Men's rights and MRAs (Men's Rights Activists): Academic critiques

A range of critiques and assessments of the men's rights movement have been published in recent years. This XY collection focuses on academic or scholarly critiques of men's rights and anti-feminist backlash. See below for the pieces, listed in alphabetical order and downloadable in PDF. 

Note that this is only a small selection of the substantial scholarship on men's rights, incels, and so on. I've compiled a bibliography here. Also see further below for further resources.

New items added in June 2024:

• Chua, Y. T., & Wilson, L. (2023). Beyond Black and White: the Intersection of Ideologies in Online Extremist Communities. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. doi:10.1007/s10610-023-09555-9
• Han, X., & Yin, C. (2023). Mapping the manosphere. Categorization of reactionary masculinity discourses in digital environment. Feminist Media Studies, 23(5), 1923-1940.
• O’Hanlon, R., Altice, F. L., Lee, R. K.-W., LaViolette, J., Mark, G., Papakyriakopoulos, O., Saha, K., De Choudhury, M., & Kumar, N. (2024). Misogynistic extremism: a scoping review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(2), 1219-1234.
• Rothermel, A.-K., Kelly, M., & Jasser, G. (2022). Of Victims, Mass Murder, and “Real Men”: The Masculinities of the “Manosphere”. In Male Supremacism in the United States (pp. 117-141): Routledge.

New items added in January 2023:

• Abdulla, Sara M. (2021). Underground Anti-woman and Incel Movements and Their Connections to Sexual Assault. In Geffner, R., White, J.W., Hamberger, L.K., Rosenbaum, A., Vaughan-Eden, V., Vieth, V.I. (Eds.). Handbook of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan: A Project of the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan (NPEIV). Springer.
• Blais, Mélissa. (2020). Masculinist Discourses on Intimate Partner Violence: Antifeminist Men Defending White Heterosexual Male Supremacy. Chapter 6 in Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence, eds. Lucas Gottzén, Margunn Bjørnholt and Floretta Boonzaier. London/New York: Routledge.
• Górska, A. M., Kulicka, K., & Jemielniak, D. (2022). Men not going their own way: a thick big data analysis of# MGTOW and# Feminism Tweets. Feminist Media Studies, 1-19.
• Habib, H., Srinivasan, P., & Nithyanand, R. (2022). Making a Radical Misogynist: How online social engagement with the Manosphere influences traits of radicalization. arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.08805.
• Hopton, K., & Langer, S. (2021). “Kick the XX out of your life”: An analysis of the manosphere’s discursive constructions of gender on Twitter. Feminism & Psychology, 0(0), 09593535211033461. doi:10.1177/09593535211033461
• Ribeiro, M. H., Blackburn, J., Bradlyn, B., De Cristofaro, E., Stringhini, G., Long, S., . . . Zannettou, S. (2020). From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: A Data-Driven Sketch of the Manosphere. arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.07600
• Vallerga, M., & Zurbriggen, E. L. (2022). Hegemonic masculinities in the ‘Manosphere’: A thematic analysis of beliefs about men and women on The Red Pill and Incel. Analyses of social issues and public policy, n/a(n/a). doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12308
• Van Valkenburgh, S. P. (2021). Digesting the red pill: Masculinity and neoliberalism in the manosphere. Men and Masculinities, 24(1), 84-103.
• Wright, S., Trott, V., & Jones, C. (2020). ‘The pussy ain’t worth it, bro’: assessing the discourse and structure of MGTOW. Information, Communication & Society, 23(6), 908-925.

Other works:

• Behre, K. A. (2015). Digging beneath the equality language: The influence of the fathers’ rights movement on intimate partner violence public policy debates and family law reform. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 21(3), 525‐602.
• Blais, Melissa, and Francis Dupuis-Déri. (2012) Masculinism and the Antifeminist Countermovement. Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, 11:1, 21-39.
• Collier, Richard. (2005). Fathers 4 Justice, law and the new politics of fatherhood. Child and Family Law Quarterly, 17(4): 511-533.
• DeKeseredy, W. S. and M. Dragiewicz (2007). Understanding the Complexities of Feminist Perspectives on Woman Abuse: A Commentary on Donald G. Dutton’s Rethinking Domestic Violence. Violence Against Women, 13(8): 874-884.
• Dragiewicz, M. (2010). A left realist approach to antifeminist fathers’ rights groups. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54(2), 197-212.
• Dragiewicz, M. (2011). Antifeminist backlash and critical criminology. In Routledge handbook of critical criminology, Eds. W.S. DeKeseredy and M. Dragiewicz (pp. 279-288). Routledge Custom Publishing.
• Dupuis-Deri, F. (2016). State anti-feminism. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 21-35.
• Edstrom, M. (2016). The trolls disappear in the light: Swedish experiences of mediated sexualised hate speech in the aftermath of Behring Breivik. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 96-106.
• Elden, Sara. (2002). Gender politics in conservative men’s movements: Beyond complexity, ambiguity and pragmatism. NORA, 10(1), pp. 38-48.
• Farrell, T., Fernandez, M., Novotny, J., & Alani, H. (2019). Exploring Misogyny across the Manosphere in Reddit. Paper presented at WebSci ’19 Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science.
• Flood, Michael. (2004). Backlash: Angry men’s movements. In S. E. Rossi. (ed.), The battle and backlash rage on: Why feminism cannot be obsolete (pp. 261-278). Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris Press.
• Ging, D. (2017). Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere. Men and Masculinities, 1-20.
• Girard, A. (2009). Backlash or equality? The influence of men’s and women’s rights discourses on domestic violence legislation in Ontario. Violence Against Women, 15(1), pp. 5-23.
• Gotell, L. and Dutton, E. (2016). Sexual violence in the “manosphere’: Anti-feminist men’s rights discourses on rape. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), pp. 65-80.
• Horta Ribeiro, M., Blackburn, J., Bradlyn, B., De Cristofaro, E., Stringhini, G., Long, S., ... & Zannettou, S. (2020). From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: A Data-Driven Sketch of the Manosphere. arXiv, arXiv-2001
• Jones, C., Trott, V., & Wright, S. (2020). Sluts and soyboys: MGTOW and the production of misogynistic online harassment. New Media & Society, 22(10), 1903-1921.
• Jordan, A. (2016). Conceptualizing Backlash:(UK) Men's Rights Groups, Anti-Feminism, and Postfeminism. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 28(1), 18-44.
• LaViolette, J., & Hogan, B. (2019). Using Platform Signals for Distinguishing Discourses: The Case of Men’s Rights and Men’s Liberation on Reddit. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
• Maddison, Sarah. (1999). Crossing Boundaries: Engaging with the men’s rights movement. Refractory Girl, No. 53, Spring, pp. 21-23.
• Maddison, Sarah. (1999). Private Men, Public Anger: The Men’s Rights Movement in Australia. Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. 4(2), December.
• Mann, R. (2008). Men’s rights and feminist advocacy in Canadian domestic violence policy arenas: Contexts, dynamics and outcomes of anti-feminist backlash. Feminist Criminology, 3, pp. 44-75.
• Mann, R. M. (2016). The Harper government's New Right neoliberal agenda and the dismantling of Status of Women Canada and the Family Violence Initiative. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 50-64.
• Marwick, A. E., & Caplan, R. (2018). Drinking Male Tears: Language, the Manosphere, and Networked Harassment. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 543-559.
• Messner, Michael A. (1997). The Limits of ‘the Male Sex Role’: The Men’s Liberation and Men’s Rights Movements. In Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. University of Southern California: Sage Publications. (Also: Messner, Michael A. (1998). The Limits of ‘the Male Sex Role’: An Analysis of the Men’s Liberation and Men’s Rights Movements’ Discourse. Gender & Society, 12(3), June.)
• Messner, Michael A. (2016). Forks in the road of men’s gender politics: Men’s rights versus feminist allies. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), pp. 6-20.
• Minnich, Elizabeth K. (1998). Feminist Attacks on Feminisms: Patriarchy’s Prodigal Daughters. [Reviews of Works by Hoff Sommers, Patai and Koertge, Fox-Genovese, and Roiphe] Feminist Review, 24(1), Spring.
• Pease, B. (2020). The rise of angry white men: Resisting populist masculinity and the backlash against gender equality. In The Challenge of Right-wing Nationalist Populism for Social Work (pp. 55-68). Routledge.
• Pollock, Scarlet, and Jo Sutton. (1985). Fathers’ Rights, Women’s Losses. In Klein and Steinberg. (eds.). Radical Voices. (Also in Women’s Studies International Forum, 8(6), pp. 593-599).
• Rafail, P., & Freitas, I. (2019). Grievance Articulation and Community Reactions in the Men’s Rights Movement Online. Social Media + Society, 5(2), 2056305119841387. doi:10.1177/2056305119841387
• Rosen, L. N., M. Dragiewicz, and J. C. Gibbs. (2009). Fathers’ Rights Groups: Demographic Correlates and Impact on Custody Policy. Violence Against Women, 15(5): 513-531.
• Salter, M. (2016). Men's Rights or Men's Needs? Anti-Feminism in Australian Men's Health Promotion. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 28(1), 69-90.
• Schmidtz, R. and Kazyak, E. (2016). Masculinities in cyberspace: An analysis of portrayals of manhood in men’s rights websites. Social Sciences, 5, pp. 1-16.
• Sheehy, E. (2016). Defending battered women in the public sphere. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 81-95.
• Wojnicka, K. (2016). Masculinist groups in Poland: Mainstream anti-feminism. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 36-49.

Further resources

Also see:

• Men's rights: accessible critiques
• Fathers' rights: academic critiques
• The alt-right, men’s anti-feminist advocacy, and masculinity
• A VicHealth 8-pager, and commissioned evidence review, on preventing and responding to backlash and resistance, both available here;
• Other materials on men's rights and fathers' rights
• Men's rights, backlash, etc.: academic references
• Fathers' rights: academic references
• Links to projects and webpages critical of men's rights and fathers' rights

There are various anti-feminist books popular among MRAs and others, including e.g. books by Warren Farrell, Christina Hoff Sommers, Katie Roiphe, Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, etc. For reviews, see as follows:

• Farrell, The Myth of Male Power (1993): See reviews by Andrew McIntyre,  Michael Flood, and Tania Mace and Rachel Cooper.
• Farrell, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (1998): See reviews by Bob Pease, Trish Wilson, and Tania Mace and Rachel Cooper.
• Farrell and Gray, The Boy Crisis (2018): See this review of Farrell and Gray's book.
• Kipnis, Unwanted Advances: Sexual paranoia comes to campus (2017): See critiques by Wade, Duggan, and these Signs Short Takes reviews.
• Patai and Koertge, Professing Feminism: Cautionary tales from the strange world of Women's Studies (1994): See this review of Patai and Koertge's book (by Manderson).
• Sommers, Roiphe, Patai: As this review documents in detail, the books by Sommers, Roiphe, and Patai and Koertge are ignorant, inaccurate, and vitriolic, and far from feminist. They are devoid of evidence and careful argument.
• Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? (1994): See reviews by Elizabeth Minnich, Laura Flanders, and Carol Davison.
• Sommers, The War on Boys (2000): See this review by Robert Menzies.