#Notallmen, #Menenism, Manospheres and Unsafe Spaces: Overt and Subtle Masculinism in Anti-“PC” Discourse

Abstract

This chapter shows how masculinist logics play out in contemporary antifeminist, father’s rights and men’s rights backlashes, in alt-right discourse and broader anti diversity and anti-‘political correctness’ in both overt and increasingly subtle ways. These contemporary backlashes naturalise essentialised gender hierarchies and their intersection with other naturalised hierarchies to claim that feminism has gone too far. Additionally, the chapter demonstrates how they invoke a crude libertarian understanding of choice and agency to claim ‘reverse discrimination’ against straight, white men and recuperate liberal equality discourses. This chapter then discusses online abuse or ‘e-bile’ as exemplary of antagonistic ethos that maintains the internet as a masculinised space that subordinates all that is feminised.