Manosphere Narratives That Don’t Hold Up to Scrutiny

But we still see them trotted out all the time as if they were truth

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Maybe I have a perverse sense of humor, but I find it sort of funny when I run across various guys putting forth the same tired narratives that don’t even make a lot of sense over and over again. Clearly, they didn’t think this nonsense up themselves. They got it from some Manosphere source, or some guy who got it from there, and since it sounded good to him, he proceeded to pass it along without even thinking it through or checking it out.

It’s a particularly insidious form of confirmation bias, because it typically involves disinformation about women. Some of it is even the “white man as victim” narrative, which is a truly silly one. But misogyny does quite often go hand in hand with racism, so I guess it shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise.

Still, this stuff makes me shake my head and since I’m all about dispelling false cultural narratives, I finally had to sit down and write about some of these.

One of the stupidest of these is that men are actually the oppressed ones because only they are subject to the military draft. Aside from the fact that it’s not women who drafted less dominant men to fight for the oligarchs and political elites, women have always clammered for the chance to serve their country and most of the obstacles to that have come from men.

In WWII, 405,399 American men died, 116,516 in WWI, 58,220 in Vietnam, and 36,574 in the Korean War. These figures cover both battle deaths and deaths from other causes (such as accidents and disease) while in service. Also, some of those deaths were women: nurses, ambulance drivers, spies, and military transport, to name a few.

By contrast, an estimated 1.9 million women are raped and 6.54 million women experience other forms of sexual violence annually in the US.

Annually: that means every single year.

Nobody is minimizing the sacrifices of anyone in the military but between 1940 and 1973 when the draft ended, 616,706 Americans died as a result of military service. This is minus the 1,500 or so women in uniform who died in these four conflicts as well as the men who volunteered. Thirty three years of conscripted deaths is less than a tenth of the number of American women who experience sexual violence every year.

Also, nobody who was drafted has died because of that for 53 years. The guys trotting that out as evidence of their persecution mostly don’t even know anyone who died because of forced military service. Maybe a grandfather or great uncle, but it’s hardly a contemporary problem. Meanwhile, nearly every woman has some experience with some sort of sexual violence and most have experience with it over and over again since they were children.

At least 85% of American women started getting sexually harassed in childhood, often as young as 9 or 10 years old. About 1 in 4 girls (and 1 in 6 boys) will be sexually abused or raped before they are 17 — nearly all of that perpetrated by men according to the Department of Justice.

Feminism supports body autonomy. It doesn’t believe in forced military conscription for anyone. In the past, the military and economic leaders have often enlisted women to shame men who were reluctant to serve, but that wasn’t the women’s idea. They too were tools of patriarchy and the dominance hierarchy system.

[embed]“We Need Soldiers, and Mothers of Soldiers” How the State invented a gender binary to serve its own needsmedium.com

At the time that forced conscription was taking place, women were second class citizens by law, with hundreds of fewer legal rights than men (well into the 1970s). They couldn’t get home loans or credit cards in their own name, could be fired for getting pregnant and could be openly paid less for the same work. Women could also legally be raped by their husbands and domestic abuse was considered largely a “private issue” that was rarely interfered with by the police.

Meanwhile, there were multiple ways to defer or avoid conscription and it only applied to some men. Not good, but not even remotely the same thing.

One of the core aspects of Manosphere narratives is that it frequently blames those who are not actually at fault for things that patriarchy has done to men.

This is because many men are overly self-identified with patriarchal masculinity, believing it to be “who I really am as a man” rather than a set of indoctrinated and policed behaviors and outlooks that guys have been subject to since birth. It’s like they’ve bought into a particularly shady multi-level marketing plan, and don’t want to admit that they are never going to “win” with it.

Anyone who brings up having to register for the draft that they most likely are never going to be called up to as evidence that it’s actually men who are oppressed in this culture needs to have a big reality check. Yes, patriarchy harms men too, but unless women are specifically upholding patriarchal norms as well, they aren’t the ones responsible for the draft, or any other aspect of patriarchal oppression of men. You guys are doing that to yourselves by clinging to patriarchy for your sense of self.

If these guys are called up for some reason someday, they need to recognize that overwhelmingly, it’s been rich and politically connected men who are behind this, and that women have fought hard for decades to be allowed into combat positions that they qualify for.

Feminism believes that nobody should be drafted. The fact that men have to sign up for Selective Service is not the sort of flex that too many guys seem to believe — just because they heard it from some Mansophere ajacent narrative. You’re mistaking women for your precious patriarchy once again.

[embed]A Long History of Women Warriors Female soldiers are far from a rare phenomenonmedium.com

And speaking of mistaking women for patriarchal male hierarchies, most women don’t find the things that Man Box men think are impressive in other men all that attractive. The height and the bulging muscles, the social status and the fat wallet — for the most part those are things that some men find impressive about other men, so they assume it’s what women want as well.

Take, for example, the notion that women prioritize a partner’s earnings and status above all else. While some studies have found a slight trend in this direction, the difference is much smaller than stereotypes suggest.2 In fact, factors like kindness, intelligence, and emotional connection are consistently rated as important by both men and women.3 ~* CouplesTherapyInc.*

Most women would prefer to date someone taller than they are because patriarchy says that women should be petite compared to men and many women have internalized that. But the reality is, if a woman meets a shorter guy with a great personality who makes her feel safe and seen, that’s not going to be a dealbreaker most of the time. I’m a tall woman and I can confirm that this is true.

Dating apps are another story, but then again, that’s an artificial environment not designed to make real connections. As Christina Laura notes:

Let’s talk about this. Because the truth is: women aren’t choosier online. Online dating just removes everything that normally makes a man attractive.

When I meet a man offline, attraction is a slow-blooming collage of things that have absolutely nothing to do with whether he has a perfectly symmetrical jawline. It’s the way he moves through a room, the relaxed confidence in his walk, the tone of his voice when he says hello. It’s eye contact that lingers half a second too long, a warm laugh you feel more than hear, the subtle scent of his cologne when he leans in to ask you something.All those tiny sensory clues that whisper: oh… I like this one.

And not a single one of those things survives contact with a phone screen.

You can be average-looking in photos but absolutely magnetic in person. You can also be Instagram-hot but flatter than a glass of stale soda the moment you speak. (emphasis mine)

So when men insist we’re “too picky” online, what they really mean is: “You’re not evaluating us using the exact attraction system we use.”

Assuming that women evaluate men the way other men tend to evaluate each other and how they themselves often evaluate women is a huge mistake. The Manosphere bros who are sure they know all about women and how they tick are usually just recirculating stories told by other men that are one part myth and two parts projection.

There are status seekers and gold-diggers out there in the world, but just as many of them are male as female. Knowing who you are and being proud of that person, while being willing to work on your rough spots — that’s attractive to almost everyone. But patriarchy is all about hierarchy and performing traditional masculinity for the benefit and approval of other men. The guys who buy into that are engaged in a homosocial activity and they’re looking for a scapegoat to blame their dating woes on when it doesn’t pan out.

Especially these days, when women have access to higher education and well paying jobs in greater levels than ever before, they are more likely to be seeking a man who adds stability, fun, and peace to their lives. Women are not a monolith, but in general, women appreciate how a man makes them feel, with the details of that meaning different things to different women.

The traits that women tend to value and need most from the men in their lives can be categorized in three discrete areas: moral integrity (from all men); relational sensitivity (from friends and partners); and satisfying intimacy (from romantic partners). ~*Psychology Today*

Satisfying intimacy doesn’t just mean knowing where her clitoris is and how it works, it also means bringing adventure and fun into the relationship in ways that also feel safe and welcome. It means realizing that getting a relationship is not an stagnant acquisition, but rather the beginning of an ongoing dynamic connection that needs attention and care to thrive.

Most women could brush up on their relationships skills a bit as well, but the fact remains that in the US, about 65% of single women are no longer seeking dates or mates, compared to about 30% of single men. This is not because there is a shortage of what the Manosphere terms “high value men” but rather because too many men don’t understand or even care about what is important to women in a dating/mating scenario and women would rather stay single than pair up with someone who doesn’t get their needs and worse yet, doesn’t care.

[embed]What He Thinks Vulnerable Means Versus what she is probably experiencingmedium.com

Another truly clueless Manosphere talking point that I come across a lot is that idea that men “built the world” or that “women have never invented or created anything useful.” While it’s true that for most of us, formal education was a parade of learning about white, male accomplishments, anybody who is not just entirely siloed in their own little echo chamber should have gone on to expand their horizons a bit since then.

First off, patriarchy is a social system that is only about 6–10k years old. All the elements of civilization were well in place before then. We had writing, pottery, boats, legal and religious systems, metal working, agriculture and beer, to name just a few. Women are believed to have invented both beer and agriculture and they certainly had significant participation and impact in civilization long before the days of being relegated to second-class status.

Women’s limited educational and career opportunities would be a great excuse for why they haven’t discovered or invented much, but it would be a wrong one. Despite all the condescension, and often lack of formal training or other opportunities, women still discovered and invented thousands of things. These include many major household appliances, central heat, the windshield wiper, the precursor to WiFi, the first computer algorithm, as well as a host of scientific and medical advancements.

That you probably can’t name a famous woman scientist other than Marie Curie and Jane Goodall is the fault of the educational system, but just because you don’t know something doesn’t make it unknowable or non-existent. Women have always contributed to feeding the family as both hunters and gatherers, and later as planters of seeds and except for the very richest, women have always worked, often in quite physically demanding ways.

Have you ever tried to do a load of laundry by boiling it in a giant pot, scrubbing and then wringing out each item individually, before hanging it all up on a line to dry? Have you ever scrubbed a floor on your hands and knees, or made and cleaned up three meals a day from scratch, with no microwave, and no dishwasher? That sort of exhausting, heavy work was typically in addition to helping to run the farm, the mill, or the cobbler shop, as well as feeding and caring for young children.

In the Middle Ages, women did construction, until they were forbidden to do so around the 1500s. Whole families, including young children, worked coal pits in the UK together until 1842, when women and children under 10 were prohibited from doing so. Imagining that we’ve always lived like some sort of sit-com such as Leave It To Beaver is pretty far off from reality. Even during the idealized 50s, by the end of the decade, 40% of women were in the workforce, and the numbers just kept growing and growing.

Imagining that women never did anything but cook, clean, and take care of men and children before the 1970s is an intentional erasure of women’s actual contributions so that this type of man can feel important and good about himself. After all, he’s better (in his own mind at least) than women, and he’s looking for ways to continue justifying that.

[embed]Did Men Actually “Build the World”? A look at the larger context indicates it’s not that simplemedium.com

As one commentator noted about the Manosphere luminaries profiled in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, these guys are a mess.

The aggression in this lot is never far from the surface. They rush to tell Theroux how happy they are. And alot of their project is vain showing off of their supposed success in the world: the girls, the money, the sports cars, all the phallic symbols that, like their impossible physiques, cover over the gaping absence of anything deeper in their personae than a bleak social Darwinism, laced with fatalism and hatred.

Performing dominance for the approval of other men isn’t likely to lead anyone to a satisfying life. Despite their bluster, these guys are not happy or at peace. In fact, studies indicate that the more a guy is bought into these sorts of Man Box dynamics, the more likely he is to be depressed, abusing substances, and suicidal.

[embed]Men Describe What It Takes to Be a ‘Real Man’ And I have to say, it’s pretty disturbingmedium.com

I’d feel sorry for these sorts of men if they didn’t center so much of their identity around lies about and hatred of women and any men they deem to be less than they are, including boatloads of disinformation — all of which is clearly ridiculous if you interface with the actual real world and know anything about human history or sociology.

These Manosphere talking points can be popped with a single pin because they aren’t based in anything but the stupid, hateful delusions of insecure men who can’t feel good about themselves unless they make someone else look or feel bad. There are many more of these stupid narratives, but I’ve run out of time today, and these are some of the most egregious ones.

Help me plan for my next story on this topic. What are some of the other stupid Manosphere narratives you’ve heard that don’t hold up to scrutiny?

© Copyright Elle Beau 2026

[embed]Men Aren’t More Expendable Than Women Average guys are more expendable than the elitesmedium.com

[embed]Delusions of Innate Superiority Belie the Insecurity Underneath You just look pathetic when you keep insisting on your unqusetionable preeminence as a manmedium.com