The Manosphere Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum: A Full-Blooded Masculine Response to the Latest Academic Panic Piece, By John Steele and James Reed

On December 11, 2025, The Conversation dropped another predictable hit-piece: "From violence to sexism, the manosphere is doing real-world harm." Two Monash University academics, both supported by feminist-aligned research councils and women's safety bodies, wrung their hands about the "dark, growing" corner of the internet that is apparently radicalising boys, ruining relationships, and propping up Donald Trump. Here is their disclosure:

"Stephanie Wescott receives funding from Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety and the Australian Research Council.

Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government and ANROWS, among others. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separate from and does not represent that role."

You've heard it all before. Same script, new date.

Here's the part they never say out loud, because it would collapse their entire narrative:

The manosphere would not exist if third- and fourth-wave feminism hadn't spent thirty years waging total war on men, boys, and masculinity itself.

That's not a justification for every unhinged incel subreddit. It's a statement of cause and effect.

Let's run the tape.

Boys are diagnosed, drugged, and disciplined in schools for the crime of being energetic little boys.

"Sit still, speak softly, don't roughhouse." Translation: stop acting like a male primate.

Result? A generation of young men who were told their natural wiring is a pathology. Where do you think they go when the classroom rejects them? Straight to YouTube channels that say, "No, brother, having energy is good. Channel it. Lift. Fight. Build."

Family courts treat fathers like walking ATMs with weekend visitation rights.

One malicious allegation (no evidence required in many jurisdictions) and a man loses his kids, his house, half his income, and his reputation.

Then society wonders why "red pill" forums are full of guys warning each other: "Do NOT get marriage-zoned without a prenup."

Corporate and university hiring is openly rigged against competent men in the name of "equity."

Firefighter physical standards lowered, STEM scholarships for "women and non-binary only," mandatory diversity quotas.

Young men watch their sisters get fast-tracked while they're told to "check their privilege." Resentment doesn't need a manifesto; it just needs repetition.

Culture at large decided that masculinity is the original sin.

Every movie dad is a bumbling fool or absent. Every ad campaign mocks "typical blokes." Politicians and talking heads casually joke that "the future is female" or that we need to "re-educate" boys.

When you tell an entire sex they are the problem, don't act shocked when some of them start believing they're the enemy — and others start organising.

That's the soil. The manosphere is the weed that grew in cracked concrete.

The academics clutch pearls over "high-value men," 4 a.m. routines, and tradwife aesthetics. They call it toxic. We call it oxygen.

For the first time in decades, young men are being handed a message that isn't steeped in shame:

Lift heavy weights to increase testosterone .

Make money.

Protect the people you love.

Stop apologising for existing.

Notice how that message is only "dangerous" when it's directed at men. When women are told to "boss babe" their way to the top, buy the designer bag, and freeze their eggs, it's called empowerment. When men are told to grind, dominate, and lead, it's suddenly a national security threat.

Yes, there are rancid corners of the manosphere — black-pill doomerism, genuine woman-hating, race-baiting garbage. Those deserve scorn. But lumping Andrew Tate's hustle clips in with actual neo-Nazi forums is the same intellectual dishonesty that equates a tradwife baking sourdough with Handmaid's Tale cosplay.

The bigger lie is pretending this is all happening in some offline vacuum. The authors sneer that "there is little or no delineation between online and real life." Right there isn't. Because real life is where boys get suspended for play-fighting, where men lose everything in divorce court, where "believe all women" became a cultural battering ram with no due process attached.

The manosphere is the immune response.

Want it to shrink? Then stop creating the conditions that cause it to swell.

Fix family law so fathers aren't treated like criminals by default.

Teach boys, not "un-teach" them.

Hire and promote based on merit again.

Let men have spaces — physical and digital — without slapping a biohazard label on them.

Admit that men have legitimate grievances instead of gaslighting them with "fragile masculinity."

Do that, and half the manosphere deflates overnight. The other half — the part that's just about lifting, earning, and leading a house — sticks around, because it's healthy and always was.

Until then, spare us the feigned concern from grant-fed academics who've never once asked why millions of young men feel the mainstream abandoned them.

The manosphere isn't the disease.

It's the fever.

And the body is fighting back.

Men, now go do your pull-ups. The world isn't going to fix itself.

https://theconversation.com/from-violence-to-sexism-the-manosphere-is-doing-real-world-harm-262205