Male self-esteem is indexed to wealth, an unstable prospect in a highly economically unequal society. In search of an alternative source of validation, many young men are turning to misogynistic ideas. The Left needs to provide alternatives of our own.
The Netflix series Adolescence, which follows the aftermath of a teen boy’s murder of a female classmate, has amassed nearly 100 million views, making it one of the streamer’s biggest hits to date. Viewers have praised the show’s nuanced portrayal of a youth social world pervaded with the views of the misogynist online “manosphere.” But not everyone is a fan. A spokesman for top manosphere influencer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, who is named directly in the show, told Newsweek:
The reference to Andrew Tate in Adolescence is an attempt to pin broader societal issues on one individual, which is neither fair nor accurate. Whilst online influence is a valid topic, it’s unjust for the public to make him the scapegoat for complex problems like radicalization and violence, which stem from far wider cultural and systemic factors.
Tate’s spokesman has a point: his noxious brand of seething chauvinism is symptomatic of sweeping cultural and economic trends. Anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee, who previously spoke to Jacobin’s Meagan Day about the political economy of tradwives, returns for this discussion about the social pressures and contradictions that elevate figures like Tate and deliver young men into their orbit.
Kristen Ghodsee is the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, Everyday Utopia, and many other books and chairs the Russian and East European studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. In this conversation, she proposes that the manosphere is filling a self-esteem void created by the indexing of male value to…
Auteur: Kristen R. Ghodsee
