My honours thesis was on incels.

An argument of my thesis was that the manosphere has arisen due to the move away from “traditional values” (including marital values where women were property), without hegemonic masculinity changing much.

Hegemonic masculinity is “a sociological concept, developed by Raewyn Connell, describing the culturally idealized form of manhood. It prioritizes traits like stoicism, physical strength, aggression, and heterosexuality. This norm justifies patriarchy and establishes a hierarchy that subordinates both women and marginalized masculinities.”

It used to be that conforming to hegemonic masculinity would largely ensure men a loyal sexual partner committed only to him, and which he could control. Or, at least that was the illusion.

Now, with the move away from traditional values, conforming to hegemonic masculinity does not ensure men a sexual partner.

Notably, hegemonic** **masculinity marginalizes men because it establishes a strict gender hierarchy that rewards only a specific, culturally idealized version of manhood. Men who cannot or choose not to meet these rigid standards are relegated to lower social position.

My argument was that the manosphere ideology is a reaction to fact that hegemonic masculinity is still largely touted as the ideal (while society is trying to move away from hegemonic masculinity, the manosphere sees this as impossible), yet conforming to it no longer ensures all men a sexual partner - except those high on “SMV” rating apparently due to women’s hypergamy.

Instead of men going after what it is marginalizing them, that is, hegemonic masculinity itself, these men legitimize hegemonic masculinity, and do so in an attempt to justify the rightful subordination of women - that men who successfully follow the norms of hegemonic masculinity are rightfully owed a woman as property. By appeals to biological innateness, manosphere claims that the return to traditional values is justified on a biological level.

SMV and hypergamy accords with this idea, as the idea of SMV and “looks matching” is used by the manosphere to imagine that any man who conforms to hegemonic masculinity naturally has a sexual partner who, by an objective rating system rooted in biology, he is rightfully owed as a sexual partner.

This is taken further with the claim that women will naturally be “hypergamous” without traditional values to keep women in check. Apparently, women’s innate biological drive, and social norms or rules that follow from it (supposedly, hypergamy) are touted as a form of evil or “society ruining” - whereas it’s claimed that men’s innate biological drive as a whole and rules that follow from this (traditional values, ownership of women) are rightful and will further advance society, and must be set into place to keep women’s ruinous biological drive in check.

These men imply that ownership of women via traditional values is necessary to prevent hypergamy and to ensure all men get what is rightfully owed to them as hegemonically masculine men.

Hence, the manosphere is a reaction to society’s move away from traditional values yet lag away from hegemonic masculinity. Instead of furthering the dismantling of hegemonic masculinity and the marginalization of men, the manosphere holds the belief that hegemonic masculinity is biologically innate to masculinity and innately attractive to women, and uses this claim to legitimize the authentic traditional values and the treatment of women as sexual property.