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Jamie Loftus
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Becca Lewis
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Jamie Loftus
So make me a start. Take it too far.
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Becca Lewis
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- [03:20]
Jamie Loftus
16 minutes welcome to 16th Minute, the podcast where for most episodes we talk to a main character of the Internet and talk to them about how their moment affected them and what it says about us and the Internet. I am your host Jamie Loftus, and feminism is a part of my whole thing, like it or not. Which is why for the next three weeks we are going to be taking a look at one of the greatest churners of main characters in the Internet's history. Bear with me. The Manosphere I know, and I'm not sure what troubles me more, the fact that some people listening, like me, have known this term for years, or that people remain blissfully unaware have to know what it is now. The manosphere, in short, is a loosely connected media environment that consists of podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok accounts, and a shitload of intersection therein that promote, at bare minimum, misogynistic but often transphobic, homophobic and racist ideals as well. It's white supremacy leading with misogyny, but it's not that simple. Many of the shows and personalities we'll be talking about in this series began that way, and others became that way. And even so, this is to varying degrees. There are, believe it or not, podcasts very successfully marketed to young men that will casually drop that women shouldn't be able to vote. This is a tweet from the Fresh and Fit podcast. A woman's vote should be 50% of a man's vote. Women aren't in selective service and don't work in infrastructure by choice, so they shouldn't have as much of a say in the elective process. Sure thing, fellas. They are should not. But then there's personalities that have been getting a lot of airtime since the election, like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn, who weren't necessarily always so outwardly open to promote a fascist that they would be considered a part of the manosphere. But they are very open to platforming any number of misogynist, white supremacist, boldly fascistic people on their platforms Joe Rogan, as many have pointed out, hosted and endorsed my boy Bernard Sanders back in 2020. But just a few weeks ago he was shouted out by the founder of UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White during a Trump acceptance speech.
- [06:11]
Becca Lewis
I want to thank some people real quick.
- [06:12]
Jamie Loftus
I want to thank the Nelp boys.
- [06:14]
Becca Lewis
Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, busting with the.
- [06:18]
Jamie Loftus
Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan. So everyone Dana White is mentioning here are manosphere influencers who hosted Trump or explicitly endorsed him in the weeks leading up to the election. And they are all very successful among young men and have garnered millions upon millions of impressions on Trump's behalf in the weeks leading up to the election. It's not the reason he won. I really don't believe that, and I think to say that is to miss the forest for the trees, but it certainly seems to have helped. Podcasts are a very parasocial medium where it's easy to sell people ideology over time. After establishing a trusted relationship with your listeners, please buy my book, Raw Dog. The conversation here is not a simple one, and I am probably not going to get everything right, because this requires taking a look at the history of American misogynist spaces. And while women and trans folks have never reached parity, this is sliding backwards significantly, even in the last few years. In the month since the 2024 election, young women on college campuses are already reporting higher rates of emboldened comments from men their age, inspired by comments like Nick Fuentes, your body, My choice. In the same token, I don't want to participate in a moral panic by implying that all young men are under this umbrella. That's not true. But the fact that young men are feeling more comfortable and are being more actively encouraged to be openly misogynistic is pretty undeniable. But recently I have seen overwhelmingly unproductive conversations that scapegoat this space as the problem and not what it is, in my opinion, which is a symptom of a larger issue. So in our first installment, I'm going to give you a short overview of what we're even talking about when we say manosphere, mainly because my mom listens to this show when she drives to work, and I'm aiming to have her and you have a better understanding of it. It's vast, it's hard to categorize, it's overrun with deflective, ironic humor that distances the salesman of this ideology from what they're actually saying. And today I'll tell you a little about it and speak to a journalist who's been studying it much longer than I have. But before we start, I want to share where I am feeling at the top of this series, because I think that a lot of what is lacking from what I've seen in these conversations, mostly those led by men, is a lack of personal experience. And I'll cite my sources here. I get why the manosphere is a simple target here, but I want to start by saying that understanding and, if possible, working to dismantle this space would not solve the larger issue. It's not a bad instinct, and I don't want anyone to feel silly because I get why the question is asked. But if there's anything I've learned from having participated in and carefully observed the last decade of feminist action, identifying the problem and pushing people out of our spaces is a step in a much larger, larger, more complicated process. If you want to get to the meat of this episode, skip ahead about 10 minutes, but I want to start by kind of couching how I'm going to approach this topic using my own experience first. So if you'd like to stay, be warned that I will briefly be discussing sexual abuse here. 32 Ian, play a little fart noise. 1. Great, we're post fart. It's the trigger zone as it pertains to the manosphere. The more I dug into this world and its increasing influence, the more I genuinely fear that on top of the policies that this space encourages rolling back already insufficient and hateful policies towards trans people, Roe being gone. The list goes on. I worry about how these conversations are still centering on men. So the first thing is I worry about the targets of these men once again not being asked to interrogate the way that they're perceived and treated, because that was my experience. I was in college in the early 2010s when I was repeatedly sexually assaulted, and while that was a million years ago in Internet terms, it is quite historically recent. And I do think that with the sheer density of the last decade and the discombobulation of COVID lockdown era, a lot of us sometimes fail to see how much has changed in Western culture in the last decade. Which is why it sometimes confuses people when I tell them that when a partner repeatedly assaulted me just a little over a decade ago, I didn't have the tools to understand what was happening and internalized all of it as my fault. Tale as old as time and the reasons why are more complicated than I realized at the time. Keeping it simple the city I grew up in did not have a lot of sex Education? Basically none. In my case it wasn't because the state I lived in was draconian about abstinence only education. I'm from a firmly blue state, but rather because where I'm from was lower middle class to poor and was generally underfunded whose status as a majority non white city in the great state of Mack Walberg often led to our schools getting fucked over big time. When I got to my fancy little arts college, I knew very little about sex and specifically consent, really, just my own experience and what I'd learned from watching TV and movies. I'd been with my high school boyfriend for years who was very respectful and loving. And partway through college I joined a comedy group. I had pretty intense social anxiety then and now and didn't want to go to the like welcome party for the group when I got in, but a guy in the group told me that I had to in order to join, so I went. I was one of three girls in a group of around 12. I didn't make my drinks that whole night. And then hours later I woke up on a couch being assaulted by whoever was behind me. I didn't even know who. I was scared. I had just woken up and I just let it happen. Because once I realized I was being violated, my first thought was how could I let this happen? And as it was happening, I tried to focus and think of one of four men that it could have been behind me and what to do when I turned around and saw who it was. And I clearly remember thinking, who would I be least upset to learn was doing this to me? And I feel comfortable sharing that I have a therapist. The point is, this was 2012 and I did not know that this was assault. I spent that whole weekend placating my assaulter once I learned who it was, thinking I was this horrible slut who had cheated on my high school boyfriend. And I ended the relationship of over three years out of shame. And to his credit, he was the only person in my life to tell me that he didn't think that I had done anything wrong. But I was so convinced that I had, I had no anecdotal proof that I hadn't, including conversations with friends and family. So when my assaulter got in touch and asked if I wanted to start dating him, I thought I had to because I had made this horrific transgression and I had to make it right. And I was afraid that if I didn't agree to date him, I would be sort of ostracized within this comedy group. Something I had worked to be a part of for years and I really didn't want to lose that. So hopefully this dynamic sounds fucking nuts now, but I want to repeat at this time I had a support system. I had peers and adults I could and did go to about this issue, most of whom were other women. And what was scary was that most of them, particularly older figures at the school and in my family, also did not understand that this was assault and that I hadn't done anything wrong. And to this day, I don't know to what degree my assaulter had been educated or conditioned to blow past a no. Whether it was a case of he knew better and didn't care or. Or that he was operating on what he had seen and observed in media, I might never know. So again, this is in the 2010s, and I would end up in this relationship that had begun with sexual assault for about three years. You will probably not be surprised to hear this was not the last assault that took place and that the instance of assault that finally made me realize what was happening would come months later and was far more straightforward. I said no, and it happened anyways. And while it took a long time to extract myself from this relationship fully, hopefully, you know, it often takes people in abusive relationships a lot of time to leave for all these different reasons. I can tell you the exact moment I began to realize that what was happening to me wasn't right. This was within a few months of my first assault when a fellow student at my college began to speak out against the school's failure to address her own campus assault. The mid 2010s had become this inflection point for discussing the widespread rape culture on college campuses. Big examples were. A Yale fraternity that both George Bush's had previously been members of was suspended for five years because of the rampant allegations of rape. And the Brock Turner case caused a lot of debate and clarification that campus rape was not less of an offense than any other. And even today it still feels a little embarrassing to admit. But it wasn't until I read stories and accounts that were similar to mine that it was a wake up call that this had happened to me too. I didn't think of myself as someone who had experienced assault because I hadn't seen anything that had happened to me characterized as that My understanding of rape was that it couldn't happen by someone you knew and that it couldn't happen while you were drunk. I really just did not know. And not to be callous, but I couldn't have Been assaulted at a more annoying time. I think 2013 was a year that people were really waking up to this issue, specifically with college students. And, you know, if this guy had waited another year to do one of the worst things that's ever happened to me, I think that the conversation and my experience experience might be a little different. But he didn't. So it wasn't. I went to a school counselor at Emerson College, and they said, sorry, if it happened off campus, they can't help me. And besides, I had been drinking at this party. I went to people in our comedy group, people my age, and everyone, including other young women, nodded and said they were sorry. But either no one believed me or no one knew what to do. And so by the end of that year, I wasn't just feeling out of my fucking mind and self harming, but I felt like, oh, I guess I was wrong and I need to stay with this person and make things okay. This is just my experience. But, like, being assaulted was horrible, but being surrounded by people I trusted who felt the same way my assaulter did was more painful than anything. In retrospect, I don't really know who in my life felt that this was a problem that was worth taking seriously. And while I held anger about it, particularly towards other women, for a long time, I don't know that any of them knew any more than I did about consent or assault or what we should expect in terms of autonomy and respect. And if I hadn't encountered stories like that other student on my campus and later seeing Emma Sulkowitz Mattress performance in 2014 where they carried the mattress they'd been assaulted on to protest Columbia University's unwillingness to address the assault. I genuinely don't know how long it would have taken me to understand that I wasn't crazy and that what happened wasn't okay. But again, I was coming from a pretty privileged place and I still had no information. And the less information you have, the more danger there is in a culture where discussion around rape culture and gender discrimination and subjugating other people's bodies is run by men. I say all this because while I think centering the manosphere as the problem is a mistake, I know that it is a problem. My big fear here is that while the progress feminists have made in the last decade is characteristically flawed in intersectionality, as it always is, that there could be a teenager right now or in the near future who does not have the information to understand that they have been violated and will internalize it as a personal failure. I worry about seeing the progress I have seen be replaced with manosphere grifters who will always get algorithmic preference and be far better funded than their opposition. As things are now, it feels like 2013 all over again, but worse. Because back then my assaulter could at least claim to not understand how consent worked and never be educated on it. But now there's people saying, your body, my choice. They understand consent, they just don't care about it. And I want to do everything in my power to prevent anyone from from going through what I did. Or even less, what the manosphere in its current state is is a lot of highly monetized, regressive rhetoric that is aiming for young people specifically. I believe that then and now it's the people who have suffered tremendously under patriarchy and white supremacy who are always asked to do the most difficult work, even in deradicalizing and preventing its spread. There's many other reasons I want to discuss the manosphere, but I share this example to make two points. First and foremost, that what happened to me was a pretty decisive systemic failure. Neither me nor most of my support system were equipped with information, and every institution from the college to the Boston fucking Police did nothing. However, the manosphere does come in here and amplified the problem, because in the middle of this relationship came Gamergate, a targeted harassment campaign of women in gaming that the men I was surrounded by, including my assaulter, were decidedly on the wrong side of and came up a lot. The way that the manosphere affects people and exacerbates existing problems has only gotten worse in the last decade, and I do feel a certain amount of responsibility to try and have a coherent conversation about it. Because to get back to the point of this show, boy, has this space generated a lot of main character misogynists. And here we are in a space where our technology increasingly makes it difficult not just to understand where the people who hate us are coming from, but what they're even fucking seeing. So if you're in a similar headspace right now and not sure how to have these conversations, or if you're shaking out of a manosphere fog, that's where I am coming from. That is why I would like to interrogate and understand these spaces. I do believe that it's important to understand a space in order to protect yourself from it. Okay, so to my listeners who are not men, I can only speak for myself, but I have found it unbelievably frustrating to hear centrist men behind laptops pontificating about actually, we had a Joe Rogan on the left. It was Joe Rogan and then call it a day, right? It's so obnoxious. And the churn of like I get it. Content just feels like clocking in. My feeling is that men will encourage the targets of this abuse to show these young men bending towards fascism, empathy and grace in order to deradicalize them. And while I do think that would help, it makes me fucking furious. So let's get into how and why the manosphere exists as it does. A little history lesson when we come back. Looking for excitement. Chumba Casino is here. Play anytime.
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Jamie Loftus
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The manosphere as we know it today which ranges from the podcast that Dana White shouted out the night of the election, all the way up to really extremist content that says women belong in the home and should no longer be allowed to vote, can be traced all the way back to the 1970s during the second wave feminist movement in the US I've actually covered this period of history pretty extensively in a past podcast series of mine called Ack Cast, where I took a look at how Kathy Geiswed's Kathy comics commented on second and third wave feminist movements through the lens of a middle class, chocolate loving, working white woman. Second wave feminism ran approximately from the 60s during the civil rights boom until the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan halted all social progress and replaced it with Wham Singles. This period of feminist action was very flawed, but did accomplish quite a bit. While first wave feminism's big win was suffrage, second wave feminism focused on reproductive rights and equity in the workplace. A time that encouraged women to push back on the domestic goddess image of the post war era and to begin their own careers. The Equal Pay act was introduced in 1963. Roe v. Wade was passed in 1972, giving anyone with a uterus the right to a safe abortion. Rape crisis centers were opened. The Feminine Mystique was published. I am aware it is flawed. And a number of specific organizations pushed back on specific issues. The National Organization for Women and ERA America focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment, which we were never able to do by the way. And the National Women's Political Caucus, whose ranks included Shirley Chisholm, focused on getting pro women candidates in office across political parties. And wouldn't you know it, there were a number of men marching alongside second wave feminists for men's rights. Stay with me. This was actually a pretty good thing. At the time. The original men's liberation movement was not a crusade against women, but rather a challenge of what the expectations of masculinity under capitalism were. They argued something that is categorically true, that men suffer under patriarchy, and that with the shifting politics of the time, a hyper masculine John Wayne Persona wasn't a realistic expectation of a man, not that it ever was. If women were being confined to the home, they argued, then men were being exiled from the home. And this movement had the same intersectional failings as the feminist movement, but were positioned alongside them, not in opposition to them. As we think of the term men's rights now, something called the California Men's gathering began in 1978 where men could convene and discuss how patriarchy affected them and These continue to this day. And I know it sounds weird, but the men's liberation movement was embraced by feminists of the time. By 1992, there was an entire book on the subject that, while critical, was generally supportive, called Women Respond to the Men's Movement, a feminist collection. It featured a foreword from Gloria Steinem and featured writing from bell hooks and Ursula K. Le Guin. Make no mistake about it, women want a men's movement. We're literally dying for it. If you doubt that, just listen to women's desperate testimonies of hope that the men in our lives will become more nurturing toward children, more about to talk about emotions, less hooked on a spectrum of control that extends from not listening through to violences, and less repressive of their own human qualities that are called feminine and thus suppressed by cultures which men dominate. And if you know anything about what the men's rights movement looks like now, this is obviously not the movement that Steinem is describing here. And that's because by the mid-70s, a schism had formed within this men's movement between pro feminist and anti feminist men. And by the end of the decade, the two were distinctly different groups. And guess which group was better at accruing power and attention. And from here on out, with all due respect, I'm going to leave the pro feminist men in the rear view. Although I love you guys and I would love to cover the California Men's Gathering. Fellas, please hit me up. The anti feminist men's movement built power throughout the 70s into the early 80s, citing texts like the Inevitability of Patriarchy, why the Biological Difference Between Men and Women Always Produces Male Domination by writer Stephen Goldberg. Sounds like a page turner. And while the anti feminist movement was growing, the feminist movement itself was experiencing setbacks. There is a whole terrific book about the pattern of progressive feminist movements being pushed back in the decade for following gains called Backlash, Originally published in 1991 by Susan Faludi, which illustrates how the first, second and third waves of feminism were all followed by legislative and cultural backlash. Sound familiar? Because that's what's happening to fourth wave feminism right now. Throughout the 80s, the anti feminist men's movement was empowered by the notion that the cause of men's oppression was not patriarchy, but feminism. And the answer to their discontent was not redefining what masculinity looked like, but rolling back progress to ostensibly put women back in their places again. Most writing about this defines a woman's place as a middle class, straight white woman's place. But it's important to note that men's rights movements have been popular across racial and economic lines for decades. This mentality was expanded on by characterizing women as entitled, castrating liars, citing figures like Gloria Steinem, Lorena Bobbitt, and Anita Hill as women who wanted nothing more than to destroy and oppress men without any acknowledgment of their oppression. Here we see the start of a repeating pattern. Instead of men's oppression stemming from the same systems that oppress everyone, we actually live in a matriarchy where women seek attention and power by punishing men acting as nature programmed them. What becomes clear in the men's rights space is that there's no way that women can win with their ideology. If women return to the home as suggested, they are freeloaders ripping off their husbands, wasting money, shopping and going out. If women go to work, they're taking jobs from men and are outside of their own lane. It's impossible to be the right kind of woman for a men's rights activist, it appears, without not just being subservient, but to openly and actively agree with these misogynist views. There is no call to action other than to roll back progress. To quote a 2013 dissertation from Bethany Kostin and Michael Kimmel called white men as the new victims. The real trouble is that men's rights guys don't know if they want to be restored patriarchs or liberated men. That is, they don't know if they would prefer to live in 1950 or 2050. As a result, men's rights websites and pamphlets are clogged with howls of anguish, confusion, and pain. And this anguish, confusion, and pain, we believe is is real and well grounded. Real here is not to be confused with true, these men do feel a lot, but their analysis of the cause of those feelings is decidedly off, especially when we see that the howls of pain have been transformed into rage, and the men's rights movement has become a movement of re appropriating power at all costs, no matter who gets in the way. This paper goes on to trace a handful of cases that seek to illustrate that point. How the solution to this is that women are bitches and therefore should not be allowed to divorce me in the first place is anyone's guess. By the time the Internet comes into the picture, though, the men's rights communities went along with it. No coincidence that white collar white men are still most likely to have Internet access. And once men's rights activists hit the Internet, they splinter over time into a number of different factions. These spaces are covered extensively in Laura Bates 2020 book Men who Hate Women, a difficult but worthy read, and she identifies the following groups as prominent and empowered throughout the 2010s, particularly during Trump's first administration. So we're not quite at the heyday of Joe Rogan that is making the rounds in the media outlets right now. This is more of the online forum era. These groups were not small, but they also weren't really talked about in a mainstream way until Closer to the mid 2010s. Incels Involuntary celibates this is a community that believes that women's rights have rendered them virgins, and also a place where pill ideology comes from. Taking the red pill means that seeing feminism has taken everything from you, which either leads to looks maxing, which is a sub community where men try to make themselves look like a chad or traditionally desirable man, or the other direction which is more common is black pilling, which is essentially a death cult that states that women will never like or be attracted to you and therefore your life should be dedicated to bitterness and vengeance. More on them next week. Pickup Artists oh boy. These guys predate the Internet significantly, but we're certainly very empowered by it. The vibe is very m'lady, with an undertone of violence. These are the oft dunked on men in fedoras, sure, but they do more than advise negging women or insulting them to make them feel insecure and more likely to sleep with you, although that's never been my experience. However, on the more extreme end, pickup artists also have a history of explicitly advocating for and perpetuating sexual violence, and are one of the many manosphere groups that are pretty obsessed with how fake they think the rate of sexual assault against women is, framing it more as a way for women to exert power over and punish men with these accusations. With PUAs, no means yes is the norm. Plow through resistance is a common phrase that was used in these forums. And as with most of these groups, the way they talk about women also leans heavily into cruel racial and cultural stereotypes. Their seminal texts include the TV show the Pickup Artist, starring now prolifically accused abuser Mystery and his protege Neil Strauss, who published the very successful book the Game, claiming to be a journalist who had infiltrated the space while he had demonstrably been a part of it for some time. Because all pickup artists are cowards, he backpedaled on this ideology over time after profiting from it to the tune of millions of dollars. The Neil Strauss journey is a deeply frustrating one. I'm talking about starting here. This is a clip where he's attempting to seduce Jessica Alba on Jimmy Kimmel. Let's see the whole. That's awesome.
- [39:45]
Becca Lewis
And the whole thing about this.
- [39:46]
Jamie Loftus
And those are great qualities. The whole thing is guys are always trying to sell themselves to women. They're always trying to say, brag about themselves and say what they do for a living. And instead you kind of got to flip the script, make someone who has absolutely no interest in you start selling themselves to you. And that's like one of the pieces. Wow. But thanks for playing along. Wow. Did you feel like that was effective? In a way, I felt like that's just what intelligent people that I don't know that talk to me do. They don't care so much about the physical and they do actually look for more than that. And so when they tell you to hear Just a few years later, Howard from the Big Bang Theory may have learned a few tricks from author Neil Strauss. He taught what he calls average frustrated chumps to manipulate the women they want. In his controversial bestseller the Game, Strauss infiltrated a group of pickup artists, revealing the secrets of seduction. One technique is called negging. He writes, quote, the purpose of a neg is to lower a woman's self esteem while actively displaying a lack of interest in her by telling her she has lipstick on her teeth, for example, or offering her a piece of gum after she speaks. Ten years later, Strauss is out with the Truth, an uncomfortable book about relationships he opens up about cheating, monogamy, and how he changed. Good morning, Neil Strauss. Thank you. Speaking of uncomfortable, after that introduction, there's nothing I can do. But you've done basically a complete reversal in this book.
- [41:10]
Becca Lewis
Yes.
- [41:10]
Jamie Loftus
And the Game.
- [41:12]
Becca Lewis
I was reporting on a culture that.
- [41:13]
Jamie Loftus
Was there, not kind of coining these techniques that already existed and that kind of popularized ideas. Though it's kind of sad that your.
- [41:19]
Becca Lewis
Contribution to the culture is people wearing ridiculous clothes.
- [41:22]
Jamie Loftus
So you've had a change of heart? I'm bigger than that. A complete transformation. Yeah. As to kind of who I was and what I thought was important. And the pickup artists, they pretend this didn't happen or that Strauss was corrupted by women. Then there's men going their own way or mgtow. These guys are qualified by the Southern Poverty Law center as a male supremacist hate group who frequently align with racist and homophobic alt right sentiments and ultimately want men to separate themselves from society and women altogether. MGTOW also subscribes to their own pill ideology, ranging from rejecting long term relationships with women to Dropping out of society altogether. At their most extreme, their community is driven by a fear of women, often being convinced that women are hoping and trying to accuse you of rape in order to ruin your life. This group actually can be traced back to the 80s, with their predecessors primarily identifying as the deep masculine movement. Sounds pretty straight to me. And finally, there's MRAs, Men's Rights Advocates. And in the ultimate example of taking a real life problem that deserves examination and turning it into a campaign against women, there is a faction of men's rights activists that call themselves father's rights activists. Another community that predates the Internet that calls attention to the systemic tendency to give mothers custody of children over fathers, regardless of if it's in the children's best interest, which is a valid concern. But this group believes this can only be addressed by removing the rights of mothers, and that these tendencies are proof positive that we live in a matriarchy. And MRAs have generally had the best luck breaking through to the mainstream because of their ostensibly more political mission. But make no mistake, the underlying beliefs are the same. Be serious. And there are more sub communities where that came from. As the space continued to grow online, we get a whole crop of media influencers either appearing organically or pivoting from other areas like academia and right wing radio to create sub communities like Sigmas. And we'll be talking about them in the next episode. But as far as the first run of online misogynists, these were your guys. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Julian Blanc, who gave way to today's Andrew Tate's and the Fresh and fit podcast hosts. The tricky thing here is that within these communities there isn't much unity, in spite of the fact that they have a common interest in taking women down a peg. Pickup artists aim to have transactional sex with women and find incels pathetic black pilled guys resent hypersexual men and look smackers, particularly if they have had sex with women before. Now, I'm not encouraging these communities to unionize, I fear the power they could accrue. But as a passive observer, it's pretty fucking ridiculous to watch all these men who agree on one scary thing continue to bully each other in order to define a sense of community. And for a long time these communities were considered to be niche. Until they weren't. I and a lot of people first became aware of this space around 2014. This is around the time of my personal ordeal, the stretch of years that brought in an intense culture war over campus assault, the Brock Turner case, the Emma Sulkowitz performance and on and on. The first reason for this, as I mentioned earlier, was Gamergate, the biggest public feminist backlash in years which grew to a year long fear mongering and harassment campaign that targeted women in the gaming community of how women were presented in games, which was and is a very male dominated space. The primary targets of this hate were women who develop video games or prominent feminist media critic and past guest of my other show the Bechtelcast. That same creator who my college boyfriend so despised, Anita Sarkeesian. During these campaigns Anonymous users organized on right wing sites like 4chan and Reddit before these spaces were more carefully regulated. The second example that empowered and made these communities more well known was the mass murder at isla Vista by 22 year old Elliot Roger in 2014. You probably know this story, at least in the abstract. Roger murdered six people and injured 14, including two young women at a sorority house. But as Laura Bates points out in Men who Hate Women, while Roger's crime was widely reported, it mainly accomplished starting yet another mental illness discourse, largely ignoring the misogynist manifesto that Roger left behind, leaving it as a footnote. The media didn't seem to know what to do with it and certainly didn't seem to understand who he had left this manifesto behind for. Roger was an active member of incel groups. He'd left it behind for incels what Roger's manifesto, which would be cited by many other mass shooters in the years to come, should have been treated as was a harbinger that misogynist online spaces had become quite literally lethal. But if you recall, this time, that conversation didn't really happen in spite of a trending Twitter hashtag yesallwomen and a few articles. We are socially trained and the media reflects more empathy for white and white passing men. And so the conversation shifted to this young man needed mental health care as opposed to focusing on why he had committed the crime in the first place. Again, we are always centering white men in these conversations, bringing my blood pressure down. Laura Bates tracks Roger's legacy carefully in her book, noting that at every turn mainstream media outlets would mention the misogynist screed that Roger had left behind, but never went so far as to prescribe it as a problem that extended beyond one mentally ill young man. It was treated as an isolated incident, a bad apple, certainly not the kind of thing that would inspire future crimes. As we now know, this was not true and was a call to action for many, while not acknowledged in most media outlets. To take a closer look at what spaces Roger's violent, hateful beliefs had calcified inside of and all this happened over 10 years ago. Now, there's a lot to talk about in terms of how this space has developed in the last decade. First, I wanted to talk to a woman. Please let me talk to a woman. When we come back, I speak with an expert on the ever expanding manosphere, researcher Becca Lewis. The following ad is sponsored by Pets Best Insurance Services. Your pet is your bestie, your therapist your preferred match. It's easy to love them even when they sneak your snacks. It's easy to protect them too, with pet insurance coverage from Pets Best because it's all fun and games until they chew on something they shouldn't. 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And restrictions may apply. Foreign welcome back to 16th minute. My blood pressure is skyrocketing and my first interview in this series comes to me by way of fellow Cool Zone media host Molly Conger of Weird Little Guys. Becca Lewis is a Stanford postdoc who researches the politics of Silicon Valley and the tech world, and she's been looking at the development of the manosphere for nearly a decade. So as a point of entry, I think it's important to not just hear an expert on the subject, but, you know, not a guy. Here's our talk.
- [53:29]
Becca Lewis
I'm Becca Lewis. I'm an academic researcher at Stanford University and I study far right movements and how they use digital media.
- [53:39]
Jamie Loftus
You'll never be out of a job again. I don't think the goal is to.
- [53:44]
Becca Lewis
Eventually make the job irrelevant, but unfortunately.
- [53:47]
Jamie Loftus
That seems far away. We're recording this three days after the election, and it's unavoidable on in any, any Internet space right now to see the manosphere brought up by people I would not even have guessed would know what this is in this moment. Because you're an expert. Does it feel cogent the way people are talking about it? Does it feel like the threat is being under or overstated?
- [54:13]
Becca Lewis
Yeah, it's a little bit surreal and in some ways it's reminding me of the follow up to the 2016 election where, you know, people are searching for answers. And at the time in 2016, the, the first answer that came up was fake news. And that was a really big thing. And that kind of spawned a whole, like, subfield of journalism and academics and everything around disinformation and fake news and all of that. And now, you know, it seems clear that the manosphere and podcasts in particular are going to be one of the big areas of focus. And I think that, you know, as with fake news, there's some truth to it, there's some oversimplification, and I think there's a lot of, like, decontextualization because the manosphere has been around, podcasts have been around. And so, you know, why is our attention turning to it now? I think is. Is worth exploring. And also, like, what we think of as the manosphere has changed too. I think that people are pointing to this series of podcasts that Donald Trump went on in recent weeks. But that's actually kind of different than what the manosphere has been over the years. So there's a lot of searching for explanations and maybe not quite understanding the dynamics behind it yet.
- [55:31]
Jamie Loftus
Something that I've seen a wide berth of opinions on. So I want to know what you think. Where does the story of the manosphere start?
- [55:39]
Becca Lewis
In my opinion, it did start in the 70s as a direct. Maybe not the manosphere, but the men's rights movement as a reaction against feminism certainly started in the 70s.
- [55:52]
Jamie Loftus
How did you fall into this line of work? It's very specific and very important.
- [55:56]
Becca Lewis
I actually was one of the people that got drawn into it following the 2016 election. But I've been researching the Internet and politics for a long time and have always been interested in digital media and the political impacts of digital media. And then after the 2016 election, I joined a think tank called Data and Society that was specifically bringing together this project to look at media manipulation, they called it. So the ways that the alt right at the time and the manosphere and other groups were becoming really effective at manipulating mainstream media outlets into accidentally publishing disinformation or amplifying some of their talking points without even realizing it. You know, someone like Richard Spencer was so good for a while at, like, getting people to give him softball interviews. So we were looking at all of that, and then it kind of lit a fire, you know, in me, and I haven't looked back. I have an academic mentor who says people are either drawn to their research subjects out of an abiding love or an abiding hate. And I learned that I'm a hater.
- [57:04]
Jamie Loftus
I guess you are academically a hater. And when you started doing this research towards the beginning of the first Trump presidency into now, what are some of the bigger changes you've seen in this space in the last eight years?
- [57:19]
Becca Lewis
It was already there to an extent. But I think we have seen, like, any illusions that this is somehow a fringe phenomenon have kind of fully broken down. If you look at the top 10 podcasters, solid third to a half of them are people that, you know, could reasonably be understood as somehow being in the manosphere or somehow devoting a lot of their energies to countering what they see as the ills of. Of feminism and social justice. You know, that was the case to a certain extent, even when I started looking at this. I mean, in the late 2010s, PewDiePie was like, the biggest YouTuber, and there were all of these things about, I mean, particularly with race and antisemitism, but with gender, too. I don't want to suggest, like, it was completely fringe before, but I think as you've had kind of, like the influencer ification of everything that you. You really have had this particular style of misogyny and anti feminism just become ubiquitous. I've been thinking a lot about Gamergate because it was 10 years ago this August, I think, is when it started. It was, I think, like, such a breakthrough moment when online misogyny did kind of, you know, spill through into. Into YouTube, into all of these different spaces, and gained legitimacy and popularity and visibility in ways it didn't have before. You know, it's very strange to me that for. For the longest time when I would talk to like very online young people, Gamergate would be like the reference point. And now when I bring it up to my students, they've never heard, say.
- [58:57]
Jamie Loftus
Which is like ancient history. Yeah. What are the patterns of how young people and specifically young men are kind of drawn into this space and have those tactics changed at all over time?
- [59:10]
Becca Lewis
Yes and no. I mean, if we think back to like the general contours of Gamergate, it was a lot of video game players who started to feel like this was first of all that this was their outlet of like space where they didn't have to think about politics or, you know, from them. It seemed free from politics. And then also it was a lot of men or, you know, teenage boys who didn't feel like they fit into normative, like concepts of masculinity. They weren't the alpha men. And so they already had this sense of like aggrievement that, that they weren't getting like the respect around masculinity that maybe they deserved. And so then to have these feminist commentators come in and start to critique the politics, the gender politics of their video games, that kind of set off this fuse. And I think you still see that being this fuse so much that, you know, they, there is this sense, you know, whether it's by not being a brawny guy or for any number of reasons, guys who feel aggrieved for some reason, or it can be a genuine reason, it could be that, you know, they're struggling financially or any of these other things. But it's really easy then to point the finger at feminists as here's why you are facing these problems and you know, here's a explanation for what you're experiencing. And then in terms of the tactics, I mean, a lot of it is just like good old fashioned social networking that, you know, Gamergate started as this gamer driven thing, but then you had these men's rights activists who were ideologues. They were explicitly in communities devoted to countering feminism and trying to change legal structures and stuff. And they swept in and saw this as an opportunity to spread their ideas. And so they began doing social networking with gamers. And so you had these kind of loose alliances getting formed. And you still see a lot of that too. At the same time, a lot of the format has changed. You know, now we're in like much more algorithmic driven systems and you know, the platforms have changed and some of the issues have changed, but some of those core things have stayed the same.
- [61:32]
Jamie Loftus
Has this Space grown. Can you sort of take me through this? Going from 10 years ago as a fringe thing into now. You know, you have five podcasters shouted out during a presidential victory speech, like, take right there.
- [61:49]
Becca Lewis
Yeah, there's a few different things. You know, when you had these groups form, they. They were pretty fringe. You know, they started to build up some political capital, but for the most part, they were pretty fringe. And they went online and they would operate in forums, but they would kind of stay in their own space. As you have more and more Systems, you know, YouTube, Reddit, different platforms that are specifically designed to bring people together, you start to have these groups getting access to and networking with other people. So that's what you had with Gamergate, right? Is you saw. They saw this kind of, like, misogynist, like, Bark of a Fire, and they leapt in and started building these alliances. So that's a piece of it. You also have all throughout all of this, the collapse of traditional news and information sources.
- [62:47]
Jamie Loftus
Yes.
- [62:48]
Becca Lewis
And so when you think about Silicon Valley building platforms like YouTube and Twitter and so on, a lot of it was specifically kind of targeting traditional news sources. And news sources were struggling to go online. They were also struggling because they were getting, like, bought up by major conglomerates and gutted. More and more, you start to have traditional news struggling, and you have a lot of different people from a lot of different political viewpoints pointing to the news media and saying, look, you can't trust them anymore. And there were a lot of valid reasons to say that, and a lot of things that I think are less valid, and one of the less valid claims was, well, it's all just a bunch of political correctness, you know, as they called it then.
- [63:36]
Jamie Loftus
Right, right, right.
- [63:37]
Becca Lewis
In the news media. So as you have that getting attacked, kind of this whole new information ecosystem getting built online, like both attacking the media and attempting to take its place. And then I think you can't discount the role of Donald Trump in all of this, even back in 2016, that he became a major force in terms of, like, taking things that were on, like, fringe forums and then tweeting them out, and suddenly they became national news stories. And so you can see the role of, like, influence and fame also playing a role, because instantly certain things would skyrocket to visibility that just wouldn't have before. You have all of these different genres of online content, you know, gaming, comedy, any number of things. And these are genres where it's like, politics isn't necessarily the first and foremost thing that people are focused on, but it seeps in. In all of these ways. And so if you have a space where there's kind of like some latent misogyny, then one thing that's a lot of the manosphere has done is it, like, it gives you certain facts and figures that become instantly available that you can draw on, right? Like maybe at certain talking points, like claiming to debunk certain feminist ideas. And so suddenly, if you already have some of those latent tendencies, then you can start to feel, like, bolstered and say, like, oh, no, actually, this is justified. And it can become actually a bigger and more legitimized piece of what you're doing. And again, this goes back to the 70s, too, which, like, not coincidentally, at a moment when way more women and people of color and like, generally marginalized groups started to enter into universities at higher levels, the workforce at higher levels, the public spheres at higher levels, then you had at the same time this, like, attack on traditional forms of expertise and saying, actually, no, we should be turning to entrepreneurs, stand up comedians, celebrities, all of these different things that surprise.
- [65:40]
Jamie Loftus
Surprise, notoriously dumb people. Like, famously dumb ass people. Has there been an increase in saying the quiet part loud? Has that always been a facet of this space? Does it vary?
- [65:53]
Becca Lewis
It ebbs and flows. And I do think a lot of that comes from, like, how well Trump is doing at any moment. Right. And, you know, he very much helped legitimize saying the quiet parts out loud. So, you know, last time around, around the 2016 election, this was a big question within the manosphere and the alt right of kind of, how overt, how open can you be with your politics? And there were a lot of YouTubers who were like, open white and male supremacists at the time. And then there were a lot of people who would collaborate with them and who would dabble in those ideas, but they would never outright align themselves. That. And ultimately that proved to be the smarter strategy because the open white supremacists and male supremacists mostly got kicked off of the platform. Someone like, you know, I spent many years watching the content of a creator.
- [66:49]
Jamie Loftus
Named Tim Pool, who's now a proven op. Is that.
- [66:54]
Becca Lewis
Yes, that's right. He was always so strategic. He would ask questions. He would maybe drop a suggestion or a hint that something was happening, but then he would say, I don't know, I don't know. And he would never claim to be a white supremacist or a white nationalist or a male supremacist, any of these things. And I think that from the perspective of staying on platforms, people have gotten really savvy about where to draw the line. And I guess it doesn't hurt that now on Twitter or X, you know, Elon Musk is in their corner anyways. They know where the winds are blowing and they're, you know, people will dip a toe in and see how open they can be and see, you know, what the reaction is like. And if they're getting a positive reaction, they'll. They'll maybe, you know, dip another toe in and go on from there. But one thing I've found in my research is that these figures are, like, very, very, very conscious of audience response. And in fact, some of them will get pushed to. You know, there's all this discourse about, like, influencers are radicalizing audiences, but a lot of times the audiences will kind of demand more extreme content from creators, and so creators will just kind of be kind of responding to what their audience wants. When you look at our current media ecosystem, like, the boundaries between these things have kind of collapsed. But it, but it becomes this easy way to kind of not think about potential harms that happen. And, you know, like, at what point are you interrogating someone's views? At what points are you just giving a megaphone for them? You know, draw the boundaries between that and that, I think, is not something that Rogan or some of the other guys like him have any incentive to think about.
- [68:34]
Jamie Loftus
I'm curious for you how slash, when algorithms became an important part of building and preserving this space, how does that factor in?
- [68:47]
Becca Lewis
Yeah, so I think it was really throughout the 2010s that, like, we went from social networking sites to these algorithmically driven media spaces. It has certainly complicated and changed dynamic. As a researcher, it has frustrated me a bit because I think it's really easy as researchers and journalists and people working in the space for us to just kind of point the finger at, like, this technology and say, like, it is the fault of the algorithm. And, you know, that's partly why I like to stress that these things have been going on since the 70s, because I think it can give us false hope in some ways that, like, oh, if we tweak the YouTube algorithm in just the right way, these problems are going to go away. Like, I do think that that's one thing that's maybe like, when we look at the reaction to the election and everyone being like, oh, my God, there's this whole world of podcasts, like, I do think that might be part of the reason there's this sense of, like, dawning horror around it because podcasts are not always driven by algorithms. For a really long time, there was this sense of like, the algorithms are the problem. They are radicalizing young men on YouTube in particular, and they are drawing them down into rabbit holes of far right content. And the thing that always frustrated me about that was I was seeing how much, you know, influencer culture and dynamics were playing a role in this. So it's like, you know, if you start to listen to Joe Rogan and become a fan of his, you don't need an algorithm to recommend new content of his. Right. I mean, you may still defer to it in terms of, like, what you choose to watch next, but you're watching it next because you've already watched a piece of content from him and enjoyed it. So there's that piece of it. And then I do think also, like, this whole idea of getting drawn down into like the deep dark corners and the rabbit holes and stuff does give this false sense of it being, you know, staying fringe content. When in fact we were seeing that this massive ecosystem of some of the most popular creators was.
- [70:50]
Jamie Loftus
Have been thinking this since you mentioned, you know, how, you know, the people saying the quiet part loud from the beginning, you know, they tended to get deplatformed. I feel like the. That's part of why podcasts have been so successful. It's like that's where you go when you're kicked out of somewhere else totally that it's.
- [71:09]
Becca Lewis
It's a way of creating the, you know, digital media brands and, and producing content that. Where you're not dependent on a single platform.
- [71:17]
Jamie Loftus
Cool. Okay, so I want to go back to there not being a lot of incentive for these manosphere podcasts, slash, just influencers in general. What do you mean when you say that? I know it's related to. I mean, this seems like a triple, tremendously profitable space.
- [71:34]
Becca Lewis
It certainly has gotten way more profit driven over time. I mean, this is why it's easy to go back and look at early YouTube and get really nostalgic, even though there were, you know, awful things going on then, harassment and stuff. But like, I think the beauty of something like early YouTube was that people weren't making careers off of it yet for the most part, that people were just kind of like making weird things and posting them online and some of them would go viral. You know, that very quickly changed. But what we think of now as this like, influencer economy, you know, that's been like the past 15 years, it has grown from essentially nothing into like this massive, massive entertainment ecosystem. And so the profit incentive is there. There's a certain genre of creator who has marketed themselves as like a provocateur. And so for them, certainly like saying the quiet part out loud is the whole shtick. And kind of like, I will go there when other people won't. You know, I would say that that's like Andrew Tate, right? Like, he, he thrives on open misogyny and like, saying the things that are like, as shocking as possible. And he has made a massive career out of that. So that's a big piece of it. There are other people who have found like, other niches. I mean, I would say that not to keep going back to Rogan, but he's just such a behemoth in this space. He's very much the, like, I'm just asking questions guy, right? So he's not out there looking to shock. You end up hearing similarly misogynist ideas on his platform because he invites on misogynists and asks them questions.
- [73:11]
Jamie Loftus
I don't know.
- [73:12]
Becca Lewis
Totally.
- [73:14]
Jamie Loftus
He just walked in the room.
- [73:15]
Becca Lewis
Let's see what he thinks. Like, when it was like just radio and television broadcasters had to make sure that they were inviting on like, multiple different perspectives and points of view around controversial issues. Not to say that that was necessarily a great system. I mean, there, there were a lot of issues with that too, but people legally had to do that and they legally had to ensure that they were somehow providing content that like, was beneficial to the public interest, AKA like, for creating an informed citizenry.
- [73:45]
Jamie Loftus
So another media narrative I've been seeing a lot in the last several days that has given me pause. Specifically the, the focus around, oh my gosh, Gen Z Men are becoming increasingly misogynist. What do you make of that?
- [74:00]
Becca Lewis
Yeah, I, I also have a lot of issues with it. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't firsthand research like the media consumers, I look at the producers. So I don't know precisely how these things are, are impacting Gen Z Men, but I think there is a strange fixation on youth and the Internet. And like, yes, the Internet is destroying our youth. That is very pervasive. I've been doing a lot of research looking at the 1990s recently. And like, everyone was freaking out about cyber porn at the time. That was like the big thing. And it was like, cyber porn is gonna ruin our youth. And it feels like every few years there's a new panic. And like, obviously we want to be critical of what media is getting consumed. First of all, it can end up making it seem like somehow older generations have not also been dealing with misogyny.
- [74:57]
Jamie Loftus
Right.
- [74:58]
Becca Lewis
For many years. And then also I think, yeah, it can really create these kind of moral panics that ironically end up reinforcing certain conservative ideals of like, we must keep the children safe. And the way that you do that is kind of by reinscribing traditional family.
- [75:15]
Jamie Loftus
Norms and stuff, things like algorithmic bubbles, things like infinite content that will sort of reinforce your worst instincts. Like, that certainly plays a big role in it. But I worry that it just feels like another sort of churning on a generation in a way that is ultimately really unproductive. And if it's perpetuated enough could really cause people, like, cause young people to double down on it. But it's also like you're saying everyone got more conservative. Why are we, I mean, and I think it is alarming when it's young people because you're like, is this going to be forever? But everybody got more conservative and specifically white people got more conservative. I was like.
- [75:59]
Becca Lewis
And yeah, I think it also is like once you're pointing the blame at like an algorithm or like a few specific podcasters, again, not to, not to say that these, these forces are like not worthy of critique. They absolutely are. And it's a lot of what I do. But these, these are all downstream of other like, systematic failures. You know, like I, I do point a lot to this fact of like local. There has been a massive collapse of local news. Local news used to be one of the primary sources that people got like information for their voting habits, like their civic needs, all of these things. And you know, within the past couple of decades, you have had these massive conglomerates coming in, buying up local news, gutting the newsrooms and selling them off. When you don't have those actual kind of public interest informed news sources, people, I think very reasonably start to distrust a media that's focused on kind of horse race, celebrity based coverage that often is driven by sensationalism, all of these things. People are hungry, people are hungry for answers. And so you then have this new ecosystem of people cropping up that provides, that echoes your concerns with the mainstream media and provides an alternative set of answers. And so there would be no Joe Rogan without some of these other factors. You know, do you think that this.
- [77:26]
Jamie Loftus
Space is going to change again because of sort of this newfound attention? Where do you see it, it going?
- [77:32]
Becca Lewis
It's important to tweak algorithms. It's important to, you know, understand individual creators. These issues are also not going to get solved by, by just doing that. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, by trying to create a left wing Joe Rogan, like, that is not, not going to succeed or solve anything. I think there is this misconception that like, if you simply present people with the correct fact, they will come to the logical conclusion that what they believe is wrong. And in fact, what so much of this is about is identity, sense of belonging, you know, ideas about how the world should work and who should be in power. And the facts are kind of downstream from that. Like, I've seen a genre of like tweet or response in the later weeks of this election of like, well, we really have to be paying more attention to men and the male loneliness epidemic and all these things. And it can be easy for it to like, fall into. Like, we need to be coddling men more essentially. This isn't going to be solved just by taking like, individual action against like bad eggs or whatever. Like, we need to think about what are, like, how do institutions or like education systems or information systems start to create this set, like, belief that men can and should be doing this in the first place.
- [79:00]
Jamie Loftus
Thanks so much to Becca for lending her time and exper and you can follow more of her work on Twittercalue. Okay, I release you for the week, but we have a lot more ground to cover. First by those who study this space and then by those who have experienced it. Next week we take a look at the expansion of the manosphere, growing from the seeds of public recognition in Gamergate and expanding now into the highest levels of American government. And for your moment of fun, here's pickup artist Cringe. All right, see you next week. Every hot girl that you see at some point was a little baby wearing diapers and at some point will be an elder woman. Our assignment is to shift our mindset. When? Right here, right now. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson. My cats flee and Casper and my pet Rockberg who will outlive us all. Bye. With Kroger brand products, you can get all of your favorite things this holiday season. Because our proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices and with a money back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite from sweet sugar cookies and holiday ham to that perfect slice of pie. Whether you shop, delivery, pickup or in store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things. Kroger Fresh for everyone. Clorox Santiva smells like grapefruit, cleans like Clorox and feels like yay. Okay, we could be here all day. Try Clorox Scentiva for a trusted clean with long lasting freshness. Also available in lavender and coconut. Use as directed. Hey there Scott Patterson from I Am All In Again Podcast Life Short Talk Fast Stream Gilmore Girls on Hulu that's right, grab your coffee and get cozy because all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls.
- [81:43]
Becca Lewis
Are now on Hulu.
- [81:45]
Jamie Loftus
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