Louis Threw says this in his new Netflix documentary.
SPEAKER_03We are all increasingly inside the manosphere, and it's up to us how we get out. Okay, so what is the manosphere? Louis Threw describes it like this. Much of the manosphere is made up of relatively uncontroversial comedians and podcasters who broadcast about women, fitness, and wealth to a mainly male audience. But at its edges is a community of more extreme content creators.
SPEAKER_01Alright, Louis, so what are the more concerning elements of the manosphere? He actually begins the documentary like this.
SPEAKER_03A few years ago, I noticed that parts of the internet were being taken over by a collection of male influencers. They claimed to be giving young men the cheat codes to win at life.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so it seems like the manosphere, as far as Louis Threw is concerned, is largely harmless to some podcasters and comedians who talk about Jim Bro kind of stuff. But there's a fringe element that is also very concerning. What does that fringe element concern itself about? While there are questions that are asked with new urgency about what is a man. And as society changes, as gender relations change, what does it mean to be a man? There seems to be a battle of the sexes, there's a war on masculine strength, and there is a call to wake up. And this waking up from our enslavement seems to be really at the heart of uh what some voices in the manosphere are talking about. And they use again and again the framework of the Matrix, waking up from the matrix. Here's how he puts it. I get stopped every day by a young man that tells me that it changes life.
SPEAKER_03The content put out by Justin and his peers pushes an ideology known as the red pill. They take the phrase from the movie The Matrix.
SPEAKER_02What is the red pill? Can you explain this to me? It's just seeing the truth for what it really is.
SPEAKER_03Claiming to have seen through the mainstream media's brainwashing about gender relations and its discrimination against men.
SPEAKER_01Taking the red pill so that you wake up from the matrix is a really interesting way of seeing life, as though we are all shackled naturally. And what we really must do is emancipate ourselves from entanglement. Entanglement is the great enemy, and disassociating from others, getting out from under, cutting through the ties that would otherwise bind you to others in the system. That seems to be key to this red pill movement. And a guy called Amru Foodl, or otherwise goes by the name Myron Gaines, uh, he seems to be a key proponent of this. So, what does it mean for Myron Gaines to emancipate himself from the system and from all entanglements? Well, it means a lot about gender relations and it means a lot about his own relationship. He describes his relationship as one-way monogamy. Check it out.
SPEAKER_03He boasts about his one-way monogamous relationship with his girlfriend. I do what the f I want to do.
SPEAKER_02She's loyal to me. She's monogamous on her end, open on my end. She packs my fing condoms when I travel. That's how real it is.
SPEAKER_01So one-way monogamy, in which the woman is expected to be faithful to the man, the man is not expected to be faithful to the woman. Uh, that is actually how nature operates. Men are not biologically linked to their women or their offspring. Uh, a man can have children with a woman, and he can leave her for dead and leave the kids for dead, and there's nothing in the biological realm that prevents him from doing that. And in human societies, that tends to be how elite men act. They get women pregnants, they have kids, and then they don't have anything to do with either the woman or the children, or the next woman and her children, or the next woman and her children. Our views of marriage and monogamy and faithfulness have been given to us by an entirely Christianized culture that thinks in a certain way about these things. If you are alarmed by one-way monogamy, that's probably your Christianity that is reacting at that point. Hey, last year someone met Jesus because of a four-pound Facebook ad, and we need your help to do it again in 2026. There is something strange happening right now. People are searching for Jesus again, but when they look, they often find stuff that is confusing or shallow or downright misleading. So we created 321 as a free online introduction to Christianity that meets seekers where they are. In just the past two years, more than 35,000 people have signed up online, and many more people have done the course in person. But the best part, lives are changing. Stories like Michael's Get Me Every Time. He just watched some really disturbing news online, the kind that makes you question everything. Having opened Facebook, just scrolling like we all do, and he saw an ad for 321, it felt like a sign from God. So he took the course. Now he's reading the Bible, he's growing in faith, his whole direction has changed. And here's the crazy part it costs just four pounds to show him that ad. Four pounds. That's all it took to put the message that led him to Jesus right in front of him. Stories like Michael's are happening again and again because this generation is more open than we think. The soil is ready. But moments like this don't stay open forever. So this Easter, we're asking 100 people to step in and help us reach more seekers like Michael. It only costs four pounds to show Michael that ad that led him to Jesus. So just think what you could make possible with 20 pounds a month. More people could encounter Jesus through your generosity. And right now at Easter 2026, every gift is being doubled for the first year. So if this story moves you, this is your moment to help someone else find the hope they're already searching for. This is a moment to sow in faith and trust God for the harvest. Will you be one of the hundred? Will you give for gospel growth? If you give before Easter Monday, your donation will be doubled by a generous match funder for the first year. So your 20 pounds would be worth 40. Visit speaklife.org.uk slash growth to give now. That's speaklife.org.uk slash growth. Thank you, and God bless. One of the main characters in this Manosphere documentary is Harrison Sullivan, otherwise known as H. S. Tiki Toki. And he is, I guess, the victim of that kind of one-way monogamy. His father did not want anything to do with him in his upbringing. And Harrison seems to have grown up as a bit of a lost boy and is now a Manosphere influencer. What's fascinating in this documentary is his relationship with his mother. Harrison speaks out some quite misogynistic stuff in front of his mother, and it's just interesting to see him say the Manosphere type stuff and for that to be brought into conversation with an actual woman who he actually loves and respects. Check this out.
SPEAKER_03You have said that you thought that you would you'd be better to marry a virgin. Yeah, ideally. Why do I want to things run through?
SPEAKER_05That type of thing. The way women are stereotyped, if they have multiple partners to the way that men are, I find it extraordinary. But it's been like that since the beginning of time.
SPEAKER_03And so we should push back on that though, shouldn't we?
SPEAKER_05Well, yes, but Where's he shaking his head?
SPEAKER_04No. Most women in the world are not like my mum. Most are thick. Most. Most.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, in the handful that you've met. You're not talking to women of my age. You're talking to 30.
SPEAKER_01Now that is really interesting what Elaine Harrison's mum says. It's been this way since the beginning of time, that men have been able to get away with a lot more than women are expected to get away with. We will return to that point, but I do think it's hilarious, actually, the way that Harrison acts uh around his mother. We get this beautiful little insight into the mother-son dynamic here.
SPEAKER_05No, you don't have to have a juice. I love it. Mommy, I don't want a juice, Pa. Don't embarrass me. All right. Don't be rude. That's not the way I've brought you up. Do not be rude. All right, because it's a reflection on me. Alright, I want to be. Can you get look at this? I'm not having him come in here. Look at this. Get out of the way.
SPEAKER_01I think that's hilarious. I think the whole red pill philosophy crumbles in the presence of an actual woman who you actually know and love and respect. You can't really do the red pill thing when you're in the presence of another woman who you love and know and respect. There's another really interesting moment when Myron gains this one-way monogamist uh act when Louie brings her girlfriend into conversation with them. Just have a look at what happens when Myron, having talked about how he is, you know, one-way monogamous and how he expects women to be okay with it, and then Louis starts talking to his girlfriend and humanizing the girlfriend, and there she is in the mix. And just look at Myron's face. He is he is giving daggers to Louis through. Just look at his eyes as uh as he is exposed by Louis in this moment.
SPEAKER_03We were talking about in the future that maybe there's a world where you would have more than one wife, right?
SPEAKER_02She understands that.
SPEAKER_03She knows that that that could potentially come down the future. What did you say about that?
SPEAKER_06Uh, I don't know. I mean, I he has said that in the past. Uh, I think when I'll see when it happens. Like, I I don't know how that will work.
SPEAKER_02The thing is that I think Well, right now it's not gonna be anytime soon because just because I'm just so focused on working. But it could happen. Right. It could, of course.
SPEAKER_03You can kick it down the road only for so long. You know, she's put two years into a relationship. If that's your long-term plan, at some point those two realities will collide. You know, that's a bridge we'll cross when we get there. Like right now.
SPEAKER_02What does that mean? That's so avoidant. Yes, it's it's something you never know, man. You can you can you can always change your mind down the road. Who knows? Maybe I'll say, uh, you know, I only just want to be with one girl because the two would be too tough.
SPEAKER_01You know, you've backtracked on that already. Did you hear Louis? So avoidant there, which I think puts its finger on uh a great hypocrisy here. Among the red pill influences, there is the projection of great strength, there's the projection of great aggression, the projection of great confidence, and yet underneath there's a cowardice. There's a deep need to avoid. And Louis, by bringing up the awkward stuff, is actually confronting these cowardly men with their cowardice. I think awkward is Louis's superpower, in fact. But what he is confronting these men with is the life of Adam. Remember the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There he is. He's meant to be a great leader, he's meant to be a great man with, you know, everything at his feet, and he's got his bride at his side, and she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. She's been taken from his side to be his equal from close to his heart that he might love her, and from under his arm that he might protect her. She is him and he is her. You are bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. That's that's who this bride is in Genesis chapter two. And then by Genesis chapter three, he is avoidant. He is cowardly, he is stepping back, he is abdicating from the responsibility he's meant to have. And he allows Eve to go toe-to-toe with the serpent when actually it was Adam that was told all the stuff about the tree. The silence of Adam speaks volumes. Adam is a coward. Adam is avoidant. He's trying to be a real man, but he is not a good man. And the avoidant man, Adam, is kind of how we all got into this mess in the first place. A man who will not stand up for his bride and instead is silent and instead serves only his own interests in cowardice. That is the kind of toxic masculinity that we have become uh all too familiar with. Now, as I say toxic masculinity, uh, we actually had on the channel Nancy Pearcy, who wrote a terrific book called The Toxic War on Masculinity. And she makes some excellent points about the difficulties that men face in the modern era, when gender relations are being called into question, and when nobody knows quite what it means to be a man, Nancy Pearcy has identified that there has been a war on masculinity and that it's unsurprising that many men feel embattled and feel uncertain about what it means to be a man in the 21st century. And there are, in effect, two different scripts that we've been given for what it means to be a man in the modern age. I ask her about those scripts, and she says some really fascinating things.
SPEAKER_00One of the uh articles that caught my eye was in the Washington Post, and the title was Why Can't We Hate Men? In a respected, you know, mainstream publication or a Huffington Post editor who tweeted, hashtag kill all men. You can buy t-shirts that say so many men, so little ammunition. And there were books out with titles like a hate men, no good men, and are men necessary? And to my surprise, I found a lot of men actually joining into the chorus. There's a fairly well-known male book author who wrote, talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer. And then this one you may have seen because it was just maybe a few months ago now, in the news. Uh, the director of the movie Avatar, James Cameron, said testosterone is a toxin that you have to work out of your system. So this is why I had this was the first reason I wrote the book, right? It's that masculinity as a whole is being judged toxic. I mean, people say, oh, we don't mean it's all toxic, but the message that often comes through, right, is that there's something inherently wrong about masculinity itself. In one survey, almost half of American men agreed with the statement, these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men. And there was a more recent one, you may have seen it, it came out in Britain. Uh so it's not in the book because it's more recent, but 55% of British men agreed as well. So whether you whether you agree or not, that's a lot of people who now think that men are getting a bad deal. And so one of the things I did at the beginning of the book, I put it right at the beginning, was this study that you're talking about. The sociologist, you know, gets invited to speak all around the world. And so he came up with this very clever experiment where he asks young men two questions. The first question is, what does it mean to be a good man? If you're at a funeral and the eulogy, somebody says he was a good man. What does that mean? All around the globe, young men have no trouble answering that. They immediately say things like, honor, duty, integrity, sacrifice, do the right thing, look out for the little guy, uh, be a protector, be responsible, be a provider. And so the sociologists would ask them, Where'd you learn that? And they'd say, Well, it's just in the air we breathe. Or if they were in a Western country, they would say, It's part of our Judeo-Christian heritage. And then he would ask a follow-up question What does it mean if I say to you, man up, be a real man? And the young man would say, Oh no, that's completely different. That means be tough, be strong, never show weakness, win at all costs, suck it up, play through pain, um, be competitive, get rich, get laid. So I'm using their language. And so the sociologists concluded that men seem to be sort of trapped between these two scripts. On the one hand, all around the world, men do know what it means to be a good man. You know, we would say they are made in God's image. And they do have this instinctive, inherent, innate sense of what it means to be a good man. You know, not just a good person, but a good man, or good at being a man. Sometimes people will make that distinction. Um but they feel this cultural pressure and to be the quote unquote real man. And those are traits that we tend to consider more toxic, at least if you know, if decoupled from a moral vision, they can slide into things like entitlement and control uh and and uh exploitation and so on. And so I I love this because it does, I I think it gives us a better approach to these issues. Instead of accusing men of being toxic, which most people you know, most men would not uh respond well to that, surprisingly. Um but can we tap into their innate knowledge of what it means to be a good man and affirm it and support it and encourage it, you know, what they already know it means to be uh a good man. And it also, from an apologetics point of view, by the way, tells us that the Christian ethic is not contrary to masculinity. You know, the masculine the secular script for masculinity, the sort of Andrew Tate uh style of masculinity, right? Fast money, fast cars, fast girls. Um, they would reject the Christian ethic, right? Because ever since Nietzsche they've said the Christian ethic means be be weak, you know, be soft, be effeminate. And it's not true. This Christian ethic does in fact fit with the innate knowledge that men have of what it means to be a good man. So I think that that is encouraging on the part of Christians to get out there, get out there into the public square arguing for the Christian vision, knowing that it will resonate at some deep level.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I think the Christian vision will resonate on a very deep level because we've already got the story of Adam, this fallen man, this broken vision of what it means to be a man. He has tried to disentangle himself from the obligations that are around him. And notice that in Genesis chapter 3, when the Lord comes to confront Adam about his sin, the first thing he does is cut ties. He says, This woman that you put here, Lord, she gave me the fruit and I ate from it. He might think that this is his red pill moment. He is finally cutting off the ties between the Lord, you know, you put this woman here, and it's this woman and it's her fault, and he's trying to get free. He's kind of break out of the entanglement that is around him. That is as old as Adam. And as HS Tiki Toki's mum Elaine said, It's been like that since the beginning of time. Since the beginning, there has always been this problem with men, that men are not biologically tied to their women or to their children, and they break free from their obligations, and in cowardice they serve only themselves, and the world has been ruined by that. What do you want to call that? We could call that toxic masculinity, couldn't we? But is there a true kind of masculinity? Absolutely. There is the second Adam. Jesus Christ is a very different vision of what it means to be a man. And he comes to stand with his bride and to entangle himself with his bride. And in courage, he is going to give of himself that he might entangle himself more in our lives and take on the burdens of that responsibility so that others might flourish. Ultimately, he will go to the cross and sacrifice himself to take on the debts of the bride that he might pay them off and give to all of us his life in a glorious, entangled union. Jesus is the answer to Adam, and in Matthew chapter 19, he actually gives us a totally different way to be and a totally different way to see history. See, H. S. Tiki Toki's mum, Elaine, she doesn't quite have history right. It is true that all the way back to Adam, since that beginning, then, yeah, male-female relationships have been pretty toxic. But Jesus goes back even further. And actually, in the beginning, there's something very different. Matthew chapter 19 is Jesus quoting from Genesis. Some Pharisees came to Jesus to test him. They asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason? Do you see what they're trying to do? They're trying to wake up, they're trying to cut ties, right? They're trying to emancipate themselves from the matrix called marriage. And Jesus says, Haven't you read, he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Now notice in verse 10 what some red-blooded men think when they hear Jesus say this. Verse 10, the disciples said to him, If this is the situation between a husband and a wife, it is better not to marry. Like when people heard Jesus say that, they were like, You're trying to entangle us with our wives and our children. And Jesus says, Absolutely I am, because that's the true way, right? That it's the true way of the true man, Jesus Christ, the second Adam. He entangles himself in our life, that we might be entangled in his life. And though it means sacrifice, it is the way of true health. There is a place for masculine strength in the Bible. There is a place for the particular giftings of men and the particular giftings of women, and men and women are not interchangeable, but that does not mean that men are to dominate women at all. They are to be like the true man Jesus Christ and his healthy masculinity expressed in service, in sacrifice, in empowerment, and in a union of love. And that's really what we're made for. When men are in the presence of women, whether it's their girlfriends or wives or their daughters or their mothers, what they really want is a union of love, and Jesus, the second Adam, shows us how that works. If you want to find out more about the second Adam Jesus, why don't you do three, two, one? The three refers to Father, Son, and Spirit, but the two refers to the two atoms, the one Adam that takes us down into toxicity, but the second Adam Jesus who raises us up into health giving, flourishing, and we can be one with him. That's the three and the two and the one. You can check it out all for yourself, all for free at 321course.com. Why don't you check that out now? And don't forget to give this video a like if you've survived this far into the video. Give it a share around the place and do subscribe to us so that we can catch you on the next one. God bless.