Written evidence from Allysa Czerwinsky
PhD Candidate and Research Fellow in AI Trust and Security, University of Manchester [MIS0050]
My research to date explores how misogyny and male supremacism manifest in online environments, specifically focusing on content shared by misogynist incels and misogyny influencers. My doctoral work centres the importance of shared stories in misogynist incel discussions, highlighting how ideologies and narratives are constructed, affirmed, and challenged across the online incelosphere.
Whilst this call for evidence uses the terms misogyny and sexism, I also include the term ‘male supremacism’ in this submission, defined by the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism as the belief in cisgender men’s superiority and right to dominate and control others. A focus on male supremacism allows for further discussion of how misogyny is rooted in structural oppression, as well as how it intersects with other forms of social harm, including white supremacy, racism, queerphobia, transphobia, and ableism, among others.
My evidence draws on seven years of researching male supremacism online and highlights two key points:
1) The role that digital environments and social media play in platforming and mainstreaming misogynist attitudes
2) The importance of multi-faceted strategies and interventions for addressing misogyny and male supremacism.
1: Digital Environments, Social Media Content, and Misogynist Attitudes Online and Off
Existing research, including my own, has demonstrated that male supremacist attitudes are increasingly mainstreamed through interactions and publicly accessible content on mainstream social media platforms. While misogynist content online is diverse, my research demonstrates the role that ideologies, narratives, and language play in making this content appealing to wider audiences. Within the incelosphere specifically, misogyny and male supremacism are constructed as ‘common sense’ responses to past life experiences of hurt, rejection, and social isolation by individuals who view themselves as uniquely victimised through diversity initiatives and feminist gains for equality. Relatedly, misogyny influencers profit on these past experiences of rejection and current anxieties around masculinity and gender roles in wider social discourses, using their platforms spread harmful and reductive ideas in ways that foster engagement across multiple modes of media. Importantly, this content directly adopts longstanding manosphere rhetoric, working to spread these beliefs from less visible forums and boards into popular platforms like YouTube, TikTok, X/Twitter, and Spotify.
Misogyny also intersects with other forms of oppression that create tangible harm for those targeted, an issue often obscured by a focus on gender alone. For instance, online discussions about the identity of woman are linked to racism, colonialism, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, ableism, and classism. My work on intersectional othering within misogynist incel forums demonstrates that certain identities are targeted in differential ways, with racial and ethnic minority women, cis queer women, trans women, queer men, neurodiverse women, and disabled women subject to specific language and dehumanising narratives across forums.
Within the wider manosphere, Black and East Asian women are subject to the same slurs levied at all women as well as specific racist slurs and racist stereotypes around desirability, femininity, and hypersexuality. Cisgender queer women are subject to erasure through assertions that their identities ‘do not exist’, while their rejection of cisgender men incentivises calls for sexual violence as a corrective. Trans women (and, to a lesser extent, trans men) are subject to wider social discourses constructing queer people as mentally ill, predatory, and deviant. Those who are perceived as failing to ‘pass’ – or aesthetically align with cisgender depictions of masculinity and femininity – are subject to harmful and dehumanising rhetoric portraying them as predatory ‘men in dresses’ who are deserving of retributive violence.
Similarly, neurodiverse and disabled women are subject to general misogynist speech, alongside specific slurs, infantilisation, and perceptions of limited sexual agency when compared to able-bodied women. A focus on the spread and acceptance of misogynist beliefs, attitudes, and speech must acknowledge the ways in which womanhood intersects with other forms of oppression, which impact how male supremacist harm is perpetrated and experienced in qualitatively different ways.
2: Strategies and Interventions for Addressing Misogyny
Male supremacism is an intersectional and multifaceted issue, one that necessitates multifaceted responses in both digital and offline environments. As online spaces are essential in platforming, mainstreaming, and sharing misogynist and male supremacist content, individual platforms and service providers also share responsibility in addressing how harmful content is able to thrive in online space. Ofcom recently released guidance for platform providers to better address online misogyny and comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act (2024), encouraging them to take responsibility for effective content moderation, design services in ways that safeguard against harm, and increase support for users who are at a differential risk of experiencing harm in online environments. However, much of this guidance assumes that clear, effective, and actionable moderation policies are in place, which is at odds with the realities of content moderation on mainstream social media platforms and independent forums. While X/Twitter does have a clear policy against hateful and harmful speech, how these rules are applied in practice remains unclear. Many of its decisions about what constitutes harmful or hateful speech are influenced by the personal views of current platform owner Elon Musk, including deeming ‘cis’ and ‘cisgender’ slurs (but allowing transphobic speech to remain on the platform), while reinstating banned accounts that violated the platform’s policies around misinformation, transphobic, and misogynistic content (Robinson, 2024). Similarly, Meta’s recent changes to its content moderation policies have removed past bans on referring to queer people as “mentally ill” or describing women as “household objects”.
Deplatforming has also been discussed as a potential response to harmful and illegal content online, which places the onus on platforms and providers to block, exclude, or restrict individuals or groups from using certain online spaces due to harmful or unlawful behaviour. While deplatforming can help limit the reach of content and recruitment efforts from hateful groups, its lasting efficacy is mixed: the level of engagement and attention high-profile accounts had before their deplatforming plays a role in whether interest in their content wanes.
Past attempts at deplatforming harmful communities from larger platforms like X/Twitter and Reddit have resulted in groups utilising alt-tech spaces to organise and connect, often at the expense of “making these communities more toxic and ideologically radical” or increasing interest from the general public. Though the initial r/Incels ban did decrease activity levels and hindered opportunities for the community to attract new members on Reddit, it also led to the creation and rapid growth of incels.me (now incels.is), alongside an increase in posts containing harmful and hateful content from former users of the defunct subreddit and newcomers alike.
While a complete deplatforming may result in increasing attention, toxicity, and the utilisation of alt-tech platforms, a focus on limiting the reach and accessibility of harmful content may be a fruitful way forward. For instance, ensuring clear and consistent content moderation on mainstream platforms can act as an immediate, short-term response to instances of harmful content online. Collaboration and direct action from platforms, tech firms, and internet service providers is also necessary: increasing transparency around algorithmic processes on platforms like YouTube, X/Twitter, and TikTok; obscuring misogynist incel forums or lowering their appearance in search engine results; and restricting opportunities for harmful content to be promoted through paid services or ads are positive steps toward limiting the accessibility of male supremacist content in digital environments.
Though moderation efforts are necessary in responding to harmful content as it is posted, there is also a pressing need for longer-term efforts to address its appeal. Moreover, the impact of male supremacist content is not solely confined to the online sphere, with this rhetoric spilling out into and (re)produced within offline social environments. Recently, the proliferation of harmful ideologies in schools has become a point of concern for academics, teachers, and parents alike, with misogyny influencers like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and Adin Ross viewed as idols and role models by school-aged boys. As school settings can facilitate the spread of harmful ideas around masculinity and gender roles, alongside being a site of rejection, humiliation, and isolation, providing opportunities to critically interrogate how young people make sense of their anxieties around gender roles, intimacy, desire, attractiveness, and dating in supportive environments can help unpick harmful beliefs.
Similarly, working to validate the experiences of hurt, harm, and rejection that underpin involvement in male supremacist communities, while offering alternative avenues of meaning-making, can help build personal resilience, digital literacy skills, and healthier social and romantic relationships.
My doctoral work demonstrates that adults are increasingly engaging with misogynist and male supremacist content online, alongside adopting misogynist beliefs. The self-reported ages of users across the incelosphere forums analysed for my doctoral work ranged from mid-20s to early 40s, a noticeable departure from current discussions about how male supremacism manifests in educating settings and its impacts on school-aged boys. Similarly, Ofcom’s recent report on users’ experiences of engaging with manosphere spaces online also demonstrates the need to broaden focus beyond youth-focused interventions, as a majority of the 39 participants included fell within the 20s to 40s age range. This difference in age is particularly important in creating and incorporating sustained efforts to support older individuals as well. Experiences with casual sex and romantic relationships are increasingly constructing as common (and necessary) in young adulthood, both within the incelosphere specifically and in broader society more generally. Failing to meet these ‘expected timelines’ was especially felt by older incels, who reported struggling to make sense of why they were excluded from foundational experiences in their adolescence. Similarly, the community’s ideology presents age as a factor inherently limiting opportunities to ascend, presenting 30 as a cut-off marking users as permanent ‘truecels’.
While these narratives are grounded in the difficulties of dating at an older age, where a lack of sexual or romantic experience may be viewed with suspicion, ridiculed, or joked about by normie peers, this rhetoric can reinforce narratives of victimhood, furthering the legitimacy of male supremacist ideologies as sources of truth. Building safe and supportive spaces for adult men to express their feelings around masculinity, intimacy, and societal pressures around dating and sex are necessary to provide alternative avenues to make sense of prior experiences outside of male supremacist ideologies. Moreover, fostering support at the community level can help individuals with differential experiences of masculinity, singlehood, and rejection than those at younger ages.
June 2025