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Exploring the Manosphere with James Bloodworth (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-09 12:58:03
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

In this episode, we immerse ourselves in the potent juices of the manosphere with British journalist and author James Bloodworth. James recently published Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere and takes us on a whirlwind tour of various misogynistic and anti-feminist subcultures, including pickup artists, incels, and the blue, red, and black pill communities. Drawing on his personal experiences and research, James discusses the appeal and dangers of the manosphere, touching on themes such as insecure masculinity and the commodification of social interactions. We also get into some joyful political implications and consider the role of social media in spreading these messages. One for all the family!

Links

Lost Boys - Journey into the Manosphere

James' Substack

The Guardian – Journey into the Manosphere – Review of Lost Boys

Prospect Magazine – Matthew Goodwin, Reform and the politics of resentment – Bloodworth’s recent article on Matt Goodwin

Comments

Lillie

Yay!!!🙏

Linda Sears

I know what I’ll be listening to while doing my Saturday morning chores.

Jenny

Listening now while putting in my modest effort. Great so far!

Roland Weber

Thanks, that was refreshing! (I dread the next decoding... 🫣)

Linda Sears

I’m really enjoying this conversation. I feel like Bloodworth does a great job of showing us the different ways the manosphere has manifested: pick up artists with their games of conquest, red pilled masculinity, in which women are simply status symbols (a la Andrew Tate), and those like Peterson who push for extremist traditional ideals of masculinity. He also helped me understand the appeal it has, including the aspects that are helpful for men, particularly young ones, and how these desires to feel masculine fit in with the productivity narratives that are so popular right now.

Daniel VI

Great interview. Have been an admirer of James Bloodworth’s journalism for a while, so good to learn more about his book. It sounds very interesting.

Jenny

I listened to this interview after listening to a news brief about the actual U.S. Secretary of Defense (former Fox News host) sharing videos on socials about his pastor talking about how women should submit to their husbands and how women shouldn't have the right to vote individually, but that households should vote with the man being head of household. This after noticing, while indulging in guilty pleasure fluff watching of a competitive dating show yesterday, more than one of the young men making offhand comments about how cooking is the woman's job. Anyway, these interviews are equal parts interesting and terrifying. I wish the manosphere phenomenon were cabined off in the more niche parts of the internet, but I fear they are now becoming more and more part of the dominant culture. I'm hoping for a backlash at some point and a turn back toward reason - but when? In my lifetime?

Vivian

In history grad school - professor old man winter used to repeat all the time that the US was the first country to create business schools and professionalize “business” I like to think the manosphere is just another extension of this. I mean if it’s down to evol science and techniques who wouldn’t want to join. Success guaranteed.

Jordan

I understand what they mean about not asking their dad about specific manosphere topics, but I do think in some cases, at least mine specifically, not having a normal functioning man to observe growing up at all can make one susceptible to Jordan Peterson type figures. I believe it did for me ten years ago in my early 20's. I grew out of it, and there is some personal responsibility involved in not subscribing to those people or their ideas, but I also don't have the counterfactual where I didn't end up surrounded by decent friends through my job during that time. Sometimes I really do think "there by the grace of God go I," but maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit on getting out of it and my circumstance or luck played less of a role than I imagine.

Jenny

Coincidentally, today I came across the Latin for "high value man" - quantivis pretii vir

Jen

Thanks guys!! So, he really went into it on his own but it was just the pickup stuff. I thought I might have misunderstood that. It’s only available in audio format here in US. I suck at listening to books.

Kyle Dun

I've had some work experience in this area so looking forward to the listen. As a man expecting two young men, I'm determined to not let my sons fall in these traps!

Kelley

I really really hate how literally 10 years ago I was reading posts on r/theredpill and thinking, man these guys are insane, there’s no way this will catch on. And then watching gamergate happen and watching Trump get elected TWICE and the manosphere is still alive and kicking. Truly depressing shit.

Colin

I think this ideology and vulnerability to manosphere gurus is very heavily driven by socio-economic factors, exacerbated by cultural factors in wider society. I wrote a long thing about that, but it takes up the whole page without a little “more” button which I thought it would have. I think it is to do with 1) lower educational attainment among boys 2) lower socio-economic performance among young men and 3) A culture that is dismissive of men who don’t/can’t do well. The upshot is that there’s very powerful evidence for this notion from the UK government, showing that educational underperformance of young men vs young women overall in the UK is very striking indeed, much more so than I would have thought, and especially in lower socioeconomic groups. The rates of living at home are also much higher for young men than young women. Amongst a sub-population of self-identified incels, the data is even more striking, with a rate of autism spectrum traits 30 times that of the general population, much lower educational attainment, a very high unemployment rate (only 44% were in full time employment, 59% in some sort of employment compared to an estimate of 70-80% for the UK population as a whole in that age group), very high rates of self-reported bullying victimisation, very high rates of living at home. So, I think those are the relevant terms in which to frame this debate, and that the narrative these men have of getting a tough deal compared to women is to a large and more successful men is to a large degree accurate. You can look at the data here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03161-y https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2024-0043/ https://www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office/news-events/news/2025/05/major-new-study-reveals-key-insights-into-incel-community.php https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/23/men-women-society-uk-housing-parents-women https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/labourmarketstatistics https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/12/university-gender-gap-scandal-thinktank-men

Kyle Dun

The evo psych bastardisation still baffles me. I never read an evo psych book that I walked away from and thought, yeah women are inferior by nature. Are they reading different books or just drawing their own conclusions based on their own personal problems?

Kelly 🇮🇪 🇦🇺

I worked at a hostel years ago and I was friendly with 1 of the guests (covid had just dropped so they were stuck there) and whatever we were chatting about he managed to drop in that I was unattractive. It took me really off guard and I didn't say anything but it got in my head. Like i dont care if you think that, but why would you say it? Am i being too up my own ass if i say anything about it?! Then I mentioned it to a few others and they we're like Kelly, he's negging you. He's all into that pick up crap. I had no idea what the hell negging was or the pick up artist stuff so it blew my mind. I seen a few years ago he uploaded (then deleted) videos of him trying to teach "how to get girls" Poor women out there having to deal with that shit and worse. Like I'm sorry your feeling lonely but it's so fucking gross. Very cute that you guys are his favourite pod 🥰

Ymirsdreams

If you find your manospheres getting toxic it can help to wear looser garments made of natural fibres.

Emma

The sad thing to me, is that from my own perspective and the perspective of my gf one of the most attractive qualities in a man is if he just likes woman as people and interacts with us as equals. And it's incredibly depressing that that's hard to find.

Nat J

Brilliant line. Utterly brilliant. “Men are biologically programmed to do whatever they want to do anyway. Women are programmed to do what men want them to.” I’ve never heard it put quite that way before.

Trees

Interesting discussion. A friend loaned me a David DeAngelo lecture series when I was 19. I remember him being more like 50% right, but I've probably just forgotten more of the problematic content. I still give him credit for introducing me to the Nice Guy Syndrome for the first time. I don't think he named it so specifically, but he empathized that you can't bribe or complement someone into finding you attractive--no amount of being nice to someone entitles you to anything. Also that if you're interested in someone sexually, be open about it and don't pretend you want to be friends or treat the person like some special princess. Basic I know, but not common knowledge for me or my friends at that age. We (mostly) had female friends and grasped that they were in fact just people, but as soon as we liked someone, we'd start doing a chivalrous knight impression. I'd wager that misunderstanding still leads to frustration and shitty behavior among a lot of adolescent males.

Max

Really interesting conversation. YT manosphere comment sections are some of the most depressing rabbit holes I've ever gone down.

Heidi Sævareid

Really interesting! I was first exposed to the manosphere back when I was doing BJJ. Was really passionate about it, but in the end I had to leave because of a guy who first befriended me, then negged me, then stalked me both online and in real life, interspersed with sending me lots of video clips and talking points from the manosphere. Jordan Peterson interviews, articles about how male chimpanzees rape female chimpanzees, and that's what men actually want to (and should?) do to women ... It was really scary. Also, it seemed like he became more and more radicalised over just a few years, but he may also have been holding back at first? Took me a while to figure out what was happening, since I genuinely liked him at first and thought he was a great training partner. Started informing myself about all these subcultures after this experience, and I actually think it led to me finding Decoding the Gurus! So I guess the awful BJJ guy did some good in this world after all.

Sasa

Thank you for doing this conversation and for opening the expression manosphere, I immediately started reading Lost Boys. I feel bewildered and somewhat anxious as a parent of two teenagers and this not just since the tv show Adolescence. Important conversation!

Lucy

I found the opening section about Bloodworth’s own experiences very interesting. I also had a very long stretch without a romantic partner even though I wanted one. It isn’t something only men experience, I think. The solution for me was the same as the one for anyone else: getting out there. I don’t know where I am going with this. Maybe there’s a way to de-genderize part of what drives the manosphere?

i'm dissLexick

"everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" seem to fit for fighting and Fatherhood

Monica B.

Enjoyed this, thank you! Just requested my library buy a copy.

Anonymous ethicist, not a serial killer at all, just asking questions.

Folks mentioned justpearlythings on the pod, and she's lost a lot of her clout because she was running basically a big financial scam on a bunch of black manosphere creators, basically taking a portion of their YouTube/Patreon money for her boosting them, and they eventually all turned on her. So she doesn't get the same amount of boosting from most people anymore.

Fran Murrell

Thanks for this episode. I think you’re spot on about Christian Nationalism being the next stop for the Manosphere. Can you please interview Andra Watson from the Substack For Such a Time as This? She escaped from this repressive ideology. One of the gurus worth debunking would be Doug Wilson. The Sons of Patriarchy (who are recovering from this religious trauma) are debating him sometime.

Paul Bowman

Great interview on a really important topic. Will definitely hunt down a copy of the book (probably even a hard copy so I can scribble notes on it). Couple of things off the top of my head. First the irony of an ideology that's ostensibly all about sex, and yet less and less anything to do with sexual desire or pleasure, the more down the rabbit hole it goes. By coincidence, was just reading Manvir Singh's excellent 2021 paper on The Sympathetic Plot (looking the most common folktale plot across cultures). His opposition to the functionalist explanation of "the simulation hypothesis" and persuasive counter of a "byproduct" theory - i.e. stories exploit cognitive traits that evolved as adaptive for other reasons, but appeared and persist because they give pleasure - made me rethink this aspect of manosphere ideology. The intuition being that people prefer to substitute functionalist (cod evopsych) explanations for sex because they are uncomfortable or feel threatened by pleasure-centred accounts. I feel there could be an angle there for "deradicalising" interventions by people who work with young people at risk of being sucked in by this toxic ideology. The second one was maybe more counterintuitive. Yes, the manosphere ideology as a whole is inseparable from a toxic masculinist heterosexism. But... the point that James raised several times about the way the ideology buys into and amplifies notions of self-commodification, being a product in some hierarchical competitive marketplace, etc, could potentially apply to same-sex oriented people as well. We know that problems like pathological jealously, coercive control and domestic violence can occur in same-sex relationships just as they do in straight ones. It would be an interesting research project to look into whether the kind of self- and other-objectifying, extreme commodification discourses that we see in the manosphere are also entering LGBT cultures as well (outside of the "woke" political milieu, which contrary to lazy stereotypes, does not make up the majority of the lesbian and gay population).