Sunderland expert shares how society needs a new script for men and boys

As the new documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere airs on Netflix, Dr Rebecca Owens, Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Sunderland has explored how the ‘manosphere’ can influence young men and their perception of masculinity.

Dr Owens is an evolutionary psychologist specialising in male psychology and was named as a Men and Boys Champion in the UK for the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys.

“The release of a new documentary by Louis Theroux exploring the online world of the Manosphere comes at a moment when societies across the West are struggling with a fundamental question: what does it mean to be a man today?

Public debate often assumes we already know the answer. Masculinity is frequently discussed in narrow terms, framed primarily through the language of “toxic masculinity.” Yet what many people think of as masculinity is not masculinity itself. It is a socially constructed script about how men should behave in a particular place and time.

When we treat this script as fact, rather than interpretation, we risk building policies and social responses on ideology rather than evidence. If we want to improve outcomes for men and boys and address the worrying trends we see across mental health, education and social disengagement, we need a broader and more accurate understanding of masculinity.

One common misconception is that traits such as misogyny or homophobia are inherent to masculinity. In reality, these ideas emerged from particular cultural contexts and have sometimes been folded into the way masculinity is measured and discussed. But behaviours that are harmful are not the same as masculinity itself. Confusing the two risks alienating half the population.

In recent years, this narrowing of masculinity has also coincided with a rise in what might be described as casual misandry – the normalisation of dismissive or hostile attitudes towards men and boys in everyday discourse. Jokes, slogans and social media trends that frame men collectively as the problem may be intended as satire or frustration, but they still shape the cultural environment young males grow up in. When boys repeatedly encounter messages suggesting their identity is inherently suspect, it becomes harder to build a positive understanding of who they are meant to become.

Human behaviour is shaped by motivations that are far older than modern political debates. Across cultures and even across species, individuals compete for status and seek belonging and recognition. How these motivations are expressed, however, varies enormously depending on cultural norms.

What one culture sees as deviant, another may see as honourable. Traditional Māori facial tattoos, or Ta Moko, communicate rank, status and heritage. In many Western contexts, facial tattoos are instead associated with deviance. The underlying human motivation, signalling identity and status, is the same but the cultural interpretation is very different.

This matters because the current conversation about masculinity often collapses complex social behaviours into a single moral judgement.

Meanwhile, the challenges facing men and boys are becoming harder to ignore. Men account for the majority of suicide deaths, homelessness, substance misuse and prison populations. Boys are also falling behind girls at every stage of the education system. Evidence increasingly suggests that experiences such as intimate partner violence affect men at higher rates than once acknowledged.

Yet public responses sometimes appear to overlook these realities. Initiatives aimed at tackling misogyny are important and necessary, but when the conversation focuses almost exclusively on men as potential perpetrators rather than also recognising them as potential victims or individuals in need of support, the message received by many boys is that they themselves are the problem.

This is where the appeal of the Manosphere begins to make sense.

The Manosphere is not a single ideology but a loose network of online communities. Some spaces focus on men’s wellbeing or rights advocacy. Others promote far more extreme narratives rooted in resentment, misogyny and hostility towards women and other men. For vulnerable young men looking for belonging, the boundaries between these spaces can be dangerously porous.

But if wider society offers boys only one script, that masculinity is inherently toxic, it should not be a surprise that some will seek alternative narratives elsewhere.

Most men do not admire internet provocateurs, despite the headlines that suggest otherwise. But when institutions appear dismissive of male struggles, trust erodes. In that vacuum, more extreme voices gain influence.

If we want to prevent boys from drifting towards the darker corners of the internet, the solution is not to condemn masculinity but to rewrite the script. That means recognising both the strengths and the struggles of men and boys, grounding policy in evidence rather than ideology, and creating a version of masculinity that young males can see themselves in.

Because if society does not offer boys a positive vision of what it means to be a man, someone else will.”