Inside the Manosphere

Will SmithMarch 24 at 7:40 PM ·I’ve watched the recent documentary “Inside the Manosphere.” And I’ll be honest, the language, the rhetoric, the mindset… none of it shocked me. I see it every single day. I sit with boys who repeat those lines. Who consume that content. Who are slowly being shaped by it. And yes, it’s confronting. It’s aggressive. At times, it’s outright disgusting. But here’s the part people don’t want to talk about…These boys are not just choosing this out of nowhere. They are finding it. And they are finding it because they are lost. Three out of four suicides in Australia are men. Suicide is the leading cause of death for boys aged 15–24. Only 30% of people accessing mental health services are male. Boys make up 80% of school suspensions. They fall behind in literacy by Year 3, and many never catch up. They are 40% less likely to finish Year 12. They are overrepresented in risk-taking, road deaths, substance abuse and violence. 90% of violent offending in Australia is committed by males. And one in three Australian men report having no close friends. Let that sink in. No close friends…. We are not looking at “bad boys.”  We are looking at hurting boys. The manosphere doesn’t just give them answers. It gives them certainty and status. It gives them a feeling of control in a world where they feel like they are failing.  And for a boy who feels behind, rejected, or invisible, that is powerful. That’s why it’s dangerous. Because it doesn’t heal them. It hardens them. It replaces pain with ego. But if we only criticise it, we miss the point. These boys don’t just need to be told what not to follow. They need something better to follow. At JCP, we work with young men who sit right in this space. And what we see is this:- They don’t actually want to be toxic.- They want to feel respected. - They want to feel capable. - They want to feel like they matter.- They want to win. And if we don’t show them a healthy way to do that, they will find an unhealthy one. We need to give young men an alternative that is just as strong, just as compelling, but grounded in something real. This isn’t a fringe issue. It’s not “a few bad kids on the internet.” It’s a generation of young men trying to work out who they are… and being met with the loudest voices, not the best ones. We can be angry at the manosphere. We can call it out, and we should. But if we stop there, we lose the boys. The real work is giving them something stronger to stand on. Because if we don’t lead them, someone else will.