E167 | Inside the Manosphere (w/ Dr. Rosy Blunstone)

Today Alex discusses the Louis Theroux documentary for Netflix Inside the Manosphere with psychiatry and psychotherapy registrar Dr. Rosy Blunstone - who also leads the the Thinking Mind Substack. 

The Manosphere is defined as  a varied collection of onlne content made by men, for men to promote masculinity. Communities within the manosphere include mens rights activitists (MRAs), incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going their Own Way (MGTOW), pick up artists and father's right's groups. 

While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men). Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill" a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix. 

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186445029

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] What would you say is the message? 

Speaker 2: I coach boys how to make money. Oh, 

Speaker: this is a nice spot. 

Speaker 2: How to be outside the system. How to be proper guys. Shut up. Bonta. 

Speaker: I was entering the manosphere. A wild frontier of streamers whose behavior is reshaping the culture whose appeal has proved irresistible to hordes of young fans.

Speaker 2: I'm doing it for money. I don't care about the morality of it. 

Speaker 3: Do you consider yourself a misogynist? 

Speaker 4: I love women and I actually understand them. 

Speaker 3: You think you know better than they do. 

Speaker 4: They want a guy that can lead them and dominate them. 

Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone. Today we're gonna be discussing something a little bit cultural, a little bit current.

We're gonna be talking about the Louis, the documentary inside the Manosphere. Everyone's talking about it. A lot of people have their own perspectives. And that takes, you know, in terms of what the documentary got right, what it got wrong, we're gonna be talking about all that today. I'm delighted to be joined by Dr.

Rosie Bloodstone, who is a [00:01:00] registrar, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist. And in case you didn't know, she's the head of our Substack, the written Companion to the Thinking Mind Podcast. I'll put a link to that in the description, and that's where you can get access to news about mental health, link to current things happening on the podcast, books that we're reading, and much more.

Rosie, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Speaker 5: No, thank you for having me, Alex. Nice step across into the podcast. 

Speaker 3: It was your idea to talk about the manosphere, and I think if it's, if I had to critique myself in terms of, you know, the direction of the podcast, it's feel, maybe that's, we're not current enough, but you said, you know, we need to talk about this.

And I agree. I have watched this and we, we should talk about it. Have you watched a documentary? What did you think about it? 

Speaker 5: I watched it, absolutely. I think I, I suppose my initial thoughts were, I wasn't as shocked as I think maybe other people were. I think some of the feedback and some of the critique and the online sort of discourse seems to have gone [00:02:00] quite firmly towards that.

This is really shocking and I don't think that I found it as shocking possibly because. We are a bit more embedded in an awareness of some of these ideologies coming through, or possibly just because of some read extra reading we've been doing. I, I was left with a few questions I think afterwards that perhaps we'll get onto in this podcast, but particularly I, I was just interested.

On your take, I suppose, about whether you thought, well, were you shocked, but also sort of whether you thought Louis Theu handled some of their influences with enough sort of vigor. I think that's one of the main criticism that's come through, and I was wondering what you thought, 

Speaker 3: I mean, in terms of the first question was I shocked, I suppose.

How shocked you are about this documentary is going to depend on your prior [00:03:00] experience as you said. And I'd be curious what experience you've had of like the so-called manosphere before watching this documentary. But I, I know a lot about it. I've done a lot of research on this because I'm interested, I'm interested in internet culture and so I was not shocked, but I saw it as a really good opportunity, you know, for other people to get an introduction because not a lot of people have the time to do a ton of in-depth internet research and to have a mainstream name.

Like Louis Thru to get involved. You know, for many people it to be their first introduction. So one thing I read this morning was Julia Samuels, who's a famous, you know, psychotherapist, her substack writing about it. She was really shocked. And she, it seems, maybe didn't know a lot of what was going on on the internet in terms of the manosphere, and it's understandable.

She's an older woman, so maybe she just didn't have that exposure. So I wasn't hugely shocked, but I saw it as a [00:04:00] good opportunity for other people to get that introduction. In terms of how Louis Thru handed it, look, I mean, Louis Thru is gonna do the Louis through thing, and the whole point of Louis th through's documentary persona is to not go in.

Aggressively and his body of work just illustrates what you can do when you do that. That actually, when you go in with a curious, I don't wanna say necessarily fully non-judgmental, but not overtly judgmental attitude, it's a bit like psychotherapy. When you do that, you get the opportunity to really allow people to unfold in front of you and show you know who they are.

I think you saw a lot of that in this documentary, and I think it would have been much harder to get that insight. Had you gone into the documentary with a more combative attitude with a sort of, let's get into a debate immediately. Debates obviously put people's guards up and they prevent people from.[00:05:00] 

Truly expressing what their views might be underneath. And I think you got, you got a lot of, you got got a nice insight into that in, in this documentary. 

Speaker 5: Yeah, I totally agree. I think leading with curiosity has to be the priority when, especially when approaching something that feels very at odds, perhaps with how you think and function and relate to other people and relate to the world because there is value in trying to put.

Yourself in the, in the shoes of the other person. Of course, it's what we try and do in terms of empathy, you know, in imbuing our consultations with empathy, but, but also about understanding who the person is in front of us and allowing them the opportunity to. Explore that with us together. So I agree and I think that what was really interesting about that approach, and again it's something that I think we don't always appreciate about the way we've been trained, is that questions come up and [00:06:00] actually.

In there being a discourse that comes after a documentary on something like this and in there being questions coming up, that's a good thing because we should be asking the questions and not just sort of shutting down the conversation. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess the point we would also underline, or I would underline if you agree with me, is that having that approach doesn't mean you approve of what the people say or approve of their views.

It just means you're trying to get their views with as much clarity as possible. And just like a psychotherapist. Might be sitting opposite the client and have empathy for them and use that approach to understand them. It doesn't mean that that therapist approves of everything their client says. You know, therapists do have to sit across clients who might hold prejudicial views on all sorts of topics, and you might still try and help that person even though you don't, you know, agree.

Uh, with everything they're saying, obviously in this context, we're not necessarily trying to help them. We're trying to understand them, and I also think there's room for the different kind of documentary. I still think [00:07:00] there's room for the more firebrand, debate oriented documentary. I just don't think that's Louis Theo's niche, and I don't think it's like where he shines the most.

Speaker 5: No, I, I, I agree. And I think that's exactly it. I mean, in terms of getting a Louisa ru style documentary, this, this is it, that is his approach. And, and, and, but I think there's, and, and I agree. I think there's, there's room for all sorts of different interpretations and investigations into. Space, the manosphere.

But because one of the, but one of the things that has come out again, of this conversation, the discourse is about the, the, the sort of the mainstream, the moving into the mainstream from the fringe into the mainstream of these views. And that in some ways, not necessarily Louis the Ru, but maybe some of the other platforms have amplified the voice and almost sort of advertised it in a way that.

Previously it had been perhaps knocked as well known and, and I think [00:08:00] perhaps that that's an interesting point about the difference between how we would approach this conversation as a therapist or as a clinician versus a documentary maker because we are there to. Unpick and perhaps challenge gently and to invoke some reflection.

But a documentary maker, a podcaster isn't necessarily there for that. And so I suppose a question is, for us and for wider sort of society is, you know, how how do we find that balance between exploring openly while all, but what, but not amplifying. 

Speaker 3: It's a good question whether you want to explore something openly or you want to like close a topic of conversation down, or dare I say censor, it will present its pros and cons, and I think history has probably taught us overall airing things out.

Having things open is a better approach for a number of reasons. Yes. I think with having [00:09:00] open conversations, you run the risk of amplifying. Voices, but I think when voices are amplified, they can also be challenged. They can be debated, and it also robs those voices of the oxygen that they may be doing something, you know, secret or countercultural.

I think when you're listening to something, you're listening to an influencer and you feel like not everyone knows who this person is, it adds an almost exotic feel to it, and you feel like you're doing something wrong in a way that's kind of appealing. It gives you a sense that you're sort of IR rebel in society and it gives it an allure that it lacks.

Once everything is kind of out in the open and you can say, okay, what does my grandma think about this? What does my aunt think about this? You almost see this in the documentary when you have the, one of the main influences that Louis threw is interviewing Hs ticky talkie when his mom, you know, is in the picture and all of a sudden you get a totally different view on this [00:10:00] person because.

You're getting the perspective of this, this, this close relative. And so I, I tend to think, yes, there are disadvantages to opening up the conversation, but I think history has taught us opening up the conversation is generally better, uh, because it invites, you know, debates different perspectives. I think the fact that this documentary has been made is a, definitely a net positive, I would say.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think it's about moving from the sort of the echo chamber and that that vacuum that can start to exist whereby it's just ideas are just reinforced, you know, sort of into infinity rather than there being an allowance for the counter. 

Speaker 3: If, if I could caveat that a bit.

I suppose then the, the other point I would bring in is there's still a responsibility for journalistic ethics. So one thing we saw with the Trump election in 2024 was that Trump, JD Vance, other people were on lots of major podcasts, Joe Rogan and the like. [00:11:00] And I think one valid point which was raised is like, yes, of course you can talk about it.

There is free speech. You can have these people on your podcast, but is it. Right. To have someone like that on the, on your podcast, on the eve of the US selection, with no kind of sense of having a well-rounded conversation, having some sort of journalistic framework, which you use to approach the conversation, and you might say, yes, I think that kind of conversation is legal.

I think it should be allowed, but should that conversation have some criticism, some valid criticism that if you're gonna have a conversation like that. Which is potentially hugely impactful. Do you have a responsibility when you have an enormous old audience, an audience of hundreds of thousands or millions, to bring a sense of journalistic ethics to that?

And I think you could make the same case about interviewing big manosphere influencers. Uh, yes, of course it's legal. Of course you can have the conversation, but I think if you're having conversations like that, you [00:12:00] should be prepared for some scrutiny and some criticism that you should bring some ethics to, to the conversation.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree. And I think this actually also leads to a wider point about social media and the responsibility of social media in this, but I'm mindful before we get there that in some ways we've sort of led with the idea that. We've both watched the Manosphere documentary and I'm wondering if it's worth, I mean, would you be happy, Alex, to maybe give a little rundown of what the manosphere.

For anyone listening who, who, who hasn't watched it. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess if I had to define the manosphere, I would say it's basically a, it's a, it's a informal way of describing content on the internet that is typically made by men for men. So that can include your podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok, big social media platforms, and I think that's the, the, the only common denominator I can see is it's made by men for men.

For things which are around things which are typically appealing to men. And I guess one [00:13:00] criticism I do have about the documentary is it focuses on extreme figures, although albeit very, very influential figures who are giving maybe some of the worst dysfunctional advice, if you had to define the manosphere broadly.

It's a spectrum. There's gonna be stuff at the far end that is very dysfunctional. All the misogynistic stuff, a lot of racist stuff that was captured in the documentary. There's gonna be stuff at the other end, which is basically just giving men advice. How should you get in shape? How can you be more financially successful?

How can you improve your dating life? All sorts of things. And so does it's the spectrum of content. By men, for men basically aiming to hopefully give men a better quality of life. And what this documentary is capturing, which I think is important, is the extreme end, which is arguably the most popular end because we know extreme things tend to be more popular online.

And that's part of the problem where, where it's sort of, [00:14:00] men will often come to that extreme content because they want that basic stuff. How do I improve my life? But often what hooks them and what can be really. Toxic, for lack of a better word, is all the, the hatred and the prejudice, which seems to come as a byproduct of that.

But I, I'm, I'm curious, Rosie, that, so you were in shocked by the documentary. What, what has your experience been? The so-called manosphere before watching this documentary? 

Speaker 5: Well, I, I think I started digging into an understanding of what were the themes that were brought out in the film adolescence. So I think that that started a bit of the, more of the investigation.

So in terms of intellectually, but I, in my sort of home life, I reg, I am regularly having conversations about, especially male mental health and, and mental health of, of young, young men because it is a, it is a real problem in terms of there being an [00:15:00] awareness that the sort of increasing number of young.

Young men with mental health issues is in some ways a forgotten portion of our society. I think having those conversations with people who work in schools, who work in sports and understanding sort of where the, where the gaps are, that has led me to understanding about why the manosphere has filled them.

Speaker 3: I, I guess the, the easiest criticism to have of the manosphere would be to say something like, these men are who are spreading this content and this advice are unethical. They are taking advantage of young men. They need to stop doing that, and young men need to realize that their advice is not worth taking.

Kind of full stop. So I think that that's the. Easiest take to have on this stuff, and I think it's importantly the wrong take to have. I don't think you can tackle the manosphere problem at a societal level unless you understand why any of this [00:16:00] stuff would be appealing to a young man and maybe what the difficulties of being a young man are.

Speaker 5: I agree. I think from a clinical perspective, from a psychiatry perspective, from a. Like therapy perspective, we have to understand what is the appeal of this? Why are these young guys being drawn in this direction? 'cause clearly there is a need that is being fulfilled here. And I think in, again, this idea of leading with curiosity, if we are not asking those questions, to understand a little bit about where on the, that spectrum of the PHE someone is.

Is placed and so the influences that are coming into their lives, then I think we are, we are fundamentally missing the point. As a woman, I think I. Find these ideas abhorrent. It is. You know, that that is, that somebody who I don't know, would sort of be sitting somewhere else saying things like, you know that [00:17:00] my value.

As a person is really only linked to a man well, and that ultimately I need to be led and that is what I'm seeking in my life. I, I, I can't, I can't fathom it, uh, that that would be the way that someone might then approach me as a, as a person, and likewise. It raises questions about how someone might approach me as a therapist or as a psychiatrist, because I am both.

And so it raises a lot of questions in my mind about. Is this, might this person be thinking this about me and, and the world? And what does that mean about our relationship and how we're going to learn to trust each other and, and, you know, move towards helping somebody and, and, and, and would that even be possible?

And I do think that there. A place to comment on the fact that there is a [00:18:00] criticism about the documentary about how women, the place of women, even in the documentary and that they, there wasn't, there wasn't enough opportunity to talk to the women who, who featured, and maybe also there was a gap, but by which there might have been a conversation about women who've been affected by, and I, and I would agree with that.

And again, you know, you can only probably do as much as you can do. And Louis Ru did try and some. In some parts and was sort of pushed back. But I, I think there was an opportunity there to, to have that conversation, which is important. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think my main criticisms of the documentary are, one, it didn't capture the idea that the manosphere is a spectrum.

There's a spectrum of dysfunction. You know, there's a lighter end and a darker end. And the documentary did focus on the darker end, although I do, I do think it warrants attention. And then my other criticisms were, yeah, there, there was not enough maybe about how. These views impact young girls and women and also [00:19:00] not enough about why it is that young boys are attracted to it and what they get from it.

Or even like, do they fully agree with it? You know, what's the consensus? I wonder. From young boys on these kinds of topics 

Speaker 5: gonna say. And it's not like those young boys weren't there 'cause they were. So there was perhaps an opportunity to say, or may, and maybe he didn't and it got brushed over. And for, I think he might have, and they just said, oh, I just think he's great.

But that opportunity, but why? Why? And then I almost want to go follow them home and say, do your par, what do your parents think? Or what do your sisters think? Or do they even know? And if they don't know, why don't they know? So, yes, sorry to interrupt, but that, I think that was. That was a missed opportunity in some respects.

Speaker 3: I, I think it's probably worth commenting on, on the why. So, why, why is this kind of content appealing to young men and. A lot of people are very perplexed by this. It's always been very frustrating to be a young man by almost by [00:20:00] design. I think young men are usually in a position in society where they don't feel they have a lot to offer because they haven't had the time to accumulate skills or other forms of value, and I think they often feel quite invisible, lonely, frustrated in a relational way, frustrated.

In a sexual way and the conventional path, you know, like a traditional masculine role model, what they would outline is you have to go on a, on a bit of a journey. As a young man, you have to go on a, you know, five, 10, maybe 15 year journey of learning, growing, becoming more competent, becoming a responsible person, becoming a protector, becoming a provider, all sorts of things.

And in doing so. That's where you can kind of take your place in the world and take your place in society, and that's usually when members of the opposite sex become more attracted to [00:21:00] you. I mean, this is the plot of the Lion King. Basically, it's the hero's journey for a young, for a young man. It's a long and arduous process and.

Imagine you're in that situation, you're at the very beginning. You haven't really started that process, and you know you're a teenage boy and you're dealing with the loneliness and the frustration, and then along comes streaming into your phone. All of this content, and you know, you don't have to do any of that.

You can become the quote unquote alpha male. Now, you, you don't have to go on this long journey. You, you just follow my program, the 10 steps. In a few weeks, you can get into my position where all of a sudden you're gonna have streams of income. Women are gonna want you, you're gonna be in much better shape.

It's incredibly appealing because it's this way of bypassing all of the normal frustrations of life and all of the lessons you have to learn and all of the epiphanies that you [00:22:00] have. So on one level, I think it's the expedience On another level, I think even a lot of men who would be willing. To go through this long process of maturation, feel that that part isn't even available to them.

So a lot of men feel like they're struggling to get educated or get through education. Even if they get through education, they're really struggling to find a job. In the past few decades, women are have, are doing better educationally and professionally than they ever have before, and I'd like to underline that.

I think that's a good thing. I think opportunity is a good thing. But what that means is that women want someone who is, who can compare and can match with them and do as well as they do or better. And so that means that a lot of men increasingly feel left out. Now, I don't think the solution to that is to become prejudiced against women, which is, this seems to be the solution presented by the more extreme ends of the manosphere as well.

Women should be more submissive actually, and they should take a step back. [00:23:00] I think that's regressive. I don't think. That's the way to go. I think the way to go is actually men need to, men need to step up their game in terms of role models for young men and to really re reemphasize the path of a traditional healthy masculinity.

And I just think that beco that needs to become the norm. My main worry is that the response to this documentary and other manosphere documentaries. It's something like men need to cool it with their aggressive impulses. Like men have this aggression and they just need to tamper down on it. They can't, you know, it's not good for society.

It's not good for them. I think that's been a message for a long time. I don't think that's a helpful message. I think the message has to be, you have this aggression. Men are more aggressive than women. This is, we know this. That's why men are much more likely to be in prison. Men are much more likely to commit a crime.

Men are much more likely to be violent men in general, not always, but in general as a group level that tend to be more [00:24:00] aggressive. You need to learn how to, to channel that aggression in a healthy way. That that has always been the challenge of being a man is you have this aggression, what do you do with it?

And we need to bring this, in my view, we need to bring this into schools, other educational platforms, into the family home, into the culture. Use your aggression wisely. Let like an instrument learn how to calibrate it. And I, I think that that's, to me is the only path forward because the more we tamper down and say, no, you need to disown your aggression, the more that makes extreme ends of the manosphere much more appealing, like a polarities on a magnet.

Does that make sense? Am I making sense? 

Speaker 5: No, it does. I mean, I, I, I think there's a couple of things I could draw out from that, and one of them is, I think the fundamental sort of theory that you landed in is about, I suppose, that these are real issues that the manosphere is addressing, albeit. In a sort of maladaptive 

Speaker 3: dysfunctionally.

Yeah, you, you can, I guess [00:25:00] what I would say is you can have the diagnosis right, and your prescription can be wrong. You know, we know this in the medical world. 

Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there is a branch of feminism, like sort of, I think they're called sort of intersectional feminist that are, that are saying exactly that so that instead of.

Instead of just sort of shouting down this, the manosphere ideas and pushing it even more perhaps into a vacuum, that there is an argument to say that we need to really look at the societal factors that are, you know, the, the loneliness and the, like you say, the sort of the channeling of these aggressive impulses and, and in unhealthy ways.

How as a society can we understand these issues and then address them. And, and I don't know that anyone necessarily has an answer, but you've raised some of them, so. Schools and at home and, and community because I, I keep going back to this idea around the responsibility of social media and one of the things that comes out from the anxious generation as well as other.

Other books are available on social [00:26:00] media, but is this idea of the disintegration of community and the way in which young people particularly have lost those third spaces, whereby ideas are shared and then perhaps those ideas are unpicked and elder and wiser men, let's say, would say, I thought like that when I was you, but, or, well, that's one way of looking at it.

Here's an alternative. And so instead, what we have is the opportunity for just an ongoing influencer led algorithm led move towards more, more extreme ideas. And this fundamentally is an issue with the way that. Social media functions and the way that sort of, it's not regulated and I guess how, how, how, how is that managed in a society?

Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's one of the most striking parts of the documentary, I think is when Louis Thru identified that all of the male influences he was interviewing or discussing lacked male [00:27:00] role models when they were young. I don't think that's a coincidence that that's the case. 

Speaker 5: No, absolutely. But I suppose one of the things that.

Comes. Out from this though is that there are real consequences for these beliefs in terms of the way that people are, are really putting their lives in the hands of these fundamentally pretty unqualified people. And while the fitness aspect of it, which is a part of, I think. Sort of red pill ideology around sort of your, your fitness and your appearance might be seen as move towards sort of self-improvement.

The idea around sort of the financial risks that people are taking, and I suppose even just the way in which it's taking over their cognitive function and decision making. I worry in some ways about the consequences of that, for instance. What starts to happen when you realize it was all a con? I feel [00:28:00] there could be a real grief response there and, and potentially real trauma because you are looking at a possibility of people who've got absent.

Father figures and role models in their lives, and then they've idealized someone who, as far as they're concerned, holds all the answers for how to make their life better. And that person does not. No one has all the answers for how to make your life better. That is what you have to work out through the struggle that you have.

You know, helpfully articulated, which I would say is maybe not completely uniquely male, although of course there are elements of which, um, are more particular to a sort of a male adolescence and, and young adulthood. And so what, when you learn it was all wrong? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's probably gonna be a huge hangover from this in, you know, 5, 10, 20 years, where lots of the kids who are watching this content now.

Have a bit of a crisis [00:29:00] of the soul, you know, when they see that. And I, I, I, again, I think this has been common in human history, that people attach themselves to, gurus fall into the, into the sway of an ideolog i of an ideology or a belief system, and then come out of it and feel adrift, because now they realize that ideology was very, very limited.

Now they're kind of disoriented. They don't have a compass. I mean, I guess the hope is that they gravitate towards a healthier, better, more comprehensive way of seeing the world. That's the hope. Obviously the bad things that can happen is that people can become very, very, they can regress. They, their mind can go into very dark places, and I don't like scare onger, but that's the kind of, when people really lose their orientation in life, that's probably when they're most prone to like violence behavior.

Acting out in some way. Acting out in an nihilistic way, suicide, things like that. So it is gonna be like a danger, like one danger to watch out [00:30:00] for with young men is actually when a young man realizes that this influencer who's been kind of running their life is kind a charlatan. They, they're kind of left bereft and that would be a very important vacuum where, where they'll need some support, I think.

Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. And again, raises the question of from, from where and from whom, because we are mental health professionals and of course there's a role for us, but. We already know, you know, waiting list are extraordinarily long. Getting access to mental health care can be really problematic. But further, there's an interesting point about the fact that these manosphere ideas in some ways show vulnerability to be this weakness.

And you know, and there's potentially a further stigmatization of. Mental health issues as weakness, and so how does someone start to move towards an awareness that actually I might need help? I, I'm not saying I expect you to answer that, but I mean, again, these are questions that as a society perhaps we have to be aware of that there's already going to [00:31:00] fundamentally be maybe more.

Barriers for this person to seek help, despite the fact that they might need it very much because they've been so indoctrinated by the idea that even to admit this out loud is fundamentally at odds with what it means to be a man. You know? And, and, and so then what? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, and I, funnily enough, another thing that came out on Netflix.

Also last week was a mini series about therapy called Blue Therapy, where you've got a, the, a couples therapists interviewing real life couples in real life couples counseling sessions. And I think it's a really nice pairing to watch that with alongside this documentary, because you can watch this documentary, the Louis through documentary feel a bit hopeless about men and society and the way things are going.

What you see in this therapy series is actually a lot of men who yes, do struggle to express their emotions and that actually causes a lot of problems. And they're not actually sure that therapy will be of any value to them. [00:32:00] And through the course of the series, they actually open up, learn to express their emotions, learn.

We know what their emotions are signaling to them. And actually what you see is men really growing. Really undergoing a process of maturation in real time within their relationship, which is quite heartening to watch. If you watch that alongside the Louis Theu documentary, you can see actually a men do have problems, but men can also change with just a little bit of guidance, A little bit of non-judgmental listening can go a long way.

Speaker 5: That's really interesting. I, I haven't seen it so we'll. We'll give it a watch and because I think that, again, I suppose it just, it comes back to this idea of being curious and again, I suppose on both sides, then allowing for the possibility that somebody can be curious about an alternative and then grasping that opportunity because presumably the people who access that.

Therapy via that program had an initial curiosity despite the fact that perhaps they thought it wasn't really gonna work. And, and, and so how [00:33:00] do we emphasize, amplify that monetary curiosity from someone who's in the mane to get out? And I'm reminded of your conversations previously about cults and how you support people to come out of cults.

And I wonder if there's sort of learning, learning from there. 

Speaker 3: I think the basic takeaway for me, what I would want to emphasize is that an individual needs to realize that they're gonna be attracted to someone and their ideology for a reason. And those reasons have to do with their basic human needs, which we all share.

So we all share the needs for novelty seeking out new stuff. We all share the needs for emotional stability and a sense of safety and belonging. We all have the need for connection. We all have the need for a sense of significance in our lives. Almost anything a human being does, whether it's going shopping to the supermarket or watching Manosphere Con content online is an [00:34:00] attempt to meet these needs.

So if you find that you've been watching a lot of this content, you first need to realize you are watching it to meet some of your needs. Then you need to realize in what way is it actually working? How does it help you meet your needs? But in what ways is it kind of dysfunctional? So you might have gone into watching this content 'cause you're like, I need some help to get in better shape and I'd like to improve my dating life.

And who would begrudge someone that you know, who would say, you know, you shouldn't want to get fit or improve your dating life or your financial life, or whatever. Totally understand the need and I went to this content for, to address those needs. And yeah, maybe it did help. Maybe some of it helped. Maybe it, some of it didn't.

Alongside that, I'm also being told now that women are less than men in an important way, or that they need to follow my lead, that I have to be in charge all the time, that I need to be hyper dominant. And it even what you see in the Louis through documentaries, even a lot of anti-Semitic views, and you need to realize, okay, [00:35:00] someone can target me.

Through a, through grains of truth and actual real valuable advice. And alongside of that, I can import a whole bunch of dysfunctional stuff as well. And then it's a question of how do I meet these same needs in a better way? Are there other masculine role models that I can follow on the internet? Or in my real life, who can I actually talk to get some better, more well-rounded advice from that yes, helps me meet those needs.

But also does it come with, with a whole bunch of kind of dysfunctional stuff Along alongside this, I think one point I want to raise today is I think as a society we're, we're stuck very often in a men versus women paradigm. In other words, men and women are on competing teams, which means it's a zero sum game, which means, you know, for a man to gain something means a woman loses something and vice [00:36:00] versa.

So it's a bit like when I said earlier, you know, women are doing better than they ever have before, educationally and professionally. The response shouldn't be that that takes away something from men, because I don't think we, we should be in a men versus women paradigm. Actually, I think we need to be in a men plus women.

Paradigm. And I think if we can make that shift culturally society, everything else can follow. Because as soon as you prioritize the complimentary aspects of men and women and you prioritize men and women getting along and thriving relationships and thriving families, all the other little things you would have to do for that to happen fall into place, okay to, to live in a men plus women.

Paradigm. What does that mean? It means men and women need to meet it. Needs means they need to be attracted to each other. It need means they need to respect each other. It means they need to find ways to form sustainable long-term relationships. And you cannot reverse engineer the good behaviors. So I think our fundamental [00:37:00] orientation needs to change.

And we need, we need, I do think we need to call out the fact that very often, especially on the internet, we fall into this men against women. And women against the men paradigm. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. That's in, because it's interesting as well, because there's a contradiction in terms of their messaging as has already been brought out.

When you have an influencer who says, oh yes, but not my mom and the rules don't apply to my mom, which again is fascinating because. These rules are not real rules then are they? Because they have exceptions. But also about this idea of, you know, I suppose the way in which we are allowing for the opportunity that there's space for everyone and, and, and, and how that meets.

The reality of sort of multiple financial crashes and difficulties with the job market and people coming through an education system, that's po [00:38:00] possibly saying things like, well, we don't really know what careers are still going to be available with the advent of ai. And so then is there are perpetuation of the idea that.

You know, well, it's survival of the fittest. And again, an ideology that says, well, you are the fittest by nature of your chromosomes, and therefore is, is perhaps again, a theory, but again, very attractive when everybody else in the world says, well, we don't really know. We don't really know the answers.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And I, I think that's, that's a good point. We can't. Like the rest of us, the non extreme manosphere types, we, we can no longer afford to remain agnostic and have like plad views on these subjects, like how men and women should exist amongst each other. We can't afford to have. Let's say a very politically correct vanilla view on these topics because if we do that, we're just leaving the vacuum open for more extreme views to take hold and be very [00:39:00] appealing.

So we, I, I would argue it's kind of the responsibility is on the rest of us normies to ban together and be like, no, there is actually a model of masculinity that's healthy that we should be encouraging men to work towards. There is actually a model of what makes a great relationship between a man and a woman that we need to work towards.

And if we're gonna talk about survival of the fittest, you know, in Darwinian terms, we didn't, we we're not a, we're not a successful species because of men doing stuff awesomely by themselves. We're a successful species because of the pairing of men and women and tribes across time and families ultimately.

And so I, I think we need to be just as. Strident and bold in our claims. A a as more extreme influences might be in order to kind of be appealing to, to, to the majority of young men and, and girls. 

Speaker 5: I think you're right actually. And I think for far too long this is, this has also been an argument in [00:40:00] politics, but for far too long people.

Who are not at the extreme have allowed for the possibility that will reason and good sense will mean that they, that this person appreciates their views are wrong. And, and fundamentally actually that hasn't borne out. And it is important to say misogyny is wrong. anti-Semite, anti-Semitism is wrong. And we, you know, these are, these are abhorrent and as a society we need to, yeah.

Call that out and then say, but so, but, so, but so what? But so what do we do? And I think that those are sort of the wider questions and, and I think that you've hit on such an interesting point that I think is just that the common thread through the whole thing, it's that the fundamentals is that relationships and are so important the relationships and individual has in their life from childhood through adolescence into their adulthood.

The, the how they function in a relationship and, and how that relationship, the influence of that relationship on their life is, is so important. And we [00:41:00] are living in a time where the relationships that people have reach beyond a family structure for better and worse. And we are talking a lot about.

Worse, but in some instances, you know, people get a lot from, let's say, social media understanding and being curious about the relationships that people have in their life and how they have come about may well be fundamental to appreciating. Appeal. 

Speaker 3: And by the way, relationships are the, are the most powerful solution towards prejudicial views anyway.

The way to get someone to have less prejudicial views about a group is to have them spend time with that group, to have different people mixing amongst each other and to realize that actually. People largely have the same needs and motivations. They may have different ways of going about them, men and women hanging out together in romantic relationships, in friendships, in family relationships.

It's the relationship itself we know will bring the majority of someone's life, happiness and satisfaction. [00:42:00] Plenty of studies have shown that, but also these relationships will significantly dampen down. The prejudicial views that one might predisposed, might one might be disposed to have. You know, I think if someone watches a bunch of manosphere content when they've already had a lot of relationships with women, again, friendship, romantic, et cetera, they're much more likely to be inoculated against the extreme views.

You know, because someone might be watching a commentator saying something like, oh, I know women are fundamentally less intelligent, and that person might have had tons of really intelligent. Female friends and be like, I know that's not true because I've had those people in my life and I've met some really smart women, you know, et cetera.

And, and, and so I think it's, we need to get back to real, real world experience, which can hopefully protect someone against whatever dumb things they're seeing online randomly. 

Speaker 5: So, Alex, do you think I should be hanging out with hs ticky talkie? Is that where this is going? 

Speaker 3: No, [00:43:00] I mean, I, I saw HS ticky talkie.

Obviously he's, he promotes a lot of, of harmful for views on online and that's bad. But I saw him as quite a tragic figure by the end of the documentary in the sense that he is so unaware of his lack of any kind of ethical grounding or consistency or all the different conflicting forces in his own mind.

I believe he's in his early twenties. You know, most people don't have a coherent, ethical viewpoint at the age of 23. To be fair, one of the main things you could say is that he's been totally captured by his audience. You know, he thinks he's captured his audience, but actually, when you make a lot of co content, your audience can capture you.

So when you make a a lot of content. You're gonna be seeing what works and what doesn't. And a lots of content creators arrive at extreme views slowly over time because they say, oh, that video where I said something extreme really did well, got a lot more views. [00:44:00] And so that process can gradually. Worse than over time, over months and years until the point where almost everything you say is really extreme.

'cause that's what's getting you the attention and fundamentally making you the money. This is a, this is a man who again, didn't have that, the kind of inoculation of a grounded ethical viewpoint and therefore was prone to being captured by his audience. I'm curious how things are gonna go for him in the next few years.

Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's, I think that's really valid and I think that there actually, interestingly. I was going to ask about as well, because part of the response in some ways has been to make a mockery of him. You know, there's been, there's meme videos of him, and then there's videos of him responding to those meme videos, and a part of me feels, gosh, he's very vulnerable, very fragile.

Very young. We've already seen that in this documentary, and while of course, in some ways it's about that challenging and saying, actually, we're going to laugh at this because we don't think it's [00:45:00] appropriate and we don't agree with you. There is something that also sort of strikes me as being fundamentally a little bit risky.

With somebody like that and, and, and that, that could be very further, very damaging to this individual. 

Speaker 3: We, we can see even from all the, the tragedies around the reality TV show, love Island. You know, when people get made fun of a lot online, bad things do happen. And while it's tempting to say, okay, this person is saying bad things and doing bad things, which he is, you see that in the documentary.

Therefore we can, you know, do whatever you want. Is there a better way to respond as a society? And again, these are very difficult questions to answer. Before we finish, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on light of the fact that the manosphere isn't going away anytime soon. These extreme views aren't going away anytime soon.

What do you think are some ways we can think about helping and supporting young women? Who are dealing with this, obviously a lot of the harmful byproducts of this [00:46:00] content, how can we support our young women? 

Speaker 5: I think that's a really important point because it's so easy to forget that it's, yeah. That these are young women also being affected by this, the, the way either in which the boys in their lives or the men in their lives are treating them, or the way that they're being treated online or the way that even algorithms are behaving towards them, and no simple answers.

But I wonder if a lot of it is exactly the same as it would be for. For the boys and the men, I would say that I'm a parent. I don't think parents can afford to put their heads in the sand about this. I think conversations have to be happening both at home and in schools, and then where we have to, as a society, look at the spaces for young women to learn and evolve and grow.

Emotionally as well as relationally with boys and men of their age, and understand about what positive role modeling looks like and what positive relationships look like. I think we need to see much more of this on television. I think we need to see [00:47:00] much more of this in our culture. I think we need to have a moment of reflection around the sorts of.

Influencers who are allowed to gain a platform and think about ways in which we can support those who have perhaps a positive message for young women and help to lift them up. And that is, that's a job for all of us. But I do, I do fundamentally believe that we must. Inform ourselves of what's going on and be having these conversations open and supportive conversations at home, at school, in communities as much as we can, because the only way we're gonna keep our young people safe is by having these conversations with the oxygen.

They need to go back, right back to what you were talking about so that these sort of very damaging views and are not allowed to, to manifest for longer than, than they. They should. 

Speaker 3: We've begun to unpick this topic, which we haven't spent a huge amount of time talking about on the podcast. We are aware this can be a little controversial if you guys have any [00:48:00] feedback, comments, if you think we did anything particularly well today or you have any particular criticisms.

Feel free to email us at Thinking Mind podcast@gmail.com and we'll also be following up with some more stuff on this, on our substack. In the meantime, thank you Rosie so much for chatting with me today. 

Speaker 5: No, thanks for having me, Alex. It was very interesting.