Which Manosphere Groups Are Most Prone to Violence?

⚠️ Why This Paper Matters

The revived men’s movement, known as the “manosphere,” has grown in prominence and influence and has been linked to multiple violent incidents, including mass shootings that targeted women. Despite these real-world harms and the manosphere’s tactics directed at women, feminism, and gender equality—including threats and violence—political science has given the phenomenon limited attention. This theory-building paper addresses that gap by both describing the manosphere and theorizing which subgroups are likeliest to resort to violence.

📚 Mapping Online Men’s Spaces

An original dataset of manosphere blogs, forums, and websites underpins a descriptive analysis of the movement’s composition and rhetoric. Key features of the empirical work include:

• Coverage of diverse online platforms (blogs, forums, standalone sites)
• Systematic description of discourse, membership patterns, and organizational forms
• Identification of recurring themes and tactics used against women, feminism, and gender equality

🧭 A Typology Designed to Predict Violence

A novel typology categorizes the manosphere along two analytic dimensions—communitarianism and interactions with women—to clarify internal variation and risk of violent behavior. The typology:

• Defines communitarianism as the degree to which groups emphasize in-group solidarity, norms, and collective identity
• Defines interactions with women as ranging from antagonistic rhetorical engagement to direct encouragement of harassment or harm
• Links combinations of high communitarianism and hostile interactions with women to elevated theoretical risk of violence

🔎 Case Comparisons as Initial Proof of Concept

Illustrative comparisons across cases representing each typology subgroup demonstrate how the framework maps onto observed behavior and incidents. These comparisons serve as initial evidence supporting the typology’s predictions about which subgroups are more prone to violence.

⚖️ Broader Implications for Contentious Politics

By documenting the manosphere and offering a theory-driven typology, the paper argues that excluding these online men’s movements from political conversation prevents a comprehensive understanding of contemporary contentious politics, gendered political behavior, and the pathways from online rhetoric to offline harm.