Description
In the 1999 film, The Matrix, the protagonist Neo is offered two pills; a blue pill that promises blissful ignorance, and a red pill that promises a knowledge of a harrowing and possibly life-changing truth. Over twenty years later, online anti-feminists offer disenfranchised individuals their own Red Pill; that current gender relations have forced men into the role of secondary citizens; victimized by feminism and women’s sexual agency. These online communities, called the Manosphere, regularly indulge extremist views and anti-social behaviour, resulting in several attacks and mass murders in the past decade. This research positions itself within the evolving discourse on misogynist terrorism and intends to better understand what facilitates disengagement from the manosphere. Through interviews and online forum analysis of individuals who have left or are actively in the process of disengaging from the manosphere and its Red Pill ideology, my research aims to develop grounded theory to answer ‘what enables individuals to leave the manosphere? And, how can this knowledge inform policies for countering violent extremism?’
