(Not Just In) Adolescence: Online Woman-Hating Communities Include Men of All Ages

TW: extreme woman-hating

Like millions of others, I’ve been watching the Netflix series Adolescence, about a 13-year-old boy who, under the influence of Andrew Tate and the manosphere, murders a girl at his school. I’m only halfway through the series, so I’m aware that this might change in the next two episodes, but I’ve been struck by how online woman-hating is so far presented as the remit of *young* men. In one scene, DI Bascombe’s son takes him to one side, and explains to his dad, as if to a toddler, the vocabulary and beliefs of incels, including the meaning of being ‘red-pilled’. This doesn’t ring true. Middle-aged (and older) men are not innocents in the world of online woman-hating. Chances are that a real-life DI Bascombe would have first-hand experience of such communities - not just incel forums, or Men Going Their Own Way groups, but the male communities that build up around porn consumption, which inculcate a terrifyingly widespread and intense woman-hatred among men of a…