‘Manosphere’-led anti-feminist ideologies making women less safe, MPs say
“Increasingly prominent” anti-feminist ideologies are leading to growing harms against women and girls in Canada, parliamentarians warn in a new report that urges more government action to combat extremism and the so-called “manosphere.”
The report from the House of Commons status of women committee comes after a months-long study on the effect of the largely online anti-feminism movement, which advocates for regressive roles for women in society and relationships and has been linked to multiple cases of real-world violence.
The committee heard from dozens of witnesses, including senior officials at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) who testified earlier this year that anti-feminist ideology is becoming “increasingly relevant” to Canada’s national security landscape.
“Hatred, extremism and discrimination has no place in our society, particularly when directed towards women,” Conservative MP Anna Roberts said Tuesday in Ottawa after committee members tabled the report.
“We are seeing concerning expressions of hostility toward women alongside continued gaps in how our criminal justice system responds to and prevents violence against women.”
Conservative MP Dominique Vien, the committee’s chair, told reporters that witnesses who spoke to the committee struggled to identify a single reason for the rise in anti-feminism.
“Violence towards women, the cost of living, despair among families, that can fan those flames of anti-feminism,” Vien said in French.
“There are studies that tell us there are some men who think women take up too much space.”
The report says witnesses generally pointed to rising economic uncertainty and growing feelings of hopelessness among young people related to various aspects of society, from relationships to climate change.
Those anxieties among young men and boys are then exploited by “the manosphere,” an online network of male influencers who promote narratives that blame women and feminism for men’s hardships, several witnesses told the committee.
Manosphere content often glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence, the report says, noting witnesses also highlighted the financial rewards these influencers seek to gain.
“It’s a way for many to make money, to sell to a targeted audience who become vulnerable. And it’s profitable,” Liberal MP Marie-Gabrielle Ménard told reporters.
The MPs launched their study after a series of incidents, including a 2018 van attack in Toronto which saw a man deliberately drive down a busy sidewalk and kill 10 people, eight of them women.
The convicted attacker had been inspired by “incels,” or self-described involuntary celibates.
Statistics Canada tracked a 19 per cent increase in police-reported intimate partner violence from 2014 to 2022. Over that period, Statistics Canada also tracked a 163 per cent spike in reports of intimate partner sexual assault and a 38 per cent increase in what the agency calls “indecent or harassing communications.”
Roberts said the data amounts to a “crisis” given further urgency by the committee’s findings on anti-feminism.
The MPs also noted the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was used to create millions of non-consensual, sexualized images of women in January, an issue that was then investigated by the federal privacy commissioner.
Some of the committee’s legislative recommendations have already been addressed, with the government introducing its online harms bill last week that would hold social media platforms accountable for harmful content and protecting children.
Another bill seeking to criminalize femicide and non-consensual pornographic deepfake images is making its way through Parliament.
The report also called for government measures “aimed at preventing harassment, online intimidation, and gender-based political violence,” as well as increased program funding for youth sports, skilled trades and digital literacy — particularly for those geared toward boys and young men.
Further support and funding is also needed to combat gender-based violence and promote gender diversity, equity and inclusion, the report adds, with a focus on programs that engage men and boys in those initiatives and provide early intervention for those at risk of radicalization into extremist movements.
Ipsos polling has shown opinions on feminism and gender equality have split between men and women as well as across generations, with young men more likely to say gender equality efforts have gone “far enough.”
Experts previously told Global News that online influence spaces like the “manosphere” may account for some of those attitudes.
MPs on the committee said governments and law enforcement should do a better job of sharing knowledge and best practices on tackling gender-based violence, but they stopped short of calls by some witnesses for a framework to track femicides, coercive control and intimate partner violence.
Roberts said data on violence against women is “skewed” because many women are afraid to come forward.
“A lot of the times, because there isn’t a safe space for women, they end up going back. And so the cycle starts again. In order to get accurate data, we have to allow the women the protection that they deserve so that they can come forward,” she said.
“But not just arresting the individual. We have to make sure the individual goes through training to understand what they did is not right. It’s absolutely the only way to stop this. If we don’t educate them, then the cycle just continues.”
—With files from The Canadian Press
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