‘Femcel’ influencers urge their followers to give up on gender equality and use men for financial gain – in the name of feminism

Summary

The “femosphere,” a growing online space for women, mirrors the misogynistic “manosphere” with toxic ideologies, including anti-gender equality views and strategies to “conquer” men.

The term describes communities like Female Dating Strategy and “dark feminine” influencers who reject liberal feminism, advocating traditional gender roles as empowering.

“Femcel” influencers urge their followers to give up on gender equality and use men for financial gain – in the name of feminism.

Critics warn these spaces mix conservative and feminist ideas, creating “anti-feminist feminism” that appeals to those disillusioned with mainstream feminism.

While less linked to violence than the manosphere, researchers caution against its potential for radicalization and harm.

  • @TheDemonBuer
    2•5 days ago

    You make a lot of really good points.

    I should start out by saying that I wholeheartedly agree that it is a very good thing that women now have the right to vote, go to school, have a bank account, etc. I think those are unequivocally good things, and I am not advocating for a reactionary return to a time before liberal feminism did successfully liberate women in many very important ways. I should have expressed that, that was my oversight and I can certainly see how my comment made my position on that unclear.

    Honestly, that’s a problem for those men to deal with

    Well, that’s the thing, I don’t think it is just their problem, I think it’s our problem.

    This is really my issue with liberalism, it’s inherently antisocial and hyper individualist, and thus fails to account for the ways in which we are interdependent. In fact, the power dynamics that you allude to in this statement…:

    This is an easy thing to say when the only people you’ve ever been dependent on were benevolent.

    …only exist because of liberalism. It was supposedly the right of husbands to have authority over, and, yes, even ownership of their wives and children, which is an antisocial concept. Some of those husbands were more benevolent than others, just as I’m sure some slave owners were more benevolent than others, but ultimately both power dynamics existed because of the supposed individual “rights” granted to those men by god or nature. Using liberalism to liberate women from institutions that liberalism helped create, isn’t ever going to work.

    Like I mentioned before, to be a wholly independent person is going to live a brutally difficult life of isolation. There’s a reason we evolved to live in communities, because it aided our survival, both as individuals and as a species. We benefit from living in healthy, stable, high functioning communities, and so we should each be interested in the well being of everyone in our community, even the lonely, isolated, hapless young men. Not by returning to a time when they would be given ownership and authority over women, but by helping them understand that they are a part of a community, that they benefit from being a part of the community, but that being in the community comes with certain responsibilities and obligations.