The manosphere as an anti-feminist network

The Manosphere is a sprawling digital ecosystem encompassing Men’s Rights Activists, Pick-Up Artists, Incels, and other distinct anti-feminist subcultures. Recently, it has become a significant phenomenon in both online and offline discussions. Whilst scholarship has examined the ideas underpinning the Manosphere, less attention has been given to its structural formation as a digital phenomenon. This paper argues that the Manosphere is best understood as a ‘defensive networked public’; decentralised, interactive, and digital public spheres where communities coalesce around shared experiences and ideologies. By analysing the affordances of networked publics: persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability, this paper demonstrates how these digital structures facilitate ideological diffusion, sustain engagement, and foster radicalisation, despite the absence of formal leadership or organisation. More broadly, this analysis contributes to growing scholarship challenging the assumption that publics inherently foster democratic participation, illustrating how they may instead leverage digital affordances to sustain defensive and exclusionary movements.