“The Normalized Misandry”: 63 Men Reveal How The Manosphere Seduced Them, And Others Weigh In

Because once I realized how most women are operating I started to study the actual things underneath it. I started with watching Karen Straughen when she was releasing new videos and saw that what she was saying was the truth.

The new commentators in the space spout a lot of BS but the problem is people ignore the part of their messages that's the truth. By deeming them "bad or evil" you ignore everything including the parts that are true then wonder why people watch them to get the truth.

Opening-Ad-2769:

I was a hairstylist 20 years ago. And I can reaffirm your position here. The stuff I heard and witnessed opened my eyes wide lol. It made a lot of things clear to me that I had previously thought the opposite of when it came to women. 

While I am not conservative and only partially agreeing with the general manosphere, I am against modern leftism. For the record, I consider myself a social/patriotic leftist, I only deny the "identity left".

Left-wing don't care for men and men's issues and being ignored is actually the best we can count on. Sadly, they are often actively dismissive ("2 in 10 homeless people are women. What a tragedy!") or degrading, accusing men of everything wrong in this world because of "patriarchy", or only able to paint masculinity as problematic, fusing the words "toxic masculinity" into one.

There is also hypocrisy, leftists will usually declare how they bare for equality, but somehow ignore legal discrimination that men suffer amd women benefit - for example obligatory military conscription, or higher retirement age for men.

Sometimes there is also open hostility. A female MP from a leftist party in one of her parliament speech threatene to "bite through the necks" (literal expression after translating) of those, who complain about parental alienation (when after divorce one parent, typically a woman, will keep the child but refuse to follow the child's meeting with the other parent, typically a man, against judge's ruling).

I do agree it is sad, but the general manosphere is probably the largest group at least semi-caring about men's issues.

Too bad r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/ is a small niche, because that's the group I agree with the most.

I was accused of SA. No court case, no enquiry. I was just simply looked at differently and she ran off to another country. So ya. Learned then that women can be extremely cruel.

Furthermore, I quite enjoy the truth. I’m a big fan of it. And they often talk about the hard truths. Not what we wished was the case, what simply is.

And ya I do agree that some manosphere guys are also gender warmongers. It’s not good. But to act as though women haven’t been on an absolute [campaign] against men, women be living in denial.

I'm libertarian now but my turn came from the fact the right welcomed intellectual discovery whereas progs in control of the cultural institutions would seek to punish wrong think when I was just a young adult trying to understand the world.

Obviously this is circa early 2010, so it's very different now. But a key reason is that I felt safer with them to learn than the ones on the other side who hated me for asking any questions to begin with.

I would argue that both the terms manosphere and feminism are too broad to be particularly useful in terms having a discussion. Either of those terms regularly gets used to refer to a huge variety of ideas and movements etc so you would have to further define what you mean by them in order for me to know what you're saying.

Personally I am very much in favor of people's right to choose for themselves how they want to live. Therefore I endorse things like LGBT rights and oppose things gender based legislation etc. Many feminists would consider me a feminist because of some opinions like that. However that is far from universal. For example trans exclusionary feminists are not particularly rare but are opposed by larger feminist movements. I also don't really see feminism and conservatism as being diametrically opposed in all things. For example I would argue that some of the more widespread conservative perspectives on sexuality that I disagree with are also shared by many if not most feminists.

It really is much more convoluted that either side likes to pretend. Personally I prefer talking about specific ideas rather than broad generalities and terms like feminism or conservatism are not particularly useful for that. Telling me that you are a feminist or a conservative really is not giving me much information about what you believe.

Well, even though I’m not a conservative and don’t frequent any “manosphere” spaces on here, the main reason I was often recommended youtube content from the online young conservative or “red pill” spaces since around 2015 is because of how off-putting and unfair it feels to see online feminists’ behavior. They’ll often repeat the same easily debunked talking points from 15+ years ago about the “pink tax” or “wage gap” without looking into any potential non-sexist reasons for misleading population level statistics, as one small example.

Also, it’s easy to get labeled a “misogynist” for seemingly arbitrary reasons unrelated to the definition of misogyny, even when not directly talking about women lmao.

For example, as of today I can no longer comment or post in the Dating subreddit, which is the first time since I started using Reddit in 2018 that I’ve ever been restricted from any community here. Why did this happen, you ask? Because I gave a hypothetical set of plausible motivations for why specific men might have behaved the way they did, as a comment on a post where OP was complaining about her experiences. My comment didn’t say anything that I think is controversial, and didn’t criticize OP or women or even make any absolute assertions. But regardless, the snarky mod note claimed my comment had misogyny, and they also muted me so I couldn’t ask for clarification either. The rules for that subreddit (and many of the largest mainstream communities) are seemingly hostile to anything that isn’t blaming male behavior for 100% of issues with modern dating lol, any comment that doesn’t join in on the misandry is labeled as misogyny and removed, seemingly.

Sorry for the rant, but this just happened and is a microcosm of what experiences with online feminists in positions of censorship authority are like.

Ironically college made me more conservative. Im a pretty rural dude who initially tried going to school for two years first in engineering, then the geological field. Both didn't work out, as I'm not a good student, so I went to welding school after. In that time I saw what a more liberal culture looked like for the first time, but tried to hold an open mind to see if I could prove my dad who was an inner city cop for years wrong.

Pretty quickly I started to dislike the culture however. I found it hypocritical that the same folk protesting misogyny were mysandrists at the bar that night, or the same folk protesting racism were bigoted towards more rural minded folk, or the same folk who were protesting their perseved government overreach, wanted the government to enforce unconstitutional measures against others. In the end my dad was for the most part right about the city, college, and folks within. There's flaws in his beliefs, dont get me wrong, and I've met enough people so far in my life to prove him partially wrong. But now I mostly go with the phrase of stereotypes are there for a reason, and am glad I can finally afford to move back away from the city.

I don't visit manosphere sites, but I was considered a liberal until covid. Then all my fellow liberals suddenly started trusting big pharma, trusting the government had our best interests at heart, and quickly went away from supporting personal freedoms, and instead supported mandates. Vaccine mandates, mask mandates, curfew mandates, quarantine mandates, etc. Then they supported censoring free speech, because it was problematic. I was like what? Being a Liberal used to mean, you believe in personal autonomy, support free speech, support gay rights, womens rights, and shifted to wanting to give the government for control. It just became pro communism and socialism under the guise of morality.

I don't consider myself conservative, more of a libertarian, but the conservatives don't have all these moving goal posts all the times.

I do research into everything I have an opinion on, the Trans stuff, the vaccine mandates, and the pro censorship and mass illegal immigration was just illogical to the point that I disdained the side I used to be with. Now I think they're even dumber than the conservatives. Which is crazy, since I voted for Obama.

Like others have said, a lot of men have been pushed out of places, especially college, and are told that they're by default oppressors. Even worse if they're white and straight or Christian. So who welcomes them? The conservatives.

Hell, even my sister says [stuff] all the time like "Men suck, but not you you're one of the VERY few good ones." Luckily I have an amazing wife who's not caught up in all this cultist mentality.

As others have said, the obvious reasons are because men are demonized with little nuance at all. There are objective facts about the suffering of men that is not only mens' own faults, but it's anthropomorphized as something done intentionally and maliciously, e.g., the "patriarchy".

For me, what's pushed me away from "feminism" and other progressive ideas, is in addition to the above, there *is zero accountability for women* in this system. There is no room for error. No room for imperfection in men, yet women are effectively "blameless" and perpetual "victims".

My life is filled with women who are walking contradictions. Whatever "good" qualities they claim for themselves are entirely self-defining. Whatever "bad" qualities they ascribe to men is just as capricious.

As a moderate who is constantly pushed away from the left the main issues that i feel draw people to these kinds of beliefs are:

Being blamed for everything, accused of everything, told your opinion doesn't matter, and having your position misrepresented solely because of immutable characteristics

The inability to diverge at all in beliefs without being lumped in with the right makes you feel like you might as well.

Social friction from having to perform rituals you don't understand or disagree with is exhausting.

The main reason i personally haven't accepted the manosphere personally is because they take those legitimate issues to an absurd extreme. Being tired of performative inclusion leading to a black ariel is just as absurd as people being up in arms over whitewashing for example.

I have been trying to date for 16 years, *trying* being the magic word. I got 0 dates, constant rejections(mostly tied to my height, secondly for being chubby), and 0 luck online after trying multiple apps for 5 years.

I started getting into psychology pretty early in order to improve my dating. I have also been in the gym for more than 7 years and have made a lot of progress. And, I went to therapy for 8 years. I also started getting into attractive hobbies like poetry, songwriting, dancing, and gardening.

After all of that...**I feel more miserable than ever**.

The gym gave me an eating disorder and body dysmorphia, while talking to girls became more and more painful with every rejection, no matter how good I was at hiding that. My depression and anxiety made me hate every possible hobby and pushed me towards developing BPD. My disgust for how much pressure and omportance people put on things like confidence, leanness, and height, is imeasurable.

All while I never mattered and always felt invisible. I tried to tell people how painful and deadly never being chosen, having no idea if you're worth dating or you're going to d*e alone feels like. The ones who always dismiss this are **women**.

"just love yourself and focus on your friendships" - not how male psychology or emotional and physical needs work. Even *self-love* is a social conditioning, you do not have the ability to love yourself if you don't know how someone loving you looks life. And it still doesn't compare to the feelings of another person.

Less than a year ago, my best friend, who struggled with dating and height too, took his own life because of it. That made me fall into a deep hatred for women's dismissal of how much access to dating and relationships they have. I turned to the manosphere

A few months in though, I realized that the life based on conditional love and achievements that the manosphere presents with a nice bow on top is not at all what I want from a partner.

Real relationships and reddit success stories kinda pulled me out of that mindset, but it never fixed anything. I am just a hollow shell existing for the sake of seeing if dating is worth something anymore or not.

Social media—and echo chamber algorithms–have amplified and normalized misandry and misogyny.

Are there men out there who treat women badly? Yes.

Are there women who do the same to men? Also yes.

The danger is that you have younger generations growing up entirely (and seeing the world through) social media. They are consuming content that isn't always accurate, factual, or representative of the real world.

For example: If a young girl views content about a young man who sexually harassed a woman, engages with that content, they will continue to see similar content. If the man was tried and convicted, he should 100% be held accountable for his actions. But that one engagement now rewires this girl's algorithm to see similar content.

As a young girl, if you see this content with every swipe, your worldview will be molded by thoughts of, "wow, bad men are everywhere," or "wow, all men are trash."

And when this girl goes out into the world, and experiences this first-hand by one or more bad actors, her worldview is now validated.

Bad actors, in general, represent a small percentage of what's actually happening. But they get more visibility and exposure, so people think it's happening more often.

Honestly, I think this is a young generation problem. Most people over a certain age don't care what men/women do with their lives. They have other issues to worry about.

But I feel for kids growing up today. Girls thinking men are horrible. And boys thinking women are out to get them. Everyone thinking what they see is real. Everything is distorted, and we are now raising a generation of humans who lack critical thinking skills because AI.

I'm going to sound like an old man, but the solution is to get off social media.

I think men have been asked over the past 10-20 years to change completely how they think or act, and what they should accept.

To be fair, these things didn't seem much, didn't seem to affect us in our daily lives, so we accepted these things.

However, these things we were asked to change didn't make our lives better; they made them worse, they didn't make others think of men better; the misandry just increased against us hugely, and they made the world worse.

So, huge swathes of men decided, why bother?

So now, I don't bother, I will treat and talk to women exactly as I would a man, I expect the same in work and outside work as I would for a man.

I won't apologise for being a man, and wanting what a man wants and desires, because they are diferent than a woman's wants and desires.

I won't keep quiet about my feelings on a subject because it might offend a woman.

I once flirted with things like MGTOW but I quickly got turned off when I realized... for men doing their own thing, they were awfully focused on their problems with women. I was at a phase in my life where I spent too much time online, isolated from my previous friend group, on dating sites where I was not getting much luck, and all the women around me save for my mother had been telling me men are garbage, men made them feel unsafe, men were not doing enough, all men are violent or rapists, and I just didn't really want anything to do with people who thought of me as a danger or someone whose motives were always to hurt them or put them down. It was before the whole bear over men thing, but very reminiscent of the same feeling.

I wanted a place to shut up about gender dynamics and talk about cool [stuff] my old guy friends & I liked and I'd rarely found women to find interest in, such as sports, programming, videogames, woodworking, home repairs, rockets going to space... I wanted friends I could relate to. Community.

All I got was some whining about how they felt attacked by women. It got tiresome, I couldn't get what I wanted from it, so I moved on to pour myself into work. At least I get paid for my efforts there.

Never understood the likes of Andrew Tate, it just seems like more of the whole hating the other gender dynamic. I wish we'd move past that, on all sides.

For what amount i have, is due in great part to the extreme left ultra woke culture hating on white men. To put it simply.

Feminist ideas - now there is a loaded term. In the western world, in this day and age, if you think that term is close to, or will be perceived by most men as close to egalitarian or humanism, you're way off base. If you don't want to come off as very biased towards you own gender, you're better off voicing those ideas specifically.

As far as politically, I haven't moved that far "right" from my left of centre spot in my youth. What has moved a hell of a lot more is much of the political left and their beliefs, priorities, and rhetoric.

When I was younger (early twenties), I followed the Red Pill stuff.

I was doing everything 'right', and still wasn't having any success with women. I followed all the advice that women gave, I treated them how they *claimed* they wanted to be treated. I was clean, dressed well, etc. All of it. And still struggled to get phone numbers.

Then I started following the Red Pill stuff, taking a different approach. It worked. I started getting dates, and having sex.

I started treating women how they claimed they *didn't* want to be treated. Using pickup artist techniques, basically the opposite of what women said. It worked.

That's why I don't trust women, and I can't take the 'concerns' about the Man'O'Sphere seriously. None of it would exist if women were capable of honesty or integrity.

Because the manosphere spoke to me in such a way that no one, or nothing, ever has.

By way of background, I am successful professionally and financially. I retired at the age of 55 and will never have to work another day in my life.

That said, I am skinny, ugly, and Level 1 autistic. I’ve always struggled to be accepted. Much more than becoming accomplished professionally, I had a real hard time disabusing myself of all the social conditioning that I had undergone. Both red pill praxeology, and some of what the manosphere has been saying, gave me a much greater understanding of how the world works, and what reality is like for millions of men out there aside from myself. I found out I wasn’t alone in my alienation from what I was told my life should look like, and what it actually is.

I should say that I think both red pill and manoshpere content has gone seriously off the rails, and it has gotten to the point where both of those things at this point are nothing more than influencers mining for clicks and likes. I no longer have any use for it, but I can say that I’m in a better place for having been exposed to it, and thinking about what fits my life and what doesn’t

Not a single day goes by without me seeing a feminism post which can't make its point without pre insulting disagreeing opinions with the usual insults.

Okay, I'm just going to start with a disclaimer. Maybe I'm just too old for this but I don't identify, nor agree with the whole manosphere definition. Nobody seems to even know what it is and throws the word around whenever it suits them.

I was asked to attend a University debate once about this topic and they wanted me to debate against the manosphere side. And I asked the organizers,'Can you tell me what the manosphere is?'. And they send me three portraits and say,"Yeah its what these bigots stand for".

The three photos they sent me was Steve Irwin, Andrew Tate and Nelson Mandela.

Like.....😂😂😂😂😂😂I'd need to be on one hell of a trip to find a philosophy that those three people agree on. Safe to say, I turned down the request for the debate.

"Back in my day', these terminologies didn't exist and we didn't form camps like this. You listened to some peoples' advice, you stress tested it in the real world, and eventually you learnt the truth of what works and what's [nonsense].

Plain and simply, in my experience, everything that came out of a feminist's mouth was [nonsense] and made my life worse, while the advice offered by the alternate group, substantially improved my life. That's very simply how I decided which beliefs to adopt.