“ There is no point spending your life running to satisfy your wife. It’s a creature with this gene called “not happy “. » This type of discourse is spreading on social networks. It comes from masculinism, a movement that fights feminism and advocates patriarchy.
This term even made it into the 2025 edition of Petit Larousse. We’ll explain it to you.
What is masculinism ” ?
According to a study by the newspaper Le Monde, the masculinist movement appeared in the early 2000s. Men claiming to be “masculinists” wanted to resist feminism and believed that women dominated them. The movement grew in response to the #MeToo phenomenon that emerged in 2017 following the Weinstein affair. For researcher Francis Dupuis-Déri, “this counter-movement (editor’s note: feminism) is centered on the victimization of men.” “The speech tends to use euphemisms, saying, for example, that feminism has gone too far, that men can no longer do or say anything, that there needs to be a rebalancing…”, specifies Francis Dupuis-Déri.
Now, these discourses are sweeping across social networks, notably TikTok and YouTube, carried by influencers of all kinds.
Who are the masculinists?
On TikTok, thousands of videos use the hashtag #malealpha. Some have several million views. British influencer Andrew Tate is the best known. He said he was openly misogynistic in an interview with another influencer. According to the BBC, he said on X that women should “ take responsibility » of the sexual assaults they suffered.
Andrew Tate has more than 9 million subscribers on X and gives “advice” through fitness, business and seduction training. In his YouTube videos, he often states that “ the wife is the property of her husband ” Or ” if she cheats on you it’s boom in the face and then you grab her by the neck and yell “shut up bitch » ». He is currently on trial in Romania for human trafficking and rape.
According to a report from the High Council for Equality on the state of sexism in France, published in January 2024, 37% of men consider that feminism “threatens their place” in society. The same report specifies that masculinist discourse mainly affects young heterosexual men aged 24 to 35.
Why is it dangerous?
In addition to the fact that these speeches fuel hatred against women and propagate conservative ideas, they also lead to more serious abuses. In December 1989, a young man entered a classroom at the École Polytechnique de Montréal. He kills 14 women at the school, declaring: “ You are women, you are going to become engineers. You’re all just a bunch of feminists, I hate feminists. »
According to France Inter, masculinist content is poorly moderated on social networks and accessible to all. More rarely, these speeches can be taken up by women. The influencer Thaïs d’Escufon is the best-known example. This former spokesperson for the far-right movement “Identity Generation” (editor’s note: now dissolved), produces videos in which she explains why a woman “should always respect her husband’s authority “.
Women’s defense associations point the finger at the masculinist movement. They see it as a current of thought that justifies sexist and sexual violence.
