The Manosphere, Pickup Culture & Male Loneliness - James Bloodworth - #975

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What wine are you drinking? That's what I want to know.

**James Bloodworth** (0:03)
It's a rosé wine that someone, we had a kind of small dinner party yesterday and they left a bottle, so it'd kind of be rude not to have it the next day.

**Chris Williamson** (0:11)
On a Monday.

**James Bloodworth** (0:12)
I know, but it's a Monday. I worked on the weekend, so.

**Chris Williamson** (0:16)
Technically a Friday.

**James Bloodworth** (0:17)
Yeah, exactly.

**Chris Williamson** (0:19)
Brilliant. I saw a quote from Richard Reeves earlier on today. I'm worried that the term Manosphere is going to go through a similar journey to toxic masculinity, simultaneously being broadened massively beyond its original parameters and breaking out of academic circles and into mainstream discourse. What do you think about that?

**James Bloodworth** (0:37)
Yeah, I think that's a... I like Richard's work and I think that's a fair point. I think I've seen the... During the course of writing my book about the Manosphere, I've seen the term has become very, very baggy in terms of how it's used. So I've seen, I've seen, I've seen, you know, the Manosphere originally at least referred to, at least in the book, it's kind of a... it refers to like male supremacist communities, anti-feminist communities, which is quite specific, I think. But I've seen it over the course of the writing of the book, it's kind of expanded to include almost, you know, if you read The Guardian sometimes or The New York Times, it's like anyone who does a bench press, anyone who can do a bench press is part of the Manosphere.
Yeah, like Joe Rogan is like the part, like he's, that's kind of accepted now in the media that he's part of the Manosphere, whereas I think, no, not really, maybe he's kind of, people in the Manosphere listen to him, but so do lots of other people. So yeah, it has become so broad as it's become a little bit meaningless. The term toxic masculinity, yeah, that kind of went the same thing. Even in cell, I would say that term, yeah, same trajectory, just kind of became this weapon in the hands of people who would then use that to proselytize for their own sort of point of view.

**Chris Williamson** (1:51)
You know what I'm trying to think about? I'm trying to think about an equivalent sort of toxic negative term that's being used for the female side of the fence that's being captured by the mainstream. If you were to look at some of the terms coming out of the Manosphere, stuff like 304s, like alpha widows, and then just every other sort of slur, like not very inventive slurs.
But I can't think of, I guess Karen in a way.

**James Bloodworth** (2:24)
Karen is probably closest. I mean, trapped wives a bit in kind of intellectual circles or if you're kind of reading, yeah, reading the New York Times or something, or The Guardian again, maybe in those circles, but it's not really caught on in popular culture at all.

**Chris Williamson** (2:44)
Yeah, I think an interesting place to start actually is what the Manosphere is not, and you've kind of highlighted there, guys talking on a podcast may be Manosphere adjacent, but again, if you broaden the term Manosphere to include anything that men like, then like roller coasters is the Manosphere and UFC is the Manosphere, and Nickelback is the Manosphere.

**James Bloodworth** (3:13)
Yeah, I mean, it's partly the fault of the term itself because the term is just here. If you just heard the term Manosphere and you didn't know anything about any of these subcultures that kind of claim that mantle, you might think it's something relatively benign because there's nothing in the name suggesting otherwise necessarily. So that I think is part of it. But yeah, I mean, it's just these terms do get lazily applied to a policy like woke is an example on the left, you have kind of people on the right was called anything they don't like, oh, this is just woke. And it's just kind of a label to associate your opponents with kind of the worst aspects of something. So like the crazy like hyper identity politics people, whereas yeah, if you people who want to discredit kind of any conservative politics will say, well, that's just part of the, you know, the manosphere and trying to associate.

**Chris Williamson** (4:03)
Yeah, trying to associate with tape. Red meat is manosphere, wearing Axe body spray.

**James Bloodworth** (4:10)
Yeah, yeah. Anything is, I mean, this was worse, I think a few years ago. So I think people like Richard Reeves have allowed us to have a more of a intelligent conversation. I mean, in the mainstream, that is. I think there's, the media ecosystem now is obviously much more broad and there are all kinds of different conversations, but in the mainstream, people like Richard Reeves, I think have made it a bit more cringe to just throw around terms like toxic masculinity, you know, everywhere. I hear that term a lot less now. I didn't use it in the book, you know, deliberately, because I think it's unhelpful. But I think manosphere, yeah, I mean, I hope it doesn't stop getting used just yet, because it's the subtitle of my book.