Pretty much anyone with some knowledge of popular internet culture is aware of Braden “Clavicular” Peters, the new face of the “looksmaxxing” movement. The twenty-year-old livestreamer blew up in 2025 for his extreme methods of “looksmaxxing” — the internet trend of men going to extreme means to upgrade their looks, status and wealth. Due to the fact that this trend mainly comes down to possessing women as tokens of status, it is considered a subculture of the larger “manosphere”, the notorious echo chamber of misogynistic men preaching patriarchal ideals for men and women. After all, the “looksmaxxing” movement has its roots in the infamous “incel” culture, which has been active online for over a decade. Incel culture has perpetuated misogyny and gender-based violence. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to many, then, when Peters was charged with the rape of a teenage girl this September. But are the striking headlines about these figures in the manosphere perhaps distracting from the larger issue of online misogyny?
The manosphere and its subcultures are taken seriously as inciting violence against women, and they have been criticised. The Irish Government rightfully identified it as an anti-gender equality movement, and the Department of Equality launched a National Strategy for Women and Girls to specifically counter this movement. However, perhaps there is an issue regarding such discussion about modern misogyny and how it singles out the manosphere as the only place to find misogyny. The reality is that misogyny is not limited to this internet space, and does not exist inside a vacuum. Much in the same way that it is ubiquitous in larger society, the refined society of internet culture does not differ.
In fact, the same misogyny of the manosphere can be identified in other internet spaces. When it comes to “looksmaxxxing”and the manosphere in general, one core idea is that men are not born with inherent value, they must construct it. That involves focusing your life on constructing wealth, developing status, and building an impossibly masculine physique. The other essential component of a man’s success is the ability to be seen in possession of women, as tokens of status.
Women, on the other hand, are born with their value, which is their beauty and reproductive organs — and are limited to it. Moreover, there is an image of women that these cultures push on young men and boys, of the “modern woman”. The women of today, who want to both build a career and enjoy a little debauchery, and embrace the independence that feminism grants. Men like Clavicular preach that the reason men are lonely and incelibate is because of these so-called “modern women”. The women that these men go for are fine with being subordinate to their husband and, of course, the “one-sided monogamy.” She is not permitted to have sexual partners other than her husband; however, there is no limit to the women he can have. The manosphere preaches traditional patriarchal ideas that operate alongside the idea of women as tokens of status, often also preaching about the woman’s place being in the home, the case for disfranchisement, and so on. These ideals, however, are not only found in the manosphere.
From taking those key ideas of the manosphere, a clear relation to “tradwife” culture can be drawn. Clearly distinct from the manosphere, this subculture surrounds the same anti-feminist rhetoric that underpins the manosphere — women should exist to serve their husbands and be a good wife and mother. The difference is the voice behind this; here, it’s women who want to disregard feminism and bring us back to the 1950s. It has amassed a huge amount of popularity, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and reflects the splinter of patriarchy that is women with internalised misogyny. This key aspect of the patriarchy is not exactly found in the manosphere, though it grows in the same environment. The popularity of the subculture points to the larger issue in society, even though one would assume society has moved past the societal standards of the fifties.
Furthermore, another internet subculture with a crucial position in a discussion of the patriarchy is pornography. The normalised degradation and objectification of women by the manosphere can be related to that of pornography. The well-known abasing depiction it presents of women predates the internet, and the emergence of adult websites alongside the development of the internet has resulted in it being significantly more accessible. Young boys and teenagers now gain their knowledge of sex from these sites — as easily as they can access the regressive ideas of the manosphere. It points to the larger problem of porn and sexual politics, which have always pervaded society, where women are not respected as humans when it comes to sex but merely as an advanced kind of fleshlight. The violence of certain porn types, of course, is also key to this matter and then brings us to rape culture. However, this internet subculture hasn’t ever garnered the attention that the manosphere has, when it once again involves the same issues of the patriarchy that make up wider society.
All of these matters are, of course, connected. Both “tradwife” culture and pornography exemplify the clear presence of misogyny in spaces outside of the manosphere, and prove that misogyny is not some hobby of weird internet macho men. Alongside them, there are, of course, other spaces where misogyny is the norm, like in gamer culture, some of which do not participate in “looksmaxxing” alongside their use of “bitch” and “cunt” to refer to women. Casual misogyny can be seen in online forums where identities are anonymous, in particular. The fact that a lot of men seem to act differently about women when they’re behind a screen isn’t an individual issue — it’s a societal one. The misogyny in these spaces is not distinct from that of the manosphere, so clearly, misogyny does not simply exist in that ether.
So when the world is once again discussing and, at times, ridiculing the manosphere men, the conversation should not act as though this is some strange phenomenon of misogyny that we haven’t seen since the 1950s. Clavicular being charged for rape should not be referred to as a normal behaviour for somebody deep in the manosphere; it should be considered in the context of larger society, and more specifically, rape culture. There isn’t a direct association between the Cornell seven and the manosphere, but there is one between both of them and the society that fosters this rape culture. There comes a point when we, as members of society, need to stop giving issues attention simply because we know they’ll make headlines and won’t last longer than merely being a headline that people frown about for a week. Examining these issues at a large scale is essential if we want to productively deal with our society’s problem with misogyny.
