Jun 1, 2026 · 56 min · 5 segments
TW: Episode mentions violence against women, domestic violence, intimate relationship abuse, self-harm, and coercive control. For this episode, Madeline and Mary sit down with Debbie Ging, Professor…
Debbie GingGuest
Mary HayesHostMadeline CampbellHost
I know there's a lot of kind of topics, but where did this all come from? So how did it start?
Yeah, I mean, it depends on how far you want to go back, I suppose, because even before the internet, there was an anti-feminist or, or a number of anti-feminist, uh, men's movements, uh, particularly in the United States, also in the UK to a lesser extent, you know, and in some other countries.
So since second wave feminism in the late '60s, early '70s, there has been a, a kind of organized, I suppose, men's response to that.
A lot of that was very positive, so there were pro-feminist men's movements, but there were also substantial anti-feminist men's movements or just men's rights movements.
And they set, I suppose, a lot of the precedent, uh, for what was to come in terms of their writings, you know, various books from the early men's movement, like Robert Bly's Iron John were hugely influential.
These were, like, really, uh, popular, best-selling books about kind of the male condition in a modern world, in a world where feminism was making advances and was seen as a, an overly civilizing force on men.
Obviously, with the internet then, men's rights groups were able to organize, uh, much better.
But it was really then with the appearance of social media, Web 2.0, that the nature, if you like, of their messaging, their communicative methods, their rhetoric, even their themes and concerns changed quite significantly.
So they went from being a more orthodox political movement to being a much more affective community that was driven by, you know, kind of personal attacks on women, emotional personal grievance.
It became a very individualistic culture about feelings rather than politics, communicative.
It sounds like it started out as quite, you know, political, but it's become kind of more normalized or more accessible now, say, with the internet.
Like, obviously it's more accessible, but why do you think the narratives that are out there are becoming more, um, palatable, say? A lot of these things I feel like maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, people would have said, "You can't say things like that," you know, or-
I know there's a lot of kind of topics, but where did this all come from? So how did it start?
Yeah, I mean, it depends on how far you want to go back, I suppose, because even before the internet, there was an anti-feminist or, or a number of anti-feminist, uh, men's movements, uh, particularly in the United States, also in the UK to a lesser extent, you know, and in some other countries.
So since second wave feminism in the late '60s, early '70s, there has been a, a kind of organized, I suppose, men's response to that.
A lot of that was very positive, so there were pro-feminist men's movements, but there were also substantial anti-feminist men's movements or just men's rights movements.
And they set, I suppose, a lot of the precedent, uh, for what was to come in terms of their writings, you know, various books from the early men's movement, like Robert Bly's Iron John were hugely influential.
These were, like, really, uh, popular, best-selling books about kind of the male condition in a modern world, in a world where feminism was making advances and was seen as a, an overly civilizing force on men.
Obviously, with the internet then, men's rights groups were able to organize, uh, much better.
But it was really then with the appearance of social media, Web 2.0, that the nature, if you like, of their messaging, their communicative methods, their rhetoric, even their themes and concerns changed quite significantly.
So they went from being a more orthodox political movement to being a much more affective community that was driven by, you know, kind of personal attacks on women, emotional personal grievance.
It became a very individualistic culture about feelings rather than politics, communicative.
It sounds like it started out as quite, you know, political, but it's become kind of more normalized or more accessible now, say, with the internet.
Like, obviously it's more accessible, but why do you think the narratives that are out there are becoming more, um, palatable, say? A lot of these things I feel like maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, people would have said, "You can't say things like that," you know, or-
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