Feminist Media Studies

ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20

#MasculinitySoFragile: culture, structure, and

networked misogyny

Sarah Banet-Weiser & Kate M. Miltner

To cite this article: Sarah Banet-Weiser & Kate M. Miltner (2016) #MasculinitySoFragile:
culture, structure, and networked misogyny, Feminist Media Studies, 16:1, 171-174, DOI:
10.1080/14680777.2016.1120490

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Published online: 22 Dec 2015.

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 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 171

#MasculinitySoFragile: culture, structure, and networked

misogyny
Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kate M. Miltner, University of Southern California

In September 2015, the hashtag #MasculinitySoFragile was trending on Twitter. The osten-
sible purpose of the hashtag was to illustrate the precariousness of “toxic masculinity,” a
(heterosexual) masculinity that is threatened by anything associated with femininity (whether
that is pink yogurt or emotions). Certain groups of men conflated this attack on the construct
of masculinity with an attack on maleness and responded, rather ironically, in a macho and
violent manner. In a tweet that became emblematic of the entire kerfuffle, Twitter user
Mech of Justice (@mechofjusticewz) sneered, “I challenge any female tweeting unironically
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with #MasculinitySoFragile to last three rounds against me in a fight. We’ll see who’s fragile.”
We are in a new era of the gender wars, an era that is marked by alarming amounts of
vitriol and violence directed toward women in online spaces. These forms of violence are not
only about gender, but are also often racist, with women of color as particular targets. The
scope and reach of this aggression has garnered attention not only from feminist scholars,
but in popular discourse, where it has been widely critiqued. Indeed, there have been a wide
variety of explanations in both popular and academic press as to why this particular histor-
ical moment is host to an especially virulent strain of violence and hostility towards women
in online environments—a phenomenon that we refer to here as “networked misogyny.”
Anonymity is a common culprit (Kat Stoeffel 2014), as are the technical affordances, struc-
tures, and policies of online platforms (Sarah Jeong 2015). For some, trolls are the problem
(Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell, and Delroy L. Paulhus 2014); for others, the insufficiency
of our legal frameworks (Danielle K. Citron 2014). While these are all certainly contributing
factors, we find that they overlook the full range (and interplay) of cultural factors at hand.
In particular, we feel that these explanations for online harassment (and other forms of
networked misogyny) fail to acknowledge the structuring nature of misogyny; attributing
violence against women to technological elements, an insufficient legal system, anomalous
individuals, or other factors encourages a distraction from the deeply embedded contextual
factors that legitimate the logic of misogyny. That is, misogyny is not only widespread and
deeply entrenched in Western culture, it is naturalized. The focus on technical and legal
elements, while important, thus becomes a means to address specific components of net-
worked misogyny, rather than fighting what seems to be an insurmountable cultural and
normative battle.
At the same time that the popular press has been focusing on various expressions of toxic
masculinity, there has also been another cultural phenomenon that has captured wide-
spread attention: popular feminism. Popular feminism lives in hashtags like #everydaysexism
and #bringbackourgirls; in best-selling memoirs by Sheryl Sandberg and Lena Dunham; on
Tumblr and on Facebook; emblazoned on tank tops and embodied by pop stars. Beyonce’s
highly public ownership of feminism at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards made headlines
and set off a round of public deliberation about what Bey’s move meant for the embattled
term. Years before this event, however, feminism and “empowerment” campaigns began to
be promoted by corporations and non-profits alike, positioning consumerism or skill-build-
ing as panaceas for an ideological and structural issue. From the maxi pads of Always to the
 172 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

mouse pads of Girls Who Code, issues involving the systemic discrimination against women
and girls became the new black (or pink).
While popular feminisms have varied goals and different means of expression, there is a
predominant theme: what women need is self-confidence. In the workforce, women need to
“lean in” and overcome “imposter syndrome”; in educational spaces, women need to assert
themselves as smart and capable; perhaps most of all, in their inner selves, they simply need
to be more confident and sure of themselves to overcome the often structural and societal
problems that are keeping them down. Of course, only particular women have access to
“leaning in” in the first place; gendered dynamics of power intersect with racial dynamics so
that women of color are structurally inhibited to an even greater degree.
The heightened visibility of popular feminism and its accompanying message of confi-
dence has been met by another popular discourse: popular misogyny. Popular misogyny
is, at its core, a basic anti-female violent expression that circulates to wide audiences on
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popular media platforms. This popular circulation helps contribute in heightened ways to a
misogynistic political and economic culture, where rape culture is normative, violent threats
against women are validated, and rights of the body for women are either under threat or
being formally retracted. Popular misogyny responds in part to the unprecedented frequency
of expressions of popular feminism articulated on multiple media channels and in a variety
of contexts. As more and more women are encouraged to be self-confident and have high
self-esteem (indeed, spawning a “confidence movement”), some men—particularly those
who ascribe to the tenets of toxic masculinity highlighted in #MasculinitySoFragile—perceive
this as an attack on their rightful place in the social hierarchy.
In particular, two interrelated groups—Men’s Rights Activists and Pick-Up Artists (or
“seduction communities”)—have responded to this “threat” by taking up some of the dom-
inant themes of popular feminism—empowerment and confidence—and reframing and
rearticulating them as misogynistic statements and practices. Here, a masculine lack of con-
fidence and perceived lack of empowerment identify a clear culprit: women and feminism.
It is important here to note that the men who comprise the Men’s Rights Activists and
Pick-Up Artists (MRA/PUA) communities are not men that are considered to be hegemonically
masculine. In fact, the primary demographic of the MRA/PUA movement is young men who
fall into the “geek/nerd” category. Surprisingly, they claim to campaign for many of the same
things that feminists want, including acceptance of alternative masculinities and expanded
parenting roles for men. How is it, then, that these men are connected to campaigns such
as #GamerGate, whose primary tactics involve silencing women and threatening them with
violence?
Arthur Chu, The Daily Beast’s columnist on all things geek and nerd, has blamed this state
of affairs on a culture that teaches geeky young men that “women, like money and status,
are just part of the reward we get for doing well,” and that popular misogyny is part of the
(unwarranted) response when these men “get good grades, they get a decent job, and that
wife they were promised in the package deal doesn’t arrive” (Arthur Chu 2014). However, what
Chu and others have failed to note is that #GamerGate and other incidents of weaponized
misogyny are not simply a response to entitlements that never came to fruition. They are
also a response to the incursion of women and people of color into what were previously
almost exclusively white, male spaces.
While the presence of popular feminism explains in part the emergence of a heightened
form of popular misogyny, it doesn’t entirely explain why popular misogyny is so dominant in
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 173

online environments—why networked misogyny persists as it does. Certainly, the capacity to

create, find, and build interest-based communities has been a key feature of the internet, long
before the advent of the “social web.” However, to attribute the prevalence of this particular
ideology and practice in certain web communities is to overlook the considerable overlap
in cultural and social norms that exists between the bastions of popular misogyny and the
communities that most clearly bear the imprint of the web’s masculinist, military–scientific
social origins.
Fred Turner (2010) and Lori Kendall (2002) have traced the sociocultural foundations of
the social web to the largely white, largely male users originating in the scientific and mil-
itary industrial complexes of the mid-twentieth century. In these cultures, aggression was
accepted (if not standard) and Habermasian rational-critical speech was privileged. While
early studies on computer-mediated communication blamed the rampant antagonism that
characterized early web forums on the lack of visual and social cues available through the
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medium (Sara Kiesler, Jane Siegel, and Timothy W. McGuire 1984), other scholars recognized
that, in fact, social norms were a key factor (Martin Lea and Russell Spears 1991). Scholars
focused on trolling and meme cultures of the late 2000s (Ryan M. Milner 2013; Kate M. Miltner
2014; Whitney Phillips 2015) have pointed out that these normative structures continue to
operate in primarily white, male-dominated “geek” spaces. As women and people of color
started to participate in these environments, pushback became a common response. One
of the Men’s Rights manifestos published during #GamerGate argued that games needed
to be a women-free “safe space” for male nerds in order to circumvent the “conflict and
alienation” caused by “female feminists migrating to formerly male spaces, demanding to
be accommodated” (David Futrelle 2014).
This fear of female encroachment is far from relegated to online social spaces: men are
also threatened by potential economic loss as a result of this apparent feminine invasion.
In a historical context of global economic recession, the impact on men has not only been
attributed to a more systemic financial failure, but more specifically because women are seen
as taking jobs—including those in the technology fields—that are somehow the “natural”
right of men. As Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker explain,
the financial crisis promulgates cultural themes of male infantilism and underdevelopment,
circulates tropes of male injury in which white men are positioned as both sign and symptom
of economic contraction and generates a strange sort of “zero sum” thinking when it comes
to the experiences of men and women in recession (i.e. if women are gaining, men must be
losing). (2014: 8–9)
The injury of economic recession is transformed into male injury, specifically caused by
women.
With this piece, we hope to have provided a jumping off point for a larger program of
research that examines the deeply entwined contexts and elements that undergird net-
worked misogyny. Rather than attacking the individual heads of the patriarchal hydra, we
argue that all forms of patriarchy need to be assessed differently—and collectively—in the
current, networked era. To truly understand—and combat—popular misogyny in its net-
worked forms, we need to look at it as a whole, and not independently at its individual parts.

References
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 174 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM

Chu, Arthur. 2014. “Your Princess is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds.” The Daily
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Recouping masculinity: men’s rights activists’ responses to

Mad Max: Fury Road
Alexis de Coning, Independent Researcher

The oft-cited “crisis of masculinity”—the notion that Western “masculinity is troubled, anx-
ious, fissured, [and] unable to cope with the alienating dynamics of contemporary globalized
capitalism” (Brian Baker 2015, 1; see also Roger Horrocks 1994)—was evoked by the recent
release of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, ed. Miller). The crisis was provoked not so much by the
film itself but, rather, by men’s rights activists’ (MRA) responses to it.
The “manosphere”1 erupted in May 2015 just before the film’s initial release. At the misog-
ynist website Return of Kings, Aaron Clarey (2015) denounced the film as “a feminist piece
of propaganda posing as a guy flick.” After watching only the trailer, he urged readers to
boycott the film. According to Clarey, if Mad Max: Fury Road was a box-office success, the
“world [would] never be able to see a real action movie ever again that doesn’t contain some
damn political lecture or moray [sic] about feminism” (Clarey 2015). A number of online news
outlets—such as Time and Vice News—picked up the story, reporting a full-scale boycott by
the MR movement, simultaneously lauding the film as a feminist triumph. While there was
no official boycott, MRA grievances were nevertheless prevalent among their online commu-
nities. At one MRA web forum, for example, a member advised others to “make an informed