This panel explores the role virtual spaces play in disseminating normative conceptions of masculinity. The manospheres analyzed each trade on a foundational “truth”: men are the future because they are our past, but they are threatened in the present. From a wellness influencer-founded new religious movement that seeks to immortalize the male body with AI to a Jewish fitness influencer who asks his followers “if God couldn’t satisfy (women who wear makeup and get plastic surgery), why do you think you can?”, these papers explore claims about what a “real man” looks like and how he can escape society’s feminizing influences. In particular, the papers explore influencers’ burgeoning role in shaping the manosphere across technological spaces like Instagram, PragerU, podcasts, and the Telegram app. Indeed, they expose various influencers’ and movements’ ability to disseminate masculinist ideologies in trojan horses like hunting podcasts and fight clubs.
From posts weaving hunting into the MAHA movement and Bible study to podcasts arguing true hunters center “God, family, and country,” hunting influencers continuously make claims about whom hunting is for and what its, and thus the nation’s, future ought to look like. Through close readings of hunting influencers’ social media posts and podcasts, I reveal the ways in which hunter influencers engage with, challenge, and reinforce white Christian men’s claimed ownership of hunting in the US. This paper reveals, moreover, that claims about who the true hunter is rely on the discursive construction of who his enemies are, whether they be atheist liberals, misinformed bleeding-heart anti-hunters, or sellout hunter celebrities and their poseur followers. To occupy the hunting manosphere is to be reminded that hunting is, and therefore you are, under constant threat. As one influencer frequently puts it, “stay paranoid, hunters.”
This paper looks at several popular Jewish conservative male influencers as case studies for understanding the online “Jewish manosphere” and how its ideologues navigate questions of assimilation, Jewish-versus-Christian masculinity, antisemitism, and American nationalism. These case studies are illustrative for understanding the “edges” of how (Christian) manospheres are usually understood: I argue that these Jewish manosphere influencers, by situating their masculinity and their Judaism as consonant with—at times helpful for—American Christian nationalism, frame their gender and religion as part of a lineage that is just as respectable as that of white Christian Americans. Notably, such influencers frame their masculine Judaism in a way that delegitimizes other forms of American Jewish life, in particular the other minority groups that comprise them. This move is in line with many more mainstream, Christian manosphere figures, and the approaches to them highlighted in this panel’s papers.
Tech millionaire and wellness influencer Bryan Johnson has enjoyed a recent surge of internet fame. In addition to his usual posts about sleep scores, sperm health, and supplements, Johnson has taken an explicit turn towards the religious. He has recently launched Don’t Die, a New Religious Movement that highlights his efforts to pursue bodily immortality under the guidance of AI. Johnson aims to turn Don’t Die into “the world’s most popular ideology” by 2027 and has called it a religion, a way of life, and a nation-state. Johnson’s ambient masculinism and conservatism surface in connections with more outspoken right-wing figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tucker Carlson. How does the “world’s most measured man” theorize religion in the digital realm? Drawing from work in Digital Religion and Science and Technology Studies, this paper argues that Don’t Die exemplifies an emerging relationship between the AI industry, religion, and hybrid masculinity.
Active Clubs are the contemporary vanguard of American White nationalist counterculture. They encourage a return to an imagined heritage encompassing religious identity, vigorous masculinity, and ethnonationalism. The paper first examines Christianity, fascism, masculinity, and melee combat in American far-right movements; case studies like the Christian Front and the Legion of Silver Shirts illustrate that Active Clubs are merely a contemporary manifestation of a century-old ideological strain. However, Active Clubs are unique in their theological plasticity: Coalition-building efforts across religious lines are visible in Pagan-Christian cohabitation in the “Return to the Land” settlement, or in the Great Plains Active Club’s call for “men of all religions rooted in the European diaspora.” The paper concludes with an analysis of Active Club Telegram networks to suggest that the embodied nature of “White Nationalism 3.0” is a deliberate recruitment tool for young men who have grown tired of being perceived as “keyboard warriors.”