Hegemonic Masculinity and Beyond: An Overview of Social Science and Interdisciplinary Research on the Manosphere

This overview of 25 of the most cited studies conducted about the manosphere draws on scholarly sources published between 2016 and 2021. The manosphere is a collection of loosely connected anti-feminist networks and communities present across a variety of digital media platforms. The manosphere gained public attention after a series of violent attacks against women, such as the Isla Vista shooting in 2014 that killed 14 or the Toronto van attack in 2018 that killed 10. These attacks prompted growing media coverage of the manosphere in the Western world, as well as a renewed academic interest in contemporary anti-feminist movements. Heeding the call for more in-depth investigation into who participates in the manosphere and their reasons for doing so, many scholars—especially masculinity scholars—have begun to study organized antifeminism online. As a result, the social theories produced about the manosphere often explain men’s participation in these movements by their inability to live up to dominant norms of masculinity. This critical overview presents the most cited articles in the social sciences about the manosphere. In a second part, this paper explores women’s groups, an understudied population of the manosphere. Drawing on ten media articles about women’s manosphere groups, this chapter ultimately argues that if we wish to effectively counter manosphere cyberhate groups, we need to develop an understanding of these communities that reaches beyond issues of masculinity.