00:00This is Apropos. Well, it's increasingly making its way into schoolyards, workplaces and intimate relationships.
00:10The UN has recently warned about the dangers of online misogyny, specifically in relation to the so-called manosphere,
00:17a network of communities that claim to address men's struggles but often promote harmful advice and attitudes,
00:24as well as false narratives about gender equality.
00:27The trend comes amid global studies suggesting that younger men are becoming more conservative and younger women more liberal.
00:34Selina Sykes takes a closer look.
00:40Its portrayal of insult culture and toxic masculinity sends shockwaves.
00:48In the Netflix series Adolescence, 13-year-old Jamie is arrested on suspicion of murdering his female classmate.
00:55As police continue their investigation, a troubling link between him being bullied at school and insult culture comes to light.
01:04A fictional tale steeped in reality.
01:06I was reading about an incident and I'd seen an incident on the telly, again, where there was, like, quite a few young boys who stabbed young girls and taken their life.
01:19And if I'm really honest with you, it hurt my heart. Do you know what I mean? And it instantly made me think what's going on with society where this kind of thing's happening.
01:27Increasingly disenfranchised boys and young men are drawn to the manosphere.
01:34Most women are attracted to 20% of men. You must trick them because you'll never get them in a normal way.
01:41Including influencers such as self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate and websites and forums promoting toxic masculinity.
01:48As studies show genders are increasingly polarised among younger generations.
01:52On one side are young women, who as a group are very liberal and galvanised by a dramatic improvement in their rights.
02:01On the other are young men, some of whom feel that rapidly changing gender roles have left them behind socially and economically.
02:08A study in the US found that in 2024, almost half of men aged 18 to 29 say that there is some or a lot of discrimination against men in American society.
02:21Which is more than older age groups and up from a third for the youngest bracket in 2019.
02:27A gender gap that is increasingly reflected in the political landscape.
02:31Donald Trump's 2024 election victory is credited in part to his courting of the manosphere during his campaign.
02:37While research is repeatedly showing that rising male support for the far right is a generational shift.
02:44A European study found that 21% of young men aged 18 to 29 expressed support for far right parties.
02:52Compared to 14% of women in the same age bracket.
02:56Researchers said this gap appeared to widen rapidly after 2020.
03:00A trend that could have a long lasting impact on politics and society as a whole.
03:05To discuss, we're joined now by sex counsellor Claire Ferreiro.
03:10You're here in studio with us tonight. Claire, thanks so much for coming in to us.
03:14So you are normally based between Paris and LA working with clients who might be described as having tendencies associated with incels or involuntary celibates.
03:25Absolutely.
03:26What are people telling you when they come to see you? What kind of, you know, stories are they presenting to you with?
03:31So for those young men, very often they don't feel listened to.
03:36They feel like they are kind of discriminated and like left apart when it comes to like sexual and also romantic relationships.
03:43So a lot of them come with the idea of like being mad at women, like refusing sex to them, like the like women owe them, like the owe them sex, which is obviously something extremely, extremely harmful.
03:58So we work together in a way so they can get like a better understanding of relationships and also have like a better idea of like what an healthy relationship should be with women.
04:10And very often I notice that those men have a lot of, how do I say, they feel like very ashamed of themselves.
04:21They have like a huge lack of confidence and very often they feel very jealous of other men as well.
04:27So it's not only like a head towards women, but also a head towards themselves.
04:31So we work together in order to build confidence and have a healthier relationship to others, but mostly with themselves.
04:36And you say as well that many of them have actually undiagnosed mental health issues.
04:42Absolutely. Why are they not able to get the help that they need and why then are they turning to the Internet to try and find it?
04:48So there is multiple reasons. One of them is mental health is not accessible to everybody.
04:53It's very expensive, especially in the US where health care is not accessible to most people.
04:58So mental health is obviously like not even a question for those people.
05:01Also, there is this idea of mental health being more targeted towards women like men feels they couldn't be vulnerable.
05:10It feels like for them is like, oh, I'm weak if I'm seeking for help.
05:14So we have to teach them that being vulnerable is OK. Seeking help is OK.
05:19And not just OK, it's necessary for them because we notice a lot of like depression tendencies and even like suicidal thoughts for a lot of them.
05:29There is like a lot of studies on that. So, yeah, we should make it more accessible to them, both financially, but also remove the stigma, the stigmatization around mental health for them.
05:40And people might think initially that, you know, this isn't something that really affects younger men so much that they might be more open when it comes to expressing their feelings in a way that older generations perhaps were not like there's more awareness campaigns.
05:55Now we've got the Me Too movement. We've got better education in schools, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
06:00Why is this particularly affecting younger men? Yeah, actually, they feel like really left out by the Me Too movement.
06:06They feel very left out by the LGBTQ movements as well. They feel like they don't belong to anything.
06:12So on one hand, they see like their fathers and grandparents and like older men, like having more like a place in society.
06:20And they feel like they don't have this place. Also, the economic factors for young people, like having less access to housing, less money in general,
06:29make them feel like they are completely left out from society. So instead of seeking help or just like self reflect about society in general,
06:37they much rather go on the Internet, like on those forums and be fed some narratives telling them that they are not the problems.
06:45The problem is like the whole society, like pushing them away. And so they get fed like hate speeches all the time.
06:53And also those people are extremely vulnerable. And it's very easy for those influencers to also sell them products in order to make profit out of them.
07:05Yeah, because that's what we're talking about as well. It's not just, you know, that they're being influenced.
07:10They're also being treated as a commercial or commercially exploited almost.
07:15Absolutely. There is like the easiest consumer for any type of market is someone insecure.
07:21You can sell basically anything to someone insecure. And those men are really young.
07:25often they feel they are completely they feel completely left out and they could do anything to feel better.
07:33And instead of seeking mental health, those influencers promote them easy access to sex, which is in the mouth of those influencers,
07:44basically assault one on one like sexual assault or sexual harassment one on one.
07:49They sell them the idea of being rich. So they get trained for crypto or other things that give them the illusion of escaping their situation for like a better a better life.
08:05So, yeah, this is this is like a really big scam if you look at it from a broader picture.
08:11And what are these kind of websites? We spoke earlier about TikTok, YouTube, Reddit.
08:15What should they be actually doing to clamp down on this? Andrew Tate, for example, he's banned from YouTube, but his videos are still available there.
08:22Absolutely. So those social media platforms claims to do more moderation, but they actually don't.
08:28Or they do like very little moderation at the end of the day.
08:31Also, we heard people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk saying that they want to reduce at the minimum the moderation on their website.
08:40So encouraging all those hate speeches against women and against other communities.
08:45So those platforms need to have like a better, like a more strict approach to moderation.
08:51And also those influencers are smart, like they know which phrases to use.
08:56They know what which wording to use instead of saying very openly, extremely harmful words.
09:05They're going to kind of twist it around to make it more like acceptable for most people.
09:12And how much of a role is the current political climate, particularly when we look to the U.S. playing in all of this?
09:18Oh, we play like it plays. It played a lot.
09:20We just have to see how podcaster influenced the election.
09:24We saw, for example, Donald Trump going on the Joe Rogan podcast, which is like massively listened in the U.S.
09:30It's probably like the most listened podcast in the U.S.
09:33And this podcast also invited a lot of masculinists.
09:36And so the political campaign for the Republicans has been very targeted towards those podcasts that are listened by young men.
09:44So it plays like a major role in terms of like voting terms for young men.
09:50And Claire, how does this all affect women while younger men are becoming more conservative?
09:54It seems women, on the other hand, are becoming more liberal.
09:56Absolutely.
09:57They're also affected directly.
09:58Absolutely. Women are getting more and more progressive.
10:01As a response, a lot of those young men feels like, oh, those women are getting more and more feminist.
10:08Feminism is a reason why we are lonely.
10:11So hence, we're going to hate feminism even more and attack those women even more.
10:16Claire, we'll have to leave it there for now.
10:18It's a fascinating topic.
10:19Sex Councillor Claire Ferreiro, thanks so much for coming in to speak with us.
