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Masculinity in two reddit : Feminism is

foul, privilege is precarious, and being beta is bad. by

Luc S. Cousineau

A thesis

presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Recreation and Leisure Studies

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2021

© Luc S. Cousineau, 2021

ii

Examining Committee Membership

The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the

Examining Committee is by majority vote.

External Examiner ....................................... Adrienne Massanari

Associate Professor, Communication

University of Illinois Chicago

Supervisor .................................................... Corey W. Johnson

Professor, Recreation and Leisure Studies

Faculty of Health

University of Waterloo

Internal Member........................................... Diana C. Parry

Professor, Recreation and Leisure Studies

Faculty of Health

University of Waterloo

Internal-External Members .......................... Jennifer R. Whitson

Associate Professor, Sociology and Legal Studies

Faculty of Arts

University of Waterloo

Daniel Cockayne

Assistant Professor,

Geography and Environmental Management

Faculty of Environment

University of Waterloo

iii

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including

any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iv

Abstract

TL;DR Work, social lives, and leisure practices are increasingly digitally mediated, and as more and more of our interactions move online, we seek out platforms and communities where we can share ideas and interact with others. Social networking sites, forums, and other socially oriented digitally networked spaces have created opportunities for communities of shared interest to come together, permitting even the smallest of interest groups to feel as though they have a home and meeting place. One location where this kind of community formation happens readily is reddit.com, a website designed to aggregate content from users and other websites into interest- based collections. Users can join and follow communities about nearly any topic, and curate their experience to show only content that aligns with their beliefs, ideologies, or desires. Along with social groups like fan fiction writers or bird watchers, the ease of gathering and sharing ideas on social platforms like reddit has allowed other niche groups with anti-equity, far-right, and supremacist groups, this has led to reddit communities in the online manosphere. The manosphere is a loose collection of anti-feminist groups that share a focus on aspects manosphere group ideologies are less of a continuum from mundane to militant, but rather like a loose collection of affiliated groups. Each manosphere group carries its own understandings about men and masculinities, and these are reflected in the ways these groups welcome (or do not welcome) men representing different versions of masculinity, and accept them as group members and/or as men. With a complicated history, growing numbers, and in some cases feminist roots, the manosphere and its popular constituent groups require examination. The purpose of this research was to explore the discourses of masculinity in two different sub-groups of the manosphere, to compare them, and gain insight into how those discourses influence community ideology. Using digital ethnographic methods, this research examines the discourses of masculinity in the /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill sub-communities of the website reddit.com this research engages the following research questions: What discourses of masculinity are embedded in the reddit manosphere spaces of /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, how do they compare, and how are these discourses disseminated and monitored to maintain collective group ideologies? And What role might reddit play, through /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, in connecting manosphere communities, and pushing users toward more radical viewpoints about gender and power? The ongoing act of conducting this research in a digital setting also generated a third question: What indicators or guideposts would have been useful as a novice digital qualitative researcher to help me better plan, develop, conduct, and theorise my digital ethnographic research? movement, as well as share the theoretical perspectives and methodological approach that frame the project. These chapters are followed by three manuscripts that present empirical refractions based on my research, as well as the development of a digital ethnographic theory-method. The first manuscript chapter, red Discourses , explores how the three mainstays of antifeminism, biological determinism, and violence provide covert and v on reddit. In this chapter I examine how subordination in a feminist society. The second manuscript, Pathways to far-right participation through /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, affordances as important contributors to community proliferation. Using the shared ideological commitment to gendered traditionalism of these two reddit communities, s (1996) explication of the left-right political spectrum, this manuscript positions /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill as far-right communities. Touching on the hard and soft misogyny of these communities as entry points into ideological pipelines, it locates reddit as a perpetuating force for far-right conversion and progression. The third manuscript is a refraction of my methodological struggles in collection of empirical materials, and the theoretical development of a way to think through the complexity of doing research in digitally mediated contexts. Application of a Digital Ethnographic Assemblage Theory-Method the Research Technoassemblage explores the challenges of using ethnographic methods in online-only communities and the messy intersections of technological systems, people behind the users, the person behind the researcher, and our (presumed) willful ignorance of that complexity. It concludes with a call for research that recognizes and better addresses the need to see and understand these complexities in all research with digitally mediated components. I conclude with a reflection on where to go from here, stepping forward with this research into continued groups. The final chapter brings together the introductory chapters and manuscripts, and reviews -right, and manosphere communities, as well as leisure and leisure research. It re-situates the importance of studying contentious groups like those studied here, and re-positions me as a researcher relative to the groups that I study. It concludes with reflections for leisure researchers to consider, as well as avenues for future inquiry that were illuminated by the findings from this study, including: the need for more Canadian-focused study of manosphere and far-right groups; the need to better study and map masculinities within the manosphere; the need to interrogate and work with empathy as a researcher of contentious worldviews; and a call to be more thorough and considered when conducting research in and on online communities. vi

Acknowledgements

There are so many people to acknowledge and thank

has been a journey. I will start with the two people who have been my most consistent supporters and encouragers through the ups and downs, happiness, and sadness of this process: my partner Shannon, and my supervisor Corey Johnson. Over the years I have devoted to this endeavor you have both, in your own ways, made sure that I could keep moving forward. You celebrated my victories . Shannon, you loved me through this whole mess, and told me that I am never allowed to write comprehensive exams again (fine by me). Corey, you taught me about the work and complexity of academia beyond the research, and have been a friend and mentor. I feel prepared in so many ways for my next academic journey. I am grateful to both of you for all your help and support. Alongside Shannon and Corey there are many people who have helped me along the way, and I will do my best to acknowledge them. I apologize now if you feel forgotten. You are not. The other members of my committee, Diana Parry and Jennifer Whitson, have provided me with much support, mentorship, and advice in the time that we have been working together. Both of you have been kind enough to work with me on projects beyond my dissertation and I have learned a great deal from you. The faculty at Waterloo have been great supporters during my time in the department, including Katie Misener as my masters supervisor, Karla Boluk as a project partner, and especially Lisbeth Berbary and Kim Lopez for talking when I needed talking, and teaching when I needed teaching. Needham Yancey Gulley, thank you for being so caring and keeping Corey alive for me. My graduate student peers have been invaluable to me, especially those who have been willing to engage with me while I worked through my project and the writing of this dissertation. I need to acknowledge the important contributions of MK Stinson, Hannah Meuller, Betsy Farrar, Robyn Burns, Hayley Baxter, Dan Wigfield, Stephen Soucie, Kristen Morrison, Chris Hurst, Irene Fu, Becca Mayers, Thabit Alomari, Earl Walker, Maggie Miller, and others to my positive experience in the department. Very special thanks are reserved for my colleagues Bronwen Valtchanov, Jasmine Nijjar, and A.C. Mack who, over the last two years, have been willing to listen to me go on, at length, about all things project, academic, and life, have provided excellent insight, and helped me be a better scholar. I owe you a debt. I owe very special academic thanks to my mother and long-suffering copyeditor. Thank you. My non-academic support system has been essential, especially my ever-loving and supportive parents who are my greatest champions, and Ran him to the park and give him pets. My friends who have no interest in academia but acknowledge what I do as important you are real people and keep me grounded. Never Change. I will end my acknowledgements by coming back to my partner, Shannon. A lot has happened since I started grad school, and you have been my support throughout all the great highs and terrible lows. You continue to be uncharacteristically upbeat about my job prospects and thank you enough. You also produced the best human on earth.

Thank you for believing in me.

vii

Dedication

To my tiny human. I do this work so that, hopefully, you w viii

Table of Contents

Examining Committee Membership ..................................................................... ii

............................................................................................. iii

Abstract ................................................................................................................... iv

Acknowledgements................................................................................................. vi

Dedication .............................................................................................................. vii

List of Figures ......................................................................................................... xi

1 : Preface: How the project found me .................................................................. 1

How did we get here? ................................................................................................................. 4

............................................................................................................ 8

Framing the Research ................................................................................................................. 9

Important note ..................................................................................................................... 10

2 : The Setting .........................................................................................................11

What is reddit? .......................................................................................................................... 12

How Reddit Works ............................................................................................................... 18

Why Reddit Works ............................................................................................................... 26

-Sphere ........................................................................................ 31

Why Choose Reddit as a Study Site? ................................................................................... 35

................................................................................. 38

Feminist Roots ..................................................................................................................... 38

The impacts of new realities ................................................................................................ 39

3 : Theoretical Perspective ....................................................................................41

Feminist Thinking ..................................................................................................................... 42

Social Construction Feminism ............................................................................................ 43

Technofeminism ................................................................................................................... 47

Feminist Studies of Men and Masculinity ........................................................................... 50

Intersectionality and Feminism ........................................................................................... 52

Masculinities Theories .............................................................................................................. 55

Hegemonic Masculinity ....................................................................................................... 56

Hybrid Masculinity .............................................................................................................. 57

Masculinity, Masculine Embodiment, Digital Technologies, and the Internet ................... 61

Geek Masculinity ................................................................................................................. 62

Digital Spaces as Leisure Spaces .............................................................................................. 64

Digitally mediated lives, communication, and the Internet ...................................................... 65

Platform studies ................................................................................................................... 65

Software Studies .................................................................................................................. 68

Online Communities ............................................................................................................ 71

Online Communities as Leisure Spaces .............................................................................. 73

Summary ................................................................................................................................... 74

ix

4 : Methodology ......................................................................................................76

Methodological Scaffolding ...................................................................................................... 76

Ethnography ........................................................................................................................ 76

The Silent Witness Lurking as Listening .......................................................................... 92

Bounding the Site ................................................................................................................. 97

Access .................................................................................................................................. 98

Ethics ................................................................................................................................... 98

Is this work (E)thnography? .............................................................................................. 107

Collection/Generation of Empirical Materials ........................................................................ 112

Observation and Listening ................................................................................................ 112

Systematic Thread Capture ............................................................................................... 114

Data Analysis..................................................................................................................... 119

Technology ........................................................................................................................ 125

Trustworthiness ................................................................................................................. 128

Summary ................................................................................................................................. 131

Antifeminism, Biological Determinism, and Violence in Two Communities anosphere ...................................................................................134

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 134

The Manosphere ................................................................................................................ 136

Reddit ................................................................................................................................. 137

Masculinity ........................................................................................................................ 140

Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 142

Digital ethnographic methods ........................................................................................... 142

Analysis.............................................................................................................................. 144

Claims and Models of Masculinity ......................................................................................... 145

The Antifeminist Nucleus ................................................................................................... 146

Men ŋ Women: fundamentally different beings ............................................................... 150

....................................................... 152

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 154

-right participation through

/r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill ....................................................................157

......................................................... 159 ................................. 163

What is Reddit? ....................................................................................................................... 164

/r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill ............................................................................................ 165

/r/MensRights .................................................................................................................... 166

/r/TheRedPill ..................................................................................................................... 167

So, Can We Call These Communities Far-Right? ............................................................. 168

How Reddit is Involved .......................................................................................................... 171

Why this all matters ................................................................................................................ 173

x

7 : Application of a Digital Ethnographic Assemblage Theory-Method the

Research Technoassemblage ...........................................................................176

Becoming Disoriented ............................................................................................................ 176

....................... 181

Complexities of Listening .................................................................................................. 181

Complexities of Capturing ................................................................................................. 185

Exposing complexity and following curiosity .................................................................... 186

Research .................................................................................................................................. 187

Assemblage as Theory-Method: Applications for Digital Ethnography ................................ 190

Technological Complexity ................................................................................................. 192

Linearity and Time ............................................................................................................ 197

Engagement and Familiarity ............................................................................................. 200

The Bounding of the Digital Ethnographic Assemblage Theory-Method the Research

Technoassemblage .................................................................................................................. 202

Staying Oriented: Using Guideposts ....................................................................................... 203

8 : Conclusion .......................................................................................................207

Here we are. ............................................................................................................................ 208

So what? .................................................................................................................................. 210

The Manosphere ................................................................................................................ 211

Reddit ................................................................................................................................. 214

Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 217

A few notes for leisure researchers: .................................................................................. 222

What this work does not do .................................................................................................... 227

Future inquiry Where could we go from here? .................................................................... 230

The lack of Canadian context on masculinities, the r .................... 230 Interrogating empathy and what these men seek in their leisure communities ................. 231

Mapping masculinities in the manosphere ........................................................................ 233

................................................................ 233

Reddit affordances ............................................................................................................. 234

More exploration of temporary data and snapshots ......................................................... 235

Challenges and Worries .......................................................................................................... 235

Feeling empathy and falling victim to it ............................................................................ 235

Leaving too much unsaid ................................................................................................... 236

Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................................ 238

9 : Afterword Knowing when to quit ..............................................................240

Letter of Copyright Permission ............................................................................................... 244

10 : References ......................................................................................................246

xi

List of Figures

Figure 1-1: On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog meme, from awesomelytechie.com

(2014) ........................................................................................................................... 6

Figure 2-1: Screenshot of search results from Google.com for the term "black girls" - August 18,

2021 ............................................................................................................................ 16

Figure 2-2: Screenshot of search for the term "black girls" on reddit - August 18, 2021 ............ 17

Figure 2-3: Composite image of subreddit options presented to new users after they sign up. All categories available are presented on the left side of the image, and all subreddits from the "Just for You" category are presented on the right...................................... 19

Figure 2-4: Reddit landing page for /u/LearnStuffAboutStuff - August 16, 2021. ...................... 21

Figure 2-5: Reddit landing page for non-users April 19, 2021. ................................................. 22

Figure 2-6: Organization of reddit comment threads, clean and with descriptions (note: this figure uses the older version of the reddit graphical user interface because the colours used to separate comment levels make the comments easier to visualize for this

example). .................................................................................................................... 23

Figure 2-7: Image showing no vote, upvote (orange), and downvote (blue) of the same post. .... 24 Figure 2-8: "Shut up and Take my Upvote" meme using image from television show Futurama -

© quickmeme.com ..................................................................................................... 24

Figure 2-9: User page for /u/GallowBoob showing 36,872,073 Karma - August 18, 2021 ......... 25

Figure 2-10: Reddit user page for user /u/LearnStuffAboutStuff. ................................................ 28

Figure 2-11: User page for user /u/GovSchwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reddit

username. ................................................................................................................... 29

Figure 4-1: Sample image from NCapture, NVivo extension for capturing web content for import and analysis in the NVivo software. Along with extensive white space, elements of the data are cut-off or missing, and some text overlaps, rendering the data image

useless. ..................................................................................................................... 116

Figure 4-2: Reddit data spreadsheet showing data points recorded for each post. ..................... 117

Figure 4-3: Side-by-side showing reddit's old interface (left) and new interface (right) for the

same subreddit - /r/MensRights, April 29, 2021. ..................................................... 117

Figure 4-4: OneNote Capture of reddit thread showing copied post link and log information. . 118 Figure 4-5: OneNote capture showing the linked-content from research reddit thread MR-H-066.

.................................................................................................................................. 119

Figure 4-6: Screen capture of OneNote data notes reflecting politics of the Right in

/r/MensRights. .......................................................................................................... 125

Figure 4-7: Using Kleptomania OCR software to capture text from a research image and convert

it to plain text for inclusion in research data notes or writing.................................. 126

Figure 4-8: Dissertation workspace. ........................................................................................... 127

Figure 5-1: Screenshot of /r/MensRights thread showing parent-child comment threading,

December 31, 2020. ................................................................................................. 143

Figure 7-1: My basement workspace - with plants for sanity. .................................................... 176

Figure 7-2: Screenshot of reddit data capture in researcher digital data notebook. .................... 177

xii Figure 7-3: Screen captures of desktop version (left) and mobile version (right) of the reddit

landing page - May 31, 2021. .................................................................................. 194

Figure 7-4: Dog on the Internet comic/meme © Peter Steiner, The New Yorker, July 5, 1993

.................................................................................................................................. 196

Figure 7-5: My basement workspace - with plants for sanity. .................................................... 204

Figure 7-6: Screenshot of reddit data capture in researcher digital data notebook. .................... 205

Figure 9-1: Screen shot of Cake Day message from reddit to the author - mobile screenshot,

cropped. .................................................................................................................... 240

Figure 9-2: Too much internet - meme - from memegenerator.net. ........................................... 240

Figure 9-3: Image of Saskatoon Catholic cathedral front door - /u/MoeYYC post to /r/pics June

25, 2021. ................................................................................................................... 242

Figure 9-4: Kermit Tea Meme: Enough Internet - imgflip.com. ................................................ 243

1

1 : Preface: How the project found me

than discrimination or lack of opportunity." "High-level intellectual activity is related to testosterone." - The manifesto of Roy Den Hollander In the summer of 2020, a 69-year-old White1 male lawyer with terminal cancer shot and killed a

20-year-old man and gravely wounded his father in the front doorway of their New Jersey home.

Dressed as a FedEx delivery person, the gunman shot both men, then fled. He would later take his own life in New York state. Daniel and Mark Anderl were the son and husband of US federal Judge Esther Salas, and at the time of the shooting the motives were unclear.

It was revealed later that t

pending before Salas addressing the idea of discrimination against men in the United States mandatory selective service enrollment (i.e., the male-only military draft). Den Hollander was an active mies and public policies he website, still active in February of 2021 (http://www.roydenhollander.com) describes him as the -Feminist Lawyer, (Den Hollander, 2021). The site provides the ttorney, his resume, and a link to been- scammed.com communicate, enlighten, educate, and elucidate about the growing Feminazi tyranny over the minds of men and social institutions (Been-Scammed.com, 2021). Been-scammed.com has very little content, and the only identifying information available about who runs the site is an email

Been-Scammed.com Stupid Frigging Fool, which

in shooting the Anderls is not the norm for those but he is also not alone. Two of the most widely recognized

1 I capitalise White throughout this document as I agree with Nell Irvin Painter (2011, 2020) that the racial identity

of Whiteness is too easily ignored, even as its influence is significant and pervasive. 2 mass murders in modern Canadian history2 were committed by men who identified somewhere on the anti-: The Toronto van attack where a misogynist incel drove a rented van into a crowd of pedestrians killing 10 and injuring 16; and the Montreal massacre where an angry young man killed 14 women and injured 14 others. While as Den Hollander, in both cases, t guaranteeing men access to power, control, women, and sex (Cousineau, 2021c). The Toronto van attack propelled discussion public action, and the importance/dangers of the internet, into the Canadian consciousness in a spectacular and terrible way. But Canada has a history of gender-motivated anti-feminism and violence against women. The most significant (deadly) single act of violent anti-feminist backlash occurred December 6th,

1986, when a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife entered the Ecole

Polytechnique in Montreal and systematically killed 14 women, and injured 10 women and 4 The perpetrator of the Montreal Massacre had been unable to secure a spot in the engineering program at the school and blamed, at least in part, women like the ones was denied entry to the engineering program not because of a lack of space, but rather that he was not qualified for entry and was missing many of the required prerequisite courses. Like many of the violent offenders that would come after him, rather than blame the deep systemic and socio- cultural constructs that permitted/denied him something, he took aim at available and defenseless targets: the women engineering students he believed had wronged him. The perpetrator of the Montreal Massacre blamed his perceived disadvantage and lost entitlement (Manne, 2020) on feminism, and decided that the best way to show his anger was murder. While the man who committed the 1989 Montreal murders was no time, it is online had the opportunity been available to him. Like others that have followed in his wake, he felt spurned by women and changing social conventions, believed that he was disadvantaged

2 I am purposefully excluding the acts of state-sanctioned genocide committed against indigenous people in Canada

through the residential school and reserve systems (both historical and current)

activists. The brutality and atrocity should not be forgotten or diminished, nor should the continued calls for

accountability in these deaths something which is not lacking in the examples that I provide where non-indigenous

Canadians were killed.

3 because of his identity as a man, and blamed feminism for issues that have roots not in feminist actions but rather in the long and oppressive histories of patriarchal domination, entitlement, and false power-sustaining traditionalisms. opening of this chapter because other radical) and still committed murder. The use of violence as a social weapon is not exclusive to extremists. The most public violence perpetrated by members of the manosphere3 has come at the hands of misogynist incels,4 and only a very rights activists (like Den Hollander) have engaged in violence. So here, Den Hollander is an outlier. What is more typical about Den Hollander , however, is revealed in the content of his website and the rhetoric that appears on Been-Scammed.com. Focused on how feminism has brought about the downfall of society, Den Hollander frames men as thequotesdbs_dbs20.pdfusesText_26

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