Meathwoman's Diary: Red pills, trad wives and the same old sexism

After reading Paul Hopkin’s piece on the Government campaign against the misogyny of the ‘manosphere’ and rise of ‘trad wife’ culture online, I recalled a Netflix documentary by British journalist Louis Theroux titled ‘Inside The Manosphere’.

If you have watched it, you will be familiar with what the word means and the type of men who engage with this ‘world’.

Theroux went behind the scenes with online personalities and public figures such as Harrison Sullivan and Sneako in order to get a taste of their beliefs, and what he found was a sort of misogynistic, cult-esque horror show.

These men use their massive online platforms to push ‘Red Pill’ ideology, which essentially means that they believe that men are systematically disadvantaged by feminism. While this all sounds like a terrifying fantasy that is seemingly far-fetched and maybe just for those who spend too much time on the internet, these ideologies are unfortunately not new and have just reinvented themselves through internet language and terms for newer generations to digest easier.

Sullivan berates and makes fun of Theroux because he isn’t ‘macho’ enough. Through this interaction alone, we can see the way that these particular men interact even with each other, even with no women involved.

While I never think women are to blame for these patriarchal ideals, more and more women are leaning into the culture of submission and the ‘trad-wife’ life online.

Videos of young women giving up their jobs, their education and their freedom in order to ‘serve’ and support their husbands, rearing their children and truly flaunting the 1950s housewife persona through what they wear, how they speak, except this time, it’s completely optional, unlike it was back in the 40s and 50s.

While there is a cohort of women who engage with this lifestyle, the nasty and targeted comments on their social media platforms continue to grow.

Then we have the other end of the spectrum, with online sex workers being torn apart for the job paths they have chosen. Either way, women have continuously received the short end of the stick in terms of online abuse.

While both roles have been tarnished with the same ‘anti-feminist’ brush despite being vastly different, those who represent and push anti-feminist ideologies are at the core of the hatred women still continue to receive.

When I first watched Theroux’s documentary, I had never heard of any of the men on the screen, despite some of them having millions of followers on social media. When I asked my boyfriend if he had heard of them, he said he knew of them all.

This is the worrying part - these accounts are directly targeted at young men, spreading a harmful message that once implemented, can be very difficult to undo. Men listen to each other, so the importance of not spreading an ‘us and them’ rhetoric is more important now than ever.