Mariel Barnes on the 'Manosphere' and American Politics

Frederica Freyberg:
The first thing I wanted to ask is, what is the “manosphere”?

Mariel Barnes:
Great question. So, in our paper, we talk about the “manosphere” as a collection of kind 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, which is really the key belief that holds the manosphere together. So they often refer to this idea that they live under the “gynocracy,” which is, yeah, this belief that men are subjugated in modern society. And so it’s a group of men often online who are, yeah, promoting these kinds of views.

Frederica Freyberg:
In your research into this, you actually read the online messaging of these people?

Mariel Barnes:
Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:
And how did you go about that?

Mariel Barnes:
So we started with the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have a list of websites that they classified as anti-feminist manosphere websites. And so we went through, and we read all of these websites, and then each of these websites often has, like, recommendations for other people that, you know, their readers should read. And so we went through those websites as well, and kind of read all of those websites, and collected over a hundred different websites that could be classified as being in the manosphere. And so we have data for all of those websites for every year that they were in existence. Some of those websites have disappeared from the internet. And so what we did is we used the Wayback Machine, which has often captured them, to then go through and read what they were saying during the years that they’re not online anymore.

Frederica Freyberg:
Given that you had that Wayback Machine and you’ve been looking at it over time, how has the manosphere changed?

Mariel Barnes:
Good question. So we see the manosphere really not being a thing until about 2008, 2009. So before then, you’d really had a couple of websites, couple of people who were involved in it. A lot of time they were really involved in, like, father’s rights and custody issues. There was some allegations about, like, reverse discrimination and court cases around reverse discrimination, but there wasn’t a lot. And then you get to 2008 and all of a sudden you see this uptick in the number of websites and the number of blogs growing. that kind of peaks out in about 2012, 2014, and then it kind of slides down again. And so you see kind of this huge growth, first of all, which is important because it’s becoming popular. That’s what it tells us. The other way I think it’s changed over time is just the sheer number of people who are reading these blogs. So, the growth of the internet and the growth of high-speed internet, the growth of personal blogging, allowed these people to reach a wider audience. It allowed people to find, it allowed men to find other men who shared their perspectives, and so they could all talk together and network together, which before the internet you really didn’t have. And so you see this growth of websites, but you also see this kind of growth in the network and connection between different people at the same time. And so hat’s how I would say it’s changed.

Frederica Freyberg:
If it receded in 2012, is it on the incline again?

Mariel Barnes:
I suspect, and I can’t prove this with the data that we have, is actually what is happening is because we see this decline, these people are moving into kind of the mainstream, and they’re moving into potentially other hateful ideologies. So they’ve started off with the manosphere, and they’ve started off with hating women, and they’ve started off being anti-gender equality. And what they have then become is 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet those feelings presumably persist?

Mariel Barnes:
Yes, absolutely. I think we can see that right now with what is happening under the Trump administration, is you’re seeing a huge backlash against women in particular, against women’s rights. And so I think you do see that coming out in modern politics.

Frederica Freyberg:
So having gone through all of this material, how troubling was that for you and the other researchers?

Mariel Barnes:
Personally, not terrible. Reading a lot of it a lot of it is kind of ridiculous. Like, I don’t think we live under a gynocracy, right? For me, we quite clearly live under a patriarchy. Women still have issues that they’re not equal on, and we still need to address them. So for me, I am quite good at compartmentalizing the stuff that I’m reading from kind of my personal life. I did have a team of RAs that were working with me at the time, and we had to make sure that they were OK. That involved making sure we were having weekly check-ins with everyone, making sure they knew they had campus resources and mental health resources. And a lot of the RAs that I worked with, they also found it kind of ridiculous what they were reading.

Frederica Freyberg:
So did either the researchers or the public who has accessed the research find this surprising?

Mariel Barnes:
Ooh, I don’t think anyone was surprised by the research, and in publishing the work, I’ve never had someone say to me like, “Oh, I was really surprised that this existed.” I think that’s because a lot of the people just realize that misogyny and patriarchy still exist in society, and I think that this phenomenon does bubble underneath the surface, and at points we see it coming out. So, like the backlash to the Me Too movement or calling things like “locker room talk,” right? Misogyny exists, and so no one’s ever expressed surprise to me that the manosphere is a thing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is this mostly inhabited by white men?

Mariel Barnes:
Difficult to tell. So, a lot of people who are in the manosphere are anonymous or they’re using pseudonyms, so they’re too cowardly to put their own name on what they’re claiming. Because they’re anonymous, we don’t really know who they are. I suspect they’re primarily white. But then you do get other like variations within that and other ethnicities, other races, a wide range of age groups as well. That’s important to point out. It’s, yeah, hard to tell like who the people are though.

Frederica Freyberg:
How does the manosphere intersect with violence?

Mariel Barnes:
Good question. A couple of ways. So in our work, in our research, what we see is that the more isolated these groups are, we hypothesize the more likely they are to engage in very public acts of violence against people. One of the most isolated groups, both from women and from other men themselves, are incel groups. And that’s why we see a lot of mass shootings and massacres emerging from the those groups. So, there’s been a number of mass shooters who write manifestos or directly attribute their actions to being in these kinds of communities so this is the Isla Vista shooting, this is the Toronto van massacre, this is the Polytechnique massacre that happened in 1989, that were directly targeting or they said they were directly targeting women. But then there’s other kinds of violence that emerge. So that’s the very public version. Then you have groups like pickup artists which want to sleep with as many women as possible, and they have a whole range of techniques for doing that and picking up women. But we hypothesize that because they need to interact with women in that way, they’re actually more inclined to commit private violence and sexual assault and rape against women. And then men’s rights activists have been very prominent in like harassment campaigns against women. There used to be a website called Register Her where they were doxing women who they claimed had made false rape allegations, or at one stage they put out bounties for pictures of prominent feminists. And so it really runs the gamut of everything from like from harassment to a violent-like massacre.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do we have any idea the percentage of the population who holds these beliefs and grudges?

Mariel Barnes:
Not really, no, which is kind of scary, right? It used to be this fringe movement. And since it’s now seemingly moved into the mainstream, yeah, it’s very difficult to tell like, who holds these beliefs, how many people are there? I couldn’t honestly put a number on it.

Frederica Freyberg:
How does the manosphere then intersect with politics?

Mariel Barnes:
In a couple of ways. So, I think that violence against women and like any kind of violence against women is a public act is political, right? It’s like this act against gender equality, it’s this act against women. And, you know, it’s just like gender equality is a political position being anti-gender equality and anti-women is also a political position. I think then it also manifests in other ways in politics. I think voting, if you’re part of the manosphere, you’re more likely probably to vote for Donald Trump, right? And you’re more likely to participate in the alt-right movement. You’re more likely probably to participate in more, yeah, populist movements as well. And it can be a mobilizing force, right? Like, all of a sudden you have a presidential candidate or a president who represents the values that you like, and so that can be a mobilizing force to get people to come out and vote.

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s also kind of freeing for the people who have these beliefs.

Mariel Barnes:
Yeah, so yeah, when you have prominent people saying the things that you think, what that leads to, I think, is you’re more likely to say those things. I know that Reddit used to have a website called the Red Pill or a subreddit called the Red Pill. And it was started by, I think it was a New Hampshire state representative. And so if he holds those views in private so much so that he goes and he starts a subreddit about hating women, what does that mean when he is representing the people in his formal capacity? Surely there is some bleed over there.

Frederica Freyberg:
How enraged should we be?

Mariel Barnes:
Quite enraged I would say, or at least I am very enraged. The idea that women are subjugating men in modern society I think is ridiculous. It’s quite clear that women still face a number of huge issues. So there’s still the gender pay gap, there’s still worsening mortality rates, particularly in the U.S., and particularly for Black women in this country. Women’s labor participation is down. Women took on the burden of unpaid labor during the COVID pandemic and looking after children. And so these are issues that are still confronting women. To say that women are the people who are damaging society when there’s quite clearly extreme or still significant discrimination against them is absolutely enraging for me.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is it about women that these people hate so much?

Mariel Barnes:
Hard to say.

Frederica Freyberg:
You’ve read a lot of their words.

Mariel Barnes:
I’ve read a lot about them. I want to say everything, but I guess a lot of these men really want unrestricted sexual access to women, and they don’t like it when they don’t have that when women are human beings and have agency and can say no, and that is what I think they dislike a lot of the time. That, and then there’s this weird resentment, like these men often think they have to support women. So, you see a lot of pushback about paying alimony after divorce, or once you get married you are totally locked in and you’re not a real man anymore. And so they hate, I think, also that, you know, being married to a woman or being in a relationship requires some emotional commitment on their part. They want total freedom for themselves and yet they want this access to women on their terms and when they say it.

Frederica Freyberg:
This just popped into my head, but do you think this kind of encouragement on the part of some political leaders for women to have more babies is any part of this?

Mariel Barnes:
Yes and no. So I think the manosphere likes it when women are subjugated and are in traditional gender roles. Part of that would be having children and having a lot of children. At the same time, these men don’t want to take responsibility for those children a lot of the time, right? Like, they don’t want to pay child support, they don’t want to look after those kids. And so in some ways, yes, that natalist view of the world is a manosphere view, but in some other ways it’s not. The manosphere is very divided over abortion actually. So, they don’t like abortion and they don’t like women having abortions, but at the same time they don’t want men to be locked into having a child if that man doesn’t want to. So for them abortion is the way out of that. And so how do you balance that, right? On one hand, you don’t want to have kids, but on the other hand you want to restrict women’s rights. And so, yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic.

Frederica Freyberg:
So if sexist views of these sort have become mainstream as you’ve suggested, what are the implications for society?

Mariel Barnes:
I think they’re bad really bad. The backlash that’s occurring against women right now I think is going to get worse. Women’s rights are being eroded, not only the United States, but also in various places across the world. And women, I think, are becoming oftentimes less equal than they were 20 years ago, right? Like, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe meant that a lot of women in this country now are subject to incredibly restrictive abortion laws in certain states, including at one stage Wisconsin before it was overturned here. If you’re a human, you should have agency over your body. And if we don’t allow for that, it’s incredibly disheartening. Women are dying across the country because of this issue, and I think that’s going to get worse as these views continue and as misogyny kind of proliferates throughout society.

Frederica Freyberg:
Having done this research, what would you like to see come of it?

Mariel Barnes:
I think I would like more people to know about the manosphere, and that this is a insidious movement that has suddenly taken on kind of a life of its own and has become mainstream. I think for a long time it was ignored by a lot of parts of society, and that was has not helped us. I don’t think we can ignore extreme views I think we need to confront them. I think when they move into the mainstream we need to acknowledge where they have come from. So a lot of the thing I have a lot of, I struggle a lot with people like Joe Rogan, right? Because I think that he has, and other people like him, have sanewashed these more extreme views so they become more palatable to a wider audience. And a wider audience thinks, “Oh, that’s not unreasonable.” And yet at its heart, like the very heart of the issue is unreasonable and it is anti-women and it is anti-gender equality, and it’s just not recognized as such. So paying attention I think to the movements like the manosphere that are extreme is important. And I hope that’s kind of what my work draws attention to.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right, Professor Barnes, thanks very much.

Mariel Barnes:
You’re welcome. Anytime.