Triggering: Manosphere

[Mindfulness.]

There has been an increase in sexual assaults against women recently. While there unfortunately has always been violence against women, there has been more reports of cases appearing in the media. This is due to the views of men who are part of the manosphere community.

What are your thoughts?

[Dude111]

Its very mean and sad...

Its good though people have MACE in case they need it..

[~Misguided Ghosts~]

Over here we just had the seven Cornell rapists. It seems like people are becoming more bold but I also wonder if it’s just being spoken about more often now.

[Mindfulness.]

It certainly is a worry...

[Proud90sKid]

Sexual assault is a serious issue in society. It completely violates a persons sense of self and safety. It unfortunately happens all too often, even to children and causes lasting psychological damage and conditions like C-PTSD. It is not just illegal, but should be seen as a fundamental violation of human rights and autonomy.

Now for the rest of my comment:

The "manosphere" has actually shown significant decline. While I support equal rights and option for abortion at any time during pregnancy, between around 2019 and 2021 I was fed up with modern dating and norms. During that time, I used to browse fairly heavily in r/MGTOW before reddit banned it. But that was 5 years ago and the manosphere has not returned back to a forum format. I do feel though that this group gave me significant bitterness toward women/if not outright hatred that has dissipated. I believe in freedom of speech and don't think strict censorship is the answer to problems like this though. In the short term, censorship only adds to the bitterness and causes the very small minority of members with pre-existing violent ideologies to act out in the real world. While I never had violent disposition, I can definitely say that not browsing this group daily slowly but eventually completely removed the feelings of anger I used to browse it at work and find myself incredibly pissed off at women and generally angry (to the point it impacted my mood at work). I am just being honest here. I know this is a controversial take, but it's what happened. That said, I still think that a legal based censorship that prevents even a theoretical comeback could paradoxically infuriate certain people and draw the wrong attention vs. just letting it be forgotten.

Why did the manosphere decline? Because reddit has largely monopolized pseudonymous discussion on the internet and replaced decentralized forums(ie. I am sure you have noticed that this forum is also facing decline). When public opposition began around 6-7 years ago, reddit started to take increasingly hard-line stance against it before banning it entirely and it simply never returned in a meaningful way to decentralized forums.

While sexual assault is a terrible attack against a person's sense of autonomy, it isn't increasing year over year. Instead, highly publicized events such as the Cornell 7 can distort perception and lead to false conclusions about increase. Sexual assault has always been a problem in the world. It affects way too many people. However, I don't feel there is evidence of it actually being on a worsening trend. And again, the manosphere is mostly dead and has been for some time now.

While I strongly believe that the manosphere is toxic, I have seen some toxic groups in the opposite direction. r/FemaleDatingStrategy (was also highly controversial and no longer active, but not banned either) is basically built around the concept of women exploiting men in a dating context for personal gain.

Many people who subscribed to MGTOW beliefs were infuriated that this "inverted manosphere" was allowed to remain up and the non-mandated closing of r/FemaleDatingStrategy actually caused a cool down. Cancel culture doesn't work. We all have grievances. A rule that causes a group of people (ie. men) to not be able to express grievances while allowing the same for a different group only adds fuel to resentment, increases polarization, and directly encourages radical beliefs by satisfying and appealing to the very confirmation bias that creates these beliefs. When cancel culture is put into place, there are always radicals who will stop expressing their ideas on a keyboard and instead take their anger into the real world. The problem is that these are the people who would have been the most volatile and destructively passionate from the get go. Most members of r/MGTOW were not out raping women or doing mass shootings. That is an objective fact.

[theantihero]

"Manosphere" is not a term I've heard. This so-called "manosphere community" is outright misogyny and women hatred. Like Dez, the only case that's been ongoing in the United States is that of the Cornell 7. But this isn't anything new, violence against woman has been happening for many thousands of years. The only difference today is that we're exposed to the media 24/7. Whenever we get on Facebook, Instagram, or another platform, we see it being discussed even if we try our best to scroll past it.