Lost Boys: The Crisis Of Modern Masculinity, with James Bloodworth

Today we’re diving into a subject that resonates far beyond midlife - the crisis of modern masculinity and why so many men, young and old, feel increasingly lost, and how this has led to the rise of the 'manosphere'.

We’re joined by James Bloodworth, journalist and author of Lost Boys, a powerful and thought-provoking book that shines a light on the struggles facing young men in Britain today. 

From work and identity, to mental health and belonging, James has uncovered stories that raise urgent questions about the future of masculinity and what it means for all of us.

In this conversation we’ll explore the forces shaping men’s lives, how those can echo into the wider world and what we can do to change the story for ourselves, our sons and the generations to come.

James Bloodworths’s Substack:

https://www.forthedeskdrawer.com/

For James' book: Lost Boys - Click Here

Reset & Retreat with us in Ibiza - 9th - 12th October:

https://themidlifementors.com/retreats/

Transcript

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The Midlife Mentors: Welcome to another episode of the Midlife Mentors with me, James. And me, Claire. What have we been up to? We always wonder when this is going to go out, because we've got an amazing guest coming up, so we don't quite know when this is going to go out. I think it'll be out fairly soon. It will be, it will be. It just feels like we've been in a bit of a whirlwind, to be honest, Claire. It has been. Very, very busy, very exciting. We have got some news about, our winter…

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The Midlife Mentors: Living arrangements, but I won't announce them quite yet. No, keep that on the lowdown. Yeah, yeah, so there's been lots of moving parts to our life, actually. I need to update my Spanish residency, so it means that, yeah, we won't necessarily be in London for the whole of the winter, but yeah, exciting plans. That's not necessarily a bad thing, is it? No, no, exactly. Escaping the London winter isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, so…

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The Midlife Mentors: Should we just get… dive straight in? Yeah, super excited to, introduce the guests we've got today. So we have joining us

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The Midlife Mentors: James Budworth, a journalist and author of Hired and Lost Boys, and we'll be digging into, I guess, what we might term the manosphere. I'll find out whether we like that term or not, James. Because I think this has been led, obviously, by a lot of our listeners of teenage boys. I do a lot of work around men's health, kind of with the midlife demographic, and you've started championing

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The Midlife Mentors: on LinkedIn, kind of, why we should be paying more attention to what's going on to men. So it's great to have James joining us as

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The Midlife Mentors: an expert in this. James, welcome! Hi, James.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, thanks, thanks for having me.

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The Midlife Mentors: Can you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself? So, how did you start out as a journalist, then get inspired to write Lost Boys?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, so I've been a journalist,

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James Bloodworth: about 15… 15 years, really. I mean, I was writing before… before that, but I've been, you know, professional journalist, writing for the newspapers, etc. About 15 years.

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James Bloodworth: I did a book in 2018 on… called Hired, where I went undercover in low-wage Britain. So, kind of, these Amazon warehouses and, working as a social carer.

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James Bloodworth: And then, yeah, was asked by my, by my publisher in 2019, 2018, actually, through 2018-19 to have a look at this issue of, of, men being kind of drawn into.

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James Bloodworth: More extreme subcultures, internet-based subcultures, but also, you know, increasingly offline as well.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, this is, well, we're going to dive into this, but you say it's, like, an increasing issue. Do you think it's got worse since you initially started this book? For people that are listening, I presume we're talking about things like, you know, we're talking about Andrew Tate, and the in-cell movement, and things like that.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, we are, so… and the manosphere is… is… the manosphere is, like, a group of anti-feminist subcultures, really. That's kind of the… that's the definition I use for it.

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James Bloodworth: or masculinist, sometimes it's called, or male supremacist. But it's really these groups of men on the internet who are united in opposition to feminism, which they blame for their problems. And I started the book in…

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James Bloodworth: I mean, I started the book in 2018 and finished it, finished the first draft, 2024, and over that time, yeah, the manosphere did become

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James Bloodworth: More main… there was more mainstream awareness of it. There were certain figures within the manosphere who you mentioned, Andrew Tate, for example, who did become kind of mainstream. People in the mainstream, you know, they wouldn't have been aware of some of the people before, but they knew who these people were. There were more people watching their content.

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James Bloodworth: it was more of a big business… it was more of a big business as well, so you just saw more people selling courses, promising to teach men how to, be men, really. So yeah, it definitely… it definitely, grew, the industry grew, there was more awareness of it, and more people, attracted to it, basically.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, I've got so… I've got so many questions around this. Well, I was just laughing there, because I've seen some of these,

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The Midlife Mentors: quite funny, I know I shouldn't take the mickey, but there's some quite funny courses, especially coming over from the US. I mean, I was first aware…

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The Midlife Mentors: of one guy about 4 or 5 years ago doing a course over in America, trying to teach men how to be men, and some of the videos that I saw on Instagram,

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The Midlife Mentors: were frightening, not coming from a woman, you know,

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The Midlife Mentors: an anti-man woman, not at all. In fact, I always champion, men as much as I possibly can, but what I was seeing on his site and on his Instagram profile, I was like, oh my goodness, it was quite frightening. There was a lot, and I'm sure you would have come across this, James, it was kind of like, oh, you know, step back into your alpha, and, like, having men in the surf being forced to box each other, and that was somehow…

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The Midlife Mentors: life-affirming for them, even though most of them ended up crying. And I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because we've…

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The Midlife Mentors: I guess, I guess culture in society

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The Midlife Mentors: has shifted massively in a relatively short space of time, you know, in 100 years of the Industrial Revolution, and two world wars disrupting working patterns and gender identities, and that's kind of sped up with technology, in particular social media. And, you know, I guess there is this…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, we joke about it, I guess, like, of my age, like, in the 90s, we had this thing, the new man came along, right, and suddenly, like, oh, you know, there was those posters of the guy holding the baby with his ripped torso, and then suddenly everyone was going to be like… The Athena poster. Yeah, and everyone was meant to be like, oh, I'm going to be caring, but then there was a backlash against the new man, and we wanted real men again. And I think since then, we've kind of got stuck in this loop, and there's a lot of men

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The Midlife Mentors: looking for answers, but not necessarily in the right places. Is that how you see it, or… how did this whole movement develop?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, to some extent, there is, it's always been there. Well, not always been there, but…

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James Bloodworth: it's been there, kind of, in some form, since… I mean, the manosphere as we know it today has been there in some form since the 1970s. It just wasn't, it was very, very fringe, it was very much a subculture. But what's changed, you know, because as you say, there have always been these…

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James Bloodworth: Like, recalibrations people have had to go through based on, economic, upheavals, just change in relations between people and society. Often those based on, on economic factors, so women going into the workplace, for example, men losing that identity, as kind of breadwinner, if you like.

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James Bloodworth: But what's really… so yeah, the manosphere in my book, I trace it from its kind of origins in the 70s, the manosphere we know today. But what really changed in the recent era is the fact that social media has…

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James Bloodworth: You know, the manosphere today is not just catering to these kind of misdirected men who have these genuine issues, but have kind of… they're barking up the wrong tree, as it were.

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James Bloodworth: the manifest for today is it also creates the feelings of insecurity, in… in their audiences, and then tries to sell them the solution. So it's basically… it's a bit like, I mean, any market, or…

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James Bloodworth: You have markets for women with cosmetics, for example, where they're not… they're not really catering to an existing need, they're kind of creating a sense of insecurity and then selling the solution, you know, if you buy this product.

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James Bloodworth: you will finally, like, live up to society's, like, beauty standards, for example. The manosphere does something similar, but to men, and says to men, you know, you're insignificant, you're a quote-unquote beta male, you're never gonna be respected by men, you're never gonna have…

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James Bloodworth: A sexual partner, or a girlfriend, or a wife.

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James Bloodworth: But, you know, here I am as your solution and your savior and guide, if you buy my product.

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James Bloodworth: I can… I can fix you. So it's… it's… it's not just this… what I'm saying is it's not just this organic, sense of these men are just confused and gravitate towards this subconscious. There is that, that does happen, that is part of it. But the new element to the manuscript, why it's really taken off, is partly because

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James Bloodworth: Social media just has been a much more powerful vector for these entrepreneurs, these masculinity entrepreneurs, to sell insecurity to

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James Bloodworth: impressionable men. I was gonna say young men, but it isn't just young men, it's predominantly young men, but men who already maybe have some pre-existing insecurities, or who are just susceptible to the salesmanship, or lack media literacy, of this stuff they're seeing on Instagram and TikTok, for example.

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The Midlife Mentors: Mmm.

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The Midlife Mentors: And I guess there must be quite a wide

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The Midlife Mentors: breadth in there, talking, you know, like, about creating this need for men within security, from, I guess, well-meaning people.

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The Midlife Mentors: maybe saying, you know, oh, I can help you show up in the world with a bit more confidence, which we'd all say that would be a good thing, through to, like, the far end of the spectrum, which we could term something really toxic. I mean, what have you seen at the more extreme ends?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, the more extreme ends, like Tate is an example, but there's also, kind of, some of the courses

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James Bloodworth: Well, not some… some of the programs I attended, as part of the research were…

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James Bloodworth: It starts off with teaching men, you know, how to be strong, and even, like, workout routines, and, you know, things that are benign, you know, or even good, you know, exercising, having a workout program, having a kind of mentor to show you how to do that stuff.

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James Bloodworth: But it… but it… then it starts to lead into this more political direction where it says that, you know, society's…

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James Bloodworth: effectively, Gone to shit, because women have entered the world of work, and…

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James Bloodworth: women get to vote, and women get to choose, and therefore, you know, strong men are being diminished, and society's been kind of ruled by weak men and women and stuff. So there is kind of this pipeline where…

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James Bloodworth: Once people start to kind of be told that everything is, you know, hinges on masculinity, and masculinity is being repressed by, women and feminists in society, and men need to kind of take back control, and that's kind of…

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James Bloodworth: when it gets more political, more conspiratorial, and… yeah, I mean, I encountered people basically advocate… who were advocating violence, in the sense that, you know, we should overthrow liberal governments and reinstate this kind of fascistic society where strong men are in charge of everything.

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James Bloodworth: That's the darkest… that's the darkest…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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James Bloodworth: side of…

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The Midlife Mentors: I think, the funny…

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James Bloodworth: Boot camps and stuff.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah. I think that's what I kind of… when I was saying it was frightening, I think there was this underlying… I could tell, instinctively, I didn't necessarily need to see the whole lot, but from some of these videos, you instinctively know that there's that dark political…

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The Midlife Mentors: element underlying it where, yeah, I can absolutely see how that would have inspired men to become very aggressive.

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The Midlife Mentors: Because I won'.

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James Bloodworth: Oh, yes.

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The Midlife Mentors: It's very aggressive.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, it's aggressive, it's both aggressive and brittle at the same time, so…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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James Bloodworth: it's very much a performance for a lot of these people. And what happens is, with the performance, is they expect other people to basically reaffirm the validity of the performance.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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James Bloodworth: On an individual level, that might mean some… some guy who's kind of putting on this… this kind of…

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James Bloodworth: Bluff persona is, like, an alpha male.

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James Bloodworth: Whereas, you know, he also expects other people to validate that, and kind of bow down behind… before him as kind of like a superior being or something. And when they don't, that can often lead to the person lashing out, because the ego is kind of challenged.

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James Bloodworth: That's something that, yeah, there have been manosphere or atrocities by people who've been part of the manosphere, like mass shooting… a mass shooting in the US, for example.

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James Bloodworth: Well, multiple mass shootings by people who, yeah, they've… that sense of ego that they are the alpha male has been kind of challenged by women, predominantly, or even other men, and they've lashed out at that.

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The Midlife Mentors: Wow. Wow. Wow. One of the central ideas, we've touched on it there, is the kind of, like, insecurity men feel, or maybe a feeling of being

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The Midlife Mentors: lost. How would you describe what that means in today's context?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, I, I think…

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James Bloodworth: it's something that means kind of feeling, like, discombobulated by the rapid change around us. I think that's something that you see manifest in not just the manosphere, but lots of things that are happening right now in politics, for example, in just people's general complaints. It feels kind of…

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James Bloodworth: In some respects, especially in… I mean, it's not the first time it's felt like that, but there are periods of history where I think people feel more like they're kind of,

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James Bloodworth: on the, kind of, surfing a kind of wave that they really have no, kind of, control over which direction they go. It's kind of…

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James Bloodworth: Economic changes over the past, kind of, few decades have seen a decline in, like, industrial work in… especially in certain parts of the country, in Britain and America.

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James Bloodworth: Where you have that kind of.

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James Bloodworth: that… a diminishment of that male identity around being a provider, around work, around, kind of, the respect that, kind of, certain working class jobs used to have. They don't really get that anymore. There's… the economy has moved away from, like, brute strength as, like, a really… a really important value towards things like,

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James Bloodworth: emotional…

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James Bloodworth: intelligence and, you know, being able to relate to other people in, like, a service economy for those, for those kind of jobs. So… so there's been that big shift of…

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James Bloodworth: Of what's valued by the economy. And at the same time, yeah, you've got…

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James Bloodworth: the male role as, yeah, as breadwinners, you know, and protector of women is not there anymore. Firstly, because women, you know, women's earnings on average are not quite as much as men's, especially as women get older, but they are kind of

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James Bloodworth: In many age groups, they are the same, or have even overtaken the earnings of some men in some industries.

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James Bloodworth: And yeah, and the protector thing, I mean, many women will say that they don't really want a protector often nowadays. You know, there are certain circumstances, it's contextual, but the idea of being a protector is kind of double-edged. It's, you know.

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James Bloodworth: women often had to deal with men who wanted to protect them from themselves and protect them from their choices, which basically meant dictate what they could do. So there's kind of been a backlash against that stuff as well. And it's just kind of…

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James Bloodworth: men feel lost, because it's like, what… what… how do I kind of orient myself in a world where those old certainties

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James Bloodworth: are no longer there. And that, that, I think, applies to everything from, you know, dating, like, how to ask someone out, to kind of how to…

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James Bloodworth: comport yourself, you know, in… in a long-term relationship, or just around other guys? Like, what… what is… what should I be doing to gain respect from these other men? Do I still need to be, like, tough and strong and have this woman on my arm, or… or does it mean something else now? It's confusing, basically.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, James, I really hear what you're saying, because… the reason I think it's…

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The Midlife Mentors: it's good to have, like, the male and the female perspective, actually, on our podcast, and actually when we're talking about something like this, is… I do see…

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The Midlife Mentors: how this has impacted men. From a female perspective, I can see how this has impacted men. Everything that you've just said, I echo and I agree with. And I also think it's… I feel great sadness, actually.

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The Midlife Mentors: for men that do feel lost, that don't necessarily know their place in society, and it makes me even more sad when I do see women

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The Midlife Mentors: belittling men, putting men down, there's a lot on social media that I see. Again, it might be because…

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The Midlife Mentors: of what I speak about, that I might see more of this, but I do hear from… I speak about this a lot on LinkedIn, where I'm sick of women always blaming the patriarchy. If I hear that word one more time, I think I might throw up. And just blaming men for absolutely everything, and there is this… also this toxic feminism

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The Midlife Mentors: that I see, where men are blamed for everything, where they are put down, and quite frankly, you know, I'm standing up against that narrative.

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The Midlife Mentors: I'm not saying some of these inequalities don't still exist, but I think men…

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The Midlife Mentors: need to be given a break. I feel like men need support. They don't need more division, they need more unity from women. This is how I feel.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, people need to learn to discriminate, better. I mean.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, there's a rush stroke, all mixed.

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James Bloodworth: People need to discriminate. Like, it's often said that people are… people are often accused of discrimination when they're often doing the opposite, and they're failing to discriminate between groups of people.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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James Bloodworth: I think that's, that's something… and online, obviously, is… you don't necessarily hear the… the voices you hear are often the shrillest… the most shrill voices. It's not necessarily the people who have the most, nuanced argument. I think it's… it's a mistake to kind of frame this stuff as, like, a gender war or something.

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James Bloodworth: But at the same time, I think there's… the manosphere, you know, is not something completely new, it does draw on…

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James Bloodworth: older ideas about women, that women should be, like, subservient to men, that, you know, even in my, like, my mum's lifetime were, like, still kind of fairly dominant in society, at least in terms of the culture, you know, of, like, shaming women for, kind of, having children out of wedlock, for example.

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James Bloodworth: You know, there's a bunch of stuff we could talk about.

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The Midlife Mentors: I'm interested, James, about your opinion on how much of an impact do you think

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The Midlife Mentors: The prevalence of easy-to-access

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The Midlife Mentors: pornography has been. So, I mean, I talk about it, like, when I was younger, you know, you had to go and hunt for magazines that someone had discarded in the bushes, but, you know, kids… kids have grown up with

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The Midlife Mentors: unfettered access to very, very hardcore acts, and that's… there's a lot of research saying that has skewed how boys and girls relate to each other, and…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, I'm just interested, like, how much of an impact you think that's had. And also, I'd be interested in, like, overlaying that, dating apps, which is maybe…

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The Midlife Mentors: Made dating more reliant on looks, rather than the whole, like, engagement and personality and the rest of it?

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James Bloodworth: With, yeah, I mean, the pornography question, I think it's, obviously, I think it has an impact on, like, kids accessing that stuff, because that's not something… like, obviously, smartphones and the internet have completely changed.

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James Bloodworth: the availability of that with respect to children. I mean, with the evidence in terms of adults, in terms of if it makes, like, men more misogynistic, I mean, it's quite… the evidence for that is sort of mixed, because it's…

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James Bloodworth: It's hard to kind of disentangle

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James Bloodworth: whether men who are already predisposed to be into that stuff seek out, like, abusive pornography, or the abusive pornography is making them that way, if you know what I mean. Like, it's not… it's not very easy to… from what I can gather, from the stuff I've looked at while I was researching the book, there's not really conclusive evidence that it's making

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James Bloodworth: people more, you know, sexually violent, firstly because if, you know, as the use of porn's massively gone up, sexual violence has actually decreased as a… like, violence in… we are a less violent society in general. The reporting of it's higher. There's more, kind of.

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James Bloodworth: There's more… people are more… it's still, you know, massively underreported, but people are more likely to report it than in the past. But violence is lower. Domestic violence is lower than it was in, say, the, like, 1950s or 1960s. It's lower today.

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James Bloodworth: But at the same time, you know, we have this much more easy access to pornography, so it's not quite as straightforward as saying, oh, porn makes people more violent, because we'd expect to see that in the same way that, you know, when I was growing up, it was all about, like, oh, do action films make people more likely to be violent? And there was this big, kind of, moral panic.

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The Midlife Mentors: Games, and yeah.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, about that stuff, and it transpired, you know, it's a bit more complicated. Sometimes it does, if someone's already predisposed to that, but yeah, it's not kind of that straightforward. I think what porn does do sometimes, and I… again, I still think it's not something children should have access to, because I think it can…

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James Bloodworth: when your kind of identity, when your sexuality's still kind of in flux to some extent, I think it's… it's not something you should be… should be exposed to. But I think even… even, like, the pornography adults are exposed to can distort their view of relationships, and that's… and the reason is because

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James Bloodworth: What's… there's been studies that show that the kind of… the way that it does that is the market for pornography is…

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James Bloodworth: The pornographers, the people who make the content online, most of the content online.

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James Bloodworth: they mainly cater to the 15% of men who pay for pornography. So, they're constantly trying to get those people, that small percentage of men, to part with their money. Like, most people who view it are just viewing, like, free stuff online, but the people who make the content are constantly trying to get those people to pay. And that 15% of men, and it's overwhelmingly men.

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James Bloodworth: They have more… they tend to have more extreme tastes than the average. And so what people see online a lot of the time, say, like.

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James Bloodworth: someone looks online and they find, like, videos of, like, men choking women out and stuff, or… or it could be a bunch of other stuff. They're seeing more of that, and it creates the impression that that's what the other people are into. That's what the opposite sex or the same sex are into, like, this is what people want.

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James Bloodworth: And then they can take that into relationships, and…

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James Bloodworth: It can screw up the relationships, it can screw up the people they're… they're trying to do that stuff with, because it's created this impression that this is what… well, this is what men or women are into, because there's this kind of deluge of…

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James Bloodworth: Of more extreme pornography online, catering to… trying to get people to part with their money, basically. Trying to cater to that.

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James Bloodworth: more extreme, 15% who do pay for it. So that's kind of, I think, how… when I first, like, learned about that, I find that, like, incredibly interesting, how it… how the kind of… that market distorts, our view of other people. And you can see it with…

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James Bloodworth: Something similar happens with politics as well, with social media, where the version of your opponents you see are these really extreme characters on, like, Twitter or Facebook or something. It's not really the average conservative, or the average liberal, or the average socialist. It's this very much more, extreme

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James Bloodworth: caricature who's kind of percolated to the top of that ecosystem. So yeah, I mean, that's one example, I think, of how porn can screw up men and women's, like, view of each other.

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James Bloodworth: Dating apps is different. Dating apps, I think, is just, as you say, it's something that…

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James Bloodworth: It tries to kind of make dating into this, like flicking through a catalogue or something, turn

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James Bloodworth: Each people… each person into… Like, a consumable product in this kind of catalog of flesh.

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James Bloodworth: Where that isn't really… like, it's just very reductive, like, that isn't really how dating works. They try to reduce it into, you know, this picture, then, like, these three or four, like, categories, like height, salary, or… whereas, like, the chemistry is much more, obviously, complex than that.

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James Bloodworth: And yeah, and then people… these… I mean, from speaking to some of these young guys who I…

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James Bloodworth: found who'd gone into the manosphere. They are going on, like, these apps, and then experiencing, like, rejection, and they think… they transpose that onto real life, and think, you know, because I don't… because I don't look like a male model, I'm never going to be able to… never be able to… gonna be able to get a girlfriend, and then they start to…

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, go online and look for answers, and sometimes that leads them down this rabbit hole of manosphere influencers.

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The Midlife Mentors: Mmm. Wow. That's, yeah, fascinating stuff you've just told us there, and it makes total sense.

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James Bloodworth: Sorry to kind of unload, like, so much stuff.

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The Midlife Mentors: No, no, it's… yeah, I mean, these are conversations that we have a lot, anyway, between us. Yeah, it spurred another question for me, is that, did you come across younger men that had gone quite far down this route, but then kind of had a…

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The Midlife Mentors: An awakening. Yeah, an awakening and turned away from it, or once they're… once they've gone down that rabbit hole, is it quite hard to turn them around?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, it's both, really. I mean, I met people who were still… I met people, you know, in, like, 2019 who'd got into some of the Manosphere stuff, like, pickup artist… pickup artist stuff, like, advice on dating.

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James Bloodworth: But then, when I met them, you know, a few years later, they'd gone much further down into the political… they'd become much more political.

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James Bloodworth: Rabid, kind of, MAGA supporters who had much more, stronger views about women's role in society, etc. But I did also meet people who… meet guys who, kind of, yeah.

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James Bloodworth: Came out of the manosphere, as they got older, as they kind of made female friends.

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James Bloodworth: as, kind of, their life improved, as they just read more, as they, kind of, got off the… logged off the internet and started to read different perspectives, just to try to gain a bit more empathy for… for the perspective of women. Yeah, I mean, some had counseling, there was things… people who were dealing with.

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The Midlife Mentors: Alright.

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James Bloodworth: Dealing with issues from their childhood around…

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James Bloodworth: dominant or abusive parents, and then had to kind of work through that stuff to kind of deal with the… this view they were projecting onto women. There was a lot of things like that. But it was… I mean, people… people gravitated towards it for different reasons. It was… there wasn't really one-size-fits-all, although there were certain common themes, I would say.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah. And we've looked at this so far, very much from the male perspective, to know what is what you specialise in, but actually we're saying… talking there about magma, I know, like, a big thing at the moment in the US in particular is this whole, like, trad wife movement that's coming in.

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The Midlife Mentors: That's being driven by females to be, like, at home, be the home raiser, so that's… yeah, it's quite… just quite an interesting perspective that I guess, in some way.

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The Midlife Mentors: is slightly matching to the manosphere. Do you have any thoughts on that?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, there is… there is that. I mean, I knew about that. I considered, you know, writing some stuff about it in the book. I met some people in Orlando, in Florida, who were…

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James Bloodworth: kind of part of that… that movement, but it's, I mean, it's pretty small.

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James Bloodworth: It's a pretty small movement. It's… the media likes it because it's, like, novel. It's something… something the New York Times can write about, and, like, oh, look at these, like, crazy women who are, you know, going against their own interests, or whatever. But it's not really… like, the difference with the Manosphere is the manosphere kind of already drew on these.

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James Bloodworth: currents in society that, in the fairly recent past, were quite mainstream. You know, the idea that it should be men who work and not women, the idea that…

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James Bloodworth: Men should be, you know, dominant all the time, or women should be kind of doing what their partners say, basically, controlled by men. Like, those ideas, you know.

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James Bloodworth: I mean, when my grand was younger, women weren't even allowed… but they were allowed, but it was really frowned upon for women to, like, go into a pub, for example.

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James Bloodworth: There was a lot of…

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The Midlife Mentors: Separate bars, isn't you, for men and women?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, there was a lot of social shaming. It was like, if you went in a pub as a woman, you were seen as, like, common, like, very common, and so the manosphere kind of picked up some ideas that are kind of still there, like, residually. Whereas the trad wife thing is…

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James Bloodworth: I don't really see it catching on, to be honest. I don't really see…

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The Midlife Mentors: Don't be getting any ideas. No, it's weird, isn't it? It's just that there's this balance that it's always kind of like, yeah, this trad wife thing, I'm just like, it's another form of ex… extremism, really, in the flip side.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, if it's about choice or something, someone chooses to.

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The Midlife Mentors: That's fine.

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James Bloodworth: at home, whether, like, male or female, while the other partner works, it's like, that's totally up to them, but that's kind of…

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James Bloodworth: I mean, most feminists, I think I've met who would agree with that. It's like, I've not really met many who would, like, who I've talked to or debated about this, who would say, no, there has to be some rule. The point is to have a choice. The point is to choose…

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The Midlife Mentors: Exactly, exactly.

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James Bloodworth: Choose what you do or not.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah. Yeah. For any of our listeners that have got, maybe, teenage sons, what might be some of the warning signs that they should be looking out for.

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James Bloodworth: I mean, if you have a 13-year-old, 14-year-old boy or something, and he starts calling himself an alpha male, then that's probably the, that's probably a good sign. Let's have a chat.

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The Midlife Mentors: Bye.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, just kind of… some of the… sometimes it's, like, men making, like, blanket statements about men and women, so just, like, these very, like, blanket essentialist statements, like, men are like this, women are like this. That's kind of when, I think.

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James Bloodworth: And in some sort of mild intervention to start with is needed, whether it be from friends or… or…

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James Bloodworth: any family members, but I mean, male family members, it can be quite effective if that person's already seen as a bit of a role model for the kid, or…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be different with different people, but…

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, there's…

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James Bloodworth: it's a bit like if someone was, you know, a racist or something, and they start making these very blanket statements about groups of people. It's,

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James Bloodworth: it tends to be kind of parroting something they've picked up online, very often, and that's kind of when you need to counter that, I would say, with, you know… yeah, sometimes even, like, restricting access to the online stuff, I think, for kids can be…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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James Bloodworth: Important, because it's…

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James Bloodworth: we call it content, like, we give it this benign, like, label content, but a lot of the time, it's actually advertising disguised as content. Like, these, like I said earlier, these masculinity entrepreneurs are trying to make people feel insecure, these…

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James Bloodworth: young boys, to sell them products. It's not just, kind of, lifestyle advice. It's a sales funnel, and a sales.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, it's a sales funnel.

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James Bloodworth: Again, we don't let, you know, we don't let, you know, cigarette… tobacco companies advertise cigarettes to anyone, let alone kind of directly to the handsets of, like, 13-year-old boys. But we still kind of think of people like the Tates of this world as, yeah, they're just kind of content creators, but they're not, really. They're running a business.

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The Midlife Mentors: Is there any backlash to any of that? Obviously, your book has raised awareness of all of that, but is… I mean, is there any backlash to this? Is there more awareness around this is what they're doing?

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The Midlife Mentors: And calling them out more.

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The Midlife Mentors: And less people are… less young boys are going to them, or is it just accelerating?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, there's backlash in terms of there's more of a conversation, especially after adolescence on Netflix. Yes. There's more of a conversation about, whether, you know, it's good to give children just, like, unmitigated access to cell phones, you know, smartphones and the internet, which I think in, you know, in the future, we'll think that that was kind of mad to do that, to just, like, give children that

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James Bloodworth: free access to, like, pornography, these, like.

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James Bloodworth: Snake oil sales… salesman just, kind of.

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James Bloodworth: pitching this, making them feel insecure at an age when, like, you already feel really insecure as a teenager, and then just, like, profiting from it. We'll come to see that as, like, mad, I think, that we…

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The Midlife Mentors: Agree.

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James Bloodworth: allowed that. I mean, there is, you know, there's more… there's a general backlash against Tate and whatever, you know, we've seen that, and there are these court cases.

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James Bloodworth: That are going on. But… but I think the more… and I think the manosphere, as it has been, as it is in my book, as I document it, that manosphere has kind of reached… reached… it did reach a high point. I don't think there's gonna be…

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James Bloodworth: you know, tape's gonna be even more popular anymore. I think it's… some people see through it, it's kind of… that thing is kind of… is burning itself out a bit. The more concerning thing, I suppose, is that some of the attitudes that prevail in the manosphere just kind of slowly seep into the mainstream. So, we see some of that happening already with

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James Bloodworth: so the idea of the 80-20 rule is, like, a common manosphere trope. It was in… it was mentioned in adolescence. It's this idea… everyone in the manosphere believes it. It's this idea that women are just chasing, like, 20% of elite alpha males and whatever, and they're not interested in any other men.

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James Bloodworth: And… Tinder and things like this reinforce that, because men go on Tinder and it's like…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yet.

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James Bloodworth: you know, if… there's so many… there's more men than women on Tinder, and it's like, if you're a woman, it's like, you may as well just, like, select the ones you're physically attracted to, because that's the criteria. But men transpose that to real life, and if you're on the internet too much, and you don't go out and see all of these couples who…

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James Bloodworth: often do, like, look very different, and there isn't kind of… you can't put some, like, 80-20 template on real life. They don't do that, and they start to believe this.

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James Bloodworth: idea, and a poll earlier this year from Ipsos, big polling company, found that a majority of, gen… I think it's 15- to 24-year-old men, Gen Z men, basically, believe, you know, slim majority believe the 80-20 rule is… is real, like, believe that's a real… a real thing.

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James Bloodworth: And it was… it was just that kind of cohort, so it was… it was only a slim majority, like 53%, I think it was. But that's a… that's directly a Manosphere idea that's become…

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James Bloodworth: become mainstream, whereas if you are someone older, they're gonna be like, no, of course, that's, like, preposterous to think that, but it's a very online… from what they're seeing on Instagram, from what they're seeing on dating apps, and from what they're hearing from the manosphere and people like Tate, that's become a mainstream

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James Bloodworth: idea. I mean, that's one. There are others as well, like opposition to feminism among younger men.

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James Bloodworth: The idea that women have the advantage over men in society now, that's something that only…

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James Bloodworth: that cohort of men believes compared to older groups, and it's something that's directly, kind of, cross-pollinated, or just kind of bled into mainstream society from the manosphere. So that's the more concerning thing, that you have more respectable figures articulating

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James Bloodworth: some of the views from the manosphere, just more… they're more… in a more presentable way, so it's not like Tate with his, like, shirt off, you know, bombast… like, berating people. It's just some more respectable figures. I mean, in America, you see that a bit with…

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James Bloodworth: you know, getting rid of Roe vs. Wade, and .

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes, yes.

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James Bloodworth: They're attacking, like, no-fault divorce now, so women shouldn't be allowed to divorce men, you know, without some…

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, unless he, like, has an affair or something.

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The Midlife Mentors: Wow.

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James Bloodworth: That's the next kind of target of some of these groups in politics in the Republican Party. So, I mean, that's when it gets…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, it's like.

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James Bloodworth: I think it's more dangerous.

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The Midlife Mentors: Dangerous. I was going to say the word dangerous, actually. Can I ask you something, James? Do you think that there has been any of this kind of real polarizing feminism that has contributed to this, I suppose.

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The Midlife Mentors: surge in the manosphere, you know, because I do see, like I said earlier, I do see…

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The Midlife Mentors: How some of the content from some women has… exaggerated.

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The Midlife Mentors: this rise in the manosphere, and kind of pushed it along. What's your thoughts on that?

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I mean, I think some of the, some of the rhetoric can be, like, unhelpful, and can lead… Yes.

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James Bloodworth: Not… I mean, a few years ago, really, so the end of the 2010s, I would say, like, 2018, 18, around that period, there could be, kind of, a lot of the, kind of, rhetoric from, like, certain online feminists, like, kill all men and stuff.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I think that stuff can be unhelpful, and kind of, if someone's already…

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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James Bloodworth: Having these thoughts about, well, maybe, you know, maybe they've listened to the manosphere, or watched some videos, oh, maybe it is true that, you know, society's controlled by women.

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James Bloodworth: then they go on Twitter and see, like, some, like, prominent, like, feminists saying, like, kill all men and stuff.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I think it can reinforce the impression that actually, you know, white men are the only people left to discriminate against, as I heard someone I interviewed say. But I think it's… I do think also that it's important not to… I don't think that's the main reason. I think it's something that kind of…

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James Bloodworth: that this is something that's already going on, there's already this backlash against, like, feminism, against liberal democracy, and there are these groups which, kind of, they don't really believe in equality at all. It's not kind of… it's not like someone made… it's not like feminists made them.

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James Bloodworth: They just already think themselves superior to women. They need someone to look down on to get, like, gain status from that. So I think it's important to differentiate, kind of, yeah, there was, there was this, especially, yeah, in the late 2000s, there was this really, kind of.

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James Bloodworth: Inflammatory, stupid, rhetoric from some feminists that kind of, oh, men are just, like, trash and stuff.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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James Bloodworth: That does contribute to radicalization, but it's not the, the main reason for it.

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The Midlife Mentors: Wrple to know, yeah.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, I would say. I didn't really find evidence for that. It, like, there's a difference between, like, the material conditions, you know.

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James Bloodworth: does… are men actually being killed by women… because women are saying that? No, but it's… it's kind of… if you're a young, sensitive man, it's probably, like, it's quite upsetting to, like, see people saying that, versus, you know, violence is happening because of some of these manners feel, like.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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James Bloodworth: Doctrines, like domestic violence, coercive control, like.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, things like that, and sometimes, you know, mass killing sprees on a few occasions.

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The Midlife Mentors: That's really helpful, thanks, James. James, this has been, just so fascinating and amazing, thank you.

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James Bloodworth: No worries, thanks for having me.

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The Midlife Mentors: What are you working on next?

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James Bloodworth: I don't know at the moment. I'm giving myself kind of 6 months to, figure that out, because I kind of just want to do some, I mean, I've been talking about the book, obviously, but going around doing that, but also just give some space to do some, like, journalism about a bunch of different things, and then go back into a bigger project, maybe early next year.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah. Fantastic. Take a breath.

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James Bloodworth: Yeah, basically. I enjoy the summer, it was, well, until recently, as the summer's, like, kind of…

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The Midlife Mentors: That's been lovely.

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James Bloodworth: I don't know, but…

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The Midlife Mentors: It has been lovely. Oh, thank you so much for Tom. We'll put a link to the book in the show notes, and yeah, thank you, James, it's been great. Thank you for writing this.

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James Bloodworth: No, thank you very much for reading it and inviting me on.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, you're welcome, thanks so much.

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James Bloodworth: Cheers.