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11 - The Manosphere Is Growing for a Reason (and It's Not What People Think) · Masculine Containment

• 0:00
  I'm Alex Sharfman.
• 0:00
  Welcome to the Masculine Containment Podcast, episode 11.
• 0:04
  This one's called The Manosphere is Going for a Reason, and It's Not What People Think.
• 0:09
  So there's something happening right now that a lot of people are talking about, but almost no one's explaining it in detail or looking at why.
• 0:16
  Millions of men, millions of men around the world are consuming the same content, sharing the same clips, following the same voices from very similar voices.
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  And so,
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  And most of the conversation is focused on one thing.
• 0:30
  Why is this Manosphere red pill world so dangerous?
• 0:34
  Why is it so challenging?
• 0:36
  Why is it leading men in the wrong direction?
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  But almost no one's asking the important question.
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  Why is it working?
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  Because...
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  It is working.
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  And when I say it's working, I don't mean it's creating better relationships or better outcomes or even getting men positive results.
• 0:53
  What I mean is, after all, when you look at the Manosphere documentary that just came out, a couple of the men featured, one of them spent time homeless after consuming this type of content.
• 1:04
  So it's not really moving men forward in the greater scheme of things, in the greater picture.
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  However, it's not really moving men forward.
• 1:12
  When you look at this documentary, there's a reason why men are following this.
• 1:16
  And even in this documentary, when you look at the three men who were featured most prominently in the documentary, clearly they had incongruencies, insecurities, and issues you could see coming up just by watching them answer questions, just by watching the interactions that they had.
• 1:33
  Examples of men consuming this content, this red pill manosphere content, who become lost and struggle to find success are everywhere.
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  So that's not what I mean by it's working.
• 1:44
  Here's what I mean by it's working.
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  And it actually is, unfortunately.
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  It's working.
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  Because men are finally hearing something that feels honest.
• 1:54
  Men listen and find relatable voices who explain what they're going through in a way that sounds like they have a solution.
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  Maybe the solution.
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  It's working because it speaks to men's frustration.
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  It's working because it reflects men's life experiences.
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  And it's working in a way that's getting increasingly more attention.
• 2:14
  And I can kind of see why.
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  You know, I post a lot of content about relationships on social media.
• 2:21
  And I get comments on my posts, not many.
• 2:25
  But they're increasing, and there's quite a few from women who say things like, all men are the same, or all men do this, or all men are the problem.
• 2:32
  And when you hear that over and over again, for men, it doesn't feel like accountability.
• 2:37
  It starts to feel like an accusation.
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  And there's also comments that I get and conversations about the patriarchy saying,
• 2:44
  that are really challenging, about how men created a system that works for them.
• 2:48
  And I understand where that perspective comes from.
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  It's like there is a reality to it.
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  But what's rarely discussed is this.
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  How many men today feel like they're living in a system that isn't working for them at all?
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  And I've heard the comments, men created the system so men should fix the system.
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  Men are the problem and they're living in a system that they created.
• 3:10
  I get that.
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  But did an 18-year-old really create this system?
• 3:14
  Did a 22-year-old create this system?
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  I'm 53 years old, and I don't feel like I was involved in creating the patriarchal system in any way.
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  I was born into it.
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  Honestly, I didn't understand it.
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  And over the course of my life, as I've understood it more, I've done everything I can not to feed it.
• 3:32
  But I still get accused of being patriarchal just because I'm a man.
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  And here's the challenge.
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  When you're attacked for the gender that you're born into, it creates dissonance.
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  It creates questions.
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  It actually creates a feeling of opposition, a feeling of needing to fight back and argue back.
• 3:48
  And that's where the manosphere speaks to so many men.
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  That's where these red pill leaders speak to so many men in general, but so many young men.
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  You know, I watched the documentary with Louis Theroux and.
• 3:59
  Yeah.
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  What stood out to me wasn't just what he showed.
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  It was what he didn't.
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  He pointed out the risks.
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  He highlighted the challenging behaviors.
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  But he didn't dig into why are men being pulled into this world, this content, this belief system in the first place.
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  And here's where I believe is really happening.
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  A lot of the men in the manosphere have discovered something real.
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  Unfortunately, it's uncomfortable, but it's real.
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  They've discovered their frustration, their disconnection, their lack of direction.
• 4:31
  They've discovered their wounding.
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  And they're speaking from that wounding.
• 4:35
  The leaders are actually speaking from the wounding.
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  Not from a healed place, but from a place that is deeply and painfully relatable.
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  Men aren't being pulled in because it's perfect.
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  They're being pulled in because it feels true.
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  And here's why it hooks men so deeply.
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  Here's why men get so passionate about this.
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  Here's why men lean into this red pill manosphere stuff.
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  A lot of the content doesn't just explain what men are going through, doesn't just explain challenges.
• 5:04
  It actually tells them who to blame.
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  And here's where it gets really challenging.
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  Red Pill content frames women as manipulative and controlling and taking advantage of men and always looking for the best option.
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  You hear language like hypergamy, that every woman is only looking for the most attractive, most successful man.
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  You hear things like you're being used.
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  It's just feminine nature.
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  Things like alpha versus beta.
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  So if you don't believe this stuff, you're a beta.
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  And if you do, you're an alpha.
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  And if a man has any feminine wounding,
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  which I'm pretty sure all of us do, I've never been a man who doesn't, this type of stuff, this explanation, can land for some men immediately.
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  Because now, men aren't just seen, they feel validated.
• 5:51
  You know, for a man...
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  If a man's ever felt disrespected, overlooked, unattractive, like they were giving more than they were getting, and then someone explains it like this, this is just how women are wired, this is female nature, you're being used because you're a man, it can create instant alignment.
• 6:09
  It feels like, hey, that's exactly what I've been experiencing, and that's why men lean in.
• 6:15
  And here's why I want to be really clear.
• 6:17
  There are experiences that men have had that are real, that I have had that are real.
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  There are moments when you really weren't respected.
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  There's moments where you weren't understood.
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  There's even moments where you felt taken advantage of.
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  That part's real.
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  That's truth.
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  That's part of the male-lived experience.
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  But what happens next is where the challenge comes in.
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  And what happens next is what really matters.
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  Because if you take real experience and you turn it into a global belief about women, that women are bad and women are challenging and women are the problem,
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  you don't become more aware, you actually become more guarded.
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  Pain that isn't processed turns into patterns.
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  And then that pattern gets projected on everyone around you.
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  And that's why this content spreads so fast, because it's coming from men who are actually still in it.
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  They're still in the reaction.
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  They're acting like they've made sense of it, and somehow they can share a solution, and it makes it feel real.
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  But they're still in the wounding, and they're communicating from a wounded place that feels infinitely relatable to many men.
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  But understanding your wound is not the same as resolving it.
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  And you can see this in the documentary because they learn why they react, where it comes from, the reason for why they behave like they do and why they feel like they do and why they have this internal turmoil that they feel.
• 7:40
  But a lot of leaders in the manifest space give them an excuse to continue reacting, not to work on their wounding and change things.
• 7:48
  They give them this excuse to stay angry, to stay frustrated, to stay in dissonance that keeps them emotionally stuck but makes them feel like they're making progress.
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  Because here's the issue.
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  If you don't address your wounding, if you don't address the challenges you have, you stay in a place of reaction and reactivity.
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  And as a man, when you stay in reactivity, you don't execute clearly.
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  You don't build consistently.
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  You don't lead effectively.
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  You don't create the results you actually want.
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  I know because I've been stuck in reactivity, not because of red pill manosphere content, but because of my life experience.
• 8:23
  And when I was able to pull out of that reactivity, things change.
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  And even worse for men in relationships,
• 8:30
  If you're in this place of reactivity and that reactivity gets justified, you stay in this same pattern of trigger, escalation, rupture in your relationship, withdrawing from the rupture, and then coming back and trying to repair, and nothing actually changes.
• 8:47
  You might feel like you win moments, but if you're stuck in that five-step pattern, you are slowly losing your relationship and you may not even know it.
• 8:57
  Here's what is reality.
• 8:59
  Men are waking up right now.
• 9:01
  They're waking up to their wounds.
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  And waking up into your wound is not the same as becoming whole.
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  Men are understanding their patterns.
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  They can explain their reactions.
• 9:10
  They can point to their past.
• 9:12
  But when the moment comes, they still react the same way.
• 9:16
  And this manosphere world is keeping them in that reaction with massive justification with millions of people following.
• 9:23
  So it looks like that's what they should do.
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  They still escalate.
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  They still withdraw.
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  They still try to dominate or fix or end up in isolation.
• 9:33
  Because awareness without regulation doesn't change your life.
• 9:36
  And so many male leaders today are men who have discovered they're wounding and can communicate it clearly and can communicate it in a way that when a man hears it, they say, this is the first time I feel seen and I feel heard and I feel validated.
• 9:53
  But the challenge is staying in your wound keeps you stuck.
• 9:57
  I recently talked to a friend of mine who explained to me all about his childhood wounding and his trauma and his conditioning.
• 10:03
  And then he told me that's why he's behaving like he does.
• 10:07
  And I had to be bluntly honest with him and say, brother, like you understand the challenges.
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  Now it's time to process those things, to understand those things, to move forward.
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  Because the next step is capacity, not more information, not more content.
• 10:19
  It's capacity.
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  The ability to stay in your body when you're triggered, to breathe and understand your emotions when they rise, to feel them fully but not react to them and not let them explode outwards, to stay grounded when everything in you wants to react.
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  This is what changes everything for a man.
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  This is what gets you in your body.
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  This is what got me in my body.
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  This is what helped me make better decisions.
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  This is what helped me
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  Figure out who I really am and reveal more of myself to myself so I can make the decisions that I really want and have the life I want and have the relationship of my dreams.
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  That's what masculine containment really is.
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  It's not suppressing yourself.
• 11:00
  It's not becoming passive.
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  It's not becoming disassociated.
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  It's becoming the man who can stay in the moment.
• 11:08
  The man who doesn't feel the need to escalate, who doesn't withdraw, who doesn't lose himself.
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  Instead, it's becoming the man who stabilizes the environment.
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  The man that doesn't create the storm.
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  The man that calms the storm.
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  Because here's the truth.
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  The manosphere has helped millions of men understand why they're struggling.
• 11:29
  And it's presented understanding that struggle as the solution and then given other solutions that don't really work and clearly have challenges.
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  But the Manosphere won't teach you how to stop struggling.
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  That requires an entirely different level of work.
• 11:47
  That requires integration and regulation and discipline and integrity and intention and repetition of the same habits over and over again that calm your nervous system, get you into your body so you don't have to react to every trigger, so you don't have to lose control every opportunity you get.
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  Instead, so you can understand why you're reacting and stop.
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  So you can get in your body and be safe and secure for the people around you, especially if you're in a relationship.
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  And so that you can stay present for yourself, allow intuition and inspiration to come through, understand more of what you actually want in your life, and see the opportunities that are right in front of you.
• 12:28
  See, awareness explains your life, but capacity is what really changes it.
• 12:34
  And masculine containment creates that capacity.
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  And so the Manosphere has gotten a ton of attention and...
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  I can understand why we all see it as negative.
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  Believe me, I do as well.
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  And every time I see a male leader screaming at someone or screaming into a camera and doing motivational speaking that sounds more like just justifying why you're behaving like you are, it makes me cringe and it makes me sorry for the men that are hearing it.
• 13:04
  And it makes me want to share a better way.
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  So if you are a man who actually wants to do the work and you've seen this stuff and it doesn't resonate with you and you know there's something wrong with it, you don't have to do it alone.
• 13:18
  I started an organization called The Brotherhood, a society for men where we learn masculine containment and we walk this path together.
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  We learn how to regulate, to calm our nervous system, to stay in the present, to stay in the moment, to feel our feelings without reacting, without exploding.
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  Being the calmest man in the room.
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  Because you've probably heard the phrase, the calmest man in the room wins.
• 13:44
  Well, understanding your wounding and reacting to it, understanding your challenges and validating them, understanding your conditioning and saying that's how it's just going to be because women are the problem is not going to make you the calmest man in the room.
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  What makes you the calmest man in the room is understanding yourself and regulating and releasing trauma and understanding conditioning and getting past all of those things.
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  So you can be in the present moment and understand what's really going on without projections and reactions and all the energy that we bring to situations.
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  Because if we as men bring too much energy to a situation to solve a problem, you can see by the manosphere, we actually become the problem.
• 14:25
  And so if you're interested in regulating and being that calmest man in the room and taking on a martial art-like discipline called masculine containment that will change everything in your life, go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
• 14:39
  I'd be honored to walk this path with you and have you in our next initiation.
• 14:43
  Thanks for being a listener and thanks for being here.
• 14:45
  I appreciate you.
• 14:46
  Please take a minute and subscribe so that we can see each other again.