Illustration by Global Voices
This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory‘s newsletter. Subscribe to Undertones.
Last month, Netflix launched Adolescence, a four-episode series on cyberbullying and the influence of social media narratives on boys, which has become a call to action for parents and policymakers and has opened up the conversation around toxic masculinity and the manosphere. Yet, toxic masculinity is far from being a new phenomenon — misogyny, LGBTQ+ phobia, and other consequences of hegemonic violent masculinity have been around for a long time.
In Hungary, Viktor Orbán government's anti-migration narratives seek to define the country's “masculine” national identity in opposition to the “feminized” Western international sphere, using competing claims of sovereignty to reinforce this distinction, fortifying the tie between masculinity and power. Éva Fodor links anti-migration and anti-gender policies in her book, The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary, where she explains that, in the fight against the European Union migration quota, the Hungarian government has framed the European Union as a “pro-gender enemy of the Hungarian nation.”
In Russia, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, government propaganda has linked masculinity with the war in an attempt to recruit new soldiers. As we have mapped in previous research, the Russian government has presented joining the army as the best way to showcase patriotism and virility, which has fed the cycle of violence against women in Ukraine and Russia.
The hype around toxic masculine behavior has also permeated the leadership of Western countries. US President Donald Trump's current anti-diversity speech and policies are directly linked to the promotion of masculinity, with members of the administration and even the president correlating leadership inefficiency and weakness with women.
The notion of strength behind the concept of masculinity has also reached social media platform executives, with Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg tying the company's policy changes with the need for more “masculine energy” and stating that “having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.’
Narrative: “Women should know their role and abide by it. If they don't, they should deal with the consequences”
According to the people asserting this narrative frame, women who don't adhere to the roles imposed on them by traditional patriarchy as child-bearers, child-rearers, and home caterers should face the consequences.
The reasoning behind this idea upholds a gender-based hierarchy that impacts personal lives, careers, family roles, and broader societal structures, positioning both cis and trans women as subordinate to men.
The reinforcement of traditional gender roles for women in Western societies is often driven by a nostalgic glorification of “old masculinity” — an idea promoted as a response to the perceived emasculating effects of “woke culture.”
How this narrative is shared online
Relationship coach Gia Macool shares a clip of an old interview with Sean Connery where the actor claims that sometimes women's behavior merits “hitting” them. Macool describes Sean Connery's statement as an aspect of “old masculinity” and asks, as an invitation, if that conduct should be brought back.
In the video, Sean Connery presents the option of hitting women as a well-deserved disciplinary action, implying that women sometimes don't behave the way they should, and it is men's right to discipline them.
Connery's first remarks about hitting women were made during an interview with Playboy magazine in 1965. He then confirmed his position in 1987 in the Barbara Walters interview shared in Macool's tweet, and, in 1993, he made similar controversial remarks in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine.
The item received over 1.8K comments, 32K likes, and 14K bookmarks. It was ranked -2 in our civic impact scorecard, as Connery's remarks are dangerous as they offer hitting as a “reasonable” measure to “put women in their place” if they are not behaving as they should.
See the complete analysis of the item here. Read also how this narrative is asserted in countries like Pakistan and Greece.
Narrative: “Women share a part in the demographic crisis and should assume their role in bearing children”
The proponents of this narrative frame affirm that women hold the responsibility to improve the natality rates because of their biological features. From their point of view, there is a direct tie between nationalism and gender roles. As Annabelle Chapman explains eloquently in her essay “Where gender meets nationalism,” “If, from nationalists’ perspective, men's role is to protect the nation, then women's role is to perpetuate it,” which naturally becomes a reason to pressure women into having children.
Demographic crises in places like the European Union have presented an opportunity for conservative leaders to promote this narrative. In Italy, for example, right-wing government leader Georgia Meloni has exploited what they call a “demographic winter” as the country's births reach an all-time low, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).
This rhetoric regards the decision to have children through the lens of national survival rather than prioritizing women's rights, personal choices, and aspirations.
How this narrative circulates online
Davide Marchiani, an Italian influencer with over 10K followers on X, who claims in his bio to have a disgust for women and self-identifies as the “most famous misogynist of X,” claims that “to increase the birth rate, you don't have to increase maternity leave,” you should instead “raise pay for fathers so their wives can stay home and be mothers.”
By claiming that the key to improving natality rates is to “raise pay for fathers so their wives can stay home and be mothers” and “dual income is an anti-family trap,” Marchiani implies that women need to, and would naturally, recognize their role in society and take on the responsibility of bearing children.
The item received 99 comments, 119 reposts, 664 likes, 18 bookmarks, and 33,4K views. It was ranked -1 under our civic impact scorecard, as it promotes policies and a perspective that affect women's ability to compete with men in the workplace fairly.
See the full analysis of the item here. Read also how this narrative is asserted in the UK and Argentina.
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