women and advocate anti-feminist ideologies, and advocate against gender equality, and view men as victims in modern day society.”
• These platforms and their growing audience dovetailed with successful political persuasions leading up to Trump’s reelection. Barnes described the mainstreaming of participants in the manosphere.
• Barnes: “They’ve joined the alt right, they’ve joined white supremacist groups, they’ve joined anti-LGBT groups. they’ve joined more populist politics — so what we see under Trump. And so the need for a specific blog that looks at men’s rights is less necessary because it’s now been incorporated into this bigger phenomenon and this bigger movement.”

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