Masculinities in Cyberspace: An Analysis of Portrayals of Manhood in Men’s Rights Activist Websites

Schmitz, Rachel M.; Kazyak, Emily

doi:10.3390/socsci5020018

Cited by 81 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Emerging from the 1970s profeminist male liberation groups, Men's Rights Activists now argue that because of biased law courts, positive discrimination, and equality acts, men are oppressed. R. Schmitz and E. Kazyak (2016) suggest that "the growth and dissemination of MRA ideology [are] dependent on vast social networks of men connecting with other men to garner support, air their grievances, and recruit new members." Dubbed the "manosphere" by Ging (2017), this online collection of various MRA websites and blogs consists of extreme, misogynistic viewpoints that blame women, particularly feminists, for the downfall of society.…”

Section: Mocking the Mra Discourse Of Misandrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Remixing misandry, manspreading, and dick pics: networked feminist humour on Tumblr

Ringrose¹,

Lawrence²

2018

Feminist Media Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we explore new forms of networked feminist humour curated on Tumblr. First, we consider the Misandry Mermaid Tumblr by exploring how the site remediates antifeminist discourses of man-hating by deploying a sarcastic discourse of misandry. We argue that the site is plagued, however, by a form of gender binary antagonism. Then, we explore an anti-manspreading site, savingroomforcats, showing how the site challenges hetero-masculine spatial dominance through the humorous insertion of cats into manspreading images. We argue that these posts tend to lack an intersectional awareness of racialised masculinity. Finally, we explore the site critiquemydickpic, which subverts dominant understandings of dick pics as threatening, generating a queer politics of disrupting phallicoriented desire.

show abstract

Section: Mocking the Mra Discourse Of Misandrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Remixing misandry, manspreading, and dick pics: networked feminist humour on Tumblr

Ringrose¹,

Lawrence²

2018

Feminist Media Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Using Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) (Deerwester et al 1990) and Word2vec (Mikolov et al 2013), topics within documents can be grouped and words can be queried to find similarities to other words, which can give insights into the author's overall views without having to read a significant portion of their corpus. This methodology could be extended by taking into account more sources, including online forums (Mountford 2015) and other websites, such as those listed in Schmitz and Kazyak (2016), and assertions could be made about shifts over time, the movement's methodology and more.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topic Modeling The Red Pill

Mountford

2018

Social Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Men's Rights Activism (MRA) movement and its sub-movement The Red Pill (TRP), has flourished online, offering support and advice to men who feel their masculinity is being challenged by societal shifts. Whilst some insightful studies have been carried out, the small samples analysed by researchers limits the scope of studies, which is small compared to the large amounts of data that TRP produces. By extracting a significant quantity of content from a prominent MRA website, ReturnOfKings.com (RoK), whose creator is one of the most prominent figures in the manosphere and who has been featured in multiple studies. Research already completed can be expanded upon with topic modelling and neural networked machine learning, computational analysis that is proposed to augment methodologies of open coding by automatically and unbiasedly analysing conceptual clusters. The successes and limitations of this computational methodology shed light on its further uses in sociological research and has answered the question: What can topic modeling demonstrate about the men's rights activism movement's prescriptive masculinity? This methodology not only proved that it could replicate the results of a previous study, but also delivered insights into an increasingly political focus within TRP, and deeper perspectives into the concepts identified within the movement.

show abstract

“…Sometimes this discussion pointed out other sacrifices men make in preserving an American way of life. There are similar discussions of sacrifice and suffering being made in men's rights (MRA) spaces (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016), which held true on A Voice for Men (the MRA site I investigated). But, in addition to honouring the sacrifice of men there was a sarcasm pointed at those who move the goal posts.…”

Section: Cruel Optimismmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…In their writing on the manosphere, Schmitz and Kazyak (2016) found two categories of misogynists. "Cyber Lads in Search of Masculinity" policed men's enactment of masculinities, sexually objectified women as commodities, and lamented feminism as a socialist oppression of men and masculinities.…”

Section: Misogyny Onlinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A Voice for Men (AVFM) is a men's rights activist (MRA) website hosted by Paul Elam. The website's espoused mission, which is "to provide education and encouragement to men and boys; to lift them above the din of misandry, to reject the unhealthy demands of gynocentrism in all its forms, and to promote their mental, physical and financial well-being without compromise or apology" suggests that it would qualify as "Virtual Victims in Search of Equality" (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016). AVFM, however, takes their activism to an extreme and has drawn the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who label the site a hate group and claim that the website is one of the two most established proponents of male supremacy.…”

Section: A Voice For Menmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Of Vice and Men: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of the Manosphere

Coulling¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The manosphere is an online network of websites, blogs, forums, and YouTube videos. This informal association of websites are united in their rejection of feminism and often promote misogyny. Locally, each website plays an important role by providing a space for an iteration of masculinity to form. Globally, the manosphere provides an infrastructure for masculinities to organize in a process of construction and sunder. Using an ethnographic content analysis, I examine the masculinities on seven of the most extreme, vehemently misogynistic websites on the manosphere and, as a foil, one ostensibly progressive website that discusses men and masculinity. Though each website espouses a unique masculinity as ideal-including, for example, a Christian masculinity, a "sovereign" masculinity that sees men going their own way (MGTOW), and men's rights activists (MRA)-I document how the men on these websites are reacting and acting to maintain and expand their power. I find that the power these men cling to is not just gendered, patriarchal power. Rather, the hegemonic ideal was a white, heterosexual masculinity (WHECM) that included evangelical Christian and colonialcapitalist lines of force that leverage eugenics' notions of family. WHECMs often expressed their masculinity in sexist and misogynistic ways, their sexuality in homophobic and transphobic ways, and their whiteness in racist and anti-Semitic ways. Further, WHECMs anointed themselves as supreme by thinking that their race, gender, and sexuality reflect the sacrifice and sacredness of Christ, situate themselves as purveyors of Truth, or both. iii I develop a conceptual model to explain the emotional backlash that WHECMs release in response to the denigration of their exaltation and the subsequent loss of patriarchal, racial, and heteronormative dividends. WHECMs' backlash begins as paranoia, in which they concoct narratives that they are under attack by an elite who are weaponizing identity politics. Under a perceived attack, men on the manosphere backlash through an emotional border work that segregates WHECMs via emotional exclusion of Others and emotionally incarcerating men within racist, misogynistic, and homophobic walls. The emotional erection and reinforcement of borders makes the Other proximate and causes reactions of discomfort for WHECMs. This discomfort is then read as an attack, which increases their paranoia, making the paranoia-border work-discomfort system recursive. I explicate five strategic actions WHECMs on the manosphere advocate to reclaim, maintain, and expand their power. WHECMs encourage propagating the white race with pliant white women who hold the white man in esteem. WHECMs encourage a democratic consumption that includes boycotting companies and culture that champion progressive ideals. WHECMs advocate for trolling marginalized people and using racist, anti-Semitic, and misogynist memes. Viewed as under attack in a racial holy war (RAHOWA), WHECMs also promote violence and killing. Finally, WHECMs withdraw. Sometimes this takes the f...

show abstract

Masculinities in Cyberspace: An Analysis of Portrayals of Manhood in Men’s Rights Activist Websites

Cited by 81 publications

References 40 publications

Remixing misandry, manspreading, and dick pics: networked feminist humour on Tumblr

Remixing misandry, manspreading, and dick pics: networked feminist humour on Tumblr

Topic Modeling The Red Pill

Of Vice and Men: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of the Manosphere

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About