Online misogyny targets teen boys as potential recruits and the influence appears to be trickling down to primary-school-age kids. So when your nine-year-old comes home from school chanting lyrics about "alphas" – a term popularised by a self-professed misogynst Andrew Tate – and your five-year-old is hacking at his hair for fear of looking like a girl – how do you respond? By Michelle Duff
The high school boys tumbled through the door of the dairy, jostling for the drinks fridge. “Oi, that’s so sigma!” one of them said, reaching for a Coke. Outside the sun shone, and as we scootered home with ice-blocks I asked my nine-year-old son if he knew what that meant.
“Yeah, it’s just like, cool,” he said.
A couple of weeks earlier, he had come home singing the song popularised in 2000s cheerleading movie Bring it On, but with the lyrics changed. “Brr, it’s cold in here, there must be some alphas in the atmosphere,” went the chant. ("Alphas" replaces the name of a team in the film, the Clovers.)
Sigma, alpha, gigachad, rizz, gyatt, mewing. Slang terms emerging from a new generation – nothing to worry about, right?
Only, these words tugged at me. I’d heard some of them before, while I was reporting on the rise of the alt-right in New Zealand, spending time in what is referred to as the “manosphere” – a collection of social media accounts and websites filled with anti-women content, and tied to the idea of male supremacy. White, heterosexual (cis) male supremacy, to be specific.
In these spaces, these words are used to describe a hierarchy of idealised masculinity "under threat" by feminism or progressive politics, or to objectify women. The idea of an alpha male is based on the debunked theory of how wolves organise themselves in packs, with the alpha being the strongest. (New research shows they actually group in families.) A sigma is a “lone wolf,” a strong, silent type intent on self-improvement – think, Canadian pseudo-psychologist Jordan Peterson and his emphasis on tidy rooms and workouts. Articles like “Seven secret rules of sigma males you need to know” warn against emotional intimacy or any weakness, coded as feminine.
Sure, language evolves. It gets ground up in meme culture, used ironically. But at a time when the type of masculinity being promoted on a global scale is the regressive machismo offered by US President Elect Trump, I’m worried about what’s being normalised around my children – and most importantly, how to raise boys with the freedom to carve out their own identities.The feminist author bell hooks once said: “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.”
According to an analysis from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, sexist and abusive attacks on women in the US have surged online since the first Trump presidency, led by an “emboldened group of ‘manosphere’ influencers, extremist ideologues and politicians,” who want to roll back women’s rights. Take for example white supremacist and holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, whose X post in response to Trump's victory earlier this month “Your body, my choice. Forever,” went viral – even reaching primary-school playgrounds here, according to a group of Facebook mums.
Parroting Fuentes, Nazi salutes, transphobic and homophobic insults – this stuff is happening in primary school playgrounds. The other week my five-year-old son slashed his long hair at school with a pair of scissors, saying people thought he looked like a girl. That worried me, but I don't want to be the modern equivalent of a 90s mum freaking out unecessarily about unwholesome rap lyrics. I asked my husband what he thought. “I think it’s indoctrination in a subtle and insidious way,” he said. It was dangerous, because when they encountered those words and ideas online they would seem normal. “As teenagers and young men there’s a terminology they’re familiar with, and it makes them feel like they’re part of a group.”
So what can parents do to help their boys be boys, however that looks? Dr Kris Taylor is a lead researcher on the University of Auckland’s Shifting the Line project, and has talked to dozens of school-aged boys across the country about issues of sexism, gender, and online ethics. Masculinity and identity come up a lot, he says – and online, boys and young men’s uncertainty can be easily exploited.
“I had one kid tell me he was ‘radicalised’ – that was his word – at the age of 11, watching electrical engineering videos. The Youtuber began slipping in anti-women commentary, and then it became the majority of his content. This boy became part of the whole Gamergate community, harassing women on the internet, and it took until he was 17 to get out of it.”
At younger ages, on Youtube and social gaming communities like Roblox, Twitch or Discord, the content starts as memes. Youtube algorithms will deliver misogynistic content from creators like rape-accused influencer Andrew Tate repeatedly to teenage boys, whether they’re interested or not. These push very rigid ideas of masculinity, which includes being fit, tough, and dominating women.
“If you’re 15 years old, you’re insecure about your body, don’t know who you’re going to be, you’re worried about how to talk to girls, this appeals because it presents a simple solution to the complex issues of your life — do this, that, work out, believe these things,” Taylor says. “Essentially, these people are weaponizing young men’s anxiety. These are young, outward looking, affectionate, vibrant young boys, being told to shut it down.”
But, in their workshops, researchers found boys were crying out to talk frankly about sexism, masculinity, and inequality, Taylor says. They dismantled ideas about "being a man" – like controlling others, not showing feelings, having sex without care for the other person, using aggression as a tool – in ways that many of them said they’d not had space to before. “Even those who were resistant found it engaging because we weren’t shutting them down.”
Dr Octavia Calder-Dawe, a health psychologist at Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka and another researcher on the project, said as well as “calling boys in,” talking to them, and allowing them to make mistakes, parents can help by encouraging intimacy – in their relationships with their sons, and among boys.
“There’s this idea that a need for physical touch, for close friendships, isn’t ‘masculine,’ or that young boys can’t be upset. For parents with behaviour management, it’s things like being careful you’re giving boys that emotional space, the room to be vulnerable.”
This also means encouraging different interests, dismantling ideas that there are ‘girl’ or ‘boy’ behaviours, and modelling care and kindness, Calder-Dawe says.
Most people who view manosphere content don’t get pulled into it, and connection with a loving culture that repudiates those thoughts has a protective effect. “A supportive whānau, friends and peers – that’s where the influence lies.”
Michelle Duff is a journalist, fiction writer and mother of two boys, based in Wellington.
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