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‘I don’t date at all now’: one woman’s journey into the darkest corners of the manosphere
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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I stumbled upon /r/theredpill(?) many years ago as a 17 year old girl who had never had a boyfriend, and it lead to me developing a severe distrust of men for several years after. I simply had no solid concept of this type of male sex culture, and it eventually lead me into the rabbit hole of the manosphere. I read through their new posts and "strategies" frequently, mostly out of a sort of morbid fascination, but also a desire to protect myself from men.
It made me believe that, as I grew into a young woman, I had to be careful, as men are terrible predators that only care about sex and the feeling of conquest. I started to understand that the way I perceive relationships might be vastly different from a certain male ideal. Ironically, what I wanted from a relationship was inspired by a quote written by Louis de Bernières, a man:
The only thing that undid those feelings was putting myself in the position to make friends with guys – "beta males", specifically, made me feel a lot less threatened – and coming to understand that what I feared was a certain type of man, which did not represent every man. Now, I feel that I'm quite capable of navigating around toxic masculinity and keeping it out of my life, and have been with my partner for over a decade in a relationship that has developed roots.
Just keep in mind that the whole alpha/beta/etc taxonomy is a myth created by the misogynists.
I'm a big man with a gravelly voice and a shaved head. Bikers always give me the nod. I doubt if anyone would call me a beta (not that I care) but I'm fully bought into not being a shit towards women. So associate with whoever you want to, but don't assume from appearance or behavior that only one certain type of man is less toxic. It's not that simple.
It's more of a generalisation and not really a word I would use in pretty much any other context, which is why I used quotation marks. A passive-aggressive criticism.
I tend to judge men as individuals, based on what I know about toxic behaviour combined with intuition. So far, this has kept the shitters out of my life.
It is really disturbing how there are entire online communities of men basically dedicated to teaching each other how to be abusers.
Sound advice, it's useful to recognize the bullshit lingo & rhetoric that's all a part of these idiotic schemes (see: "Pickup Artists"). I realized that one of my acquaintances had started slipping those catchphrases into convos years ago, and it caught me off guard. They hadn't seemed like much of an asshole before, but it raised my hackles knowing that they weren't just reviewing the media, but integrating it into their personality/beliefs without any sort of filter.
The red-pill/PUA industry preys on the weak-willed. They exploit vulnerable and weak-willed women for sex, and weak-willed men for money.
r/FemaleDatingStrategy is/was a subreddit as well (seems inactive since 2023), it was basically the same as r/theredpill, just for women.
Weird that this is getting downvoted so heavily, but nobody is elaborating why, just downvoting it and moving on.
Because the sort of people who would downvote that, have learned to avoid trying to get into these conversations.
People would likely be downvoting because if we're having a conversation about group A doing Z bad thing to group B, changing the conversation to "well group B does Y bad thing to group A" is generally seen as a not cool thing to do.
The problem for me now is, someone is going to come and try fighting me over how men can be, and are, victimized. I know that. Anyone with a brain knows that. Men need more support than they're getting, also, and toxic masculinity (ironically, the same kind you can find in the Man-o-Sphere) is so, so mean to men, telling them to walk it off, to suck it up... I can't tell you how much work I've had to do to help deprogram the fiance, who spent 20 years in the Army... But that wasn't the discussion. It's changing the topic.
You're not allowed to talk about any problems women face, without someone saying, "but men have problems, too," and then getting mad at you for being a man-hater if you don't immediately drop the thing you were talking about to discuss the problems men face. Which is such a shame, because it solves neither problem, and just serves to piss people off.
So now that I've engaged you, and said the thing those people weren't saying, someone (possibly multiple someones) are going to try and fight me. I'm going to try and ignore them, but I have ADHD, so we'll see what happens.
They have moved to a dedicated website now.
Honestly knowing what I know about guys, I wouldn't date them either if I was a chick.
"Chick"?
Chick is slang for female.
they moved onto other subs once that got banned, or on another platform, they are sitll there on places, like twoxchromosone, femcels,,,,etc. alpha, beta thing came from pickup artists videos, and incels/and other men binge on that content.
beautiful quote, saved......saved to my wank bank! had you going there for like 7 periods! I need to share this on twitter
but no very pretty never heard it before