Are our boys ok? Fighting online misogyny with Kate Scott
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I don't know how familiar people are with the actual content of Andrew Tate's videos, but he does sometimes talk about

choking women and sexually assaulting them in order to regain that kind of dominance over them. If you allow her to blatantly disrespect you and you tolerate that, then you're setting a precedent which means, well, why would I respect this guy in the first place? The manosphere is a really big umbrella term to encompass a lot of sub-communities online that very much have this

extreme, misogynistic kind of undertone. But men are too afraid to pull the plug on it because they get addicted to the pussy and they don't believe they can get any more pussy. And this is one of the advantages of being a playboy. I can leave any chick because I got ten more. It's very pro-male and at times very, very anti-women.

Imagine living in a world where it's men, not women, who are in peril. Men under attack from a woke agenda that has pushed traditional masculinity to the fringes and made men weak and pliable, unable to provide and at the mercy of women. Welcome to the Manosphere.

Besides sounding like a spray-tanned reality show, the Manosphere is a loose term to describe a network of online communities that create content for boys and men. The spectrum of this content is pretty broad, from videos and paid courses on how to get jacked at the gym and how to build abs and how to get rich, to the push for a return to traditional gender roles and why women are to blame for men being sexually rejected.

Self-help is often the gateway to blatant misogyny. A lot of us got a scary glimpse into the influence of this world via the Netflix show Adolescence. The show depicted the dark side of boys indoctrinated by the manosphere and the violent consequences and has started conversations we've been trying to have for years.

Kate Scott is well-versed in the manosphere. She's a PhD candidate with the University of Sydney, looking at what draws men away once they've been indoctrinated. As part of her research, Kate spends her days wading through the sludge of quite extreme content, watching toxic videos and reading hate-filled comments, instructionals on picking up and getting laid, and figuring out what makes this stuff so magnetic for so many guys.

She's also trying to understand the factors that can help boys and men come out the other side, blinking and confused in the bright light of the actual reality that exists outside of the manosphere. I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, we need to talk about understanding online misogyny with Kate Scott.

If you've seen the show Adolescence, you'll remember that hateful attitudes towards women don't just exist online. It's at school, the young friends, it's in the gross guard at the juvenile detention centre who creeps on the female psychologist, it's in the home, at the hardware store, and of course, it's in the comments section.

Online misogyny has real world influence and impacts our relationships with men and men's relationships with us. And it's online where casual misogyny can really metastasise into something genuinely terrifying that puts our safety at real risk. I wanted to get a better understanding from Kate as to what boys and men are seeing in these spaces.

I would suggest that the manosphere is predominantly an echo chamber of a lot of men venting their frustrations, and that can be about women. It can be about the state of the world where they feel really disenfranchised. It is very much men bouncing these ideas around without really getting the other side of the story or getting a different perspective.

So one of the things that came up in the show Adolescence was the idea of the red pill. Can you explain what that means? The red pill is this kind of core idea that you'll see very prominent in the manosphere. And it comes from the Matrix movie where the protagonist is offered two pills. Red pill offers this truth that is otherwise concealed. And the blue pill has this blissful ignorance of how the world works.

25 years later, we have the manosphere kind of co-opting this and saying that the red pill as it is nowadays is this reality where men are basically treated as second-class citizens to women. Just like Neo was offered the red pill in the film The Matrix, red pill communities offer boys and young men the promise of having the veil lifted from their eyes should they choose to take it.

You'll often see these tips and tricks and step-by-step guides or cheat codes on how to cheat the system that's stacked against you. For example, Andrew Tate has his Hustlers University where you can pay money to get these step-by-step guides on how to improve yourself and that can be romantically, financially, career-wise, confidence boosting. So that's something that you'll often see, this idea of the Red Bull. What kind of university is it?

Hustlers University is what Andrew Tate's kind of monetised scheme is called. Yeah. Tell me about what is Andrew Tate and others like him, what is their world view? There is almost this split understanding of the world, one in which men are treated awfully. They are second-class citizens, the world is stacked against them, women hold all the power and it is up to them to take it back.

Now, sometimes that can be through these kind of subversive pickup tips or it can be through some really violent acts. I don't know how familiar people are with the actual content of Andrew Tate's videos, but he does sometimes talk about choking women and sexually assaulting them in order to regain that kind of dominance over them. And he talks about that as though it's OK? Yeah, it is...

at times really normalised within the manosphere. Now, I want to make sure everyone's aware that the manosphere has a huge spectrum. It can encompass this really kind of violent rhetoric, but at the same time there are people who work in this space that genuinely want to foster, you know, self-improvement, confidence-building,

Someone who's talking about the correct posture when trying to do weights is very different to someone who talks about sexual assault being okay or making rape jokes. The issue is when you have the lines blurring between them and you have this sort of haze of misogyny that encompasses all of this content.

That's a really interesting point because, yeah, it's good to know how to hold a barbell if you're going to do some weights and what the posture is can affect if you're going to grow muscles or you're going to hurt your back. But within that, there's stuff like Andrew Tate saying one of his common phrases is choke the bitch out. How does that filter into the attitudes of boys and young men who are consuming this stuff? Yeah, so for 35% of young boys, they see him as relatable.

and 25% of young boys see him as a role model. Now, not all of them agree with his views on women.

They like other elements of Andrew Tate, this idea that he's a defender of traditional masculine values, this idea that he really has a strong work ethic. Those are elements that young boys see as really admirable. There's a lot of other people that have strong work ethics that aren't choking bitches out. OK, but yes, please go on. Yeah, but also it's important to remember that for young boys online,

It's not a matter of them purposefully seeking this out, right? I think there was a study that said it takes 23 minutes for a young boy's social media profile, whether that be on TikTok or YouTube Shorts. It takes 23 minutes for something toxic or extremely misogynistic to come up. So it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Wow.

Kate, that's terrible. It's not the best. A lot of us have sons or brothers or just people that we care about and we care about the future of the human race. And this stuff is scary. So when it's in the manosphere and the boys are breathing it in and downloading it and repeating it back, how does that affect them and how early in their lives are they seeing this stuff? Yeah, so...

The research that I'm looking into is looking at people who have left the manosphere or have left red pill communities. They talk in depth about how it really damaged them mentally. They went in maybe feeling a little bit down on their luck. Yeah. And they left with quite severe social self-confidence issues. If you enter a community or enter this kind of online space that constantly says you're a loser, right?

You're a loser, but I can fix you, right? You have no social skills. The world is stacked against you. 80% of women go for the top 20% of men. You're not it. But here's how you might be able to do so. It can be quite damaging. It can be really damaging to your psyche and it doesn't fulfill you in the way that you think it does.

According to research, there are a few main drivers that pull young boys and men into these spaces. Now, one is the red pill notion that there's a hidden truth waiting to be revealed in these communities. And another is humour. And who doesn't love a lol and a shareable meme? But this humour is usually at the expense of someone else.

Young guys can make these really awful jokes and their mate's like, oh, I can't believe you said that. It creates almost this race to the bottom, right? Yeah, yeah. So that can also be really seductive because it gains you these social points. Another thing drawing boys and young men in is that sense of community and us-versus-the-world mentality. If you're feeling down on your luck and there's these online groups that are saying, it's not you...

It's really not you. The world is stacked against you. Men have it so hard at the moment. We're seeing a lot of this disillusionment and disappointment being utilised by these spaces into anger.

a feeling that there's an injustice. And that can be really motivating or it can be even more disheartening. Right. Tell me about being disillusioned. Young boys, young men, what are they expecting? Is it about entitlement and a slight reduction in their entitlement or something? Like, why are they so disappointed? I think the main issue is we're currently in a society where everyone's finding it really difficult. And for young men...

who have grown up with an idea of what a masculine man is, right? Someone who goes to work, who can be the breadwinner of the family. They can have a wife, kids, white picket fence.

Cut to today, we're in a cost of living crisis. Young men can't really afford to be the sole breadwinners. Kate says that challenges to masculinity, what that looks like and how it's valued now, is another reason for boys being disgruntled. And I think a lot of young men see this critique and they see it as a personal attack.

So I do think that's where a lot of that disillusionment lies, this understanding and this perception that there's not really as much of a space for them that there might have been once upon a time, this idea that they now have to share the stage. And we're seeing quite a reaction to that now. But aren't women finding the same thing and then not going around killing people?

And I guess by that I mean, like, it is really hard. You're absolutely right. And the promise of getting ahead or buying a home seems like it's getting further out of reach. Yeah. And that, you know, the despair that's sort of ingrained in learning that is...

across the board, but only men are having this reaction. Everyone's having a rough time and it does seem nonsensical that we're seeing this spike of male violence and this online kind of horrific vitriolic language where other communities are kind of not really engaging in those same activities. But unfortunately, I think a small part of it is that young men really struggle to

express themselves in a way and be vulnerable. So there is this kind of expectation to be angry and

Because there's less shame in that. So let's go through some terminology that is used in these spaces. We have the Chadds and the Stacys. Who are they? Yeah, so they're the kind of cream of the crop. The very top man is the Chad and then you have the very top woman, which is the Stacey. If you look online, you'll often see memes where they're, you know, very blonde, the Chad's really muscular and the Stacey is really, you know,

Well endowed. And they aren't really prized for their intellect, I'll just say. Okay, okay. What about a Becky? A Becky is a woman who's maybe a little bit below a Stacey, so often brown hair, perhaps a little bit more intellectual. I'm going off of the memes, the visuals. Sure, sure. So, yes, they're kind of underneath it as well. Okay. And how do boys and men refer to themselves in this?

We have insoles. There's chads, as we've kind of discussed earlier,

Alpha males comes up a lot. Yep. And following underneath them is these kind of beta males, people who aren't quite as successful. So one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you, Kate, was because of the Netflix show Adolescence. So anyone who's seen the show knows that the main boy, Jamie, self-identifies as an incel. He's only 13, so he's not meant really to be having sex. Yeah.

Can you talk me through the ways that these communities breed a narrative that the world owes boys and men something that they've somehow been denied? In Cells, for anyone who doesn't know, means involuntarily celibate. And it was actually coined by this female college student who wanted to create an online community for people who were really struggling romantically. It was designed as a support group.

So that was in the 90s. In the 2000s, it very much became co-opted by a very angry and oftentimes very militant male group. And it turned the narrative from this community of support to a community of anger, of entitlement, that they are involuntarily celibate.

And it's against their will. They're owed sex. They're owed that satisfaction from women. And because women refuse to have sex with them, it's their fault, right? That's the involuntary part. It's their fault. This sense of entitlement over women and our bodies is a motivating factor in the darker parts of the manosphere. And so you see this anger start to grow because you have this whole community of

that not only have this identifier of where in cells, but you start to see whole languages emerge and you have this entire language and lexicon that evolves and it creates even more of an in-group, right? Right. You get it, you understand it, you know the language, you know the memes. I just want to go back to this 80/20 thing.

Yes. I heard it in the show Adolescence and I've heard it before that. The idea is that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. Yes. So what? Like even if it were true, which I think we are in agreement that it isn't, the 20% of men are hot. The other 80% just have to work a bit harder, don't they? Like what's the – I don't know. I don't understand the argument. Mm-hmm.

Unfortunately, I think that's because the argument isn't very well thought out. Oh, God. It's so important. I think it is just creating this scarcity mindset. So is it the regular man who sits somewhere about 50 or 60, he wants access to the hotties

all through the spectrum of women. And he's annoyed that this 80% is unavailable to him. Yeah, yeah, 100% this idea that if you are under the 20% highest, most attractive, most rich men in the world...

You only have 20% of the population of women to choose from. And they're all absolute hound dogs. Yeah, and there's no one there for you and you're never going to find a romantic partner and you're going to be an incel for the rest of your life unless you, you know, come into an exorbitant amount of wealth. Right, and muscles. Or muscles, yeah. Okay, so what I am now understanding is it gives men victimhood. Yeah, yeah.

Incel forums, I would argue, are the most violent in terms of the manosphere broadly. There's a reason in 2021 ASIO actually declared them as a rising terrorist threat.

And that's because we're seeing a lot of this anger being funnelled towards acts of violence. There are other less extreme examples of how these ideas infiltrate the real world to places like the classroom. According to research from Monash University, female teachers and students are facing disturbing sexism in schools from male students spurred on by so-called 'manfluences'.

In Victoria, there was an issue where a young male student was creating AI nudes of a female teacher. That's awful. So we are seeing this kind of hateful language and violent attitudes be really normalised and often it's swept under the rug as, oh, but it's just a joke. I hate it's just a joke.

Does any part of you think there's an element of moral panic at play here? I don't believe so. I think the actual harm that we're seeing from the manosphere and the growing amounts of violence in young people nowadays, it's concern enough to me that I'm confident in saying that it's not just another moral panic. I mean, we've got generations emerging that have no memory of what life was before us.

the World Wide Web, right? And so we're seeing these young people engage on these online communities, these online platforms that are extremist, that are unmoderated. And at the same time, we're seeing youth violence and extremism increase. So in 2023, every one of Australia's terrorism attacks or incidents were perpetrated by a young person. There was a report done by the AFP and Five Eyes saying

They had several highlighted cases where the perpetrator explained that they did engage in a lot of misogynistic content online. So we are seeing correlation. And because of that, I wouldn't say it's a moral panic. I would say that this is a genuine concern.

If you're listening to this as a parent, you might feel like it is such an overwhelming problem. And how do I even start to tackle it? But what can we do as parents and as caregivers to try and help our boys become good men? The first thing is to go into those conversations with curiosity rather than disappointment or anger.

I think it's very easy to hear that your son is watching Andrew Tate and try rip the phone out of their hand and say, no, he's awful, why are you doing this? I think pivoting the conversation to what do you find useful about him?

but also being careful to challenge any kind of questionable or concerning behaviours that you've seen. I also think it's about having a phone too early. Do you think that plays a part? I hesitate towards any kind of forced censorship or moderation. I think...

We can see when people have access forcibly restricted, it can at times very much lead them to more extremist elements. If you're letting your child have access to the internet early, I don't necessarily think that is innately a horrible thing, but I think there needs to be a real discussion and conversation as to what that looks like.

Is it supervised? If so, what does that kind of look like in practice? How often are you checking? You can only use this in the communal areas of the household. I think also encouraging young people to, I mean, I don't want to be that person who says go outside and touch grass, but finding hobbies that don't necessarily have an online component is

So the focus of your research, Kate, is what motivates men to leave these spaces, which is unusual. They're already in there. They're in and part of it. They've had the indoctrination and then they leave. So what have you found? Yeah, so there's a few reasons why young people leave the manosphere or the red pill, so to speak.

One is they're really realising that it's not serving their needs, whether that be emotionally, financially, romantically, mentally. Another reason is their friends aren't really enjoying their company. You know, there's been quite a few confrontations with friends and they're realising that their social circle is diminishing and they're finding themselves quite lonely. Because of the influence that the manosphere is having. Yeah, yeah.

Kate says that taking the time to sit with boys who have been drawn in to the manosphere and being open and curious about their experience is key to stopping them from falling too far down the rabbit hole.

Building that relationship and ensuring that their young person feels seen and validated. And I know that that can be really difficult if you have a really busy schedule. You, like, both parents work all the time and you only really see, you know, them for two hours during dinner and after dinner when they're on their phone. You know, really working on that relationship so that if there are any insecurities, if there is any sense of disillusionment,

They can find support in you rather than these spaces online. Okay, that's lovely. And what about men? What can men do and how can we help men? It's a really important time for men to step up in terms of being role models for young people nowadays. We're in a place now where a lot of young men don't really see women as authority figures anymore.

We have teachers who are being physically, mentally, emotionally intimidated by their male students who don't see them as people to be respected. Men don't necessarily have that issue. And I think, therefore, the responsibility does really lie with them to step up, to call out behavior, and to be a safe space for young men to come to when they have issues.

to really take the time to model what being a strong, positive man looks like today and being, yeah, open to have those really vulnerable conversations I think is really important.

One of the things I've really appreciated about the TV show Adolescence is that it opened a door into having this conversation. It laid bare the problems we've been screaming about for years. Toxic masculinity, pressure on boys to be sexual and the ubiquity of bad-tempered, emotionally unregulated father figures. And of course, this vast, unknowable online space where women aren't welcome,

and let's be real, we don't want to be there, but that is influencing our boys and hijacking their wellbeing. But we owe it to boys to step up and provide an alternative to what they're seeing in the manosphere. And blokes, that means you too. Especially you. It's time to step up.

Ladies, we'd love to hear your experiences with boys or men who have been drawn into the manosphere and how you dealt with it. Maybe it was your son or your partner, your dad, someone you were dating. Send us a voice note to ladies at abc.net.au.

This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gundungurra and Gadigal peoples. Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie de Bettencourt. It's produced by Elsa Silberstein. Supervising producer is Tamar Kranzwick and our executive producer is Alex Lollback. This series was created by Claudine Ryan. Music