Bodies of the Manosphere

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Matilda Médard 10840516

MA Thesis Comparative Literature June 14th_{, 2019}

University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Murat Aydemir

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(Short) Manosphere Glossary

Due to the specificity of some of the language used in the Manosphere, I decided to include a short Glossary preceding my thesis. All these definitions, unless otherwise specified, come from the online ‘Red Pill Wiki’ (this is hosted by redpilltalks.com). Other definitions come from the Glossary of a MGTOW website (mgtow.com/glossary/). The language has not been altered. I have made this selection as I sometimes use these words throughout my thesis, but also because they reflect the culture-specific jargon used in the Manosphere.

ALPHA: (1) an alpha male; (2) dominant behavior

ALPHA MALE: the highest ranking male in a group, a dominant male, a sexually attractive male BETA EYES / big eyes / big round eyes: Eyes that appear big. Not necessarily unattractive in a male. Sometimes also called bug eyes or frog eyes.

BETA: (1) noun A beta male; (2) adj Behavior that is submissive or weak

BETA MALE: A male who is second in rank to the alpha, A weak or submissive male, A sexually unattractive male

BETA PROVIDER/ BETABUX/ BETABUXX: A man who financially supports the woman in a

relationship. It could also be a man who emotionally supports her by being overly romantic, sometimes to the detriment of his personal boundaries and to the health of the relationship.

BETA PROVIDER GAME: Tactic used by men who wants sex. Basically the man jumps through hoops by going through multiple dates hoping that the woman will eventually reward him with sex. In a

relationship he will support the woman financially or emotionally.

BETA ORBITER: A man who hangs around a woman because he is attracted to them but he does not have sex with them.

BONE LAW: Refers to the fact that male aesthetics depends on the development of a man's bodily frame and facial bones mostly. For example according to bone law a receding chin is due to an underdeveloped jawbone.

CHAD: A physically attractive male, typically white. (Ethnic variants): Black – Tyrone; Arab - Chaddam ; Indian - Chatpreet; East Asian – Chang; Hispanic - Juan

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HYPERGAMY: Usually refers to a facet of evolutionary psychology regarding women especially in regards to their sexual partners, preferring to marry above their league in either physical beauty or wealth.

INCEL: Blend of involuntary celibacy. Refers to state in which a person who is willing and physically able to engage in sexual relations is unable to find a partner. The term applies to people who have not yet engaged in sex, those who have had sex at least once but are unable to find another partner, and those in a relationship with a partner who is unwilling to have sex.

LOOKSMAX/LOOKSMAXX: Maxing out one's own appearance.

MEWING: An informal term of pushing the tongue up hard against the roof of the mouth for long periods of time and/or or chewing hard falim gum. It is said to improve the appearance of the jaw and to give the user a stronger and more aesthetic looking profile.

MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way. “MGTOW espouse the abandonment of women and a Western society that has been corrupted by feminism. The existing system, to them, is impossible to amend, so MGTOWs are “going their own way.”“(Lin 78)

NORMIE/ NORMALFAG: An average everyday boring person. Sometimes used to refer to people that are "average" in looks in contrast to Chad and incel. A "high-tier normie" refers to person who is- above average in attractiveness (but not as attractive as Brad or Becky). A "low-tier normie" refers to a person who are below average in attractiveness.

NUMALE: A man who has feminist qualities.

OMEGA: A male who is the lowest in the social hierarchy. An incel male. Used to distinguish incels from beta providers.

ONEITIS (def from MGTOW glossary): Pronounced like the name of a disease. “One-Eye-Tiss”. The delusion that one woman is different, special, and therefore “the one”. Oneitis leads a man to pedestalize a woman without realizing this is an instant attraction-killer for her.

PUA: Initialism of Pickup Artist, originally coined from the belief that picking up women is a form of art. Used to describe the members of the seduction community.

STACY: A female counterpart of Chad. A white attractive female with an hourglass figure. WIZARD: A man who is a virgin until the age of 30. Wizardchan parodies a meme that if a man maintains his virginity until the age of 30 he's going to achieve supernatural powers like a wizard. BLUE PILL: A blue pill is a person who hasn't woken up to the fact that society discriminates against males, not females; to blue pill is to do the same.

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BLACKPILL: (definition taken from Rational Wiki1, rationalwiki.org/wiki/Manosphere_glossary) This is a series of ideas found in smaller portions of the manosphere. It is basically a fatalistic version of the red pill with the ideas of biological determinism at its core. The idea surrounding it is that the PUA game is a scam and that bad boys do not attract females; instead, the most important factor is looks and physical traits. Taking the "black pill" is synonymous with coming to the realization that those who lack such traits will never be attractive to females, regardless of PUA techniques used, and should just give up.

PURPLE PILL: Purple pill or purplepill is a term used in the manosphere to describe individuals who are neutral with regards to the gender wars. The purplepill movement tends to sit on the fence, being neither on the bluepilled side, nor redpilled side. It could also refers to either (1) being aware of red pill

philosophy but still holding out hope that blue pill-based solutions can work; or (2) the getting-together of red and blue pillers for debate.

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Introduction

In a video entitled “The Truth about Soyboys” (2017), popular Youtuber (and Infowars journalist) Paul Joseph Watson asks “Is soy-food consumption turning men into pussies, and making them more likely to adopt leftwing beliefs?” The derogatory term ‘soyboy’ describes men considered too effeminate and/or who advocate for feminism. Its origin is on body building forums and websites, where it refers to men who use soy protein to build muscle. Some believe this regimen leads to a hormonal imbalance fostering the production of more estrogen in the male body. However, the term quickly pollinated other corners of the internet. In Incel (involuntary celibates) groups and TRP (the Red Pill) forums, ‘soyboy’ went beyond the designation of a phyto-estrogenated male body. ‘Soyboy’ stretched to describe men who favor feminism, who are ‘beta’ (general term in the Manosphere which describes men whom women do not find attractive), and who smile too much or with their mouth open in a way that some participants regard as emasculate.

Some call this smile ‘soylent grin’, humorously referring to the 1973 dystopian film

Soylent Green. In Soylent Green, two policemen protagonists discover that the main food

corporation Soylent Industries makes a product out of ground-up human bodies. This fact is hidden from the general population with the help of a corrupt government. Similarly, ‘soyboys’ are thought to be ignorant to the exploitation of men under a feminist and/or liberalist dogma2_. They are oblivious consumers of a grander totalitarian force, who simultaneously feed it and let themselves be exploited.

2 In this logic, feminism/liberalism exploits men by simultaneously shaming men for what they

‘naturally’ are (reprimanding ‘natural’ hierarchies of domination) and blaming them for the exploitation of women/minorities.

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My research interest started with the figure of the ‘soyboy’. Not only was I amused by the layers of meaning packed into the creation of this online ‘meme’, but I was also constantly asking myself how seriously it should be taken3. I was surprised that in online spaces not respectively dedicated to discussions of the body (like body building forums), endless

conversations categorize men as ‘beta’ or ‘alpha’ based on detailed accounts of appearance, gait, or belief-system. Why would users, instead of simply stating ‘emasculate’ or ‘masculine man’, go to great length to create intertextual characters such as the ‘soyboy’? What do these online figures, built on mockery or appraisal of certain bodies, say about the construction and

performance of gender online? What does such a concern with the body online, where it is not at first glance present, reveal about the practice of embodiment for these anti-feminist groups?

The ‘soyboy’, for me, not only testifies to a revamped anti-feminist subculture, but shows the use of a language and imagery contingent on characteristics of the internet space. The ‘soyboy’, as well as other figures, reveals a mode of being online which is fundamentally

concerned with the body. To conceptualize the position of the body in online engagements of anti-feminist spaces, the figure of the ‘soyboy’, among others, requires analysis at the

intersection of ‘digital’ or internet studies and gender/embodiment theory.

From Cyberspace to #Gamergate

Discussions concerning ‘gender’ and ‘online spaces’ emerged tardily in social sciences and humanities oriented research in internet studies, as Foka and Arvidsson deplore in Digital

3 Surely, people don’t seriously think that feminism is actively emasculating men by encouraging soy-food consumption?

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Gender: A Manifesto (2014) (2). Citing research dedicated to gender online, Foka and Arvidsson

separate between ‘utopian’ and ‘dystopian’ scholars (2). In this classification, ‘Utopian’ scholars4 promote the idea of cyberspace as a liberating and emancipating space for gender. Because the user leaves their gendered5_{body behind the computer screen, online, they are able to reinvent} and play with gender identity, freed from offline stereotypes and bodily limitations. In parallel, cyberspace presents a potential for radical democracy (Foka and Arvidsson 2) – a space where users meet and engage on equal par, leaving behind their offline identities formed by

race/gender/ (dis)ability/age/class/location.

However, ‘dystopian’ critics6_{, Foka and Ardivsson tell us, reject this ‘cyberspace’ utopia} as the internet became a place of unchecked online harassment and what some saw as a “white male playground” (2). The ‘dystopian’ view thus points to the ways in which gendered

oppression and violence are effectively transposed online, if not how technology itself

encourages gender violence. With this view, there is not only a question of access to technology (online gender divide), but an interrogation of how that technology upholds gender/sex

differences. Foka and Arvidsson argue that, because nowadays Internet technology is

ubiquitous, new research should investigate “how the digital intermingle with the social in the production of gender” (3).

4 Benedikt 1991, McCaffrey 1991, Biocca 1992, Plant 1996, Schuler 1996, Wittig and Schmitz 1996, Castells 1997, Tsagarousianou et al. 1998, Plant 1996b, Stone 1995, Turkle 1995, Rommes and Van Oost 2001, Graham 2001, Jimroglou 2001

5 Foka and Arvidsson focus on gender, but the same thing could be said concerning categorizations of race, class, sexuality and (dis)ability among others.

6 Scott et al. 2001, Roberts and Parks 2001, Inayatullah and Milojevic 1999, Ferganchick-Neufang 1998, Kramarae and Taylor 1993, Herring 1996, Sutton 1996, Reagle 2013, Camp 1996

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I would add to Foka and Arvidsson’s distinction between ‘utopian’ and ‘dystopian’ scholars that there is a tendency to uphold a dichotomy between real and virtual in internet research. In the case of ‘utopian’ scholarship, that separation is clear – the real (offline) as grounded, embodied, and the virtual (online) as disembodied and free. In the case of

‘dystopian’ scholarship, that distinction is maintained in the sense that the online is seen as a transposition of the offline. For me, this distinction fails to address how we (humans) are changed by technology.

With regards to my interest in what happens to the body online, I stress that the

real/virtual binary upholds another: that of mind/body (Brians 123; White, “Networked Bodies” 607). As Michelle White and other feminist scholars have pointed out, utopian views of

cyberspace are deeply rooted in the Western tradition of somatophobia (White, “Networked Bodies” 606; Threadcraft 2). White, who retraces Internet Studies within the journal Feminist

Media Studies, thus calls for feminist analyses to specifically look into gender and notions of the

body online (White, “Internet Studies” 96).

Similarly, Ben Light called for academic research for internet studies and gender regarding heterosexual masculine identities (247). Light acknowledges that research has been conducted to understand how gender online or cyberspaces was reimagined or handled, but he points to the lack in research on digital gender looking into heterosexual masculine identities – something which should be done, he says, not only because ‘gender’-anything research should also look into heterosexual masculine identities7_{, but also because heterosexual masculine} 7 Heterosexual masculine identities are often, as pointed out by gender researchers, ignored in discourse surrounding gender because they are seen as the ‘norm’ or ‘unsexed’. It is thus

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identities, he argues, have been evolving along digitally networked publics into what he coins ‘networked masculinities’ (252 – 253).

The topic of ‘networked masculinities’ connected to online anti-feminism has garnered much academic attention in light of the event of Gamergate. In 2014, Eron Gjoni posted a story (along with screenshots of Facebook conversations) of his ex-relationship with woman-game-developer Zoe Quinn, accusing her of using her romantic relationships with gaming journalists to further her career (Massanari 334). In response, defenders of Gjoni used the hashtag

#gamergate (circulated massively) to accuse a restriction on freedom of speech and questionable journalism ethics in US gaming culture (Marwick and Caplan 547). However, this ‘movement’ also showcased massive networked harassment taking the form of doxing (publishing private information such as living address), revenge porn, cyber-stalking, and death threats (among others) (Marwick and Caplan 545). Moreover, disgruntled gamers not only targeted Quinn, but with the help of Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) groups, would organize and network to

“systematically attack feminists, female video game critics, and developers” (Ging & Siapera 547). Following #Gamergate, several academics have called for research on anti-feminism online and new media platforms, as well as how algorithmic politics encourage or enable toxic

subcultures8_.

is important to stress that heterosexual masculine identities are ‘gendered’ in the context of gender studies.

8 For more reading on this, see Adrienne Massanari’s article “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures” (2017) and Ging and Siapera’s contribution to the “Special issue on online misogyny” (2018) by Feminist Media Studies.

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The Manosphere

#Gamergate also spurred academic interest in the Manosphere. The Manosphere is a

portmanteau word combining ‘man’ and ‘blogosphere’, used by both participants/users as well as critics. It is made up of a collection of various websites, forums, threads and videos. As the word suggests, it is an online space tended by men and addressed to (cisgender) men. This “loose confederacy of interest groups” (Ging 2) are united on fostering a sense of community directly opposed to the rhetoric of contemporary Western feminism and a sense of identity mostly based on heterosexuality and whiteness (Ging and Siapera 516-517), but also what Debbie Ging calls ‘Beta masculinity’ (3) and ‘RedPilled’ masculinity (Nagle 2017 83; Ging 3).

‘Beta masculinity’ is masculinity mobilized under the banner of victimhood facing what they believe to be a feminist totalitarianism which relegates ‘unattractive’ men to the fringes of society (Ging 13). Similarly, in his book Angry White Men (2015), Michael Kimmel coins

‘aggrieved entitlement’ to describe the language unifying men’s rights activists and the Manosphere (118).

In their study on the Manosphere, Marwick and Caplan cite Blais and Dupuis-Deri’s conceptualization of masculinism as the founding belief-system of the manosphere: “Since men are in crisis and suffering because of women in general and feminists in particular, the solution to their problems involves curbing the influence of feminism and revalorizing masculinity” (546). A return to a more untouched and preserved and more ‘true’ masculinity, in this case, is bred with sexist (and anti-feminist) beliefs. That is to say, this masculinist belief-system is said to be a reaction of women’s rights and power advancement in Northern America and Europe.

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Although Many associate and talk about the manosphere as an online continuation of the off-line Men’s Rights Movement or Men’s Rights Activism of the seventies and eighties (Schmitz & Kazyak 2; Marwick & Caplan 545), others have also argued for research which looks at the specific online nature of this movement (Nagle 83). The Manosphere, as Angela Nagle notes in Kill All Normies (2017), is radically different from even the most anti-feminist of pre-internet men’s rights activists (84). Post-2010 online anti-feminism, she argues, is strikingly more verbally violent thanks to the anonymous nature of many websites (84), and more right-wing, oftentimes sharing common language and metaphors such as the ‘red pill’ with the Alt-right (85)9_.

I refer to ‘red pilled’ masculinity as masculinity which rallies around what I call the ‘narrative of the Red Pill’ (this will be addressed in the first chapter). What some call the ‘metaphor’ of the Red Pill is central to the Manosphere (Nagle 86). Coming from a reference to

The Matrix (1999), the ‘metaphor’ in this case stipulates that Feminism is the Matrix that forces

men into submission. Taking the ‘Red Pill’ implies seeing this as the truth, and rebelling against it.

Several groups and websites gather under the Manosphere. These include, but are not limited to10_{: ‘Pick up Artists’ (PUAs) (heartiste.wordpress.com, returnofkings.com), ‘Men’s} Rights Activists’ (/r/mensrights)11_{, ‘Involuntarily Celibates’ (Incels) (Loveshy.com, Sluthate.com,}

9 While in the Manosphere, the ‘red pill’ describes “their awakening from the blissful mind prison of liberalism into the unplugged reality of societal misandry” (Nagle 85), the ‘red pill’ for the Alt-right describes a similar process in a racialized world. However, the separation is not always so discernable. I will refer back to connection between the Manosphere and the Alt-Right in my conclusion.

10 Some of these websites have been de-activated or blocked since the beginning of this research project. 11 ‘/r/’ refers to this forum being a Reddit subthread.

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/r/braincels,/r/incel, /r/PUAhate, and 4chan’s /r9k/)12_{, /r/TheRedPill, as well as ‘Men Going Their} Own Way’ (MGTOW) forums, websites, and dedicated Youtube channels (Nagle 89; Ging 7). As Nagle points out, the Manosphere is home to a heterogeneous, at times clashing group of users (84). For example, PUAs and Incels tend to oppose each other – the former advocating for Alpha masculinity (being able to ‘pick up’ women) and the latter rallying around a shared sense of Beta masculinity (being rejected by women).

Specific identities regrouping the Manosphere have been studied in the social sciences. Debbie Ging’s “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere” (2017) addresses the various tropes anti-feminist spaces have created themselves and makes the very needed analysis of how these new tropes, specific to online spaces, do not necessarily coincide with traditional forms of hegemonic masculinity formerly present off-line (11). Similarly, Lin’s article “Antifeminism Online: MGTOW” (2017) offers a great anthropological look into the construction and communication within the MGTOW (masculinist separatist online community vaguely affiliated with MRA’s), and focuses on how antifeminist rhetoric is created according to the philosophy of MGTOW. These articles understand the Manosphere at large under the concept ‘networked’ identities and actions (harassment, cyberbullying, etc).

Focussing on the creation and circulation of discourse in the Manosphere, scholars point to the creative and ever-renewing jargon and visual cues used among these groups. The “red pill terminology” (8), as coined by Ging, unites the Manosphere despite group differences. Looking back at the PUA/Incel clash, these groups still share a deep misogynistic world-view despite prescribing different ‘cures’.

12 This group was made famous after student and ‘Incel’ Elliott Rodger’s University of California Santa-Barbara school-shooting (Nagle 94).

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Online Embodiment

However, much of the academic research on the Manosphere, coming from the social sciences, focuses primarily on modes of communication and group-formation, for instance on how anti-feminist discourse is circulated, or explaining what that discourse consists of. I therefore wish to add to this academic literature by focusing instead on what the position of the ‘body’ or

‘masculine body’ is in the Manosphere. The question at stake is how bodies, texts, and online platforms interact: how these are informed and shaped by one another.

I thus turn to what I see as an extremely valuable academic work for this thesis: Jenny Sunden’s Material Virtualities: Approaching Online Textual Embodiment (2003). Sunden writes

Material Virtualities after a two-year field work in WaterMOO13_{. WaterMOO is a text-based,} collaborative server where users can interact with each other simultaneously and create a textual world (homes, characters, jobs, movements, dialogues, etc) (Sunden 21).

For this research, Sunden asks what happens to the body in the midst of what she sees as a “doubleness that characterizes online modes of being” (3). This doubleness, Sunden argues, is rooted in a distinction between an embodied self, the person typing behind the computer screen, and what Sunden calls a textual I, the character coming to life through typed text in WaterMOO (3). There is a doubleness in the online condition because the embodied self and the textual I are distanced through the act of typing and the computer apparatus. However, they are not fully

13 This sort of program is based on the model of MUDs (Mutli User Dungeons), online role-playing, text-adventure computer games (Sunden 20).

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separate in the sense that the textual I acts as an extension of the embodied self, and the embodied

self an incarnation of the textual I.

Departing from the online condition of doubleness, Sunden wants to know through which mechanisms the online body becomes gendered14_{. Rather than seeing WaterMOO as an} online virtuality which unleashes boundless gender play, Sunden argues that the textuality of WaterMOO is “saturated with the politics of the sexually specific, situated, and mediated body [Sunden’s emphasis]” (182). Online, where the gendered/sexed body of the user is not directly visible, the body becomes a central question for users. This demonstrates, for Sunden, the strong inscription of the material into the virtual.

Material Virtualities is extremely useful for the aims of my research because its approach

complicates the real/virtual binary present in a lot of cyberspace research. Sunden understands both typist and computer technology, the physical and the textual, as interacting and

overlapping intimately in a way that reveals the textual and ‘cyber’ as already embodied. Sunden rejects the utopian lens casting cyberspace as placeless and disembodied, yet maintains that the imaginary has a strong capacity to act on physicality (182).

Departing from the theoretical framework of Material Virtualities, I also wish to extend the relevance of this book by combining Sunden’s arguments with objects that do not come from a computer game. Danah Boyd rightfully reproaches Sunden for talking about online bodies, but talking exclusively of the bodies of WaterMOO (140). Boyd asks how Sunden’s argument of material virtuality, the text as embodiment, would work in cases like online

14 Sunden discusses mechanisms through which the body becomes gendered and/or sexed. For her, these processes are hardly indistinguishable in online spaces (she adopts a Butlerian view whereby gender/sex are both performative processes). I will come back to this discussion at the end of the first chapter.

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blogs/journals where the text stands on its own (141). The objects I have picked come from places of the internet that are not respectively intended to act as virtual worlds like WaterMOO was. I thus use Sunden’s concepts of textual embodiment and online bodies with precaution, tracking the moments when these are applicable or not, and whether my objects complicate them.

Bodies of the Manosphere

The central question of this thesis is: How does the position of the body as well as the practice of online embodiment in the Manosphere complicate or nuance the binary of real/virtual?

Following Sunden, I argue that the internet, of which the Manosphere is a sub-culture, instead of offering liberation from embodiment, manifests a reverse effect – the return and obsession with flesh in relation to gender within this subculture. In the Manosphere, internet spaces (in this case through social networking sites, forums, and Reddit subthreads) enable the creation of new language and objects (memes for instance) dedicated to articulating the

masculine body. These articulations of the male body are deeply invested in recycling

conservative dichotomies of the masculine/feminine. Most importantly, if we are to break away from the virtual/real dichotomy, I argue that we need to talk of online bodies and not just

representations, caricatures or tropes. In short, the Manosphere mobilizes the body and creates new forms of embodiment in a way that could only be done through the internet.

Although my research interest began with the ‘soyboy’, seeing at it is mostly used as an online insult, I turn to different objects for the advancement of my thesis: what I call the

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levels: starting with the narrative of the Red Pill, which overarches the Manosphere, in order to build on the more niche objects in the second chapter. Using these objects, I ask what happens to the body when it comes online. Coming from a feminist viewpoint, this research would by no means condone the language and rhetoric circulating on these platforms. However, this

research also hopes to look into that language is generated, negotiated and circulated, and thus help to understand contemporary manifestations of anti-feminism.

The first chapter is dedicated to unpacking the position of the body within what I call the narrative of the ‘Red Pill’. In this chapter, I explain why I use the term narrative rather than metaphor. ‘Swallowing the red pill’ comes from the movie The Matrix (1999). In the

Manosphere, it describes the process of becoming aware of the (believed) political and economic hegemony of feminism in liberal democracies. I first spend some time explaining the position of the body in The Matrix. Through this lens, I then unpack how this position is translated in the Manosphere, specifically r/TheRedPill. I make references to social sciences research from Shawn Van Valkenburgh and J.B. Mountford that track at ‘strategies’ of ‘sexual game’ in the

Manosphere within the respective r/TheRedPill and ReturnofKings.com. I then shift the attention to the language of the ‘Red Pill’, which, as Debbie Ging notes, has permeated most if not all platforms affiliated with the Manosphere. Looking at that language will allow me to bring back the discussion on the body via Judith Butler’s concept of performativity. Sunden herself used this concept to describe the way in which gender acts online, although she nuances it by saying that online, there is always a mediation via technology.

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Adding to my arguments in the first chapter, I turn to the meme ‘Virgin vs. Chad’ in order to further complicate the relationship between text, body and technology. In this chapter, I push from a general position of the body within the narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ to that of a specific mode of embodiment in the ‘Chad’. I begin by unpacking the specific meme ‘Virgin Walk vs. Chad Stride’ in order to relate memetics to literacy, using theory from Ryan Milner and Limor Shifman. That is to say, memes require understanding of a specific, vernacular language which is multimodal (combining visual, textual, and intertextual components and references). I then connect this understanding of memetics as literacy to the ‘Chad’ as an embodied figure. I do this by using four different posts from the 4chan forum /r9k/ where the author identifies as ‘Chad’. Using Sunden, who distinguishes three different kinds of online bodies, I discuss the position of ‘Chad’ between an imaginative body and an illusion of the real.

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Chapter One: Swallowing Pills

I first heard of ‘the Red Pill’ outside of its reference in The Matrix in 2016, when a recently-released documentary under that name stirred much controversy within the feminist hubs of the internet I was visiting. In The Red Pill (2016), Cassie Jaye conducts a series of interviews and meet-ups with Men’s Rights Activists (MRA’s), and gradually showcases her shifting position from liberal (white) American feminism to pro-Men’s rights. The title of the film acts as a reference both to the online groups and forums under the heading of ‘the red pill’ and to

filmmaker and main character Jaye’s journey, who herself can be understood to take or swallow the ‘red pill’ in the making of the documentary.

The ‘red pill’ always has a double meaning, referring both to the online spaces dedicated to anti-feminism/men’s rights movement and to the act of taking a ‘red pill’ (becoming exposed to the alleged evil totalitarianism of feminism). That is to say, entering online spaces dedicated to men’s rights activism and antifeminism is, as those spaces claim, effectively enacting an ideological shift, which counters the presumed mainstream and monolithic ideology of liberal feminism/progressivism.

I call this the ‘narrative of the Red Pill’ as opposed to a ‘metaphor’ (Nagle 83) because it represents a change of state (Schmid 2). There is a before and an after being exposed to the truth. Moreover, as I argue in this chapter, the term the ‘Red Pill’ is not rhetorical (metaphors usually serve that purpose) and does not solely serve as a stylized linguistic act (Herman et al. 305) – it is not a mere ‘story’ which deals with a series of events, but the way it is told calls on

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larger perceptions of social reality. Although the reference to The Matrix (1999) is metaphorical, taking a similar structure of narration, the ‘Red Pill’ online is a narrative.

The narrative of ‘having taken the red pill’ or ‘being redpilled’ takes its roots in The

Matrix movie (1999). The Matrix sets up a world where a giant AI computer controls the human

race. Humans’ bodies are shackled while their minds are hooked to a simulation, oblivious to the truth. The main character Neo, a hacker who repeatedly encounters the phrase ‘the matrix’ in his online searches, is offered a choice between a blue pill and a red pill by alleged terrorist Morpheus. Taking the red pill would expose Neo to the Matrix, “the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth” (in Morpheus’s words), while the blue pill would “end the story”.

In the manosphere, taking ‘the red pill’ signifies becoming aware of the alleged evil omnipresence of feminism or of liberal beliefs (these two are often merged) in Western societies, which is leading to the decadence in Western values and the impoverishment of men. Loyal to its cinematic reference, the ‘Red Pill’ narrative also implies a not so direct or harmless

conclusion: that feminist/liberal ideology is sedating people into believing they live in another kind of world, and bars them from seeing the truth of the enslavement of men.

It could be easy to discard the presence of ‘the red pill’ as just another ‘weird’ part of the internet by conflating it with flat-earthers or illuminati-lizard-people-controlling-us theories. However, I wish to propose that, taken seriously, the ‘Red Pill’ narrative mobilizes the body in a way which creates a specifically embodied kind of digital literacy. That is to say, the language of the Red Pill creates bodies (alpha, beta, chad, cuck, soyboy, etc.) and offers those who ‘swallow the pill’ (ie. adopt the language and worldview) an escape from the Matrix. The Red Pill

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ideology is embodied in the sense that it passes ‘through the body’ (the act of swallowing) and in the sense that the body of the ‘red-pilled’ body becomes a vessel for ideological warfare.

Through this process of ideological embodiment, I see the phenomenon of the ‘return of the body’ online which Sunden alludes to (72). Much like the users of WaterMOO who create characters online in order to appear in the game as bodies (something done exclusively by text in WaterMOO), websites and forums of the Red Pill are saturated with textual (as well as visual) renditions of bodies. Sunden pushes for an understanding of not only ‘bodies as texts’ (textual renditions of the body), but the ‘text as body’ (20). That is to say, in WaterMOO, users not only create characters that are textual, but interact with each other and the virtual world of

WaterMOO through these typed-bodies (Sunden 90-91). This is where I locate what Sunden calls textual embodiment: bodies of characters are not only written, but the user embodies them in a textual way in order to exist in WaterMOO, something which is also always material because it requires the material body of the user typing their online bodies.

But how does the Red Pill narrative relate to textual embodiment? In order to make the connection between textualizations of bodies and online embodiment (and specifically the gendered/sexed dimension of these two), Sunden brings up Judith Butler’s theory of

performativity. Similar to ‘offline’, the subject is constituted through gender/sex in the world of WaterMOO (Sunden 29, 53). But how does the relationship between ‘textual’ and ‘bodily’ play out in the Red Pill, and how does it nuance notions of performativity?

In the first part of this chapter, I focus on the position of the body in The Matrix. The story of The Matrix makes the body at once the locus of oppression by evil AI and the site of rebellion by swallowing of the red pill and restoring the body using technology. I then translate

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this position of the body in The Matrix to The Red Pill communities. I do this by using research from the social sciences by Shawn P. Van Valkenburgh and Joseph Mountford to track the ways in which Red Pill sites are dedicated to developing sexual strategies for ‘picking up’ women and gaining power through physical means. Then, using Debbie Ging’s work on the Manosphere, I look at the relationship between body and language to discuss the concept of performativity in the narrative of the Red Pill.

Swallowing Ideology

In The Matrix, an giant AI computer network enslaves humanity and feeds on the bodies of humans to generate electricity. In order to avoid rebellion, the AI creates the Matrix, a virtual-reality simulation world in which enslaved humans are experiencing life without knowing their fate.

Neo, the main character, is living in this simulation, working in a stereotypically modern cubicle office during the day and computer hacker by night. His hacking hobby sets up the tension at the incipit of the film. Something, or someone, is sending him messages via his laptop, repeating the word ‘matrix’. After being discovered both by the small group of humans rebelling against the Matrix as well as the Matrix ‘cops’, Neo meets Morpheus, the leader of the human rebellion. Morpheus presents him with a choice between ingesting a blue pill or a red pill: “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

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Neo swallows the red pill, which exposes him to the truth of the Matrix. He wakes up in an AI-built womb, frail and shaven, in pre-natal fluid, attached to metal wires that act as

umbilical cords. His body, which until this point he had thought of as functioning, and most importantly, his own, turns out to be vulnerable and illusory. Neo faints shortly after his escape from the AI womb. This scene is important for my argument because the underlying choice in taking a pill is one of embodiment. Morpheus says: “One cannot be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself”. Being exposed to the Matrix, seeing the world for what it truly is, requires swallowing a pill.

In “Bodies in/and The Matrix” (2004), Deirde C. Byrne notes that the film presents the body as the locus of enslavement to AI: “Within the Matrix, the human body is not, as in humanist paradigms, an instrument of personal autonomy: rather, it is a tool, a mechanism for the perpetuation of domination” (100). Fundamentally, the Matrix asserts its power by keeping the body sufficiently alive to shackle it and reap its energy.

At the same time, the body is the site of awakening, reconstruction, and finally of

overcoming the Matrix for Neo, via the help of cybernetic technologies (Byrne 102). Neo ‘wakes up’ from the Matrix in a scene that acts as a spectacle of birth (Byrne 98). It will become again an “instrument of personal autonomy”, as Neo is first rebuilt using technology. Neo begins his training in martial arts and other virtual-bodily activities via virtual reality programs plugged to his brain. Through technology, Neo regains control of his body, and is able to navigate within the Matrix, even controlling the Matrix’s spatial and temporal dimensions at his will.

Byrne notes that The Matrix remains technophilic (98). Although technology oppresses humans, it also enhances the body’s capacities for resistance to the ‘bad’ AI. For Byrne, The

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Matrix conceptualizes the body in posthuman terms – as an instrument (Byrne 98), a ‘prosthesis’

(Hayles 3). The subject’s control or misuse of the body determines their position as victim or rebel to the matrix.

The Body Commodified

The manosphere uses a similar narrative unfolding as in The Matrix. First, you are subject to the domination of feminism’s hegemony. By entering ‘Red Pill’ sites and forums, and swallowing the red pill, you can begin to free yourself from the matrix. The male body is both the

subordinate of feminism’s hegemony and a potential site of resistance, if the subject swallows a pill. In that sense, ‘swallowing the red pill’, becoming aware of feminism’s believed take-over of the Western world, implies that ideology must first pass through and be absorbed by the body in order to be completely integrated. Turning back to one of my points of interest in this research, the ‘soyboy’ figure posits that the consumption of soy is associated with feminist ideology coupled with an increase in estrogen hormones; ingesting the red pill serves as the cure for the ‘soyification’ of the male subject.

The mobilization of the masculine body as a site of reconstitution has been studied in social sciences. In “Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere” (2018), Shawn P. Van Valkenburgh conducts a content analysis of subreddit r/TheRedPill’s (r/TRP) sidebar. r/TRP shows similar narrative framing to The Matrix. On the one hand, r/TRP is concerned with exposing the truth of feminism’s exploitation of men “which enables women to get what they want out of sexual relationships and reduces men’s capacity to attain their own

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desired sexual outcomes” (Van Valkenburgh 6). On the other, the sidebar offers a strategy of resistance and liberation for men called ‘sexual strategy’.

Van Valkenburgh notes that r/TRP’s devotion to ‘sexual strategy’ or ‘game’ takes its roots in evolutionary psychology (8). r/TRP directly quotes and bases its arguments in evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology understands human behavior as fundamentally motivated by gene reproduction, and claims that males and females have evolved along different paths (Van Valkenburgh 8). Among other things, r/TRP asserts that women behave according to an ‘Alpha fucks, Beta bucks’ principle: engaging in sexual intercourse with men who provide ‘good’ genes, and marrying men who provide financial stability (Van Valkenburgh 9).

However, r/TRP does not restrict itself to observing patterns of behavior and psychology to a supposed evolutionary root, but posits that “men can become attractive to women by mimicking alpha behavior and appearance” (Van Valkenburgh10). By using evolutionary psychology to develop strategies for sexual dominance, r/TRP is heavily invested in discussions of the body.

Van Valkenburgh shows that manosphere websites and forums falling under the umbrella of ‘Red Pill’ oftentimes emphasize the modification of the physical body as a primary strategy for sexual prowess. This is done, as Van Valkenburgh notes, not only through physical fitness and weight lifting (11), but also through “holding frame” (13), rejecting their own and their partner’s display of emotions and vulnerabilities. Similarly, in the article “Topic Modeling The Red Pill” (2018), Joseph Mountford finds that one of the themes running through the manosphere is the “homosocial policing of masculinity through self-help and lifestyle content”

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(4). In his analysis of the prescriptive masculinity found in ReturnOfKings.com (RoK) (a prominent MRA website), “Goals and Growth” was the most common classification present in RoK, which was not only strongly associated to “Pick Up”15 but also “Exercise” (9).

This devotion to bodily improvement is also something that I noticed in my own

exploration of manosphere sites. On redpilltalk.com, for instance, a subforum called ‘Ratings’ is used as a place to exchange ratings between participants (see Figure 1). These ratings are done according to various criteria, ranging from the sound of one’s voice (where users send voice clips for others to listen to), to bone structure, hair, eyes, ‘eye area’, genitalia, clothes, scars, ethnicity, chin, etc. This is usually done on a scale of one to ten (out of ten). Sometimes, users will ask the forum to rate someone else, or compare a single person within a group of people on a picture. Users sometimes upload a picture of a woman (love interest) and ask the forum to rate her.

Similarily, the blog “Chateau Heartiste” (see Figure 2) provides readers with elaborate charts and methods to assess their ‘sexual market value’. James C. Weidman, who runs the blog “Chateau Heartiste” found on Wordpress, argues that feminism has caused a decline in Western civilization by allowing for women’s economic freedom and miscegenation (Nagle 89).

Alongside promoting ideas bordering white supremacy, “Chateau Heartiste” offers ‘Alpha assessment submissions’. Here again, the body is a tool for rebellion facing a perceived disempowerment – the blog is the ‘technology’ which will rehabilitate it.

15 This is a reference to the Pick Up Artists group in the Manosphere. ‘Pick up’ refers to strategies employed to convince/coerce women into sexual intimacy/relationships.

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Figure 2: Chateau Heartiste Blog’s Alpha Assessment Submissions page.

Van Valkenburgh explains the rating of the body in r/TheRedPill’s sidebar via the quantification of Sexual Market Value as a logic of neoliberalism transferring market economy onto the material body, “as it privileges scientific rationality and integrates common economic discourses involving meritocracy, rationalization, quantification, and market-based exchange into its seduction ideology” (16). Van Valkenburgh goes even further in saying that this

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‘scientific rationality’ which is understood in r/TheRedPill’s sidebar as evolutionary psychology, could be integrally linked to neoliberal economics (16). For Van Valkenburgh, the extreme example of r/TheRedPill’s sidebar as a resource for men to understand the ‘sexual market’ and determine and improve their ‘sexual market value’ is revealing of a link between the method and findings of evolutionary psychology and capitalist ideology in the 21st century. That is to say, the deterministic argument made in evolutionary psychology concerning the competition for gene reproduction adopts a capitalistic economic model of human behavior.

In r/TRP, ROK.com, and the manosphere at large, this is translated as ‘the sexual marketplace’, whereby people ‘consume’ sex and bodies are transformed into commodities to be sold or offered on that market. As follows, one can improve their Sexual Market ‘value’ by changing physical appearance, adopting certain bodily behaviors, and thus gain social status (Van Valkenburgh 15). The commodification of the body established by the ‘Sexual Marketplace’ encourages the modification of the body. Within the grander narrative of ‘the red pill’, this modification serves as a political rebellion against the matrix of feminism/liberalism. Users encourage each other to exercise, talk or stand in a certain way, to adopt certain bodily behaviors so as to increase their ‘sexual market value’.

The ‘Red Pill’ is effectively a pill in the pharmaceutical sense as it precipitates a bodily change. This has been taken up to extreme matter-of-factness by Alex Jones’s Infowars store, which alongside selling ‘Alpha Power’, ‘DNA Force Plus’ and ‘Super Male Vitality’ supplements in the form of ingestible pills, now also offers “The Real Red Pill” (which are dietary

supplement capsules). Among other things, the ‘Real Red Pill’ promises to “support optimal cognitive function” and “healthy hormone balance” (all for the modest price of $59.95!) using

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various vitamins and minerals. It seems that there is some truth to Van Valkenburgh’s argument that r/TheRedPill is a product of neoliberal politics if all it takes to escape the totalitarian rule of feminism is to ingest a pill.

Moreover, this intense policing of the body and appeals to modify the body surprisingly recall more feminine notions of gender and embodiment. Traditionally, the feminine is thought of as more embodied, if not entirely a slave to her body, in Western philosophy (Threadcraft 3). This follows according to a division of mind/body where the mind is categorically perceived to be more human, more agential (Butler, Gender Trouble 17). As follows, women’s bodies become sites of modification and discipline, but also sexual consumption (objectification) (Threadcraft 12).

If masculinity, as shown in the ‘red pill’ has become concerned with a feminine kind of disciplining and modification, what does this say about contemporary gender differences? Although this does not strictly fall in the scope of my research, there seems to be a relationship between the commodification of masculinity and neoliberal politics of individualization and market rationalization. Gender thereby becomes something marketable or transformable according to market values of optimization, regardless of which specific gender the individual has or chooses. However, within the scope of my research, I see a connection between internet technology and the articulation of bodies as modifiable, especially as the internet invites for a textualization of the body.

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Red Pill Language

I have discussed that the Red Pill makes use of explicit tools for measurement (SMV, Rate Me) of the body. Via these tools and strategies, the body becomes the site of reconstruction. I see another layer in this reconstructive process of ‘taking the red pill’, which lies in language. The narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ leads to a textualization of the body – the body becomes subject to intense scrutiny as it is suspected of being part of the matrix.

In her theorization of anti-feminist online masculinities, Ging argues that the ‘red pill terminology’ is largely homogenized throughout the Manosphere (8). According to Ging, although this language stems from r/TRP, it leaked into MRA and MGTOW groups, and has become present even in spaces not explicitly dedicated to Manosphere ideals of anti-feminism and defense of rape culture (8). The Red Pill terminology includes words that have already been mentioned so far such as ‘beta’ and ‘alpha’ (male) or ‘incel’ to denote specific people or types of masculinity (see Glossary). Unlike pre-internet men’s rights groups, Ging notes, like Van Valkenburgh, that the manosphere uses ideas of evolutionary psychology to explain male and female (human) socio-sexual behaviors (11). However, Ging argues that online, this underlying paradigm has been geekified and transformed to brew into its own “uniquely misogynist, heterosexist, and racist lexicon” (see Glossary, ‘Looksmaxx’, ‘Oneitis’, etc) (Ging 12), which is constantly renegotiated on manosphere spaces (Ging 13). The creation of this lexicon is not innocent or contingent. I would add that this terminology creates masculine bodies based on the fundamental narrative of the ‘Red Pill’, which sees bodies as either victims or rebels to the matrix.

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Furthermore, Ging argues that ‘the red pill terminology’ works to establish a common discourse of masculine hegemony, even though different groups have clashing interests at times. For Ging, such a lexicon contributes to the creation of an alt-right/manosphere echo chamber (16). Due to the hyperlinking and cross referencing that happens on social media platforms such as Reddit or Youtube (via this lexicon), this ‘echo chamber’ effect pushes Ging to call the Manosphere a “discursive system” (16). This discursive system threatens to become digitally hegemonic, Ging argues, because when it is combined with the internet’s unbounded, delocalized spatiality, it provides users with a base to organize networked cyber bullying campaigns (such as Gamergate) when women internet users work, represent themselves, or make a gender-related opinions online (16).

Before turning to a discussion of the relationship between language and bodies in the narrative of the Red Pill, I first want to make a reflection on the modality of language online. Following Ging’s argument that the ‘red pill terminology’ unites the Manosphere at large, I am reminded of what Bennedict Anderson calls an ‘imagined community’ in regards to the concept of nation. The nation works as an ‘imagined community’, he argues, in the sense that its

inhabitants never meet (6), yet is conceived of as united, limited, and sovereign (7). Anderson talks about the standardization of language, which emerged from fruitful interaction between print-languages and capitalistic technologies, as a foundation for national consciousness (44). Although I am not talking about ‘nations’, I think the role that language has in creating interest groups online such as the Manosphere, works in similar ways as with nation-building16_{. Much} 16 In 2017, some 4chan users created a fictitious country, ‘Kekistan’, which came to be associated with the Alt-Right. For more on this, read Emillie V. de Keulenaar’s article “The Rise and Fall of Kekistan: A Story of Idiomatic Animus as Told Through Youtube’s Related Videos” (2018).

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like inhabitants of a nation never meet, internet users often remain anonymous to one another. Yet while nations are also concerned with establishing space (borders), on the internet anyone can travel anywhere17, and ‘spaces’ (websites, subforums, etc) are created daily.

This leads me to think that language has perhaps even a more primordial role in the creation of a community than with ‘nations’, where some geographical constraints bring people together. Despite the absence of clear spatial, social, and temporal categories of the internet (Papacharissi 49), the Manosphere instead, I would argue, mobilizes language in a way that creates a sense of space (Goody, Watt 306-307).

The creation of a common language that is not directly readable or accessible to newcomers serves “the internal rhetoric of social network sites [which] often valorizes communal language and imagery” (Papacharissi 106) but also, in the Manosphere, creates a kind of literacy. Taking the broader sense of ‘literacy’ as the ability to decipher and encipher systems of signs, the Manosphere’s literacy is posited upon being ‘redpill’ed’18_{. As was}

mentioned previously, ‘assessments’ and ‘ratings’ claim to be able to recognize and distinguish between ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ men. Similarly, the ‘soyboy’ designates a body which is recognizable (because it consumed soy) and is seen as victim to the matrix of feminism.

The Body as Text

The idea of the body as recognizable, or rather created, through language, is central to Judith Butler’s work on performativity. While the theory of performativity and its contestations and

17 For argument’s sake, I am referring to open internet access, where the government plays a minor role in the limitation of websites, for instance those known to host child pornography.

18 Those who fail to become literate in this case are referred to as ‘blue pillers’. They made the choice to stay in the Matrix.

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continuations have greatly advanced the theoretical understanding of gender/race/sex/etc and text or speech, linking this theory to online spaces is not a straightforward path.

I therefore return to Sunden’s own research as she incorporates performativity into her own work on the gendered presence of the body online in WaterMOO. WaterMOO was a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) game. MUDs were text-based online multi-player role playing games, an “ongoing, collaboratively written, online performance” (Sunden 21). After two years of

ethnographic research and participation in WaterMOO, Sunden wrote Material Virtualities (2003) in order to theorize “the way human interaction is transformed when mediated by machines, and in particular in what way bodies as material systems of meaning are engaged in these interactions.” (14) With this, Sunden is certainly not arguing for a ‘pure’, unmediated human interaction. Rather, she sees bodies as always already ‘systems of meaning’ articulated through language and acts. The question lies in what kinds of bodies are created through different interactions between language and technology.

Narrowing down on her interest in gender in online space, Sunden cites a binary mode of thinking when it comes to cyberspace research. Gender is regarded as that which is typed and virtual, while sex is “firmly anchored in the material body left in physical reality” (50). Sunden rejects a view of gender as opposed to sex – that the body (and sex) is a blank canvas onto which gender is applied (51).

Following Grosz and Butler, Sunden thus argues for an understanding of the body as a system of writing (52). Before creating characters on WaterMOO, players use the @gender command which determines the pronouns of their character (Sunden 53). Sunden argues that in WaterMOO, the @gender command gives textual bodies a sex, while virtual gender, intimately

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linked to @gender, arises from character descriptions and interactions (53).Sunden’s research is a reaction to the postmodern utopian idea that cyberspace would give rise to a multitude of genders, where gender could act as pure fiction, pure symbol. Adding to the virtual/real

dichotomy, the ‘cyberspace utopia’ prescribes another dichotomy, whereby the body is radically opposed to culture.

Interestingly, Sunden’s two-year research in WaterMOO indicated that even though players are presented with an anonymous and limitless platform, they most often choose to textualize their characters in a traditional gendered and sexed way. For Sunden, the “intimate connection between the sexed body and (MOO) discourse not only points to how bodies, always sexually specific, are present in language, but how they in a sense come into being through language as such” (164). In WaterMOO, interactions and bodies are always textual, but always packed with ‘offline’ cultural baggage. In a similar way, interactions on spaces like Reddit and 4chan are mostly textual. I understand gender and sex as more purely ‘text’ online, but not in a way that regards gender offline as ‘material’. Rather, the stakes of the creation of gender online rely more on a textual becoming than material-bodily acts.

Yet, Material Virtualities proposes an understanding of a mode of being online which questions “how the poststructurally deconstructed subject is more than text, or rather, that text itself needs to be rethought as a variety of corporeal and material mediations.” (Sunden 187). That is to say, if we understand the condition of ‘being online’ as always double, as in, always serving a mediation between an embodied, behind-the-screen self, and a ‘textual I’ (Sunden 3), this pushes us to understand text as always already material, and bodies as always textual (15).

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In proposing a model for understanding virtuality in WaterMOO as both textually and materially embodied, Sunden makes a considerable contribution to theory concerning gender and text, notably Butler’s theory of the performative. For Butler, the conditions which make the body recognizable as a subject are found in language: “Language sustains the body not by bringing it into being or feeding it in a literal way; rather, it is by being interpellated within the terms of language that a certain social existence of the body first becomes possible.” (Excitable

Speech 5). Butler here follows Althusser’s concept of interpellation: the process by which ideology

constitutes the position of subjects, in a way where that position is naturalized (Bodies that

Matter 121). Butler applies the concept of interpellation to gender. Gender is performative, to the

extent that its existence depends on it being performed (“Performative Acts” 527), and to the extent that the subject comes to exist through this performance.

I see a similar construction of gender in the Manosphere. The ubiquitous ‘Red Pill terminology’ creates new bodies or modes of ‘doing’19_{gender through repeated and stylized} language acts. Words like ‘cuck’ and ‘beta’ (and other variants) create types of men online. These words render certain kinds of bodies recognizable online, they work as interpellators. And much like Butler stresses the importance of performativity in the time when she is writing (when a bad performance can result in violence), ‘Redpiller’s’ online are strenuously concerned with ‘doing’ gender in the ‘correct’ way, as shown in the case of “Rate me” and “Alpha

Assessment”. Paradoxically, while the Manosphere and the narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ claim to unearth and bring to the forth the ‘real’ world, by having created their own local brand of

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language, they reveal the very constructedness of our identities and bodies in relation to language.

Yet, for Butler the body exceeds language; exceeds speech in a way that gives it agency in breaking the performativity of gender (among other constructions). While language comes to form the body and makes it intelligible (Excitable Speech 152), the body is “the blindspot of speech, that which acts in excess of what is said” (Excitable Speech 11). This distinction

(body/language) is important for her because it sets up the grounds for emancipatory politics and acts (Excitable Speech 41). Put simply, performativity sometimes fails, and that’s a good thing, because it reveals the imaginary distinction between man/woman.

But where is this body which exceeds language online, if not behind the computer screen? Would it then have the same potential of disrupting the performativity of gender? In the same way that gender performativity requires an embodiment of norms which act to naturalize an idealization of ‘natural’ gender/sex, the narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ is invested in the creation of absolute genders. Online, this logic creates bodies which automatically ‘fit’ within these ideations.

While Butler has been criticized for overemphasizing the liberating power of

understanding gender and sex as performative (Bordo 169 – 170), I think not enough attention has been paid to the potential for Butler’s theory of performativity in the articulation of online gender, in her understanding of gender as an imaginary [my emphasis] (Bodies that Matter 13-14). This is something I think Sunden has managed to argue, although in the very specific and outdated context of the MUD game, by complicating the way we think about virtuality, and arguing that:

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“[…] embodiment includes the virtual in the shape of imaginative projections and phantasmic bodies of dreams, […] the imaginary has a capacity to retroact on the physical that significantly blurs the boundaries between the corporeal and the imaginative.” (Sunden 182)

That is to say, the materiality of bodies is always mediated through ‘fantasies’

(gender/sex being a fundamental one) online. The narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ fits perfectly in this framework, as it is highly (I would even say dangerously) imaginative. Drawing inspiration from The Matrix, it imagines ‘reality’ as a simulation, and positions the body as reconstructed via technology.

Slavoj Zizek saw in The Matrix a perverse staging of the ‘fundamental fantasy’: “it is rather that our reality is that of the free agents in the social world we know, but in order to sustain this situation, we have to supplement it with the disavowed, terrible, impending fantasy of being passive prisoners in the prenatal fluid exploited by the Matrix” (25-6). In short, we (as a society), fantasize about the possibility of living in a simulation in order to protect the idea of what we think is our freedom within an individualistic, capitalist society.

This question of ‘fantasy’ recalls earlier utopian dreams of cyberspace. To return to the original binary real/virtual discussed in the introduction, I do not wish to ‘do away’ with it, but rather complicate it – the material is already present in the virtual through articulations of the body, and the virtual is present in the real through the imaginative. The ‘Red Pill’ narrative is especially fruitful when combined with internet technologies not only because at its core, it already encourages human-technological interaction, but because online, its imaginary

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views of ‘cyberspace’, fantasy still has a lot to do with how online identities are created, but not in a way where those identities are immaterial and culturally disjointed from ‘offline’.

Conclusion

I have spent this chapter fleshing out what I call the narrative of the ‘Red Pill’ online and its relationship to the body. My main question was: How does this narrative conceptualize the body, and what does that say about the position of the body in regards to internet space? Drawing its inspiration from The Matrix, the ‘Red Pill’ narrative urges users to realize that men’s bodies are enduring ongoing persecution from a believed feminist totalitarianism. In turn, this narrative posits the body as the site of resistance to the matrix. Swallowing the ‘red pill’ enacts a bodily change. The body becomes the site of reconstruction. As scholars Van Valkenburgh and Mountford show, ‘Red Pill’ sites promote this ‘reconstruction’ alongside a belief in a ‘sexual market value’ and a strategizing of sexual activity.

Simultaneously, this strategy is developed through a language that is homogenized throughout the Manosphere. I have shown using Ging’s work “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere” that this language plays a role in building a sense of masculinity that threatens to become digitally hegemonic. Furthermore, I linked such an investment in language to the creation of what Anderson calls an ‘imagined community’ referring to the nation.

I have then discussed the above in relation to Sunden’s work, and specifically how the body is textualized in online spaces. By way of creating new language and encouraging

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participants to see their body as malleable using internet technology does textualize the body. However, this is done often, as Van Valkenburgh points out, within an applied evolutionary psychology model, which naturalizes and essentializes the masculine and the male sex.

Referring back to a broader question underpinning this thesis, I note that the gendered body in the Manosphere, although it is performative, is also deeply invested in naturalizing sexual and gender differences. This not only contests a cyber-utopian vision of gender as more malleable or free online, but also complicates the real/virtual binary.

The place the body takes in the story of ‘The Red Pill’ derived from The Matrix and applied to antifeminist places online is, I would argue, a position, in which new media

technologies facilitate or mediate a transition from one of totalitarian domination to individual (and dreaming of collective) freedom. If we are, as feminist literary scholars, to understand these contemporary expressions of misogyny, we need to go beyond articulations of the body alongside binaries of nature/culture but also body/text, instead viewing the experience of the embodiment and gender as mediated between materiality and text, while at the same time not opposing these two. In the midst of this juxtaposition between body as materiality and the internet as text, the imaginary plays a primordial role of corporealization.

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Chapter Two: Becoming a Chad

20

I would like to further narrow down on some of my points from the first chapter concerning the relationship between body and text online. To do this, I use a popular meme called “virgin walk vs. Chad stride21_{” (Figure 3). This meme offers a comparison between two bodies who sit on} opposite ends of a sexual activity spectrum. I wish to go deeper into my analysis of the body in the manosphere, moving from a general position of the ‘body’ as presented in the Red Pill to categorized online bodies as articulated by Sunden. That is to say, while the narrative of the Red Pill locates the body as the site of ideological reconstruction, the meme ‘virgin vs. chad’

provides specific online characters that the user can embody. Furthermore, following Sunden’s footsteps in understand body, text, and machine as always connected, the ‘virgin vs. chad’ is useful for my project because it is emblematic of the discursive mode of memetics which is specific to online culture.

According to the website ‘knowyourmeme.com’, part of the ‘Virgin vs.Chad’ meme originated on 4chan’s /r9k/ board with an illustration of the ‘Virgin walk’ on March 25th, 2017. 4chan is an imageboard platform where users are anonymous and there is no archiving of the threads. The website is organized in ‘boards’: each board dedicated to its own topic or

subculture. The /r9k/ board was created in 2008, the peak year of 4chan meme culture (Douglas 317), as a board which only posted original content (no reposts). This was done via the program ROBOT9000 – users refer to themselves as ‘robots’. The board became an eclectic mix of

20 Parts of this chapter come from a final paper I wrote for my completion of the course Il/Literacy Matters: Thinking Literature, Art and the Humanities in the 21st_Century.

21 I use ‘Virgin walk vs. Chad stride’ in reference to the specific picture attached at the beginning of this paper. Being a meme, the contents of this picture have been repeated and transformed. I thus use ‘Virgin vs. Chad’ to describe the meme’s core structure of the opposition between two bodies created along sexual lines.

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anecdotes (green stories) and memes. In October 2015, /r9k/ gained outside attention when the Oregon school shooter allegedly warned of his attack the night before on the board (Nagle “The New Man of 4chan”). Some ‘robots’ and other anons (the name of 4chan users) responded by saying this was the so-called ‘beta uprising’ they had been waiting for. The /r9k/ board is also home to ‘incels’ (short for ‘involuntarily celibates’), who use the board as a way to vent their frustration with their lack of sexual activity. This is made more explicit on 8chan, 4chan’s alternative website, where the twin /r9k/ board specifies in the guidelines that “You must be a male virgin to post on this board.”

The ‘virgin’ in the /r9k/ meme is presented as a caricature. Faithful to its online subculture, the caricature has a humorous aspect: “struggles to find comfortable hand form”; “hair seems to overreact to wind”. All the descriptions of this figure, which are listed and point to specific parts of the ‘virgin’s’ body, paint this figure as someone who is uncomfortable, whose body stands awkwardly, and who cannot fit in to social or environmental spaces. This discomfort with his body, the environment, and people around him supposedly point to that figure’s sexual activity status or lack thereof.

The ‘chad’ also reads like a caricature. He is presented as colorful and smug.

Descriptions like “Hands always prepared to grab nearby fertile pussy” recall the methods of the PUA community. Contrary to the ‘virgin’, the Chad represents a sexually successful heterosexual man.

At first glance, the figures in the ‘virgin vs. chad’ meme read as representations, or caricatures, which refer to some real or perceived-as-real, embodied type of masculine figure.

Bodies of the Manosphere

Table of Contents

(Short) Manosphere Glossary

Introduction

Chapter One: Swallowing Pills

Chapter Two: Becoming a Chad