Áilín Quinlan: Mother’s experience led her to the manosphere...it’s here too
The woman described how attempts to phone or visit her son were met with a kind of remote politeness. He very rarely rang home, and when he did, the call came to her husband’s phone.
It was the phrase “dish pig,” that had really started her thinking, she explained. She’d seen the phrase in a news story.
The article reported that Sonas, Ireland’s largest domestic violence service provider, was warning that online misogynistic influencers were normalising hatred of women. And that it was shaping our children’s behaviour.
“Dish pig” was a new one on her, she said, adding that Sonas had explained the phrase had been used by a boy who called his mother one and threw things at her when he didn’t like his dinner. Dish pig is apparently slang for kitchen dishwashing personnel.
This mother, for reasons that will become clear, googled the manosphere and its views on women, discovering that it viewed most females as inferior, manipulative and/or deserving of contempt.
A professional in her fifties, she had a husband and children, some of whom were still in education and two grown adults.
One of the latter two, a male in his twenties, had been a cause of concern for some time.
It was some years since he’d moved out of home to work in a different part of the country.
In the past 18 months or so, his visits home had become increasingly rare, and when he did turn up, he appeared aloof, sullen and detached.
He stopped engaging normally with siblings and parents, had no interest in whatever was going on at the time, didn’t seem to like being around his family, and was always staring at his phone.
All through college and his first years of working away, this mother and her son had phoned each other every week.
Now her phone calls were going unanswered, and he didn’t ring back. She resorted to ringing his partner.
Next, she noticed that when he came home for a visit, he was no longer willing to help out in the kitchen. Since primary school, she said sadly, he’d always helped her to prepare meals for big family occasions. He was a good cook and always ready to do little jobs for her.
Now, if she asked him to do something, he wouldn’t openly refuse - but the job wasn’t done.
She read an article afterwards that said a significant number of male second-level students were now doing this to female teachers in school.
She couldn’t understand it. She and her husband repeatedly tried to ask her son what was wrong. Was it the job, his relationship, stress?
It was impossible. He’d either silently stand there, cold, detached, unresponsive and unyielding or simply turn his back and walk away.
Attempts to phone or visit him were met with a kind of remote politeness. He very rarely rang home, and when he did, the call came to her husband’s phone, not to her, and he always seemed to be in a hurry or doing something extremely noisy during the phone call.
He ended things with his fiancée. Contact with both his immediate and extended family networks faded. Eventually, it became nigh impossible to get hold of him. And nobody had the first idea what had happened.
Then the mother read the article about Sonas and the dish pig, and the fears about boys displaying resentment and hostility towards their mothers.
She watched on Netflix. She saw how a young boy was gradually groomed online into a state of complete hostility and hatred of women, how he wouldn’t talk to or engage with his mother and how he eventually murdered a female classmate.
She watched Louis Theroux’s acclaimed 2026 documentary re on Netflix in which Theroux investigates the controversial online network of influencers, podcasts and manosphere self-help theories.
She learned about the red pill philosophy, which maintains that society is discriminating against men in favour of prioritising women’s rights.
She read about the deeply misogynistic attitudes being promoted by many online subcultures. She learned about Incels and MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) and wondered if this was the kind of thing her son was into now.
Her throat closed, she said, when she came across an article explaining how the manosphere recommends a strict, hierarchical approach to interacting with mothers, how it emphasised the need to assert male authority over maternal influence, and avoid listening to mothers on anything that mattered such as career, lifestyle or relationships, because it would turn them into Beta males.
Men, she read, should aggressively resist maternal authority and view a mother’s rules or emotional appeals as manipulation.
In disagreements, the advice to the aspiring Alpha male is to remain in a state of what is termed “The Frame” by remaining cold, detached and hard as steel.
Severely limiting contact or a complete cutting of maternal ties is also recommended to “protect” the young man’s development as a strong Alpha male, especially when a mother does not conform to manosphere ideology - if she is a feminist, if she is authoritative, or if she is a single mother.
In areas of the manosphere, single mothers are often blamed for societal issues and for raising “weak” men because of their “manipulative” behaviour and over-controlling attitude towards sons.
Many communities in the manosphere strongly reject feminism and female equality and view women’s independence as a huge threat to male dominance and authority in the home, and advise seeking guidance exclusively from other dominant men or influencers working out of the manosphere.
So there you go. It’s here.
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