Start The Conversation Episode 10 Transcript

Toxic masculinity and the “manosphere” with Dr Shannon Zimmerman

Shannon: Whether you're looking at jihadists to the far rights, they all have massively gendered ideologies. And yet, for some reason, we don't talk about that. And so when we say misogyny is a core factor in terrorism, people say, ah, well, maybe it's a fringe thing, but I strongly disagree. I think it's huge motivator. The problem is, is the Manosphere doesn't actually give you any solutions. These ideologies don't have a positive outcome. They don't provide solutions that the young people are looking for.

So giving them a place where they can actually express vulnerability and receive support would be quite novel and could be really quite impactful for them.

Simon The violent extremism landscape is fluid and complex, and it can be difficult to navigate. This podcast series has been developed as a means of providing listeners with some thought-provoking topics within this context, personal insights and journeys, as well as helpful information that could assist someone who is vulnerable to being involved in violent extremism. The Engagement and Support Unit services focus on early intervention, awareness, and resilience against violent extremism. They consult with and support the local community with this information to help mitigate the drivers of violent extremism and raise awareness of the complex factors and vulnerabilities that contribute to these ideologies. Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and airways on which we are meeting and broadcasting today. As we share our learning, we also pay respects to elders past and present. It is their knowledge and experiences that hold the key to the success of our future generations and promote our connection to country and community. Please note that views expressed are not necessarily representative of the New South Wales government. Episodes may contain depictions of violence or sensitive topics that some people may find distressing. For further information, please view our episode notes.

Rebecca I'm Rebecca Shaw, Communications and Community Engagement Manager. And this is Start the Conversation. Netflix's new show Adolescence has sparked a lot of recent conversation and online discussions because it explores teenage masculinity in raw, sometimes unsettling ways, touching on themes like male insecurity, toxic masculinity, peer pressure, and toxic online influences that mirror real-life dynamics within the Manosphere. From a countering violent extremism lens, it raises the question of definitions and the delicate tipping point between violent misogyny and incel ideology and the evolution from online grievance spaces into real life threats. It can be a bit of a minefield to navigate and understand fully. And so to help us with these complexities, we have brought in Dr. Shannon Zimmerman. Shannon is a lecturer in strategic studies at Deakin University in the Center for Future Defense and National Security. Her research investigates misogyny-motivated terrorism, looking at online radicalisation and the groups in the Manosphere. She's currently working on a book exploring the involuntary celibates, or incels, as a new political movement. She has designed training on gender and countering violent extremism in the Asia-Pacific for UN Women and worked for the United States Institute of Peace on Gender and Counter-Radicalisation. Currently, she is the convener of the Members States Community of Practice for the UN Office of Counterterrorism's Gender and Identity Factors Platform. She received her PhD from the University of Queensland in 2019 and her Master Arts in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University in 2012. Also with us today is Johanna Hough. Johanna is a Senior Project Officer for the Engagement and Support Unit. Johanna has worked in CVE for over seven years in communications, community engagement, research and project delivery. Johanna also has a background in education and media, holding roles at the SBS, ABC and TikTok. She's currently delivering research and education projects for frontline staff on a range of subjects including modern slavery, prevention, online misogyny and countering violent extremism.  That was a big intro. There was a lot of big words there. Anyway, we are going to begin today by asking Shannon, what is the Manosphere and what is its place in the current digital landscape?

Shannon That's a very good question. So the Manosphere is, well it's a moving object to be honest. So what it is, is it's conglomeration or a dense network of blogs, chat rooms, webpages, threads, video gaming platforms that are all interconnected and united by a shared belief in something called a red pill. And so what it, is a digital ecosystem. These are websites that are hyperlinked to each other that direct users towards similar websites. So once you enter the Manosphere, you find yourself shuttled between web pages that all have similar kinds of content and progressively more radical content the deeper you go. And that's kind of what the Manosphere looks like.

Johanna And what is the role of incels in the manosphere and how do they differ from other groups?

Shannon The incels are one of what they would call the tribes or the subcultures that exist in the manosphere. And there's a bit of a debate on how many cultures there are there for sure. There's the men's rights activists, there's the pickup artists, there's men going their own way, and then there's incels. And some other people say there's a gamer geek culture, there's sort of a Christian fundamentalist culture. Those are subcultures that sort of inhibit the manosphere. They overlap quite a bit with the manosphere. But the incels are one of those sort of four core tribes, and they're probably the most radical and most extreme of the tribes in the manosphere.

Johanna And what would be some of the common beliefs of all these groups?

Shannon All of these groups are united by their belief in something called the red pill. And what that is, is it's this ideology that has grown up around the belief that the patriarchy, that those gendered inequalities of the past were never actually real. And what's happened is that feminism has gone too far, and now we find ourselves in an environment that actually discriminates against men. And so their fundamental beliefs are it's a strain of anti-feminism. They really embrace a type of traditional, almost regressive masculinity, this sort of hyper-masculinity, the type of alpha male masculinity. There's a lot of anger towards women or the broader society they think that supports feminism, which in turn is marginalising men. And so the belief of the red pill is that these men or the people that believe in the red bill have come to see this reality and that most of the world around them is actually blind to it. And that way they're enlightened in a sense. So they're able to see these inequalities and it's sort of their job to push back against them.

Johana And what would you think of someone like Andrew Tate? Is someone like that, like, not necessarily believer of the red pill or doesn't necessarily espouse that? Is that someone who's still considered part of the manosphere, those sorts of influencers?

Shannon I would say he overlaps with it. So he's what we call a manfluencer. And so he definitely has some of the key traits of the red pill. So this alpha type of masculinity, very much kind of like a bit of the pickup artistry in some of the stuff he works on, the hyper masculine sort of aggressive male persona, the complete dehumanisation of women. So a lot of the content that Andrew Tate posts really has a lot of Manosphere ideas in it. And he's what we would call sort of like a gateway representative. So people will click on his content and it's really alluring for young people that are sort of trying to make their way in the world. They might click on it because it'll have things like hashtag wellness or hashtag relationships. So it doesn't have anything that indicates that it's an extremist type of position. And then click on that and they hear this type of rhetoric and then it leads them into that manuscript and then they find themselves in all of those interconnected websites without realising that they're just in a tiny part of the internet and they're only getting one particular perspective.

Rebecca You've mentioned incels as a political ideology in your work and it's the subject matter in your book that you're working on. Can you elaborate on that for us?

Shannon Yes, so for a while there was this impression that incels were sort of just a funky kind of subculture, just a group of young people. There's two types of incels, and there's incels that are sort of the lonely hearts groups, and these are individuals who wanna have romantic connections with other people, and they're really struggling to do that. And there's a great deal of reasons for this. It might just be that they live in a geographically isolated area. Maybe they're really shy, maybe they're neurodivergent. There's a lot of reasons that these people struggle to make connections. And they find themselves unable to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, sorry, in this case, generally a girlfriend. And what they did is they started as a lonely hearts group, where they could meet together online, incels only ever meet online, they never meet in person, and give each other advice and support and say, it's not just you, I'm having the same challenges. Here's what I'm doing to get better at these things. And for them, it's a state of life that they're trying to get out of. But then you've got misogynist incels and that's a separate group. And those are the ones that haven't just, they've embraced the red pill, but they've moved beyond that. And they blame their loneliness not on failings that they are just struggling to overcome, but they blame women, they blame society. And they say it's not their fault, the system's against them, and they're not being given something they're entitled to. And those were the incels that I studied, the misogymist incel. Because they are a- I don't want to say a minority. I would say most incels slide into the misogynist realm, but only a very small number of them actually undertake violence. And what's happened is over time in these online spaces, they've shared ideas, they've talked about how they want to change society and they've come up with the sort of nascent proto-political ideology. So they say they want to push back progressive rights and norms. This would be things like women's access to abortion or to reproductive health care. They wanna push back women's right to free employment. They really wanna go back to what they view as this sort of idealised 1950s era where women were reliant on men and they had to marry a man in order to basically get on in the world. And they say that's the only way to fix their circumstance, that women have to pair up with a man because women don't have to do that, then they're able to date around. And pursue any man they want. And then incels who think they are particularly unattractive are unable to get a girlfriend. And so their political ideology is really to roll back gender rights, gender progressive norms.

Rebecca So they essentially do fit into the extremist group, like sort of category.

Shannon Yes, and I would say their views in that regard are particularly extreme. Some of them will advocate for stripping women of all of their rights. They see women in many cases as sort of subhuman and should be sort of treated almost as commodities. So very, very extreme interpretations of the way women should be viewed. And this type of dehumanisation means that it's much easier for people with this belief system to engage in violence against women.

Johanna The Netflix show Adolescence has sparked a lot of concern amongst parents about what their children are exposed to. And it's also highlighted what we know in terms of teenage years being a time where people are particularly looking for a sense of belonging, etc. And we've recently heard of the study that Dublin City University did, which showed that it takes on average 23 minutes of video watching on certain platforms for people to be recommended toxic or misogynistic content, even if they're not looking for it. I guess I'm wondering about what the role of the algorithms and social media are in people being exposed and interested incel and misogynistic culture.

Shannon That's a really great question because they play a big role, and it's an unseen role because a lot of people don't know how these digital environments work. To be honest, it's almost impossible to know because a lot the algorithms are sort of secrets that are held by the companies, but there's a couple of key factors that end up promoting the type of extremist content that we're seeing and also facilitating the radicalisation of young people online, whether or not they're looking for that type of content. And the first one is, of course, you've got self-synchronisation. So when individuals are online, they are automatically drawn to websites or to friends groups of people that have similar views that they do. They hang out with people that like the same sports teams that have the same hobbies, often that have same political affiliations. And so they sort of self-create these environments that reinforce their already existing belief systems. But then you get algorithmic bias. So say I'm on YouTube and I'm watching TV shows that I like, the algorithm picks up what I am drawn towards and it might include things like my political inclination, my general belief systems, and it will recommend more and more videos. But the way these algorithms work is they want you to click. They want you keep watching. So what they do is they recommend things that are a little bit more scintillating, a little more engaging each time, but that also means they recommend things that are bit more extreme. And that includes extreme ideologies. And so a young person can type on YouTube and say, best way to ask a girl on a date. And it's just gonna take a couple of clicks if it even takes that many to get some kind of misogynistic content because the algorithm wants them to keep clicking. And then once they find themselves in these spaces, you get the echo chamber effect, of course, but you also get something called online disinhibition. And in all of these spaces, these individuals are anonymous. So they use avatars, they don't use their real names. In fact, anon is the sort of like the key name. You have to use anonymous and then maybe a number. And when you're not connected to your real persona, your real life, people are willing to act in much more extreme ways because they don't get, first of all, the face-to-face feedback, the censorship that they might get from saying something extreme, but also there's no way for there to be repercussions for what they say. And so they say things that are more and more extreme because they want to get the attention of other people. And then the final thing that adds into this is a lot of the spaces in the manosphere use the option of upvoting content, liking or upvoting. And content that gets liked or upvoted obviously moves towards the top of the page. The more extreme the content, the more likely it is to get upvoted. And so that extreme content becomes the norm and then people want to top that. So they say something even more extreme. And so you end up with these environments that are all designed to drive people to be pretty much the worst versions of themselves because they want to get the likes, they want get the views, they want upvote the content that is the most basically inappropriate because that's how they get the attention.

Rebecca I feel like you've sort of touched on this question and especially with your reference before with Andrew Tate acting as like click bait or sort of like the gateway into this sort of content. But beyond the algorithms, why are young men actually clicking on this content? What draws them into this sort of incel or manosphere content? Is it this drive for really extreme content, the drive for the likes as you just said or is there more to it? Is it really tailoring like personalised content for individuals.

Shannon Yeah, it can be very tailored. It's a bit uncanny how much online spaces can learn about you because they pull all this information together. They'll know what you've been shopping for. They know what's on your grocery list. They will know what brands you like to look at depending on what ads you click on on Facebook. So they will know a lot about you. And so if there's an influencer who wears that brand that has, you know, faintly views that are faintly like yours that gets lots of likes, so they're more extreme, that's who they give you. And so they're literally tailoring the content to you, which means you might get things you really like, but it also means that there are things that are very persuasive and you're not being introduced to any alternate views. So the problem with the algorithms is they give you what you want and nothing that makes you step back and say, hold on a minute, is this really how the world is or what might be the problems with this content? Because soon it's all their feed is, that's all they see online. And computers remember this so they can log off, go off and do things and log back on and that's still what they see every day and so they just assume that that's normal but it becomes more and more extreme and their version of normal becomes more and more extreme.

Rebecca If we drill down a little bit more into these individual users, what psychological or social factors make some individuals more susceptible to manosphere ideologies, or what might some of the vulnerabilities look like.

Shannon The Manosphere is attractive to people, young people in particular, because these are individuals who feel like they're not meeting the milestones, their developmental milestones like they should be. So they're young men who feel they haven't had their first kiss, they haven't had their first date. They feel like they're missing out and they're trying to understand why that is. And instead of doing self-reflection and saying well it's a combination of factors, the manosphere gives them an easy answer and they say it's not you. It's society, it's women, it their fault. And if you're really struggling, because when you're a young person trying to figure out who you are, it can be a very scary time, then it's really comforting, to be honest. You're like, oh, okay, it not my fault. There's nothing wrong with me. It's society's fault. The problem is, is the Manosphere doesn't actually give you any solutions. It just says it's the society's' fault, and you end up kind of stuck. And so young people who are missing these milestones hop onto these websites looking for solutions, but there aren't any, and so they just look deeper and deeper and deeper, and all they find is hate.

Johanna It's really hard, I guess, as parents to know what to look out for, but are there any signs that parents could take note of that their son or daughter might be looking, I guess son, might be looking at these things?

Shannon Yeah, that is it's really hard for a parent to know what their child is up to online. I mean, obviously there are ways you can monitor what websites they go to, and it's a hard line to find where you're being an engaged parent, but you're giving people the autonomy they need to sort of, as they grow up, it's very difficult path to walk. But understanding where your child is spending all of their time online, particularly if they spend a lot of their time online. Because there are people who spend six, eight, 10 hours a day on these sites, and that's a warning sign right then and there. That's a lot of time online. And it might be that they're chatting with their friends on Twitch while they're playing video games, and it's completely normal, but they can be also deceiving because a young person might be playing a video game, and then there's a stream on the side where they're having a chat, and that chat is extreme. It's highly misogynistic, it's promoting violence. While they're playing a video game. It's got a whole different conversation going on. And if the parent isn't paying attention, they're not gonna see that. So just understanding what sites your child is on. There are some that you really wanna be aware of that really cater to extreme content. Being aware of what those are because they change over time. Like one website might have extreme content for six months, then they get a new moderator, they clamp down on it. And so that content moves elsewhere and you just have to try and stay on top of that. Knowing who your child's friends are, actually are, meeting them in person, or understanding how they're engaging in them. But also, the easiest way to tell if someone is getting into the manosphere is through the language they use. So, individuals on the manosphere have a very particular vernacular. They speak in very specific ways. They refer to, you know, alpha males or beta males. Beautiful women will be called Stacey. They will talk about things being like red-pilled, or they'll say. You know, playing video games is a cope. So they've got particular ways of saying things about the activities they undertake that are indicating that they're really engaging in these worldviews and starting to adopt them.

Rebecca They might be watching The Matrix on repeat.

Shannon On repeat, yes. Yeah, or if they start dressing up, you know, like some of their, the heroes, like they will, they'll be, there's a lot of overlap with things like Lord of the Rings, oddly enough. But that they've changed like the hairstyle and there's orcs, there's a whole complex.

Rebecca It's a lot to stay on top of.

Shannon It's lot to say on top off. So really it's just monitoring how much time your child spends online and knowing who they're spending it online with and where they're going, you know. And it can be mainstream websites. YouTube can have incel and deeply misogynistic content on it. So don't just assume, oh it's YouTube, it's fine. Yeah. Know where they are going.

Johanna And you mentioned before Twitch, and obviously I've heard of Discord as well, but are there any, and you did say it's changing all the time, so we won't hold you to it, but are their any particular platforms and also any particular influencers that people should be watching out for, parents?

Shannon That's a good one. So, Andrew Tate's the most obvious. Jordan Peterson's another one that's an entree into the Manosphere. A lot of the folks on the Manosphere really are drawn to pseudoscientific justifications for the sites, or the state they find themselves in. So, when you're looking for influencers who claim that they're basing their content on science, particularly like dating advice based on biological determinism, things like that. Those are the ones you want to be concerned about because they're twisting science to justify a really narrow interpretation. You want to watch out for gaming platforms that have the chat function alongside. So you've got Discord, you've Got Twitch. There's a lot of chat apps like Signal, because that one deletes the messages after a certain amount of time. The new current one that's the thing is Gab. But again, they evolve so quickly. Just have to try and stay on top of that. And I think the e-safety commissioner, the e commissioner has a website that might help people do that because they move from platform to platform as the moderation requirements change. So Incel started on Reddit, their sub Reddit got banned, so they made another one. When that got banned they moved to a different website. And then when that got banned, they got a server in Iceland. So they travel and banning them they've shown doesn't actually work. It just pushes them to go into deeper, harder to find places. So just being aware of where they are and where they're traveling.

Rebecca Now that you've said ban and YouTube, I'm just going to jump in with a question that was further down the line, but I did just hear on the radio this morning that YouTube is being added to the list of ban platforms for under 16s. I think I know the answer to this question based on what you just said, but do you think this will have any effect at all?

Shannon I think it's unlikely. I think that it's already a habit for these young people to be on these social media sites. And if they choose to not be on them or, say, their parents ask them, say you cannot be on them, they're going to feel like they're missing out. And so young people that are already feeling alienated and isolated are going to feel more so. So I don't think it is going to have a great effect. It might be more effective to take target on new social media sites that are appearing because they're proliferating at an incredible rate. And just being aware of those that are coming out and determining whether or not we want them in Australia.

Rebecca So it's not all doom and gloom for people out there wanting some useful tips and advice. If we did notice an interest in this content, how could we help as parents or friends of a person of concern?

Shannon For incels in particular, it's actually getting easier for people who have sort of embraced the ideology to get out of it, initially when it began. And incels, as sort of a group of individuals, it's been around since around 2014, but it's evolved over time. It's become more extreme, but also, there are incels now who have left. And they know how difficult it is. It's like leaving any extremist group, to be honest. So when you leave, that's your identity. It's your entire friend circle. And once you're not one of them, you've got nothing. And so it's so hard to leave. So now there's subreddits called Incel Exit. There's a couple of other websites. So pointing people to those sites to say, well, here's how those off-ramps are. But it also shows that these ideologies don't have a positive outcome. They don't provide solutions that the young people are looking for. What they really do is they sort of freeze them in place and stunt their sort of growth even more so than before. And so, it's a really positive thing when they're looking for ways to get out. And the incel ideology overall is rather brittle. So it's a all-encompassing worldview, but it doesn't really withstand the test of reality is the thing. It's cultivated entirely online. These individuals don't meet. And so when they're exposed to real-world examples that don't fit that worldview, it doesn' take much for them to sort of realize, oh, this isn't what I thought it was. This isn't the world that I'm being told it is. And so most incels leave when they have to leave home, when they get a job, when they start university, when they their first girlfriend. It's just a basic life milestone that they accomplish. And they're like, oh, I can do this. This isn't what I thought it was. What doesn't seem to be effective actually is seeing a therapist or getting medicated because incels are incredibly distrustful of authority and often talk on their websites about how they distrust things like psychologists. Which I think is quite problematic because they also, by and large, identify as suffering from anxiety or depression or other ailments that have made it hard for them to connect.

Rebecca Very counterproductive.

Shannon It's very counterproductive. But say their parents say, well, no, you have to see a psychologist, well that doesn't really work if you're being told you have go, however, you will see the ones, the incels that have left and then gone and gotten that psychosocial support are really like - it changed my life. You know, that's what it was. I was suffering from intense social anxiety and there are ways to help me that aren't turning against the world. So it's a bit of a, it's conundrum. It's a dilemma. You know you want to offer this kind of support to them but that's the kind of thing that'll turn them off.

Rebecca No, that's a tricky one. But it's interesting, you almost describe it to be a bit of a transitory state though, you know, until they reach a more positive, you know, pro-social milestone in a way. When, you know, you talk about these support groups for, I guess, people who have exited the belief, which is great, I guess, the incel community, but how do we talk to our kids about gender relationships and masculinity in a healthy way, sort of within the home.

Shannon Yeah.

Rebecca If we can't, you know, get them to talk to a specialist.

Shannon Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of like having that awkward conversation with your kids about where do babies come from, right? You don't really know how….

Rebecca Possibly more awkward.

Shannon Could be a little more awkward. And it is difficult to broach. So obviously, young people learn from what their parents do, so you want to model healthy behaviors. And instead of talking about maybe healthy masculinities, because that can be a bit on the nose, talk about what a healthy relationship looks like, because they're fixated on a positive relationship with a woman. But they don't know what that's gonna look like. The information they're getting from incel sites is really dysfunctional relationship advice. So saying, you know, this is how you wanna be, this is you engage with women, this is what a good relationship will look like, giving them examples or exposing them to people that have healthy relationships that can be modeled for them to follow after. But also, I think one of the most effective things to do is sit down with your kid and figure out where they are online, but talk to them about understanding and thinking critically about the content they're being introduced to. They're pretty savvy. Young people are pretty savvy, and if someone just stops and says, hey, wait a minute, have you thought about this? Have you thought how negative that is? Have you though about what impact that is having on you? That's a big first step, because oftentimes nobody else does that and says if they say a joke, a really misogynistic joke or a way of talking about someone, calling them on that and saying, hey, that's not appropriate behavior. Can you imagine what that would feel like? Encouraging them to really think about things from not their point of view but other points of view is a good way again of sort of undermining that that really self-centered ideology that lives in the manosphere which is all about me me me and so those are all those little ways to sort of just stop people and say think about this for a second because it happens so gradually in some cases also can be quite quick and others but it's it's so insidious they may not even and realize it's happening until you stop them and say. Yeah, like did you think about what you just said there, like what does that mean to you? And calling your child up on that type of stuff.

Johanna Do you find, on that note, do you find that people are having, people who are online in this space aren't having positive relationships with women in real life, or is it a bit more less obvious than that in terms of they might be, have some friends that are women and it's all going okay and then come home and existing differently online or behaving differently online?

Shannon From what I can tell, and again I only interact with incels online, is that they have very very limited relationships with women. So obviously if they've got a mother or sisters, but they don't consider them, family or are sort of in a separate box, but they would have really no engagement at all or very limited engagement or only superficial engagement with women who are their age and like potential romantic partners. So they might go to a party, but to be too embarrassed to actually approach and speak to anybody. So they might be out there. They'll be engaging in the community, but they may not. If they had male friends, the friends would only be male. It's very unlikely they'd have a female friend.

Johanna And that's probably like you're talking about people who identify as incels here, but if we're talking boys who are just getting interested in content, it's a slope towards that I guess.

Shannon Yeah, exactly. They would think oh, well, she, women can't be my friend, is kind of where that ideology would take them. If they had female friends, they'd have to be like, oh, well either you have to date me, or I don't want anything to do with you. There's no in-between in the manosphere.

Johanna So I guess moving on from the online space, how does the manosphere or interest in incels online evolve from an online grievance into a real world extremist threat that we were talking about before?

Shannon Yeah, and this is a very, very small minority of misogynist incels. And it's not incel incels, so it's the ones that are a lonely heart group. It's the one that have really embraced that hatred of women, but these are the individuals who have gone beyond the red pill saying, you know, it's feminism that's the problem. And they've embraced what we call the black pill, which is a really nihilistic interpretation of the world. And they're basically saying. The world is a gendered hierarchy. I'm at the bottom of the hierarchy. What makes incels really unique from every other extremist group is most extremist groups think of themselves as superior. And that's why they are justified in undertaking whatever activities they undertake. Incels think they're inferior, and that's an untenable position. It's a life of suffering that's too great to endure, and that victimhood justifies their violence. And so, When they've embraced that and they say, there's nothing I can do to make my life better. I can't go to the gym. It has nothing to do with how much money I make. I'm always gonna be alone and isolated. Then that's an individual who has nothing to live for, but it's also an individual who's really angry at the world and they want revenge. And for incels, it's not revenge on the specific individual. They may have, most of them have had an experience where they got turned down by someone or a girl was mean to them in some context and they remember that. But they take that anger and they generalise it to all women, and then they say, oh, but all normies support women in having this power, so I'm angry at everybody. So the groups they target is anybody that's not an incel, and that's what makes them so dangerous. They just want society to know how much they're suffering, and that's when they sort of transcend that boundary, they've got nothing to live for, so they're the perfect suicide attackers. Incels, when they undertake attacks, do not intend to survive. At least none of the ones I've encountered do. And they wanna go out and they want to basically let the world know about their plight, take their moment of revenge. It's their moment to reclaim that lost alpha male for one moment through the ultimate alpha male, right? And then it's over. And that's what they're aiming for. So I think there's been 53 casualties specifically related to incel ideology, but I would say there's hundreds of others that have been influenced by incel ideology. Who have gone on to conduct mass violence attacks.

Rebecca Yeah, that's an interesting one, actually, because to my knowledge, there haven't been any attacks in Australia put down to incel ideology. You may you may have something to say about that. But, you know, you're talking about motivators and drivers for these attacks largely overseas in the US, I imagine you're referring to. But were there warning signs from the people who have already committed incel inspired attacks? You know, were there common threads that perhaps people missed or we could be, you know mindful of.

Shannon Mm-hmm. It's very hard to tell when someone on the manosphere is posting for real or doing what they call shitposting. They love to say they're gonna do something and then not do it. However, every attack that I'm aware of has been preceded by some kind of threat. But it's quite vague one of them posted, you know, if you go to high if you got to school in the Northeast don't go to school tomorrow. And then there was an attack. And so It's so vague, it'd be impossible to act on. A lot of them do post their manifesto shortly before they do their attack. But again, I think the average was just over an hour before they undertake an attack. So by the time it's identified, notified to the authorities, it'd been incredibly difficult to respond to. And that's what makes it so challenging. These are individuals that you're on websites where everybody's talking about, oh, I wish I was aggro enough to undertake an attack. I'm gonna do it, man, but you don't know if they mean it or not. And then when the ones that actually do mean it, you can't tell if it's true or not, and some of the attackers have only lurked. So the key incel, I don't think he would actually fit under the, he's not actually an incel by definition, but the first incel Elliot Roger didn't, he posted on a pick-up artists forum, but he never posted on an incel forum. They didn't really exist at the time. But he was mostly a lurker, same with the Toronto van attacker. He mostly lurked on his face. Alec Messian? Yes. But he did post, just two or three minutes before his attack, he posted something on Facebook.

Rebecca It's really interesting you say that Elliot Roger is not an incel. You're going to have to debunk. You've debunked what we've been saying in our presentations. So could you just, I guess, explain that a little bit to us? I know you said the incel movement perhaps didn't exist back then.

Shannon Yeah, he's an interesting one. So you do see people who are like the pre-Incells, George Sidini in 2009, you had the polytechnique shootings in Canada, which was definitely misogyny motivated. But incels as an online community didn't really exist, but Elliot Rogers considered the patron saint of incel's. The funny thing is though, is he he had everything going for him. So he had, his parents were divorced, but they were both engaged. He had an immense amount of psychosocial support. He received assistance, special support, and education. He was enrolled in university. He had roommates. Generally, he'd be considered attractive. His parents bought him a BMW. He didn't fit the incel mould, which would be not in education, employment, or training, like the ugly kid that hides in their bedroom. He didn't fit that mould. But what he did was he had this manifesto. And it's a very long manifesto they posted online. Sort of detailing his grievances. And this has sort of become the doctrine for incels. But if he had appeared now, I wouldn't get the moulds. Like his ideology fits the mould, but his profile doesn't fit the mould. But then again, that's the case for a lot of extremists.

Rebecca There's just so many contradictions that play with this whole, you know, manosphere thing anyway, isn't there?

Johanna Yeah, I'm moving on, I guess, from the individual a little bit. Do you think, now that we've identified that incel is extremist ideology, do you think that global counter-terrorism frameworks are adequately addressing gender-based ideological violence?

Shannon I think these frameworks have consistently and routinely not adequately based gender-based violence. And it's a known issue for security and in counter-terrorism. There's this sort of gender blindness. They say, oh, we're gender blind. But that means they're masculine. Because if you think about the people that work in these spaces that think about these issues, they're generally men, they're generally a certain type of man, and so they even think about terrorists as a certain sort of profile. So they're not gender sensitive. And I think we really still struggle with identifying misogyny as a factor in violent extremism, which boggles my mind because it's present in every single extremist ideology that I know of. Every single one has really traditional gender norms, has really aggressive ideas about women's rights, extreme ideas, and it's all about controlling access to women's bodies. Whether you're looking at jihadists to the far rights, they all have massively gendered ideologies. And yet, for some reason, we don't talk about that. And so when we say misogyny is a core factor in terrorism, people say, ah, well, maybe it's a fringe thing, but I strongly disagree. I think it's huge motivator. And when we don't pay attention to it, we miss a lot of the warning signs. We just say, oh, boys will be boys. Oh, they're just, you know, it's locker room talk. But it's type of hate speech. It just happens to be against women, not a particular group. And most societies have always overlooked that type of violence.

Johanna And I guess my next question is linked to that, and I guess it could be just simply readjusting the focus to count this as an extremist group or ideology, but what can governments and therefore educators and public health, et cetera, do in terms of countering the spread of misogynistic ideologies?

Shannon I think it's really pushing back when these narratives try and enact their political viewpoints. So when they say we're going to really, you know, they push for bans on women's access to reproductive health, you need to make it clear that women's rights are everybody's rights. You know, you can't allow them to be bartered away for other types of peace. And so. And we saw that, obviously you see it in Afghanistan, places like that, but we also see it in other countries where they're rolling back women's rights. And that's basically saying, okay, well, it's okay for this type of ideology to exist and it starts to proliferate. And we're seeing a lot of regressive governments, gender regressive government, and popping up in places in Europe, in South America. The current administration in the United States has some very sort of conservative gendered policies. And that does send a signal to these more extreme actors that they're on the right path, that what they're doing is justified. And I think that's really problematic. So governments need to really say these are non-negotiable things. You know, this is type, it is A, recognizing it as a type of violence because the vast majority of mass violence attackers, not incels, but most others, because incels don't tend to have girlfriends, half of them have histories of domestic violence. And if we'd paid enough attention to that, we would have known that, and maybe potentially been able to prevent those attacks, but for some reason that violence doesn't count.

Rebecca It's a tricky one. Look, finally, we talk a lot about what parents and governments can do. But how do we engage young men themselves in shaping solutions that are going to impact them? You did allude to this earlier, saying they're kind of in this state that they don't necessarily want to be in and they're looking for off ramps. So what's your advice on that?

Shannon From what I've heard with a lot of people who engage with people who are starting to radicalise and including incels, the biggest thing is they need someone to talk to that's going to listen. You don't want to argue and say, well, that's not the way it is, because they're looking for a way to understand the world. So listening to what their challenges are and their problems are and hearing the fears that they've got, because, they're embarrassed that they're afraid that they are not man enough because it's a very vulnerable thing to admit. And finding a safe space where they can say, you know, am I not up to it? And finding people that can say well, yes you are, you absolutely are enough. And giving them positive male mentors, but also some of the most effective ways of engaging with these individuals is listening to what they need, hearing out their ideology, and then connecting them to support really, just to get those basic milestones again, like help them get that first job, help them maybe address any mental health issues that they may have. But it has to be their motivation is the thing. So you can't tell them what to do. You have to listen to their challenges and say, well, what do you think will help with that? And in many cases they know, but they've never actually been asked because when you express these fears on an incel forum, they will make fun of you and they will smack you down. They're not supportive forums. So giving them a place where they can actually express vulnerability and receive support would be quite novel and could be really quite impactful for them.

Shannon Just not recommending psychologists.

Shannon You have to ease into it, you have to ease into and make it to a point where they think, maybe I do need to see someone, like maybe my anxiety or my depression is a medical issue and it's not just me and I should talk to somebody. But they have to work around to that.

Rebecca Shannon thank you so much for today we will put all your recommendations and resources and information about yourself and what you've been working on in our show notes but we appreciate everything that you've shared with us today it surely is a complex issue but yeah thank you again.

Johanna Very eye-opening thank you.

Shannon Thank you for having me

Simon You have been listening to Start the Conversation, a podcast series produced by the NSW Countering Violent Extremism Engagement and Support Unit. For more information, please see the episode notes or visit www.steptogether.gov.au