A-Infos (en) Australia, AnComFed: Picket Line - Selling sexism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Young men are being radicalised against women and queer people by rich 
influencers and tech-company algorithms. And it's not an accident. It's 
being done for profit and to protect the interests of capitalism.
Boys in high school are the biggest target. If you're a teenager, you 
have real reasons to be angry at the world. Your school feels like it's 
falling apart. If you don't have a shitty job at McDonalds yet, it's 
only a matter of time until you're a wage slave like everyone else. And 
who knows if you'll ever be able to afford moving out of your parents house?

The far-right wants young people to think the problem is 'feminism' and 
'wokeness'. But the real enemy is capitalism and the sexism that it 
relies on.

Alpha-males and tradwives
Boys are encouraged to sign up to this far-right agenda through 
'manosphere' propaganda. The manosphere is a loosely defined coalition 
of different online misogynists, who claim to be helping men by teaching 
them the secrets of dating, fitness, and finance. The goal is to game a 
corrupt system run by woke elitists, and stand up to feminists, who do 
nothing but blame and attack men.

Men are the main audience for this new wave of sexism. But women aren't 
immune to the propaganda. The far-right is increasingly appealing to 
women with the ideal of the traditional wife (or 'tradwife'): a 
lifestyle reflecting the 1950s stereotype of a stay-at-home wife. Scroll 
tiktok and you might come across a slick video made by one of these 
women, preaching about living 'the simple life'. No more career stress. 
More time for friends and hobbies. And, of course, being free to raise 
children. The tradwife movement argues that women have been lied to: 
that feminists forced women into the workplace and away from this 
'natural' state.

In many ways, these are two sides of the same coin. Both encourage an 
allegedly traditional lifestyle, where men make the money, and women 
keep the house tidy. Both downplay how difficult housework can be, while 
also putting women who do so on a pedestal.

All of this is a recipe for escalating abuse, because the real goal is 
the submission of women. In the case of leading Manosphere influencer, 
Andrew Tate, it led to outright sex trafficking. For the far-right 
Youtuber and tradwife Lauren Southern, it resulted in years of torment, 
and divorcing her husband out of fear. Submission here is an excuse for 
control and often stems from intense levels of jealousy and expectations 
of women's sexual purity and fidelity-ancient sexist expectations.

Who benefits?
Being a sexist pig online is big business.

Manosphere influencers reach big audiences by telling men and boys the 
economy isn't fair. But rather than change it, they sell a fantasy of 
escaping work and exploiting the rest of society. Inequality is fine-as 
long as they're the ones on top. To get there all you need to do is sign 
up to their self-help course, buy into their crypto scams, or purchase a 
guide for sex trafficking your girlfriend.

Tradwives sell the same kind of dream; a life far outside the realm of 
possibility for most families. Elaborate homesteads; vacations; 
excessive homemade meals that take hours to prepare. All it takes is 
marrying the 'right' man at the top to escape the poverty and work of a 
regular existence.

The success of this movement isn't an accident. These influencers are 
the new propaganda wing of the far-right, and they have friends in big 
social media capitalists, like Elon Musk.

Guys like Musk support this stuff for two reasons. The first is that it 
distracts from the real problem in people's lives: capitalism. But it 
also supports the far-right's agenda for women. They want to roll back 
all of the progress of the last century by abolishing abortion, birth 
control, no-fault divorce, and even the right to vote.

The goal is control over women and their bodies. Partly for ideological 
reasons, but ultimately for the reasons that capitalism has always 
required sexism: as a way to reproduce the working class.

We have an aging population. Capitalists are increasingly worried that 
there aren't enough fit, young workers to support an older population. 
Families are having fewer kids, or none at all-partly because it's just 
so damn expensive. Bulk billing is harder and harder to come by. The 
price of daycare keeps going up, along with food, rent, and all the 
other basics.

There's a contradiction here. How do you attack workers' conditions but 
still keep them productive? For the far-right, it's even trickier: 
they've already committed themselves to attacking the migrant workers 
currently filling the gaps. Their answer is the only one left open to 
them: exploiting the free labour of women at home, and reducing them to 
child-bearers.

The system to blame
This new online sexism is gaining steam, because hidden in all of their 
hideous beliefs is a kernel of truth. Work is exhausting and it sucks. 
Women are still expected to do most of the chores and childcare, even 
after a day at their job. But forcing women out of paid work isn't the 
solution. Firstly, because for most women, no choice was involved, they 
have to work to afford to live. Secondly, because domestic labour is 
also exhausting. And thirdly, because everyone else has also felt this 
exhaustion.

The real reason work sucks is because we live under capitalism. A system 
where a small number of people (capitalists) own everything, and you (a 
worker) are forced to sell your labour to survive.

Capitalism is why you'll spend most of your waking life with no control 
over your day. Capitalism is why you're paid a pittance to do a job you 
hate. They own the company you buy your food from, and they're the 
landlords raising the rent. That's why they get to sit back and get rich 
from your work, while you desperately try to pay bills.

The capitalist system is supported by sexist ideology. It doesn't just 
keep women and non-binary people in line, but men too. It tells them to 
'man up' and accept dangerous work; to fight the bosses' wars; and to 
see women-their fellow workers-as the enemy.

Direct action, not diversity training
What may seem like harmless fantasy or good dating advice can easily 
hide an ugly underbelly. The internet doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's 
run by capitalists. What you see is decided by tech billionaires, 
purposefully designing algorithms to feed you a diet of ruling class slop.

How do we fight it? Well, we know what doesn't work. We can't ignore the 
problem and hope it disappears. Liberal diversity initiatives can be 
overturned by any government, and workers know their bosses don't 
actually care about that stuff. Why should men listen to management 
lecturing them about what it takes to be a good person?

It's workers who need to talk about sexism and fight it together. That 
takes recognising it in all its forms, and committing to taking on the 
oppression of women as a united class.

You learn who your comrades are when you fight the real enemy together. 
The deep connections of solidarity built in union meetings, in reading 
groups, and in the streets can lead us to a better future. But the first 
step is to probably stop scrolling so much.

https://ancomfed.org/2026/06/selling-sexism/
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