Exploring the Manosphere with James Bloodworth
Added 2025-08-09 12:58:03 +0000 UTCIn this episode, we immerse ourselves in the potent juices of the manosphere with British journalist and author James Bloodworth. James recently published Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere and takes us on a whirlwind tour of various misogynistic and anti-feminist subcultures, including pickup artists, incels, and the blue, red, and black pill communities. Drawing on his personal experiences and research, James discusses the appeal and dangers of the manosphere, touching on themes such as insecure masculinity and the commodification of social interactions. We also get into some joyful political implications and consider the role of social media in spreading these messages. One for all the family!
Links
The Guardian – Journey into the Manosphere – Review of Lost Boys
Comments
Great interview on a really important topic. Will definitely hunt down a copy of the book (probably even a hard copy so I can scribble notes on it). Couple of things off the top of my head. First the irony of an ideology that's ostensibly all about sex, and yet less and less anything to do with sexual desire or pleasure, the more down the rabbit hole it goes. By coincidence, was just reading Manvir Singh's excellent 2021 paper on The Sympathetic Plot (looking the most common folktale plot across cultures). His opposition to the functionalist explanation of "the simulation hypothesis" and persuasive counter of a "byproduct" theory - i.e. stories exploit cognitive traits that evolved as adaptive for other reasons, but appeared and persist because they give pleasure - made me rethink this aspect of manosphere ideology. The intuition being that people prefer to substitute functionalist (cod evopsych) explanations for sex because they are uncomfortable or feel threatened by pleasure-centred accounts. I feel there could be an angle there for "deradicalising" interventions by people who work with young people at risk of being sucked in by this toxic ideology. The second one was maybe more counterintuitive. Yes, the manosphere ideology as a whole is inseparable from a toxic masculinist heterosexism. But... the point that James raised several times about the way the ideology buys into and amplifies notions of self-commodification, being a product in some hierarchical competitive marketplace, etc, could potentially apply to same-sex oriented people as well. We know that problems like pathological jealously, coercive control and domestic violence can occur in same-sex relationships just as they do in straight ones. It would be an interesting research project to look into whether the kind of self- and other-objectifying, extreme commodification discourses that we see in the manosphere are also entering LGBT cultures as well (outside of the "woke" political milieu, which contrary to lazy stereotypes, does not make up the majority of the lesbian and gay population).
Paul Bowman
2025-08-19 13:38:26 +0000 UTCThanks for this episode. I think you’re spot on about Christian Nationalism being the next stop for the Manosphere. Can you please interview Andra Watson from the Substack For Such a Time as This? She escaped from this repressive ideology. One of the gurus worth debunking would be Doug Wilson. The Sons of Patriarchy (who are recovering from this religious trauma) are debating him sometime.
Fran Murrell
2025-08-17 00:07:16 +0000 UTC
