okay, but how do we stop boys from falling down the rabbit hole??
There are a few different suggestions ranging from interpersonal to systemic, and much like birth control none of them are 100% effective but they increase their effectiveness if you use more than one.
- Make sure your kid has positive role models of all genders. Preferably several of each. This does require an amount of people having opportunities to and comfort with interacting with children for extended periods of time.
If a kid is gonna get radicalized into misogyny it helps if they can go "but wait... my aunt Meg isn't like how these people describe women, and actually my uncle Byron is visibly happy and healthy without needing to act like how these people say men should be." This is without these role models even necessarily needing to verbally intervene.
2. Make sure your kid regularly interacts with peers their age of all genders, especially pre-puberty.
Being able to talk to someone of the opposite gender without being weird about it is a skill that takes practice under the patriarchy. If your son is completely isolated from girls when he enters puberty then his main exposure to them will be through porn. And if he can't interact with girls outside of a sexual context without walking away feeling like he did it wrong, that puts him in a state where he's vulnerable to these online misogynists.
3. Don't just foster kindness; foster introspection.
The manosphere is at its core reactionary. It's emotions-driven rather than reasons-driven, which is maybe why the rhetoric of men being more logical than women slowed down in the past 20 years. You can certainly try to make sure your kid's emotional needs are met and that they have the ability to meet them themselves as they become more self-sufficient, but also make sure they have the tools to regulate and reflect on the occasion that they don't.
The fact is, the manosphere is nothing but a grift meant to pull in angry people and keep them angry to keep them watching and spending money. It won't solve their problems and it will make them bitter people. Lots of people notice this happening and get out early, but they have to either see it destroy someone else or recognize that it's destroying themselves in real-time. That's hard to do when you're in it, but it's easier if you have practice with introspection.
4. Include men's issues in feminist activism.
These boys are told by the manosphere that feminists want to make men's lives worse, and feminists corroborate this narrative when they say that the patriarchy benefits men and that it needs to be destroyed.
I have always advocated for the notion that the patriarchy benefits a select small group of men while ignoring the rest and actively oppressing women. The average working class man is just as likely to benefit from the abolition of the patriarchy as a woman is. A lot of female feminists scoff at this but I've personally used this rhetoric to break a few men out of their pipeline before it was too late.
It's critically important that men see feminism as a viable solution to their problems because for the most part right now their only option is MRA.
5. Something about walkable cities
Part of the reason boys are falling so hard into hyper-misogny after generations of increased progressivism is because actual social isolation is at an all time high. Solving the problem of social isolation is its own can of worms but the reintroduction of 3rd spaces, making sure teens and adults can physically meet up regularly, and so on would go a long way.
Generally, the higher proportion of socialization is done in a physical location, especially in a public space, rather than in private and online, the better. That's not to say online friendships are bad by any means, but there's a phenomenon of participating in discord groups and forums as an alternative to having friends that is destroying people of all genders, and men in particular are being radicalized through this process.
6. Destroy the patriarchy.
Easier said than done, but it would definitely work.
On 6 specifically, you have to foster masculinity that doesn’t build itself on the patriarchal ideas of masculinity. A lot of patriarchal masculinity is the result of misogyny so if you logically follow one, you also follow the other. This is harder said than done because you are literally fighting against the influence of society.
Edit to add my tags to the main post bc I think it’s important:
#btw terfs are the opposite side of the coin of the manosphere #by believing that men are inherently violent and dangerous they reinforce that idea into vulnerable men #and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy #and by insisting that men and women be isolated from each other socially and politically #they make it harder for us to learn from each other and understand each other #advocating for 'female separatism' or whatever they call it will never be feminist #it's not realistic or sustainable and it does more harm than good