This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: "Students are funneled into echo chambers, lured into extremist content through innocent avenues such as gaming and workout videos, then exposed to extreme misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia." That's how one Australian teacher described what they're seeing in their classroom. Andrew Tate's name came up again and again.
Students cite the manosphere influencer—who is currently facing multiple criminal charges including rape and trafficking—as an authority in class discussions. Teachers found it hard to push back without being accused of bias. Teachers call it the manosphere pipeline.
Our new national survey shows why it's so effective, and why it's more dangerous than any single extremist ideology, precisely because it doesn't lead just one way. Our team surveyed 3,429 Australians, including—for the first time in a study of this kind—teenagers as young as 13, about their opinions across six distinct extremist movements: incel, far-right, white supremacist, religious, far-left and anti-feminist extremism. We asked anonymized participants about their attitudes toward women, gender roles, violence against women, radicalization and the use of violence for personal and political reasons.
Our survey asked whether they agreed or disagreed with statements like: Across every single form of extremism we measured, the strongest predictor wasn't political ideology, religion, ethnicity or how much time someone spent online. This one attitude did more to separate those who support extremist violence from those who don't than every form of online engagement put together. And it wasn't a niche pattern confined to the 'manosphere.' If the same attitude predicts incel violence, religious extremism, far-right and white supremacist violence, and left-wing violence with almost equal force, then these aren't six separate radicalization stories that happen to share a risk factor.
Misogyny is the ideological fount from which they all draw. Strip away the specific manifestos, grievances and enemies, and what's underneath, in every case, is the same belief system. What they share is an ideology that men ought to dominate women, that transgression of the natural gender order deserves punishment and that violence in service of restoring the natural gender order is legitimate.
Extremist movements did not invent this logic from nowhere, though. They inherited it, already formed, from attitudes about gender that many of their recruits held before they ever found an ideology to attach it to. Our study was also interested in which online environments are most responsible for cultivating and amplifying both misogynistic and extremist attitudes.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
