From the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism
Anti-feminist conspiracism grew with the successes of feminist movement and threats to cisgender men’s entrenched dominance and continues to shape anti-feminist and male supremacist movements and the US right, both online and offline today. The array of contemporary anti-feminist mobilizations, both within the Christian Right and secular ideologies, are influenced by the 1970s Men’s Rights Movement (MRM)’s assertion that feminism’s advances were unfairly leaving men behind. Anti-feminist conspiracism unites male supremacist groups around a core narrative: feminists are secretly wielding control over government, law, education, media, culture, and society to advance women’s interest at the expense of men (the truly oppressed). Anti-feminist conspiracism is based in a deep suspicion and demonization of women, a firm belief in cisgender men’s (sexual) entitlement and their control of women’s bodies and autonomy. Anti-feminist conspiracism should be understood not merely as anti-feminist (as in self-identifying feminists) but also fundamentally anti-women.
Anti-feminism is central to the conspiracy genre. In the anti-feminist imagination, feminists are behind other perceived threats, such as “wokeism” and “Cultural Marxism,” and anti-feminist conspiracism shares many elements with anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-government conspiracies. This concept of a powerful feminist behind-the-scenes elite is reminiscent of long-standing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that name Jewish people as a “global elite” who exert global control (Kosse 2022). Some versions assert feminists are pawns of the “Jewish elite”—mirroring the structure of racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that communists and Jews must be behind the US Civil Rights Movement, as Blacks were dehumanized as irrational and incompetent (Lyons 2022). This reflects a tension between anti-feminist conspiracism that paints women as intelligent and evil, and that which views them as incompetent and base (sometimes holding this contradiction within the same text or ideology) (Hodapp 2017). This chapter focuses primarily on the “women as evil” trope and beliefs that women control government. Skepticism toward the government, especially after increases in women’s and civil rights, tends to lie at the center of conspiratorial thinking. Anti-feminist conspiracism, like anti-Semitism, has an ambivalent relationship with government: seen at once as a source of threat giving women illegitimate power and as a structure to reclaim from corruption (for some, by any means necessary). Some, like the Proud Boys, aim to build nationalist mobilizations in support of a white male supremacist symbol like president Donald Trump—both through democratic electoral means and through anti-democratic violence such as the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.
We analyze here the genre of anti-feminist conspiracism. First, we argue that anti-feminist conspiracism should be understood as a structuring mechanism of society, a mechanism intertwined with misogyny and a host of other forms of structuring conspiracism. Second, we argue that the individuals and movements that promote anti-feminist conspiracism have an ambivalent relationship with the idea of government and government intervention: just as they disavow government intervention and decry feminism as interfering in people’s lives and rights, they simultaneously call upon government and institutional intervention to instill their own values and policies, often policies that would limit or abolish women’s rights.
This is the opening of a blogpost from the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, which is an extract from a chapter in the Bloomsbury book Conspiracy as Genre: Narrative, Power, and Circulation.
Alex DiBranco (she/her) is the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. Her work furthers understanding of male supremacist ideology and methods for gender justice change, with a research emphasis on male supremacist violence, anti-feminist conspiracism, misogynist incel and men’s rights ideologies, and anti-abortion movements and the Christian Right. Her writing has appeared in outlets including the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Journal, The Nation Magazine, and The Public Eye quarterly, a publication of the think tank Political Research Associates. She has provided trainings and advice on male supremacist ideology for journalists and for social justice organizations such as Western States Center, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and SURJ.
Megan Kelly is a PhD candidate, and a co-founder of IRMS. Her research interests include the relationship between masculinities, whiteness and victimhood in supremacist movements, and responses to these movements. She is particularly interested in identity formation, misogynist ideologies, and relations between different male supremacist identities.
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