The Sex War

Why the manosphere errs on its judgement of women

Among conservative men, one often hears the claim that feminism has contributed to the destruction of Western civilization. Ideas such as “toxic masculinity” were openly ridiculed. It is certainly the case that divisive feminist rhetoric made the fatal mistake of refusing to distinguish toxic masculinity from healthy masculinity, acting as if masculinity itself were fundamentally flawed.

Men’s suffering was ignored, downplayed or even celebrated. Yet the male suicide rate is on the rise.

As Isaac Newton put it in his Third Law: “For every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Men, often anonymously, have taken out their frustrations online—not merely against feminists, but against women as a whole. Certain manosphere figures like the Tate brothers have exploited this rage. They propagated an Islamist philosophy of polygamy and the idea that women need to be “kept in their place” through humiliation. This trend did not succeed. Men and women have been driven further apart, politically, culturally, and socially. Men indeed suffer. It is also true that women suffer. We don’t need a balance or moderate solution, we need a radical one that transcends this dichotomy altogether. One based on synthesizing male and female needs in the modern era. After all, an ideal relationship doesn’t seek compromise; it lets both parts become whole through harmony.

There has long been a hunger to bridge the divide. Books like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, The Five Love Languages, and Attached have sold millions of copies. Readers have often reported trying to hide them - embarrassed at the idea that they seek to understand how to make love work. But that should not be a cause for embarrassment. The issue, instead, is that these self-help books are entangled as they are in sterile therapist vocabulary. They pathologize regular conflicts and difficulties with myriads of clinical terminologies, making healthy relationships an impossible standard. Beyond lacking depth and good writing, they fail to address the root cause of the issue at hand.

Men and women need each other to create a future. God has designed us as such. Let’s start with this fundamental truth.

Even in our hyper-individualistic society where we can survive without one another materially, we still need each other to create continuation in our species. Love, for this reason, is primordial, and no artificial replacements, such as AI, can meet its need. A few great minds dedicate themselves to creative excellence, ascetic spirituality, philosophical reflection, or scientific discovery, choosing to subtract themselves from relationships altogether. Still, these are exceptions, not the rule: Society needs loving relationships to thrive. Even these exceptional personalities have reported painfully sacrificing the pursuit of love to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to their vocation for the benefit of humanity.

Love was central to Greek tragedy, the basis of Western civilization. It was not just the basis of Romanticism, it was present as early as classical literature with Homeric poetry. Wars were waged in the name of love. It inspires novels, theatre, art. However, modern popular culture is primarily deprived of positive depictions of romance. They are seen as “cringe” and “weak”.

In contrast, tearing down the opposite sex animates and excites the public. Whether it’s men or women doing it. Marriage and birth rates are declining, and both men and women report feeling increasingly lonely while blaming one another for the outcome, driving an even greater divide. The culture both reflects and encourages this reality. It is a vicious cycle.

Part of the issue is the commodification of relationships. In a “choice society”, individuals use dating apps as if they were playing video games or picking clothes from online stores. Romance is abstracted from its mysterious essence. It is true that many couples nowadays find one another and can marry through these apps. But how many, proportionately, submit themselves to a humiliation ritual of a, “Hey, I’m looking for a relationship, in fact, I’m here because I cannot find one and I feel a little desperate,” and the possibility of rejection, to no avail? This is a particularly damaging dynamic for women, who are not naturally wired to pursue men in the open, and who are not built to overcome rejection the same way men are. In fact, women risk spiritually feeling lower self-esteem when doing so. It is still true, to a large extent, that men are the ones who pursue, and women approve or disapprove. In the realm of romantic communication, women tend to give signals, while men take action.

Many long for a return to spontaneity, the thrill of uncertainty, the adrenaline rush that was once felt through organic interactions. Saying, “Hey, I’m looking for a relationship”, in a plaza or café out in the open was once unfathomable for both sexes, but today it is considered normal if performed from behind a screen. These apps can work, but they need to be used in a way that respects our needs.

Not too long ago, one would meet others casually, through friends and family, not knowing if the opposite party felt the same way. We would go to a bar or restaurant, knowing that we would find them because local communities had single points of reference; there was no need to organize or force encounters. The relationship would naturally evolve. There was no awkward, “We’re both here to assess if we like each other,” akin to filling out a spreadsheet. The term “dating market” has become mainstream now, but few understand the implications of internalizing this term: Love becomes transactional.

Where to go from here? The first step must be to reconcile these spontaneous interactions with modern technology. Spaces on social media with shared common visions and values are alternative ways to meet organically. Dating apps, if used at all, should be designed through this lens. Searching for the closest gym, cooking school, or whatever passion you are interested in exploring, and signing up online, is also a growing reality of the new world. If none are out there to represent a particular need, we can create it. The old way of meeting individuals casually, in our immediate proximity, is dying as the virtual world is replacing this reality, but a new one where people find one another through shared interests or niches is emerging. This is a way for anyone seeking to subtract themselves from the alienating energetic pulse of a dating app. To maintain excitement, rather than reducing romance to a chore, or even worse, an act of desperation.

We should remember that the past wasn’t always better than the present. Before the 18^th century, marriages in the West were usually arranged, and children were not so much of a deliberate, intentional choice as they were a duty. Life was more straightforward in terms of the burden of decisions. Modernity is distinct because the freedom to choose is increasingly amplified.

With the advent of automation, the freedom to choose will increase as manual labor will be almost entirely replaced. With choice, relationships and marriages are optional; no external force obliges couples to be or stay together. They are bound by emotional well-being, romantic attraction, and voluntary commitment. Choice allows either one of the two individuals in a couple to walk away without suffering too many legal constraints or economic pressure. Even the Catholic Church, historically opposed to divorce, made sweeping reforms to annulments a decade ago.

What factors keep relationships and marriages together in the modern age? What makes love work? Romance, passion, mystery, respect, trust, honesty, loyalty, communication. Masculine and feminine energies compensating and fulfilling one another without resorting to redundant clichés of mechanized “roles”, so popular today among manosphere ideologies. Prioritizing meaningful connection instead. In fact, the more we talk about it the less it may come to life. They include an element of letting go, the beauty of living unpredictably without planning, analyzing, controlling. One of the mistakes of modern relationship advice is that both men and women assess romance like a business investment. An Italian proverb says, “You cannot make the heart obey.” (Al cuor non si comanda).

The manosphere’s further stigmatization of women who choose to dedicate themselves to work or a passion is also destructive, especially when these women are still unmarried. Women who invest in their intellect and talents, and not only their physical appearance do better in marriage. Educated women are likely to get and stay married, proving that women’s education isn’t to blame for declining marriage rates. Rather, it should be embraced as a factor that leads to success in marriage. Women who can have enriching conversation with their spouse, who can relate to their experiences and with whom they share a common vision are more likely to be happy in their marriages and make their husbands happy too. Independence in women is seen as an attractive trait for men, contrary to what the manosphere claims, so long as the man feels respected and valued. A distinction between co-dependence and inter-dependence is needed. But more importantly, it is good for women. A study finds that independent women have more success in relationships.

There is much discussion about the effects of industrialization on men, but less about the effects on women. Machines replaced female labor in the household. Before the nuclear family, women were busy with tiresome housework, such as doing laundry by walking to the well and cooking meals from scratch with raw ingredients. Many women today indeed opt to find their independence through careers and self-fulfillment because this work no longer exists for them. They are emancipated in the true sense of the word, just like many men were emancipated from the estranging labour that existed before machines replaced certain repetitive work.

While machines, and goods with endless choices have transformed housework, this has come at the cost of loneliness and isolation before women entered the workforce. Women often report higher dissatisfaction and depression in a married, domestic context without an interest or passion, or a job in which they don’t engage with the outside world. A comprehensive study found that, “Overall, the prevalence of depression was found to be higher in married nonworking women as compared to working women.” Husbands leave home for work, and come home burnt out to wives who are now desperate to speak to them for connection. This can cause a strain in the relationship, which becomes unbalanced.

Women also had help raising children. Families existed in extended units, not in a nuclear household. An essay by David Brooks, “The Nuclear Family was a Mistake”, makes this point. He writes: “We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families (…) to smaller, detached nuclear families.” Today, even domestic women seek nannies to help them raise children, because it was never meant as a one-to-one job enclosed in the walls of an apartment. When women are supported in raising their children by other family members or their community, while remaining present mothers, those marriages improved. They are also able to fulfill themselves in some capacity, contributing to their wellbeing. Especially when children are of age. And it is by engaging with the world, by falling in love with life, often through work of some sort, that one might meet a future beloved in the first place. The challenge of our age is reconciling women’s need for fulfillment with motherhood.

Children added economic value to the household before industrialization because they performed more labor. Today, the opposite is true: children are a net economic cost. When one thinks about having a child today, especially in our economic crisis, the question of costs is an inevitable one, especially when asking for help results in having to hire nannies rather than relying on extended family members to take care of them for free. Thus, children are fewer. It is no coincidence that all industrialized countries have witnessed a steep and rapid decline in birth rates. How do we reconcile the rising costs of providing for children with the desire to have them? By rebuilding communities that help women raise children. By creating a structure where women can seek fulfillment in both motherhood and in the world around them.

There is also an emotional element to our crisis in attachment. The manosphere often tells men that expressing earnest feelings for women is a sign of pitiful “simping”, citing stoicism as an admirable, masculine philosophy that should be pursued instead. But there are flaws in the stoic ideal, including a life predicated on apathy, and one may argue, even passive weakness. Furthermore, even if we see the stoic philosophy as a valuable one, the greatest stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius or Lucius Seneca, advocated for self-control in the context of virtues defined as patience, temperance, and acceptance. This model of virtue is at odds with the manosphere’s propensity to shame men who express emotions towards women. Particularly when that expression is a traditional sign of chivalry. “Where love rules, there is no will to power,” said the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung.

Furthermore, shaming women as a tool to keep their behavior in check may backfire. While shame can be instrumental to achieving a society with better morals, this is only true if it can bring salvation. In other words, shame is only helpful as a negative incentive within a worldview that encourages a reconciliatory change in behavior.

Shame is not preached by Jesus. The Bible states the opposite: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). Shame features even less in pre-Christian, European Pagan faiths, where sexuality was liberated. When shame is only used against women and not against men as a moralizing instrument, women increasingly lean towards progressive politics, where they feel their concerns are better heard. This is why we see such a sharp divide between Gen Z male and female voting patterns. Telling women, “You’re designed to serve and obey your husband and your value is only tied to your fertility,” was never going to be a great selling point. Rightly so.

No ideology can be successful if love, the most primitive of human needs, is denied. Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov said that hell is the “suffering of being unable to love”. Men and women are being divided from one another by a hostile culture that is feeding off their miseries. One where love becomes secondary to practical and puritan considerations. Amid modernity’s chaos, the powerful force of unapologetic love is needed. Make the West romantic again.

Alessandra Bocchi is editor of Alata Magazine and artist at Painting Life.

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