“Adolescence”, since its release, has scarcely been out of headlines. As a teacher, I am frequently asked “Is it really like that? What have you experienced? How did you handle it?” These are difficult questions to answer. On the one hand, I am one of many educators who have found themselves increasingly faced with the culture of sexist hostility that the Manosphere promotes. In the last few years, I’ve met it in ‘joking’ memes (“Miss, what colour is your Bugatti?”), querying of my professional competency (“Miss, our science teacher said that women have fewer brain cells than men: does that mean you’re not qualified to teach us?”), assault-apologism (“But, Miss, lots of women do lie about r*pe”), and open hostility (“Miss, you’re a f******g b****h!”). Reddit threads from teachers confirm similar experiences across the UK, Australia, and the US, and the data shows that girls are increasingly subject to s**ist and s**ual harassment at school. On the other hand, it’s hard to raise the alarm without unhelpfully essentialising the problem: the Manosphere is quick to jump on and exploit narratives that frame young men are irredeemably toxic, and fatalism disempowers action. These questions, therefore, have a dual answer: yes – there is a problem, but also – my classrooms remain full of excellent young men that demonstrate the Manosphere can be both resisted and defeated.
Recently, the UK Prime Minister – Keir Starmer – lent his support to Netflix’s initiative to stream ‘Adolescence’ for free to secondary schools across the UK. This certainly raised some eyebrows: ‘Adolescence’ does it a great job highlighting the problem, but the viewer is left to infer solutions. Many in the education sector are rightly anxious about being charged with the responsibility of managing conversations about radical misogyny. In some cases, this is because they feel they need specific training or resources (or external experts) to manage the Manosphere rearing its head in the classroom, or else worry that a discussion of such topics might prove personally triggering. In other cases, they are concerned that indelicate treatment of the issues could bait the inflammation of already-existing cultures of sexual harassment or provoke other aggressive reactions. I’ve seen teachers worry online, for example, that the very scenes meant to provoke horror – like Jamie’s threat to his psychologist – would receive jeers of support in their classrooms. Most of all, educators are worried that an undue focus on schools’ responsibilities risks obscuring that misogyny is systemic and permeates politics, justice and culture. If we localise our solution to schools alone, then we limit the results we can achieve. As a teacher, I can help students process what their social media algorithms show them, but I’m not responsible for or able to control the fact that social media algorithms amplify misogynistic content when it knows the user is a teenage male. Political will needs to be ambitious and consider prevention, rather than rescue.
That said, I do believe that educators have a role to play. I have recently written about strategies that we might use to inoculate young men against the influence of the Manosphere: teaching critical thinking, providing strong role models, and empowering boys through opportunities to take responsibility. I stand by the statement that inoculation is a crucial strategy: students need to be primed to independently resist the Manosphere’s influence, because we can’t hand-hold all of them. But, that said, I take the point of ‘Adolescence’ writer, Jack Thorne, that we need more radical action than role models. After all, inoculation doesn’t prevent infection – it merely lessens symptoms – and it does nothing for the already infected. We also need to know how to treat.
In this article, I want to suggest some guidance for educators – teachers, teacher aides, and counsellors – on how to deal with direct conversations about the Manosphere in the classroom. Specifically, I’m offering a reactive paradigm that guides responses to low-level Manosphere citation in the classroom (e.g. parroting of talking points or memes), which is the most common format that I experience. This is, importantly, distinct from management of more serious cases (e.g. verbal or physical harassment, r*pe jokes): these are matters for senior-leadership as suspension and exclusion-level offences and merit their own focused treatment.
I make no pretensions to expert status or universal provision: I’ve read the expert advice that’s available, engaged in honest conversations with my students, and tried to learn from missteps in my own experiences. However, I hope that sharing what has worked best – in my context – can be a useful contribution to the collaborative effort that is required to halt and reverse the Manosphere’s degrading influence.
- Preparation: Know Your Terminology
Part of the Manosphere’s effectiveness has been the euphemistic code through which it speaks. Discussions of ‘Bops’, ‘80-20’, ‘2D’, ‘Fapfuel’, ‘SMV’, ‘Body Count’, ‘Butterface’, ‘Roasties’, ‘Simps’ or ‘White Knights do not immediately suggest misogynistic meaning. Veiled language has several advantages: it allows for ideology to be shared without oversight, provides a dog whistle to signal group-identification, and lends the ideology a kind of counter-cultural charisma. Furthermore, it means that teachers are often unaware that it is present in their classroom at all, until it appears explicitly (at which point, its extremity makes it harder to manage).
For this reason, educators need to keep abreast of the Manosphere’s language and symbols through age appropriate workshop content we deliver in schools. When we can demonstrate that we ‘know the code’, we not only disincentivise its use, but also gain an advantage in conversations: many young men think adults ‘don’t get’ internet culture, so showing knowledge of the Mansophere can buy credibility.
Personally, I created a TikTok account to track discourse directly and share with my colleagues, but there are other options to track the dynamism of online culture: Google any neologisms that you hear in the classroom, keep an eye on new additions to Urban Dictionary, or ask trusted students to share words to watch out for. Since most words and ideas work by common themes, terminology becomes much easier to spot once you know the basics.
(2) Responding: In The Classroom
While “praise in public and criticise in private” is usually a good rule for maintaining a positive learning environment, I believe that the Manosphere requires a public response. School leaders and teachers need to clarify moral appropriateness, disincentivise copycats, and affirm the safety of other students (remembering that the Manosphere is directly impacting the physical safety of young women).
But how do we do this in such a way that the public shame of a ‘call out’ doesn’t end up exacerbating a student’s existing vulnerabilities (remembering, too, that the Manosphere both targets and seeks to entrench the situation of alienated young men), or promoting an inflammatory reply?
- Interpret as generously as you can
It’s important to avoid knee-jerk condemnation when the Manosphere appears in your classroom. In some cases, terminology or ideas might be repeated innocently, critically or satirically. Sometimes, students might be asking what sounds like a Manosphere-charged question in good faith (e.g. “Does catcalling really happen?”, which I note is distinct from the similar-sounding, but quite different “Does catcalling really happen?”) Even where a student appears to both know and mean what they have said, this can be indicative of a failure of understanding, rather than character: there is research that suggests boys are often ‘left out’ of s*xu*lity education, and it is in this very gap that the Manosphere’s grifters have proliferated. Thus, we should be cautious of immediate displays of deficit-thinking: they risk aggravating the encounter, shutting down conversation through overreaction, and/or feeding the narratives that the Manosphere perpetuates (e.g. “Feminists think all men are toxic!”).
Importantly, generosity does not oblige passive assent to misogyny: you can approach a statement charitably, while still affirming the boundaries of the classroom space. For instance: “This will be the first and only time I will ever accept ‘joke’ as a reason for using that terminology: are we clear?”
- Separate statement from speaker
Before you give the statement critically in the classroom, I recommend severing the what-was-said from the speaker (and their supporters). Statements like “That’s a very out-of-character statement/reaction from you” or “Do you need an exorcism? You appear to be possessed by the spirit of Andrew Tate” can carve out a pathway for students to back away from a radical statement and provide implicit assurance that any ‘call out’ you deliver is a rejection of the statement itself (rather than the student). This allows the student to feel that they still have social currency with you and their peers, which de-escalates the likelihood of a defensive response.
- Address the comment – Don’t ignore it!
When converting a statement to a teachable moment, you’ll hear a range of attempts to prevent critical discussion: “It was a joke!”, “He said it first!”, “Of course I don’t actually believe that!” These statements are useful to accept in the moment (even if you don’t believe them – more on that later), because they provide you with another layer of abstraction between student and statement, which de-escalates the encounter. Use their logic to push forward safely: “Even if you were joking, some people actually do think this stuff is true, so let’s take a moment to talk about that.”
Humour can be effective here; in that it can defuse anxious or confrontational energy in the room before you engage in critical conversation. For example, I have a custom PowerPoint ready-to-go for the “I was being ironic!” defence (which usually gets some laughs when it appears, because it has a little space to customise on the fly with the “ironic-statement-of-the-day”). Projecting it on the whiteboard – and thereby making clear that this incident isn’t my first rodeo with a malignant comment – is another effective way of making the offence less about the individual and more about the thought that has been expressed: “Look, so-and-so, you aren’t the first student to try and argue with an English teacher about irony, but I’ll give you the chance to the be the first one to win, ok?”
The next step is to address the substance of the statement with the class. You have a few options for how you might choose to approach it (which can work together, or function as independent strategies). Unless you’re dealing with a universally hostile environment, try to make this a collaborative discussion in which you elicit the right kinds of thinking from students socratically. This has the advantage of offering peer-correction (remember: many students disagree with the Manosphere and are looking for ways to express that, but they need your support!) and avoiding the kind of condescending didacticism that’s likely to render students less receptive.
Strategy One: Break down the logic of the terminology or statement. For instance, if a student claims “all women are gold diggers”, you can ask a series of questions that help them identify the flaws in their view:
- “Can you give me some examples of women that you know that are gold diggers? What is your evidence for knowing that they are?”
- “On your logic, wouldn’t this mean that women would never partner poor men? Is it the case that they don’t?”
- “How do you explain women that still marry men after having signed a prenup?”
- “In what cases can partners share income with each other, without ‘gold-digging’?”
- “Why do women need to dig for gold?”
Importantly, this is an approach that only works if you have some familiarity with the Manosphere-claim and its apparent ‘logic’: don’t wander in unprepared! However, there are huge advantages if you can pull of this approach: such Manosphere content occurs in ‘debate’ format where speakers select clueless opponents, use rhetorical sleights of hand (like the ‘Gish Gallop’) and employ favourable editing to effect what looks like victory. Showing how the logic fails – in its preferred format – can be very powerful in removing its currency.
Strategy Two: Offer a line of questioning that elucidates the ‘real world’ consequences of making a certain statement:
(a) Pointing out that ‘joking’ intent is often indistinguishable from support for the statement or malicious intent, which can have detrimental impacts
- (e.g. Question: “How can you tell if someone is homophobic?” Inevitable answer: “They say or do homophobic things.” Follow up: “So if you were homophobic, you said something homophobic, and wanted to avoid punishment, what would you say to escape it?” Inevitable answer: “That I was joking.” Follow up: “Hm, so how do I know that you’re not lying about joking? How do I distinguish your statement from something actually homophobic? Do you see the problem here?”)
- A useful example for this approach is this study about r*pe jokes, which reveals an association between use of r*pe humour and r*pe proclivity: it’s rendered a few of my (senior) classes absolutely silent in the past.
(b) Explaining penalties that can follow from certain statements or actions. For instance, a student once ‘joked’ that he could to “rizz up” random girls on the street by reaching out and stroking their faces. In response, I pulled up the legal thresholds for criminal assault and tortious battery: “What do you think, gents? Would he be liable criminally, civilly, or both?”
(c) Showing how certain statements can fracture relationships of trust or beneficence with women that young men care about and depend on. Rather than making presumptions about family status re: mothers and sisters, I prefer to either use myself in examples – “So, since women are stupider than men, you probably don’t want this exemplar essay that I wrote for you, do you?” – or else I gesture to non-particular women, like friends – “Do you think your female friends would want to hang out with you if they heard you say that?”
Strategy Three: Query the goals of Manosphere figures. One line of questioning I have found particularly effective is to assess the professionalisation of the Manosphere, with the goal of exposing how its influencers’ primary goal is to create problems for their audience, rather than solve them:
- “So this guy is teaching you how to get rich. How did he make his money? What interesting lessons has he taught you about how to get that job and succeed in it?”
- “He’s training other people to be influencers? And he has 3 million subscribers? That’s a lot of influencers that he’s creating. Who are they going to influence, exactly?”
- “So how does he make his money now as an influencer? From sponsors on his videos? So, the more of his videos people watch, the more money he makes? Ok, so if he actually helped people fix the problems he is taking about, would anyone need to watch his videos anymore?”
- “Oh, he’s made lots of other people successful? Like who? What happened?”
For your own endurance and mental health, I do recommend against offering personal vulnerability in these kinds of moments. It can be tempting to want to humanise the issue – especially if you’re a female teacher – by showing how these kinds of comments hurt. Certainly, many students will react well to shows of vulnerability. However, those radicalised by the Manosphere may not produce the compassion you’re expecting: remember that the Manosphere’s most radical ideologues hold that women are sub-human, so appealing to the humanity they don’t think you have will leave you litigating your own dignity. In fact, for self-preservation, I recommend pretending the opposite, so that malicious students aren’t aware of which targets their commentary should aim at. That student that called me a “f***** b****?” The only response he received (before being sent to the Dean to find out the details of his after-school detention) was “Huh, I guess I’m not getting invited to your 14th birthday party at Laser Strike then. Tragedy, that.”
- Tone
These are emotive issues. In general, it’s best to keep your tone neutral. Agitated lectures will only shift focus to your manner (and away from the lesson) and may be used to feed Manosphere narratives (e.g. if you’re a woman, you’re being ‘hysterical’ and ‘irrational’). Humour is useful as a framing device, either to de-escalate the beginning of a response, or when ending a response and returning the class back to ‘normal’. However, avoid overusing it such that the gravity of your commentary is lost: the Manosphere’s radical potential is serious and needs to be treated accordingly.
- Consequences
In my opinion – except in cases of the truest innocence (e.g. you overheard a student saying to a friend “What’s a BOP? So-and-so just called me one”) or appropriate critical citation (e.g. “The word BOP is sexist, so you shouldn’t say it!”) – you should administer consequences when the Manosphere appears in the classroom. This means ‘jokes’, ‘irony’ or similar are not excusable.
This might sound harsh, but permeable boundaries only create uncertainty about what’s acceptable and what’s not: if you enforce consequences unevenly, this can lead to debate and resentment later. This doesn’t mean consequences have to be visibly harsh – simply follow up conversation with a “So-and-so, I’ll see you lunchtime to discuss this”, making clear to the class that your standards are strict.
(3) Response: Outside of the Classroom
Administering consequences doesn’t need to be about punishment (although that can be part of it): rather, consequences allow you a change to follow-up with the student, re-establish your relationship, and create a positive pathway forward.
- Let them talk
When talking with the student outside the classroom, let them guide the conversation and be open to hearing their point of view (as non-judgmentally as you can, until you have all the facts). Ask open-ended questions and allow them to properly explain themselves: “Where did you hear this idea?”; “Is it persuasive to you?”; “What made you bring it up in class?” If you’ve let ‘joke’ slide for the sake of de-escalating the classroom, this is the time to bring it up: “Can you help me understand why this joke is funny?”
If you can, I highly recommend asking them to show you some of the online content they have seen from the Manosphere. The advantage of this approach is that they become subject to what Sartre calls “the gaze”: this occurs when a person looks upon themselves through the eyes of another. When students show me videos that feature statements about how women are “hypergamous” (this is pseudo-scientific shorthand for wh*re, to be clear), they’re forced to see that statement through my eyes, not just their own. Inevitably, this will generate discomfort. They will say things like: “Well, obviously I don’t agree with that one, because… Well, you’re a woman, and…. Anyway, I mostly follow them for gym content”. This self-correction demonstrates that they’ve encountered cognitive dissonance, which signals the statement is already beginning to break down in their mind. If the conversation is going smoothly, you can gently push this kind of point further: “There are lots of people that create gym content, who don’t say those things about women. Why don’t watch one of them instead?” (The gym excuse is actually so common that I’ve curated a list of fitness influencers that aren’t Manosphere-adjacent, just to prove the point).
If the gaze doesn’t provoke cognitive dissonance, or they’re unwilling to share, the best strategy is to ask students to explain why the statements they’ve made are credible to them: “Is this something you have seen in real life?” Often, they will admit that their views have been shaped by online experiences, which gives you the chance to start establishing the gap between the online world and reality.
In some cases, you will need to be open to the fact that parts of the Manosphere’s narrative may ring true in students’ experiences (for instance, it’s certainly true that some teenage girls can be a little cruel in declining even the politest romantic advances, and a student may be responding to a personal humiliation). In these cases, shift to helping the student understand that: (a) singular experiences cannot be extrapolated to universal laws; and (b) that the advice the Manosphere is providing them to manage their problem is not actually helpful (e.g. “Rather than calling women who decline dates with men b*tches, wouldn’t it be better to role-model them how to reject or accept rejection respectfully so that they behave better next time?”)
- Repairing the relationship
Even a gentle ‘call out’ will do damage to a student’s ego. Therefore, in the course of the private conversation, you should focus on ensuring that you remain open to a positive relationship with the student. Praise is powerful in this regard: you can praise a student’s willingness to face consequences with maturity, their openness in conversation, and their willingness to change their mind when presented with alternative views. Successful conversations often lead to strong feelings of shame: I’ve seen plenty of tears. This is a moment you can frame powerfully to help mitigate the embarrassment of its vulnerability: “You know, the fact you’re ashamed is actually a sign of really strong moral character: it shows that you have values, that you’re humble enough to admit you didn’t live up to them, and you have empathy for others in terms of how you might have affected them. Shame shows you’re a good person, not a bad one.”
Remember that the Manosphere – while it claims to empower young men – actually preys on and tries to magnify their insecurity. It tells young men that society wants them to fail, that women see them only as wallets and assailants, and that they will never be ‘masculine’ enough (unless you buy this Hustler’s University membership, of course…). Praise deconstructs this claim: it gives young men a positive counter to this narrative. Thus, when the opportunity presents, tell the student positive traits you see in them and give them an identity they can return to when they’re under pressure. Once they’re back in the classroom, be deliberate about seeking opportunities to praise constructive behaviour publicly, to help them reset their narrative amongst their peers.
- Agreeing on a pathway forward
Finally, make sure the student leaves the conversation with an action-plan about how they will re-engage in the classroom. I like to co-constructively script these with students, asking “How do you think we could show everyone else that what you said was a mistake, and you don’t agree with your actions?” My students often have plenty of excellent ideas for how they might go about this. As an English teacher, I use our studied texts: we might look ahead a few chapters and find something that a student can comment on in class to show more sensitive engagement with the issues. For example, a student that talked about ‘gold diggers’ came back to class prepared to offer some sensible commentary on the financial precariousness that leads Charlotte Lucas to marry Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice.
Ultimately, the goal is always to give a student a method to define themselves by a better metric than the one the Manosphere has taught them, and in which they can see themselves (and be) a force for social good. I have found that many young men I have dealt with are only too keen to take up the mantle, and I truly believe there is a powerful force for good within so many of our young men. I refuse to let the Manosphere stamp it out.
If you want to learn more, reach out to us.
NEW: Our 60-90 minute Incels, Misogyny and the Manosphere workshop designed for staff, educators and professionals can be found here.
This workshop is tailored and intended to support you to confidently recognise symbols, language and propaganda of extreme misogyny and incel ideology. It will also provide a greater understanding of online and gaming spaces and how they influence this type of thinking. Participants will leave with greater confidence in practical response options.
At ConnectFutures, we create and deliver practically minded workshops that seek to develop a sense of citizenship, respect, and intolerance to hate that extends across on/offline worlds.
Price| Learning outcomes | format. Click here
