On Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere documentary, and why emotions are logical

Few things can light up a rainy Thursday night like a good documentary (tell me you’re in your 30s without telling me you’re in your 30s…), and this week, it’s Louis Theroux’s journey into the ‘manosphere’ basking in the glow of the zeitgeist. Theroux’s documentary follows what is sadly now a familiar sight: several built, belligerent men espousing generic hate (mostly against women, queer and Jewish people – a classic trifecta), all while rocking facial hair that would make Beppe di Marco extremely proud (if you know, you know). It is safe to say that nobody here seems to be having a great time.

While the extent of the toxicity (both in extremity and reach) that Louis encounters is new, many of the tropes carted out by the ‘manosphere’ are well-worn and familiar. An old classic that underpins a lot of their thinking is this: emotions are inferior to logic (with the implicit side-dish of emotions = female; logic = male). Emotions are neither useful nor desirable, they’re something to squash in order to become the sort of ‘real man’ that would score in the thousands on an arcade punching machine. Because, lest we forget, emotions aren’t for men.

There are, of course, many ways in which this is an illogical belief. So, why does it persist?

Certainly, what we learn about emotions as children shapes how we feel about them as adults. Growing up, we receive plenty of mixed messages about emotions. Some emotions (e.g. gratitude) are generally seen as good. Some emotions (e.g. jealousy) are seen as always bad. Some emotions are OK for some people, but not others (e.g. people socialised female are often allowed to express many emotions except anger, while people socialised male are permitted few emotions but anger). Amid all this confusion, one message is clear: emotions are not just things you feel - they’re big, complicated, and political.

Although this rhetoric around emotions has pervaded for many years, we’ve still not excised emotions from the human experience. Humans have evolved over millennia, but modern humans still come equipped with a full range of emotions. Why haven’t we evolved away from them? Because – surprise! – they’re useful. Emotions provide us with data that reflect our experience of the world, to aid our decision-making. For example, anger: we feel anger when something is unfair, uncomfortable, or ‘wrong’; the emotion alerts us to an issue, and seeks to propel us into action that will change the situation, getting us out of a bad place and into a better one. So, useful.

Emotions are a massive source of data on our lives. Data is information, and information is useful.

If thoughts provide the black-and-white foundations of our world, emotions inject the colour. They are a superhighway into our lives, providing all sorts of information about how we experience ourselves, other people, and the world around us. While nobody is suggesting that we voice and act on every emotion we feel, refusing to harvest that rich data to inform our choices doesn’t make sense: we prevent ourselves seeing the full picture of our life, and this makes it much harder to know how to best shape it. For example, by ignoring emotions telling you you’re feeling sad, you remove your opportunity to make the changes you need in order to feel better. It’s the opposite of the ‘logical’ premise: switching off emotions means we make less well-informed decisions, not better ones.

Emotions are there, whether you acknowledge them or not. It can be weird to pretend things aren’t there when they are, in fact, there.

If we don’t acknowledge our emotions, we’re stuck pretending we don’t have them, and that isn’t an acting job we’re particularly good at. As exemplified by Harrison Sullivan: him saying he’s definitely fine about growing up without his dad is fooling nobody. If we avoid directly communicating an emotion, we still communicate it indirectly – maybe we go quiet on people; stop making eye contact; or clunkily change the subject when things get uncomfortable. In all these ways, we telegraph loudly and clearly to others that we’re feeling something, even if we’re not saying we are.

If we don’t acknowledge emotions, we create more problems.

When people know we’re feeling something but nobody is talking about it, everyone experiences the issue, and yet it can’t be resolved. In this situation, things can easily get worse – the person suppressing the emotions can feel isolated and uncared for, and the people around them are left to guess what might be going on. It’s really easy for this guessing-game to spiral – often when we know something’s up, but don’t know what it is, we can easily start imagining something even more distressing than what’s actually happening. Logic goes out the window, and everyone starts walking on eggshells, with no helpful way forward in sight.

Emotions create relationships, and relationships matter. A lot.

The final piece of my emotions-are-logical cake is this: emotions help us connect with other people, and to form community. Relationships are essential to all humans, and are our highest priority. Deep friendships form through mutual vulnerability. Sharing emotion brings us support from others, and enables us to support people in turn. If we cut off emotions, we also cut off relationships, and for a social species that relies on groups in order to survive, that is the most illogical thing that we can do. Sadly, it’s so apparent in the ‘manosphere’ documentary: these men are deeply impacted by a lack of the close, meaningful relationships they want – with other men, especially.

So, what’s the impact of all this flawed thinking?

The idea that men should suppress emotion to be more ‘logical’ is both pervasive and incredibly damaging. It’s something that starts young – even boys barely a year old are told not to cry, and aren’t held or soothed in response to upset. This is, of course, the ongoing influence of patriarchy, and it’s something that men (and everyone else) have every right to be furious about – it’s not fair that they are told these things, and that their internal life isn’t enabled to flourish in the way it is for others. We must advocate for boys’ emotions, and provide them the tools they need to be able to use them wisely. As we have seen, simply telling boys they don’t have feelings doesn’t stop them being there, and not teaching boys how to engage with emotions leaves them vulnerable and ill-equipped to navigate life.

The ‘manosphere’ posits that it offers men enlightenment, happiness, fulfilment, and wealth of all varieties. It is able to speak to so many men because so many men are struggling to find these things on their own. Sure, maybe the answer to unhappiness is to stuff it deep down, and spend endless nights walking up and down the Marbella strip with a bodyguard who couldn’t roll his eyes any harder at you. But maybe whatever you do, life will remain a doleful monochrome until you allow that colour in. The ‘manosphere’ offers a pretty classic Faustian pact – sell your soul, and everything will get better. It’s quite striking that so many men in this space don’t seem to believe their soul is worth holding onto.