Content warning: This article discusses mental health and gender-based violence.
The manosphere isn’t a new concept, and women have widely discussed its detrimental impacts for a very long time. Yet, it’s taken a documentary by a man to make many take the issue seriously. Nonetheless, Louis Theroux’s Inside The Manosphere is important. It has pulled back the curtain on a deeply troubling world, a growing online ecosystem of influencers, pickup artists, streamers and masculinity coaches who are distorting young men’s views of masculinity and gender roles. It is confronting viewing. It should be.
The response has been swift. Schools are scrambling, parents are alarmed, educators are searching for programs and resources. And, nearly all of it is focused on supporting the boys.
Here is where we have a responsibility to look at the big picture – because every spotlight casts a shadow, and right now, our girls are standing in it.
The manosphere isn’t just teaching young men how to behave, it teaches them what women are for. Typical manosphere content tells them that women are only valuable for their bodies, that they exist to be dominated by men, and that they deserve whatever men decide to give them. One influencer in the documentary says that a woman’s value is ‘her looks’ and at the same time tells women to be sure not to think their value is that high, because they “overinflate their sense of self-worth”. The message is consistent and it is deliberate: women do not get a say in their value and worth.
As Theroux explains himself, it holds a “Darwinian view of alpha supremacy” where men must build value through wealth, muscle, and control, and where women are a resource to be used, not a person to be respected with valuable thoughts and her own right to self-determination. How we have circled back to this archaic thinking, I am not quite sure. But alarmingly, this is not fringe thinking anymore. It is being consumed by young men at scale, every single day, on platforms designed to maximise engagement and reward outrage. And the young women in their lives, their classmates, their friends, their future partners, are sitting right alongside them in that same world.
If we only ask our young men how this affects them, once again we leave our girls to fend for themselves.
When misogynistic ideology goes unchallenged, girls don’t just witness it, they internalise it. They begin to measure their own worth through the lens being handed to them, and the data tells us this is already happening at alarming levels.
According to the Liptember 2025 Report on Women’s Mental Health:
- Body image issues now affect 64% of girls aged 14–19 (up from 48% just one year ago).
- Suicide and self-harm rates in this age group have risen from 16% to 25% in a single year. This is 2.8x higher than the general female population.
- 60% of teenage mental health challenges are triggered by low self-esteem or low confidence.
- 44% of teenage girls are affected by anxiety. 45% are affected by depression.
These are not abstract numbers. These are girls sitting in classrooms right now, absorbing a world that is telling them every day that they are not enough, or worse, that their only value is in how they look in the eyes of the boys and men around them.
Let us be clear about where hypermasculine, misogynistic ideology leads. When male relationships are built on dominance, aggression, control and hypersexuality, and women are framed as objects to be dominated, we are not just dealing with a cultural debate. We are talking about the breeding ground of violence and abuse where 2 in 5 women in Australia have experienced violence since the age of 15.
Is it any wonder that when asked whether they’d rather be lost in a forest with a bear or a man, so many women don’t hesitate?
Here is the painful truth: when we don’t actively support our girls in this conversation, we are not keeping them safe. We are simply leaving them to be shaped by a world that does not have their best interests at heart.
Girls need language. They need tools. They need adults who take seriously the pressure they are under, not just the pressure of school and social media in general, but the specific, targeted, relentless pressure of a culture that is actively telling them they are less than.
They need to be taught, clearly and urgently, that they have value beyond their looks, how to hold their own worth in the face of those who would diminish it, and how to trust their own voice when the world is working hard to silence it.
We cannot wait for the harm to show up before we act. By then, we’ve already failed them.
Netflix’s Inside The Manosphere has given us a moment. A cultural flashpoint. A reason to have long overdue conversations. Do not waste it by making it only about the boys.
Support your young men, absolutely. Work with them, have hard conversations, challenge the ideologies they’re being fed, teach them that their worth is not in the money they make or the people they dominate. That work is essential, but also have the parallel conversation. Give your girls the same urgency, the same resources and the same attention.
Because if we don’t, the world will do it for us, and probably not in their favour.
Our girls are watching.
They are waiting.
And they deserve more than to be an afterthought in the conversation about their own lives.
Maeve Slonim is the CEO of The Flourish Journey, which delivers evidence-based workshops in schools across Victoria, helping teenage girls build confidence, find their voice, and develop a strong sense of self. To date, they have worked with over 25,000 young women, giving them a deep and unmatched understanding of the challenges facing teenage girls today.