What ‘Inside The Manosphere’ Made Me Realize About Raising Boys Without Their Dad

My sons grew up with a dad who was largely not around. His interest in them fluctuated depending on what he needed in the moment — to look like a good dad or a cool one. Certainly never both at once. His attention was always directly tied to how visible he wanted his sons to be in his life and how that visibility might benefit him. My sons felt it. They still do. It’s a common enough story.

So common, in fact, that I can’t help but see it reflected in something else: the rise of the dreaded manosphere. The same one Louis Theroux recently covered in his tough-to-watch Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere.

I watched every second of that documentary, not once but twice. I didn’t enjoy a moment of it, but I wanted to see if there was something I recognized in these men who took such unabashed pride in showing the world how to be awful to women. Men who were also largely raised without present, reliable fathers. I waited to have sympathy for them because, of course, I thought of my own sons. I wondered if I would subconsciously excuse their behavior, as one young man’s mother did with such flippant ease, because I imagined my own sons in this position.

I cannot imagine my own sons here. They do not live in this space. They are full of disdain for the manosphere when they talk about it; the entire concept barely warrants a roll of the eyes from them. And so no, I do not see my own kids at all in these men. These angry, tense, foolish men throwing collective tantrums for all the world to watch.

I see no tenderness in these men, no vulnerability, no warmth.

I see the young men who idolize them, two in particular in this documentary, and this is the part that breaks me a little. They just want someone to show them the way. One man has lost his brother to suicide, struggled with unemployment, lived in his car for a year, and is looking to the manosphere to tell him how to make things better. He lifts weights on the beach. He high-fives his bros. And he decided this has to be the way.

I’m lucky that, while their father was absent, my sons still had solid male role models, something the boys and men in the manosphere certainly appear to lack.

I think of my two older sons’ teachers when they were tender little things. When they were 7 and 9, when they were bruised by my divorce and their father’s recent lack of interest in them. Their teachers were both men. They were funny men, silly men, smart men. I saw them often when I volunteered in the classroom, dancing and clapping along to Christmas music during school concerts. Playing soccer during recess. They were unabashedly tender themselves. They weren’t embarrassed to look foolish.

When one of my sons cried after losing a basketball tournament game, his teacher laid a hand on his back and talked with him for a long time. To this day, I do not know what he said; it was private, between the two of them. I do know that my son nodded along to every word. I do know he laughed. I do know he came back to me clear-eyed and happy. I do know he grew into a man who did not need the manosphere to show him the way.

These teachers changed our family. They set an example for my oldest sons when they were left adrift. They gave them tacit permission to be vulnerable, to be silly. To not be so afraid of looking foolish. They showed all of our kids that looking foolish or seeming weak is not the dreaded monster in the closet to be feared. That it can actually be quite a joyful thing. That it is freedom.

My two older sons went on to model this for their own little brothers. They became role models for each other. They held each other up when they needed it, held each other in check when they needed that, too. They’re not afraid to laugh at themselves, in part because they admired men who were funny and silly and smart.

The manosphere seems to me to be a joyless place. A place where little boys were dropped off for detention and no one ever came to pick them up. It is a sad and dangerous trap, a path that leads in a circle.

I know my sons didn’t fall into that trap. But I also know they might have — if not for a few good men who helped show them another way.