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The Netflix-produced Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere aims to understand the extreme, misogynist fringes of the – an umbrella term for online masculinist subcultures – and the men who are, as Theroux puts it ‘redefining what it means to be a man’. Starting from the premise that documentaries seek to inform and to educate, in this blog post we examine one of Theroux’s especially misleading – and therefore miseducational – claims: the supposed link between trauma and the manosphere.

An ideology rooted in childhood trauma

Theroux wants to understand why the ‘manfluencers’ have adopted their beliefs. ‘In my time in the manosphere,’ he tells us, ‘I’d become curious about how the streamers grew up and what they shared from their childhood.’ Theroux believes there’s a common thread of childhood experience linking his manfluencer interviewees: family instability, absent fathers and abusive households are, he says, repeatedly part of their ‘origin stories’. ‘Across the board,’ he speculates, ‘I had the sense that influencers still carrying the wounds of childhood, who’d had to learn brutal strategies of self-reliance, were projecting their trauma onto the wider world.’ Theroux ends the 10-minute segment with this statement: ‘An ideology that seemed to me to be rooted in trauma was being rolled out as the basis of far-reaching social renewal.’

What is the evidence base?

Theroux’s casual mention of trauma, and his framing of its role in manosphere formation, troubles us. We contacted , a senior lecturer at The Open University, who has conducted . We wondered if Theroux’s claims aligned with Jon’s research. He offered a different account of why young men might be drawn to the manosphere’s extremist zones: ‘I keep coming back to the young men in our research who talked about wanting to be seen as a someone not a something. When we speak to teenage boys about their experiences of being a man, they often highlight feeling undervalued and ignored.’

We also spoke to , an education consultant specialising in trauma-informed practice. Like us, he’d viewed the documentary’s focus on trauma with concern. Tony stated: ‘What struck me is how quickly a complex story about childhood instability is used to suggest a link to ideology.’ He continued:

… there seemed to be a lack of depth or evidence. Experiences of violence, unpredictability and lack of repair absolutely shape how young people understand relationships, trust and power. What we know is that the pathway from trauma to belief systems like those seen in the manosphere is not straightforward. Trauma often leads to difficulties with regulation, attachment and identity, rather than a fixed set of views.

, though the link is . This is a world away from the idea that trauma is the single root cause of the manosphere. While Theroux doesn’t explicitly state this, nor does he guard against it. He allows the possibility to hang in the air. We share Tony’s concern that ‘there is almost a sensationalist flavour’ to this part of the documentary, and that it ‘risks oversimplifying both trauma and the reasons boys and young men are drawn to spaces’ like the manosphere.

‘While Theroux doesn’t explicitly state that trauma is the single root cause of the manosphere, nor does he guard against it. He allows the possibility to hang in the air.’

Theroux’s undeveloped and unsubstantiated ‘it’s-because-of-trauma’ thesis is deeply flawed and problematic. It fails to recognise that people , including signs of (such as a deeper appreciation of life and a greater sense of empathy). It fails, too, to understand what trauma, in its most general sense, is. As Tony reminded us: ‘Trauma is not the thing that happened but how we experience and respond to that thing.’ This is one of the first lessons one learns on .

Theroux implicitly characterises the manosphere as the result of ‘bad’ parenting and growing up poor. In other words, he takes an issue that may well be sociopolitical but offers no social or political analysis. Instead, the ‘problem’ is individualised, the broader societal issues ignored. To claim that the manosphere is ‘an ideology rooted in trauma’ is simplistic and stigmatising. The manosphere is . Rather, it emerges from a combination of historical, political, social, psychological, technological – and, yes, commercial – factors. If documentaries are meant to educate, then Inside the Manosphere risks miseducating audiences, at least where trauma’s place in the manosphere is concerned.