DW Opinion

Doctor Block On The 'Manosphere' Ignores Toxic 'Daddy' Issues

The "manosphere" is about to be regulated like tobacco, while toxic female podcasters get a pass.

Stephen Kent

The Lancet medical journal has found that young men are too online, angry, and anti-social — and, in a newly published report, prescribes treating the "manosphere" as a "public health problem" akin to tobacco and ultra-processed food. In classic U.K. fashion, the researchers propose tighter content moderation and government-tuned algorithms to "promote positive messaging."

Credit where it's due. The authors concede that the yearnings which drive boys into the arms of creators like Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, and Clavicular — social belonging, status, and an explanation for why life in the 21st century feels rigged — are valid.

Co-author Sarah Hawkes says we must offer boys "something better, not just tell them what to avoid." Sure. But at what point are these concerned citizens who learned about the so-called "80/20 Rule" after watching Netflix's "Adolescence" going to admit that men and women are being driven apart by equally depraved voices all selling liberation from roles, duty, and boundaries?

Whataboutism isn't the perfect response, but it's one place to start. For a generation, researchers have obsessed over men and boys, on everything from their grievances over feminism to online porn habits, their failure to launch, their "toxic" this and "performative" that. Almost nobody in academia or media has seriously scrutinized what slop young women are being fed, and by whom. The hard work has fallen to female YouTubers concerned about the exploding popularity of monster erotica novels among American women.

On the always-viral "Call Her Daddy" show, one of the biggest podcasts on earth, drawing something like 10 million listeners per episode, mostly female, listeners are swimming in a toxic stew of their own.

Women and girls are treated to advice such as: If you're "a 5 or a 6, die for that d***" — average-looking women, they say, should make up for being homely by offering rougher sex to keep men on the hook. Other episodes promote the mantra of cheat or be cheated on. If you want to understand why Jane Doe at Cornell University might have sought out group sex and couched the debauchery in the rhetoric of body autonomy, look no further than Cooper. The sex acts she recommends to girls are too explicit and abnormal for publication — but if you're online, you know.

Last week, a clip of Cooper talking to actress Sophia Bush made the rounds, and Cooper laid out that if women are considering divorce but are reluctant about whether they can do better, "the answer is always yes," she said. Bush called the notion that it's ever too late "patriarchy."

Imagine a male podcaster with 10 million listeners telling husbands that, when in doubt, they can always trade up. Most "manosphere" podcasts are dude bros talking about aliens, World War II, creatine, and mixed martial arts. When Jordan Peterson was in better health and on the scene, he was raked over the coals for his blase suggestion that young men "clean their room" before trying to change the world or expect women to have kids with them.

Academics and wannabe regulators in the U.K. have no credibility when it comes to distinguishing the difference between benign content on masculinity from "Modern Wisdom" by Chris Williamson or Arthur Brooks, and the sad loner male slop cracked out by Sneako and Justin Waller.

My teenage daughter has informed me that I'm a manosphere creator because, on Geeky Stoics, we mostly talk to men aged 18-35 about male heroism, risk-taking, and friendship. Guilty as charged, I suppose. But we live in a time where certain presidential candidates have felt comfortable saying out loud, "the future is female." A bizarre statement built on top of the "we need more women in STEM" project, as if men don't need jobs.

We've all been overserved with studies and punditry about the perils of the manosphere. Turns out, abusing women systematically does lead to prison. How about we change tactics and have a decade-long cultural discourse about why married people are outpacing everyone on weekly sex and satisfaction? That would be news to most people.

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Stephen Kent is the co-creator of Geeky Stoics on YouTube and author of "Great Escape: 30 Reflections on Stoicism, Faith and the Wisdom of Great Stories," to be published on December 1. 

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