A close friend of mine fell into the manosphere rabbit hole after he broke up with his girlfriend. I've been trying my best to help him out of it but I haven't gotten anywhere. Is there anything I can do? Especially resources I could point him to, or resources that can help me develop a better deradicalization strategy would be very welcome.
FD Signifier on YouTube has a lot of manosphere content, but it is usually medium-long form.
To add to this: a lot of debunk videos aren't made to appeal to people who are "in" the manosphere but more for the validation of people who are already out of it. They tend to mock and belittle the people in it as much as they do the perpetrators, which just pushes people to double down.
FD Signifier's stuff isn't like that at all. His tone is always patient and open.
Man worked in dealing with boys in the ghetto; think he was deadass a teacher before in some way or another-- man's whole angle seems to be giving those of us on the outside the tools to start disassembling that kind of manosphere garb. Professor Odi's also a good pick; I don't have near as good a gauge for him yet cause it also like-- he spits good anti-manosphere material, but he's also got this whole kinda 'selling courses' bit he does that Iunno how I feel about that just yet
Sorry to hear that, from personal experience (a friend of mine is in the same situation) I know that it isn’t easy to see someone you care about fall for these conmen.
What worked in my case is by listening to his rants/complains and really keep asking to find out what is bothering him. Most things that he said ware a reflection of the neo-liberal capitalist sociality we’re living in.
I shared my viewpoint on the facts (not explicitly mentioning my Marxist-Leninism) and explained how today’s society ruins the many aspects of our life (like dating, for example, it isn’t in Tinder’s interest to have a high success rate because of the paid functions that mostly males use).
That way I got the “edge” of him. Nowadays he is far more open to other points of view and understands that a few girls that are selling themselves on social media aren’t a good reflection of them all.
By just being there for him and give some advice you can slowly but surely show him that other people acknowledge and share some of his concerns, and that they don’t need to be rooted in some misogynist way of think.
I hope that this is of some use, I wish you the best of luck!
So a lot of this is going to be contextual - how important the friendship is, how deep he has gone into the manosphere, how long he's been in it etc.
I'm going to approach this from the assumption that it's a long-game situation and that you care about the person deeply. Pretty much everything applies from this but whether you choose to maintain the friendship or whether you decide to end the friendship or you aren't willing to invest as much into this project as it demands is your prerogative.
Basically in a long-game situation your primary concern will be to always maintain the relationship and lines of communication. If you don't have those two fundamental factors, you will be unable to effect any change.
What this means is that you will almost certainly need to be judicious in what you choose to push back on and when you decide to do it. What this looks like, in practice, is letting things slide by if they do not serve your overall goals. I'm not saying that you have to tacitly or even implicitly support their opinions but if you are skilful about it you can make asides to voice dissent without dragging something down into a debate. Throwaway lines like "I don't really see it that way" or "That doesn't track with my experience" before carrying on the conversation are going to be important here.
Your friend has almost certainly taken the trauma of a breakup and turned it into manosphere bullshit. What this means is he likely feels lost, powerless, abandoned, disillusioned etc. and the manosphere narratives are assuaging these underlying feelings. You will need to approach your interactions with him in a way that does not threaten him or aggravate these feelings of powerlessness etc. because if you position yourself as a threat to the beliefs which give him a sense of security and power then you will aggravate the underlying causes for him falling to the manosphere and you will almost certainly make him dig deeper into the manosphere as a way of bolstering himself.
You will need to walk the tightrope of being a friend to him while not being an ally to his beliefs. You will have to demonstrate that you will not abandon him and that you are not going to force him into positions where he feels powerless. But at the same time, you cannot endorse his beliefs and you will need to get him to trust you enough that he expresses these opinions to you and then to trust you enough to let you explore these opinions in regards to validity, consequences, implications etc.
This is where the real work takes place. You need to be delicate and engaged while also holding a position of detachment - if you treat these discussions where you explore his beliefs from an antagonistic angle or where you are heavily invested in it emotionally, it's going to result in arguments and shutting down and similar counterproductive outcomes.
Essentially, you want to get him to move from a totalising narrative such as "All women are b*tches" to something which has nuance, even if it isn't a complete reversal. This might mean that when he says something like this and you have decided that it's appropriate to challenge it in that moment, you could reflect that he doesn't treat his mom/sister/etc. as if that statement is true. Then you want to explore this apparent contradiction and use dialogue to open up space to compare, reflect, challenge, and further explore.
If, over time, he moves from "All women are b*tches" to something like "Most women are..." or "Women can be..." then that's progress, even if it doesn't feel that way.
Keep on chipping away at these values by exploring them, gently countering them (especially with real-world examples), and ultimately getting him to question the narratives himself.
It's kinda hard to give a clear procedural roadmap to how you would go about challenging someone's beliefs because it's all so contextual but I hope this is a starting point for you. And I just want to give you a caution that if you approach interactions with your friend from the position of "I'm right and he's wrong, he needs to learn from me so that he can see my point of view and why I'm right", you're never going to make progress. You have to be humble, open, curious, and most of all gentle.
Good luck with it.
Thank you so much for this very thorough and insightful response. I'll give it my best.
