The rise of the femosphere

‘A f*cking labrador.’ Such is the disdain with which one of the students interviewed in the New Statesman’s article ‘Meet the angry young women’ described her privately educated, straight, white boyfriend. Over the past few years, a narrative has emerged warning of the growth of the manosphere: young men and boys turning to both unsavoury sexist influencers and right-wing politicians to inform their worldview. Yet perhaps this focus on the manosphere has obscured a contrary trend: a growing hostility towards young men as epitomised by prejudices apparent in the newly emerging and increasingly commented on femosphere?

Some commentators are bemused that although women in the West have arguably never had it better in terms of rights and opportunities, young women seem deeply pessimistic and angry at their plight. They report record levels of mental-health struggles – from anxiety to depression. They are much less likely to believe the economy works in their favour – despite the facts, which indicate it works better for them than for their male peers. Girls now perform better than boys in school, go to university at higher rates and women under the age of 30 earn more than men of the same age.

Yet this pessimism prevails and extends beyond young women’s own prospects to their increasing negative perceptions of the opposite sex, per se, with just 35 per cent of British women under 25 holding a positive view of men. A popular social-media trend, consisting of women reiterating they would rather be alone in a forest with a bear than a man, perhaps best illustrates this sentiment.

While undoubtedly real material concerns about violence against women and girls – amplified by all political parties – help explain such attitudes, they also seem partly rooted in the growing influence of a progressive worldview that interprets society through the lens of privilege, victimhood and, above all, identity. Within this framework, many young women are drawn to a politics of empathy and victimhood that divides society into oppressors and the oppressed. As a result, some who passionately advocate for tolerance and equality are willing to overlook bigotry when it is directed at those deemed privileged, and one such target are those without protected characteristics: the caricatured straight, white man.

But beyond any war between the sexes, the contemporary femosphere also seems hostile to its own peers who won’t sign up to their prescriptive line on everything from trans rights to intersectionality, reserving a special ire for older women with different views on feminism – namely, the women who have rejected gender ideology, aka TERFs. Perhaps most notably, Grace Campbell described For Women Scotland as ‘ugly, ugly freaks’ with the ‘worst clothes, worst hair, worst views’. Has the concept of sisterhood been lost on the young women of the femosphere?

So, is the comparison made between the femosphere and manosphere fair? Are we witnessing the emergence of new female empowerment or gendered grievance politics? Has social media created different echo chambers fomenting hostility between the sexes? And what might the long-term consequences of that divide be for relationships, family formation and social cohesion?