Surviving the Manosphere

Presenter, campaigner and activist Jess Davies has questions. Are we still asking for it because of our outfits? Our routes home? Our profile picture? Our social media posts? Or can we finally admit that there might be something wrong with… men and masculinity? James Bloodworth delved into the array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the manosphere. With it he asks why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs it promotes and what can we do about it?

As the epidemic of male violence towards women and young girls reaches terrifying new heights through new and expanding technologies, women’s rights campaigner Jess Davies will help question society’s understanding – or lack of – when it comes to consent. With a toolkit to understand and tackle online misogyny, her book No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World will arm a new wave of internet sleuths to take down the manosphere, one unsolicited pic at a time.

Already there, James Bloodworth explores the uncertainties that life and masculinity has spawned in an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the manosphere, as men search for new forms of belonging. In the course of his journey he meets incels, enlists on a bootcamp for so-called ‘alpha males’, and speaks to modern day Hugh Hefners using social media to broadcast their jet set lifestyles to millions of followers. Combining compulsive memoir with powerful reporting, fascinating international case studies, data, cultural analysis and history, his book Lost Boys: Undercover Adventures in Toxic Masculinity is a guide to the crisis in contemporary masculinity.

Join Jess and James to discuss a world that is confusing for men and dangerous for women. How has this come about, how can women start to survive this, and how can we work together to make change?