My take-home from Inside The Manosphere was that society needs more emotionally and physically available fathers.
The men drawn into this red pill bull have a common theme in their lives: absent or abusive fathers. We’ve framed “daddy issues” (hate that term, but I’ll use it because we all know what it means) inherently as a woman’s problem but it’s abundantly clear that a lack of positive masculine influence affects boys and girls equally as negatively. I look at these manosphere men and think how on earth could a woman be happy to settle for one-sided monogamy, humiliation, abuse, breadcrumbing and disloyalty just as long as there’s cash, and then I realise, many of them probably have absent and abusive fathers too. It’s just appears perpetual cycle of men with daddy issues exploiting women with daddy issues, ad infinitum.
We need to reframe what it is to be “masculine”: proud, protective, providing, with softness, accountability, and emotional integrity. Masculinity isn’t bullying, berating and blindly chasing billions of dollars at any cost.