The Manosphere in Arabic: Mapping Subcultures, Narratives, and Impacts across Arabic-Speaking Online Spaces

The ninth issue of ‘Evidence Bits’ is based on the publication ‘The Manosphere in Arabic: Mapping Subcultures, Narratives, and Impacts across Arabic-Speaking Online Spaces’ (2025) authored by Sarah Kaddoura and published by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Regional Political Feminism Project, Beirut, Lebanon.

The paper documents the emergence of an Arab manosphere through channels and networks that adopt Red Pill praxeology, sexual marketplace theory, hypergamy, mating strategies and alpha beta taxonomies. The paper shows how these concepts are intertwined with religious references, Arabic terminology and moral discourses that construct the Arab manosphere as a hybrid ideological field.

The Manosphere refers to a cluster of online spaces where men produce content, debate grievances and circulate anti feminist, anti women and anti gender ideas. It includes subcultures associated with hostility toward women and, at its extremes, forms of digital and physical violence.

YouTube, Telegram and X play a central role in shaping how Arab manosphere ideas circulate and gain visibility. Algorithmically amplified videos, interconnected page networks and a constant flow of short form clips and humour make these ideas highly shareable and emotionally charged.

Islamic concepts such as qiwamah (used by creators to justify men’s duty to lead and provide), fitrah (presented as the natural or God-given order of gender roles) and dayouth (a shaming category for men seen as failing to maintain authority over women in their family) are selectively mobilised to legitimise patriarchal authority and moral narratives about gender.