The question is not whether girls should lead. It is whether parents are being told what kind of political formation is taking place in their children’s schools.

When we were children, many of us heard the same warning: do not go anywhere with a stranger who offers you candy.

It was never a very complete picture of danger. Most children are not abducted by strangers. Yet the story carried a truth that parents understood: children are impressionable. They can be attracted by something pleasant, familiar, or seemingly harmless without seeing where it may lead.

And yes, they can be drawn to a message that relieves them of responsibility and explains their difficulties as the fault of the opposite sex. In that sense, the feminist message can be its own kind of candy.

I have been looking at feminist organizations that establish clubs and leadership programs for girls and young people. At first I wondered whether there was evidence of an effort to introduce girls to feminism early and bring them into activism. The answer to that questions is yes—but the organizations’ own public materials tell a more specific story than the caricature: they introduce young people to feminist ideas and train them to advocate for particular political causes.

What I found was an organized pathway. It begins in middle and high school. It teaches students a particular way of understanding social problems. Then it gives them training and tools to advocate politically for the causes selected by the organization. A small portion of those tools, often called Guidebooks, is available to the public. The largest portion of their material is withheld. Do you think they might be hiding something?

So it can be framed as public youth activism. But it is not politically neutral. The publicly available material makes it clear that their objectives are to train activists to fight for the feminist cause.

Middle-school girls are at an age when belonging, identity, and moral purpose matter deeply. They are not empty vessels, but they are still forming ideas about who they are, whom they should trust, and how to interpret unfairness. That is why parents should take seriously any program that combines friendship and leadership with a particular political worldview.

Let’s have a look at some of these programs.

Girls Learn International: a pathway, not merely a club

Girls Learn International (GLI), a program of the Feminist Majority Foundation, reports more than 160 clubs in 26 states and 18 countries. Its clubs are for middle- and high-school students, and GLI says they operate in public and private schools as well as community settings. Its own description says that it is building “a movement of informed advocates and a new generation of leaders and activists for social change.”

The organization provides an online Guidebook with more than fifty meeting guides. The public catalog includes titles such as “Allyship in Action,” “In Her Shoes,” “Representing Girlhood,” and “Rethinking the Language We Use.” The detailed lessons require a club login, so ​we really don’t know what is behind that door.

But GLI is very clear about the larger program. Students meet regularly to learn about human rights and gender equity, then are expected to undertake advocacy or fundraising projects. The stated issues include reproductive rights, comprehensive sex education, the Equal Rights Amendment, LGBTQIA+ rights, racial justice, environmental justice, civic engagement, and menstrual equity. There are trainings, a summer activist program, conferences, internships, United Nations opportunities, and a bridge into the organization’s college-level feminist network.

Again, none of this is hidden. The point is not that the group is concealing its goals. The point is that parents may see the word club or leadership and not recognize that the program is also a pipeline into a defined political movement.

NOW is even more explicit

The National Organization for Women’s Campus Action Network offers materials for middle- and high-school students as well as college students. One public activity list gives us a much clearer view of what “young feminist” organizing looks like.

Students are invited to do an “Education Privilege Walk.” They line up, step forward or backward in response to statements about family education, race, language, disability, income, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and safety. When the walk ends, the students who have moved furthest forward—those treated by the exercise as having the greatest privilege—compete for two candy bars. The discussion then asks whether the competition was fair and what “gaps in privilege” need to be bridged.

There is nothing illegitimate about discussing unequal circumstances. Young people should understand that some classmates face burdens others do not.

But the exercise does more than encourage empathy. It gives students a framework: social outcomes are understood through privilege, group identity, and unequal power. That is a political lens. It is not the only lens through which children can be taught to understand the world.

The next activity makes the framework explicit. Each student receives a card naming an “intersectional feminist issue” and is asked to discuss how they would solve it. The approved issue list includes ending the wage gap, abortion access, keeping Planned Parenthood open, ratifying the ERA, comprehensive sex education, transgender military service, immigration policy, and other causes. The same document recommends documentaries such as She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, Seeing Allred, The Hunting Ground, and Birthright: A War Story.

Those films and causes do not represent every reasonable view of sex, family, women, men, violence, education, or public policy. They represent a particular worldview. The clubs then give students practice in fundraising, campus organizing, publicity, and political action.

It is hard to honestly describe this as merely encouraging girls to “find their voice.” It is training young people to use a feminist voice in public life.

Other organizations say the same thing in different language

GLI and NOW are not unusual.

Girl Up, a program launched by the United Nations Foundation, calls advocacy its tool for “social, political, and economic change.” It supplies clubs with advocacy resources around gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, menstrual equity, education, and other issues. It reports thousands of clubs worldwide.

Advocates for Youth publishes a 64-page Youth Activist Toolkit. It teaches young people how to define a problem, identify “constituents” and allies, analyze decision-makers, build collective power, shape a public narrative, and run campaigns. Its examples include reproductive justice and ending stigma around abortion.

Girls for Gender Equity is more candid still. In a public program model, it says its work is grounded in Black feminist pedagogy, intersectionality, social justice, and an anti-oppression analysis. It recruited young women and gender-nonconforming youth to develop policy recommendations for New York City around education, health, anti-violence work, criminal justice, and other systems. One may agree with its aims. But no parent should mistake the program for neutral civic education.

​I suppose these organizations might provide some value to girls. They ​might encourage confidence, public speaking, friendship, service, ​and attention to real hardships​.

But those benefits do not erase the political purpose. Leadership is not neutral when the organization chooses the causes, the interpretive lens, the reading and viewing lists, the vocabulary, and the campaigns.

What about boys?

There are programs for boys. I found groups such as A Call to Men, Coaching Boys Into Men, Equimundo, and MenEngage. They often teach boys about consent, relationship behavior, violence prevention, “healthy masculinity,” and being allies in gender equality.

Some of that work may be useful.

Yet there is a striking difference in emphasis. Girls’ programs are often organized around girls’ leadership, girls’ rights, girls’ voices, and girls’ advocacy. Boys’ programs more often begin with what boys must not become: violent, sexist, dominating, unsafe, or emotionally closed. They are frequently asked to become allies to a movement built around others’ needs.

I have not found a comparably large and well-developed network of school clubs that begins with this message: boys and men have inherent dignity; their struggles matter; their gifts matter; their health, education, fatherhood, and safety deserve attention; and they can organize to address the places where boys and men are doing badly.

That absence is worth noticing.

The question parents should ask

The point is not to pull girls out of every club, or to frighten parents with exaggerated claims. It is to ask the same questions we should ask of any organization seeking access to children.

What is this group teaching? What assumptions does it make about men and women? Which social problems does it emphasize, and which ones does it ignore?​ What films, readings, slogans, and activities shape the ​young girl’s understanding of men, women, and social problems? Is the purpose service, discussion, leadership, political advocacy—or all of the above?

And perhaps most importantly: are parents told the answer plainly?

Both boys and girls should be encouraged to think, lead, speak, and act. But neither should be quietly handed a ready-made ideological map and told that it is simply compassion, empowerment, or equality.

Children deserve to learn how to think before they are trained to become advocates for someone else’s conclusions.

A word about the money

The funding picture is large, even though the precise youth-program share is difficult to isolate. Public Form 990 filings show that the Feminist Majority Foundation reported roughly $8 million in revenue in its most recent filing, while Girls for Gender Equity reported roughly $3 million. The United Nations Foundation—the parent organization of Girl Up—reported about $77 million in revenue. Those three organizations alone represent nearly $90 million in annual organizational revenue.

That is not a claim that $90 million is spent on girls’ clubs. It is not. The United Nations Foundation supports many projects besides Girl Up, and the Feminist Majority Foundation does much more than Girls Learn International. The other organizations discussed here have separate budgets as well. No honest person can turn their parent organizations’ full revenue into a dollar figure for youth feminist advocacy. But the responsible conclusion is still clear: this is not a shoestring effort. It is a well-funded ecosystem with national and international reach, professional staff, curricula, conferences, networks, and access to schools and public institutions.

Imagine if even a small portion of that kind of sustained support were devoted to boys. Not to telling them they are dangerous or defective, and not to making them auxiliary members of someone else’s movement. Imagine school clubs, mentors, and materials that told boys that masculinity is honorable; that courage, responsibility, protection, competence, and leadership are gifts to be developed; that boys’ pain and losses matter; and that they have inherent value simply as human beings. Imagine a generation of boys being invited to lead from strength and purpose rather than being taught, first of all, to apologize for who they are.

 

If you want to understand Robert Moore’s four archetypes of mature masculinity, begin with the King.

Not because the King dominates the Warrior, Magician, and Lover, but because he provides the center around which their powers can be ordered. Without that center, the Warrior may fight without knowing what is worth defending. The Magician may understand everything while believing in nothing. The Lover may become overwhelmed by everything he feels and desires.

The King gives these powers direction.

The word itself may cause trouble. We hear “King” and may think of monarchy, dominance, privilege, patriarchy, or a man who expects everyone else to obey him. But that is almost the opposite of what Moore meant by the mature King. The King is not the man at the top demanding that the world revolve around him. That is the inflated ego masquerading as the King.

The true King creates order, accepts responsibility, blesses life, and uses his power to help others grow.

That difference is the heart of Moore’s teaching.

The Center Is Within—but It Is Not Me

Moore believed that the psyche contains deep organizing patterns that Jung called archetypes. They are not roles we invent or costumes we decide to wear. They are fundamental human potentials that shape how we experience power, love, struggle, knowledge, purpose, and relationship.

For Moore, the four major patterns of mature masculinity were the King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. Each creates a different kind of psychological space. The Warrior confronts and acts. The Magician understands and transforms. The Lover connects and appreciates. The King brings order, meaning, blessing, and generativity to the whole.

But the human ego is not the archetype.

This was a point Moore made repeatedly because so much psychological and political trouble begins when a person confuses the two. The ego touches an enormous transpersonal energy and concludes, “I am that.” A leader begins to believe he is the nation. A father assumes that his authority makes him the source of truth. A therapist accepts a client’s idealization and starts to imagine himself uniquely wise. A successful man comes to believe that the people around him exist primarily as an audience for his greatness.

Moore compared this kind of inflation to plugging a 110-volt coffee maker into 220,000 volts. The ordinary personality cannot contain archetypal voltage. It may briefly look powerful, but underneath there is anxiety, brittleness, and fear of exposure.

His alternative could be summarized in one wonderful sentence:

“The center is in here, and it is not me.”

The center is not a political leader, a father, a spouse, a therapist, or some other admired person. But neither is it my own conscious ego. Psychological maturity comes from forming a relationship with that deeper center without claiming to be it.

That is what gives the mature King both strength and humility.

The King Creates a Cosmos

One of the King’s primary functions is to bring cosmos out of chaos.

By “cosmos,” Moore did not mean rigid control or a world in which everything is forced into place. He meant a living order in which things can develop according to their own nature. The mature King does not need to micromanage every detail. He creates and protects the conditions in which life can flourish.

Moore sometimes used the image of the King dancing the world into being. He discussed the film King David, in which David dances into Jerusalem after the death of Saul, the shadow King. Moore insisted that this was not merely a war dance or an exhibition by a triumphant man. Archetypally, it was a cosmos dance. The King was manifesting the new order before his people.

Elsewhere, Moore spoke of the King trying to “dance Atlantis back to the surface.” I love that image. The mature King is not imposing a lifeless plan upon the world. He senses an order and possibility already waiting beneath the surface and helps bring it into being.

We can see this capacity in ordinary life.

A good father creates a home with enough stability that his children can safely experiment, fail, and become themselves. A good teacher gives a class direction without crushing curiosity. A good supervisor establishes standards while helping employees develop their own judgment. A community leader looks at disorder and asks what structures will allow people to cooperate, contribute, and thrive.

This is guidance without control.

The shadow King cannot do this. Because he has no secure relationship to an inner center, he tries to become the center himself. Everything must pass through him. Information, power, initiative, and approval are centralized. Other people’s independence feels like rebellion.

The mature King asks, “What does this person need in order to grow?”

The shadow King asks, “How do I keep this person dependent upon me?”

The King Sacrifices for the Realm

Moore was emphatic that the essence of Kingship is not privilege. It is sacrifice.

The King carries responsibility for a realm larger than himself. He may enjoy authority and honor, but those exist because he has accepted an obligation to serve and protect the whole. Power and sacrifice belong together.

This gives us a simple way to distinguish mature authority from its counterfeit. When a price must be paid, who pays it?

The mature King is willing to bear the cost required by his responsibility. The shadow King retains the language of sacrifice but selects someone else as the victim. Moore captured it with a darkly comic question: “Who’s the goat?”

The shadow King says, in effect, “Yes, a sacrifice is necessary—and I have decided to sacrifice you.”

We see this in families, workplaces, institutions, and governments. Leaders protect their position while transferring the consequences of their decisions to those with less power. Fathers demand sacrifices from their families that they would never make themselves. Organizations preserve the comfort and reputation of those at the top by treating people below them as expendable.

The mature King understands stewardship. The people, resources, traditions, and institutions placed in his care are not simply his possessions. They have value beyond their usefulness to him.

The shadow King knows only disposable people. He uses them while they serve his needs and discards them when they do not.

The Blessing

Of all Moore’s ideas about the King, his teaching about blessing may be the most moving.

The King sees another person, recognizes what is trying to emerge in him, and offers a blessing that strengthens it. This does not have to involve religious language or a formal ceremony. A blessing may be conveyed through attention, delight, encouragement, confidence, or the simple experience of being taken seriously.

The blessing says:

I see you. You have value. There is something in you worth developing. You have a place in this world.

Moore believed that fathers have a “natural priesthood” in mediating this blessing to their children. A father does not create the child’s worth. He bears witness to it and helps the child experience it as real. For a son, the father’s blessing can help consolidate a secure masculine identity. For a daughter, it can affirm her worth and strengthen her capacity to relate to the masculine without fear or submission.

Sadly, many children never receive that blessing.

Moore argued that there is no emotionally neutral alternative. If the blessing is absent, the child experiences something closer to a curse. He may grow up with a chronic sense that he has no right to be here, that his gifts are insignificant, or that his very presence is burdensome. Depression, purposelessness, compulsive behavior, and substance abuse may become attempts to live with that absence.

Moore’s image of the shadow King is unforgettable. This King may sit on an impressive throne, dressed in flowing robes and a jeweled crown. But when you approach him, he yawns. He looks bored. He may not look at you at all.

That is the inner King mediated by a father who could not delight in his child.

The true King looks at you and sees possibility.

When a Son Begins to Shine

The decisive test of the father’s King energy comes when the child begins to develop power of his own.

Moore described the shadow father as responding to the son’s emerging confidence by “calling in an airstrike.” The son shows a talent, receives praise, speaks with confidence, attracts attention, or begins to think independently. Instead of feeling pride, the father experiences the son’s growth as a threat.

The unspoken message is: “If you grow, I lose.”

The attack may take many forms. The father ridicules the son at the moment he is most pleased with himself. He points out the flaw in every achievement. He competes with him, humiliates him, withdraws affection, or reminds him who is still in charge. The father may believe he is keeping the boy humble when he is actually keeping him small.

This dynamic is not limited to fathers and sons. It occurs whenever someone with power experiences another person’s development as a loss of status. It can appear between mothers and daughters, supervisors and employees, teachers and students, mentors and protégés, or leaders and their potential successors.

That leads to what may be the clearest measure of mature power:

What happens inside us when another person begins to flourish?

The mature King experiences that growth as the fulfillment of his stewardship. The shadow King experiences it as a threat to his throne.

The Tyrant and the Weakling

Moore’s archetypes are never divided into a simple healthy side and one unhealthy side. Their shadows tend to form a polarity.

One pole of shadow Kingship is the Tyrant. The Tyrant dominates, humiliates, exploits, and attacks emerging life. He must remain the only genuine center of power. He therefore surrounds himself with dependents, admirers, and people too divided or frightened to challenge him.

Yet the Tyrant is not strong. His domination grows out of insecurity. He knows, at some level, that he is masquerading as the true King. That is why he requires constant confirmation and reacts so violently to criticism, independence, or ridicule.

The other pole is the Weakling, who avoids responsibility and waits for someone else to provide order. The Weakling may appear modest or helpless, but Moore saw a hidden grandiosity in dependency. The inner position can be: “I would be a King, but the price is too high. Someone else should study, decide, work, risk, and sacrifice for me.”

This can become manipulative. Helplessness recruits others to carry the responsibilities the person refuses to claim.

The Tyrant and Weakling often find one another. One needs subjects; the other wants someone else to take charge. Together they create a system in which neither becomes mature.

Moore’s description of codependency was characteristically blunt: it is an agreement that neither person will grow up.

The King and the Queen

The mature King does not rule alone.

At the deepest level of the psyche, Moore saw the King and Queen as a royal pair. Mature relationship requires two genuine centers of power, each capable of blessing and strengthening the other. A healthy man does not need a diminished woman in order to feel like a man. A healthy woman does not need a diminished man in order to feel powerful.

The shadow King does not want an empowered Queen. He wants consorts—people who admire, serve, soothe, and orbit him without possessing a comparable center of their own. The shadow Queen has the same difficulty with an empowered King.

When the royal couple fails, families often form triangles. A mother dissatisfied with the father may recruit a son as her champion or emotional partner. A father dissatisfied with the mother may draw a daughter into a similar role. The child receives a kind of special status, but at a terrible cost: he or she is pulled out of the proper generational place and enlisted in an adult struggle.

Moore joked that what the world might need was “celestial mythic marital therapy”—Zeus and Hera learning to get along. Behind the humor was a serious insight. Human beings have imagined powerful Kings and Queens for millennia, but we have had much more trouble imagining the two fully empowered and mutually blessing one another.

The task is not for one to triumph over the other. It is for both to become whole enough to share power.

There Are No Warriors Without the King

Moore’s four archetypes are distinct, but they are meant to work together.

This becomes especially important when we consider the Warrior. Warrior energy gives us discipline, courage, decisiveness, endurance, and the ability to confront what must be confronted. But force by itself is morally directionless. It can serve justice or cruelty, protection or conquest.

The King provides the transpersonal values that tell the Warrior what is worth defending.

Moore put it beautifully: “There are mercenaries without the King, but there are no Warriors.”

A mercenary fights for reward, excitement, status, or whoever happens to be paying. The mature Warrior serves a moral realm—a community, a sacred obligation, the vulnerable, the future, or a vision of justice that reaches beyond personal gratification.

People sometimes speak of the Rainbow Warrior. Moore reminded them that there can be no Rainbow Warrior without a Rainbow King.

Without the King, strength easily becomes aggression. With the King, strength becomes service.

What Are You Doing With Your King Projection?

The final lecture in Moore’s series turned toward a practical problem. Premodern societies had visible kings, sacred rituals, and religious worlds in which royal projections could be lodged. Modern people killed or deposed their kings and often congratulated themselves for having outgrown the need.

But eliminating monarchy did not eliminate the archetype.

The King projection simply found new homes: presidents, political movements, celebrities, therapists, religious leaders, romantic partners, and sometimes the ego itself.

Moore therefore did not ask whether we project the King. He asked, “What are you doing with your King projection?”

That question matters because idealization contains a dangerous ambivalence. When we elevate a human being to godlike status, we inevitably begin to hate him for failing to be God. Adoration can turn rapidly into rage. The person who was expected to save us becomes the person blamed for every disappointment.

Moore’s goal was not to destroy the projection but to recognize it, withdraw it from its human carrier, and form a conscious relationship with its archetypal source.

He suggested several ways of doing this.

We can study the myths, rituals, images, and history of kingship. We can examine the lives of men who carried King energy in both its mature and shadow forms. We can pay attention to dreams. We can use prayer or religious ritual if those traditions remain meaningful to us. Prayer, Moore joked, is helpful with grandiosity because “it is kind of hard to think you’re God if you’re talking to it.”

He also recommended Jung’s practice of active imagination: entering into a deliberate inner dialogue with an image or figure from the unconscious.

Imagine seeking the inner King. Where does he live? Can you find the room? Is the throne empty? Does the King welcome you, ignore you, threaten you, or look bored? What does he see in you? What does he ask of you? What blessing have you been seeking from an earthly father, teacher, leader, or partner that no human being has been able to provide?

Moore did not present this as make-believe or as theology that one must accept. He treated it as an experiment in psychological experience. “The plumbing’s there,” he said. “The wiring’s there.” See what you encounter.

The Gift of Vocation

The blessing of the King does more than help a person feel good about himself. It gives value, direction, and vocation.

Moore spoke of the successful lawyer who earns plenty of money but remains chronically depressed. Achievement has provided status but not meaning. The person may then turn to cocaine, alcohol, sexual conquest, spending, or relentless work in an attempt to produce the vitality that success failed to deliver.

The King connects us with values larger than ourselves. It is the part of the psyche that asks what our life is for. It gives us concern for the public world, for justice, for children we may never meet, and even for the rainforest. Without some connection to that larger order, everything is reduced to private appetite and personal advantage.

The King gives us a Vocation with a capital V.

That does not mean everyone must become famous, wealthy, or powerful. Vocation may be expressed in raising a child well, caring for a piece of land, practicing a craft with integrity, protecting a community, teaching, healing, building, or quietly keeping faith with a responsibility that matters.

The question is not, “How important do I look?”

It is, “What has been placed in my care?”

The King Is Still Needed

Our culture is rightly suspicious of domination. We know too much about tyrants, abusive fathers, corrupt institutions, and leaders who demand sacrifice from everyone but themselves. But Moore warned against confusing the pathology of masculinity with masculinity itself.

The shadow of the King is not evidence that we should live without King energy. It is evidence of what happens when that energy remains unconscious, inflated, wounded, or absent.

We need men—and women—who can create order without becoming controlling, exercise authority without needing worship, accept sacrifice rather than selecting victims, and experience the growth of others as a source of joy.

We need fathers who look at their sons and daughters and say, in a hundred ordinary ways, “I see you. I delight in you. Your gifts do not diminish me. Go become who you are.”

We need leaders who do not make themselves the center of the realm. We need mentors who prepare their students to surpass them. We need men whose strength is governed by a moral purpose and whose care does not become control.

Most of all, we need to stop asking other human beings to carry the full weight of our longing for the King.

Moore’s teaching returns us to that central paradox:

The center is within, but it is not the ego.

When a man knows this, he no longer needs the world to kneel before him. He can use his strength to create order, bear responsibility, protect what has value, and bless the life growing around him.

That is the King within.

Men Are Good.

 

I recently read a paper titled Mapping the Neo-Manosphere(s): New Directions for Research, published in Men and Masculinities. It was quite an experience.

The authors—Vivian Gerrand, Debbie Ging, Joshua M. Roose, and Michael Flood—describe what they call the “neo-manosphere,” an enormous collection of online communities, personalities, political views, and self-improvement practices supposedly united by misogyny and male supremacy.

As I read, I kept waiting for the evidence. And waiting.

Where were the statements demonstrating the misogyny being described? Where were the representative quotations? Where were the arguments presented in enough detail that readers could evaluate them for themselves? Where was the distinction between hatred of women, criticism of feminism, advocacy for men, political disagreement, traditional beliefs, and ordinary male self-improvement?

For the most part, those things never appeared.

Instead, the paper offered an intricate academic portrait of a dangerous ideological ecosystem. Nearly every form of male-oriented dissent, vulnerability, or self-help could be positioned somewhere inside it or along its borders. Then, near the end, the authors became quite serious about intervention and control.

That is where the paper becomes much more than a questionable academic exercise.

The Conclusion Appears in the Definition

The paper begins by defining the manosphere as an online ecosystem of anti-women actors. In the introduction, it becomes a collection of anti-feminist and male-supremacist groups.

Those are not conclusions reached after the evidence is presented. They are built into the definition of what is being studied.

This matters because antifeminism is not the same thing as misogyny. A person can disagree with feminist theories, oppose feminist organizations, criticize feminist policies, or document harms produced by feminist advocacy without hating women or believing that men should rule over them.

Yet the paper repeatedly allows these categories to bleed into one another. Anti-feminism becomes adjacent to misogyny. Misogyny becomes adjacent to male supremacy. Male supremacy becomes adjacent to violent extremism. Once this chain has been constructed, a person need not advocate violence or express hatred toward women to be placed somewhere within the threatening manosphere.

The classification does the work that evidence ordinarily would have to do.

A Map With Very Few Exhibits

The paper does refer to some ​q​uestionable material. It mentions Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and deepfake pornography. I can see how some folks might label some of this as misogyny.

But this paper ranges far beyond those examples.

It includes or draws into the orbit of the manosphere men’s rights advocates, Men Going Their Own Way, Christian conservatives, dating coaches, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ryan Holiday, Lex Fridman, David Goggins, Jocko Willink, NoFap communities, wellness advocates, evolutionary psychologists, psychotherapists working with boys, tradwives, and female antifeminists.

What particular belief makes all these people part of one male-supremacist ecosystem?

They don’t say.

The authors identified 430 articles about the manosphere published since 2019 and drew upon approximately 100 of them. They say they selected recent publications to keep their map current. But they do not give us a systematic account of why those 100 were chosen, what evidence standards were applied, how conflicting findings were handled, or how the quality of the selected studies was assessed.

Most importantly, the paper seldom brings the primary material into view. Readers are generally told what another scholar concluded about an online community. We are then given a citation to that conclusion.

A citation may tell us where an assertion came from. It does not by itself prove that the assertion is correct.

When Repetition Becomes Evidence

The paper contains an impressive number of references. But citations are not necessarily independent evidence.

Much of the literature comes from scholars working within the same feminist and critical-masculinities framework. They frequently use similar definitions, begin with similar assumptions, and reach similar conclusions. One scholar classifies a community as misogynistic. Another scholar cites that classification. A third cites both papers as evidence that a scholarly consensus has developed.

Eventually, an interpretation acquires the appearance of fact through repetition.

The process works something like this:

1. A contested interpretation is introduced.

2. Like-minded scholars cite it approvingly.

3. Later papers cite the growing literature rather than examining the original material.

4. Repetition is treated as independent confirmation.

5. The resulting “consensus” is used to justify intervention.

There is nothing inherently wrong with scholars citing one another. That is how knowledge develops. The problem arises when the scholars share the same ideological premises and rarely test their interpretations against primary evidence or competing explanations.

We see the same process in the news media. One outlet publishes a claim. Other outlets repeat it. Commentators then report that numerous sources have confirmed the story. But when the chain is followed backward, the apparent confirmation may lead to the same original assertion.

​S​ay something often and people will eventually start believing you.

The paper does not so much map the manosphere as map what a network of similar-thinking scholars has said about the manosphere. The difference is enormous.

When Male Suffering Becomes Further Evidence Against Men

One of the most troubling features of the paper is the way it treats male suffering.

The authors describe theories suggesting that some men strategically adopt the language of victimhood and suffering to conceal existing systems of male power. That creates an almost perfect closed system.

If men express confidence or authority, that can be read as male supremacy. If men describe pain or disadvantage, their suffering can be interpreted as a performance designed to restore male supremacy.

What evidence could possibly prove the theory wrong?

Boys’ educational problems, male suicide, fatherlessness, workplace deaths, family-court experiences, loneliness, economic displacement, and men’s loss of social purpose receive little consideration as problems with standing of their own. Male distress matters mainly because dangerous influencers may exploit it.

The possibility that men might have legitimate grievances is never allowed to reorganize the analysis. Their suffering enters the model as another part of the pathway toward misogyny.

Imagine treating women’s suffering this way. Imagine an academic paper arguing that women describe victimization strategically to conceal female power and obtain greater institutional control. The authors would rightly be asked for extraordinary evidence. Not hard to imagine, is it?

Men are granted no such presumption of sincerity.

Self-Improvement Becomes a Radicalization Pathway

The paper is particularly suspicious of male self-improvement.

Physical fitness, discipline, purpose, Stoicism, financial advice, pornography avoidance, and wellness practices are treated as possible entry points into male-supremacist spaces. Even content carrying ordinary labels such as motivation, mindset, and money is described as potentially directing boys toward dangerous material.

Certainly, some influencers exploit insecure followers. Some sell worthless programs, make irresponsible health claims, or deliberately intensify fear to keep an audience engaged. This is hardly unique to men’s media. The internet is overflowing with wellness grifts, financial fantasies, political panic, and products marketed through insecurity.

But the authors do not treat exploitation as a general problem within the attention economy. They construct a particularly male ideological danger. Helping men develop strength, confidence, discipline, and purpose becomes suspect because it might “re-masculinise” them rather than lead them toward the authors’ preferred understanding of masculinity.

The paper even contrasts some evolutionary psychologists and psychotherapists working with boys with approaches grounded in social-constructionist and intersectional principles. The underlying assumption appears to be that social constructionism and intersectionality provide the only legitimate ways to understand men, boys, and the world around us.

That is not a neutral concern about hateful content. It is a dispute over which theory of men should be institutionally approved.

From Description to Control

Near the end, the paper moves from describing the manosphere to proposing what should be done about it.

The authors support educational interventions, disengagement programs, gender instruction, critical digital literacy, and broader structural responses. They then write:

Structural interventions must therefore include policy reforms that address not just content moderation, but also the architecture of virality, algorithmic bias, and platform accountability.

That sentence deserves much more scrutiny than the authors give it.

Architecture of virality

The architecture of virality consists of the systems that allow material to spread: recommendation engines, trending lists, hashtags, reposting, automatic playback, notifications, engagement-based ranking, and monetization.

Changing that architecture can mean slowing the spread of material the platform considers harmful. Content may remain technically available while being excluded from recommendations, search results, trending lists, or monetization. It has not been formally banned. It has merely been made nearly impossible to find.

That is censorship with softer edges and less public accountability.

Algorithmic bias

Algorithms often reward sensational or inflammatory material because outrage generates engagement. Examining that problem is entirely reasonable.

But what counts as the bias, and what would count as its correction?

Within the framework of this paper, the problem appears to be that algorithms recommend material the authors have classified as misogynistic, male supremacist, reactionary, or manosphere-adjacent. Correcting the algorithm would presumably mean turning it away from those ideas and toward content considered inclusive, social-constructionist, and intersectional.

In other words, the algorithm would be adjusted toward the authors’ preferred ideology.

Platform accountability

Platform accountability sounds reassuring. Platforms should enforce clear rules against threats, targeted harassment, doxing, and illegal activity. They should explain their policies and provide meaningful appeals.

But the paper employs categories far more elastic than threats or illegal conduct. What would platforms be held accountable for suppressing? Misogyny? Anti-feminism? Male supremacy? Traditional beliefs? Evolutionary explanations of sex differences? Criticism of feminist organizations? Male-oriented therapy? Stoicism? Advocacy for fathers?

The authors never establish a reliable boundary.

And they never answer the essential question:

Who decides?

Would it be technology companies, government regulators, feminist advocacy organizations, academics, fact-checkers, or privately funded extremism researchers? What evidence would they require? Could their decisions be appealed? Would the standards be public? Would criticism of feminism remain protected? Would identical standards apply to hatred directed toward men?

The paper does not tell us.

Apply the Same Standard to Feminism

The easiest way to expose the problem is to apply the paper’s method to feminism.

Imagine beginning a study by defining feminism as an online ​misandrist ecosystem of anti-male actors. Imagine grouping together radical feminists, mainstream women’s organizations, feminist journalists, gender-studies departments, female separatists, lifestyle influencers, abortion activists, and women who post angrily about dating.

Imagine treating female claims of suffering as strategic performances designed to conceal women’s institutional power. Imagine describing women’s wellness and empowerment content as possible gateways into misandry. Imagine tracing every shared citation, hyperlink, podcast appearance, and social-media recommendation as evidence of ideological cross-pollination.

Then imagine recommending disengagement programs, educational interventions, content moderation, algorithmic correction, and upstream regulation of the digital environment.

The methodology would immediately be condemned as guilt by association.

And yet finding direct expressions of feminist hostility toward men would not be difficult. Many feminist writers and activists have described men as violent, defective, dangerous, unnecessary, or collectively responsible for women’s suffering. Such statements have appeared in books, classrooms, journalism, advocacy, and popular culture. They are often defended as provocative social criticism rather than treated as gateways to extremism.

I am not suggesting that feminist speech should be suppressed. I am asking whether the people demanding controls on male-oriented speech would accept their own rules if those rules were applied evenly.

If they would not, they are not proposing a neutral system for controlling hatred. They are proposing ideological control.

Show Us the Evidence Before You Control the Conversation

There is misogyny online. There are men who say hateful things about women. There are disturbed communities, exploitative influencers, and individuals who encourage violence. Specific threats and specific acts should be confronted directly.

But none of that grants scholars permission to collapse an enormous range of men, beliefs, and communities into a single male-supremacist ecosystem.

Before regulating an ideology, we should require those proposing the regulation to define it clearly, identify who actually holds it, present representative primary evidence, distinguish hatred of women from criticism of feminism, and demonstrate that the proposed intervention targets harmful conduct rather than political disagreement.

This paper does not meet that standard.

It begins with a loaded definition, gathers a network of mutually reinforcing citations, treats male suffering as potentially deceptive, stretches the manosphere across an astonishing range of people and practices, and then invokes the resulting academic consensus to justify intervention into the systems that determine which ideas may spread.

The process is circular but effective:

First create the category. Then fill it with everyone you distrust. Cite colleagues who use the same category. Call the repetition a consensus. Finally, use that consensus to regulate the people placed inside it.

That is not simply mapping an online world.

It is constructing a threat—and then requesting the power to control it.​ Can you sense the desperation?

The paper discussed is Vivian Gerrand, Debbie Ging, Joshua M. Roose, and Michael Flood, “Mapping the Neo-Manosphere(s): New Directions for Research,” Men and Masculinities 28, no. 5 (2025): 443–464. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X251350277

Men Are Good.