‘Gillette: The best a beta can get’: Networking hegemonic masculinity in the digital sphere

Theorising masculinities online

There are several key conceptualisations of masculinity along with theories of gender power that are core to an analysis of hegemonic masculinity within digital spaces. This section begins by outlining the development of the concept of hegemonic masculinity from Raewyn Connell’s seminary work on gender power to James Messerschmidt’s (2018) most recent articulation, and problematises the popular notion of ‘toxic masculinity’.

In Connell’s (1995) seminal work, she puts forward an understanding of hegemonic masculinity as ‘the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’ (p. 77). This concept of hegemonic masculinity was developed within Connell’s theorisation of gender and power as relational and was part of a broader attempt to understand and conceptualise gendered hierarchies both in terms of men’s dominance over women and the stratification of masculinities (Christensen and Jensen, 2014; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005).

Connell lays out that hegemonic masculinity is not necessarily a specific set of characteristics; it can be configured in a range of ways depending on the social context, arising from the normative patterns of performance as held as the ‘“most honored way of being a man” and all other male gender performances are examined within the framework of this standard’ (Connell and Messerschmidt as quoted in Rodriguez et al., 2016: 244). However, as a contested concept, hegemonic masculinity has faced a range of criticism for being ‘too structural, too abstract, for reifying normative masculine positions’ (Christensen and Jensen, 2014: 62) yet, as Christensen and Jensen (2014: 60) argue, much of this criticism is a result of the ambiguity that has arisen from the concept’s reception and adoption.

One such problematic reception and development is what has evolved into the popular notion of toxic masculinity, which presents an attempt to understand a particular manifestation of hegemonic masculinity. The concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ emerged in the 1990s to help explain various representations of masculinity. Terry Kupers (2005: 715) popularised the concept when he used it to identify toxic expressions of masculinity (such as violence, greed, homophobia and misogyny) and contrasted these with nontoxic masculine expressions (such as the drive to be successful at work, provide for his family, or win at sport).

It is this popular notion of toxic masculinity that the Gillette short film adheres to as it begins by highlighting a constellation of behaviours deemed toxic by Kupers (2005: 713–714) that serve to foster ‘male domination’, ‘the devaluation of women’, and ‘wanton violence’ (such as bullying, catcalling and fighting) and concludes by demonstrating and encouraging nontoxic behaviours (defending women, breaking up fights). However, this notion has been subject to much critique within academic literature with Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) arguing it implies toxic masculinity is a fixed collective of traits. Instead, they present an understanding of masculinity, and more broadly, systems of gender, as relational, and argue that hegemonic masculinity is under constant reconstruction. Debbie Ging (2017: 3) further underscores this when she draws attention to how hegemonic masculinity can be expressed through actions including distancing oneself from the traits typically associated with the popular notion of toxic masculinity.

In 2005, Connell provides an updated version of her concept of hegemonic masculinity with co-author James Messerschmidt in which they propose a slight reformulation that recognises the agency of subordinated groups, a finding further underscored by Maloney et al. (2019) research documenting online resistance to hegemonic masculine domination. Here, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argue that the ‘hierarchies of masculinities is a pattern of hegemony, not a pattern of simple domination based on force. Cultural consent, discursive centrality, institutionalisation, and the marginalisation or delegitimation of alternatives’ (p. 841) are features of socially dominant masculinities.

Anderson, in 2010, critiques the concept of hegemonic masculinity by arguing that there is a decline in orthodox forms of masculinity. Instead, Anderson (2010) puts forward a notion of ‘inclusive masculinities’ framed around a decline of homophobia (at least in the West) and argues that a decline in ‘homohysteria’ permits men to demonstrate a wider range of behaviours without being homosexualised. However, this concept of inclusive masculinities has been a major point of contention within the field of masculinities with Messerschmidt (2018: 136) arguing that it dismisses the relational and legitimation features core to hegemonic masculinity.

In 2018, Messerschmidt (2018) provides a more extensive reformulation of hegemonic masculinity, laying out a revised definition of contemporary hegemonic masculinities as,

. . . decentered, fluid, contingent, provisional, and omnipresent locally, regionally, and globally; they are hidden in plain sight; and they collectively constitute a social structure that relationally and discursively legitimates unequal gender relations between men and women, masculinities and femininities, and among masculinities (p. 133).

Along with this updated definition, Messerschmidt (2018: 125) details several other nonhegemonic masculinities, the first of which emerged from Connell’s original conception (including complicit, subordinate, marginalised and protest masculinities) and were designed, Messerschmidt argues, as abstract rather than descriptive concepts. The second group of masculinities Messerschmidt (2018: 125) presents is part of his reconceptualisation of hegemonic masculinity and includes dominant, dominating, subordinate and positive masculinities. Dominant masculinities are defined here as the most celebrated form of masculinity in a particular context, while dominating involve commanding and controlling interactions while neither necessarily legitimate a hierarchical gendered relationship (Messerschmidt, 2018: 125). Subordinate are constructed situationally as aberrant or deviant and positive masculinities are those that legitimate an egalitarian relationship between men and women (Messerschmidt, 2018: 126).

Connell’s early work also conceptualised an ‘emphasised femininity’, that is, ‘those forms of femininity that are practical in a complementary, compliant, and accommodating subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity’ (Messerschmidt, 2018: 28). Lauren Menzie (2020) further builds on this concept and extends it into the digital realm in her work analysing incel culture. Menzie (2020) sets out that emphasised femininity must be ‘obedient to the conditions of heteropatriarchy, compliant with the male gaze, and of “acceptable” form (white, straight, able-bodied, thin)’ (p. 5). This notion of emphasised femininity is useful for understanding the role of some women in contributing to and sustaining male hegemony.

In addition, Christensen and Jensen’s (2014) intersectional approach to understanding hegemonic masculinity is important here to provide a multi-dimensional understanding and contextualisation of power relations, particularly in terms of what they call ‘internal’ hegemony (the hierarchical power relations between men). They call for a dynamic and contextual approach to power and for research that analyses complexity and contradiction to further understandings of how masculinities are ‘othered’ and to better grasp how ‘being a man can be a category of disempowerment’ (Christensen and Jensen, 2014: 70), particularly for marginalised ethnic minority men.

While the Gillette short film uses the concept of toxic masculinity to frame the narrative of masculinity in crisis, this article aligns with the view that the concept of toxic masculinity is reductive. Consequentially, Messerschmidt’s reformulation of hegemonic masculinity along with the intersectional approach put forward by Christensen and Jensen (2014) is used for this research as the analysis explores how hegemonic masculinity is reproduced and reinforced online in the public response to the Gillette short film.

Geek masculinities, backlash publics and the manosphere

Since Ben Light’s (2013) call for research into how masculinities are (co)produced and reproduced within digitally networked publics, there has been a developing field of research into networked masculinities, the relationship between masculinity and digital media, and the antifeminist and anti-‘PC’ backlash culture that has emerged online.

Debbie Ging’s (2017) research is used as a basis for this article as she theorises new articulations of masculinity online and identifies collectives of men that are associated with what has become known as the ‘manosphere’ and how they employ technological affordances to enforce masculine power. The manosphere is the digital manifestation of the contemporary Men’s Liberation Movement and has become a loose confederacy of men’s interest groups (Ging, 2017: 2) and includes involuntary celibates (known as incels), men’s rights activists (MRAs), fathers’ rights groups, men going their own way (known as MGTOW), pick-up artists, traditional conservatives and several other groups whose focus is liberating men from perceived feminist control. Ging (2017: 1) theorises the different articulations of masculinity by these groups and argues that technological affordances amplify ‘new articulations of aggrieved manhood’ and complicate the ‘orthodox alignment of power and dominance with hegemonic masculinity by operationalizing tropes of victimhood’. This research provides a vital basis for this study as Ging’s work helps bridge theoretical understandings of masculinities with online manifestations of hegemonic masculinity.

Extending Ging’s (2017) work, Nicholas and Agius’ (2018) research on antifeminist fathers’ rights and men’s rights activist backlashes draws attention to the role these groups play in enforcing the Internet as a masculinised space in which women are subordinate. This research is useful for understanding the overt and tacit, organised and more informal tactics MRAs employ as they mobilise to oppose feminism. While Nicholas and Aguis focus primarily on MRAs, several scholars have focused on how incels (Bratich and Banet-Weiser, 2019; Jaki et al., 2019) and MGTOW (Jones et al., 2019; Wright et al., 2020) attempt to reclaim or assert power online.

More broadly, Angela Nagle’s (2017) work into the culture wars online, demonstrates how content from the manosphere bleeds into other areas of the web, overlapping and intermixing with content from the alt-right movement and how these different male subcommunities share and engage with a common language and ideology. This ideology is known as ‘the red pill’; an analogy deriving from ‘The Matrix’. In the manosphere’s adaption, taking the red pill means one is awakened to the reality of female domination and male oppression. Despite sharing a common rhetoric, Nagle (2017) makes it clear that these men’s groups are distinct and sometimes conflict with each other. Research into the incel community, for example, identifies that a core dimension of the group that differentiates it from other masculine groups is a hatred towards other men, particularly attractive men who successfully ‘score’ with women (Ging, 2017; Jaki et al., 2019). This puts them at odds with the other groups within the manosphere. However, little research has examined how these distinct men’s groups and their differing articulations of masculinity may manifest in a single networked public.

One approach that could be extended to further understand the masculinity upheld by the incel community is Salter and Blodgett’s (2017) notion of ‘toxic geek masculinity’. They consider how geek masculinity disavows stereotypical masculine traits (such as athleticism) for technology and gaming. Salter and Blodgett (2017: 4) argue that geeks formulate a shared identity defined by their powerlessness in traditional spaces resulting in the development of their own highly masculinised spaces, linking this trend with the development of social media platforms by tech geeks such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. Salter and Blodgett (2017) identify a fundamental tension of geek masculinity in how they reject orthodox masculinity (embodied by athleticism and sexual prowess), valorise technological mastery, all while maintaining an obsession with hypermasculine heroes. Anything that critiques or questions this fragile and contradictory geek identity, Salter and Blodgett (2017: 194) argue, results in a ‘set of defensive reactions’ that attempt to reinstate a ‘geek equilibrium’, that is, a ‘constructed fantasy’ in which ‘young white men outside the traditional definitions of masculinity are victims turned heroes’. In this way, geek masculinity ‘becomes and thus functions as hegemonic’ (Maloney et al., 2019: 28) in specific settings.

This article expands further on this by exploring how hegemonic masculinity is coproduced and reproduced online as well as how technological affordances are used to achieve hegemony within the digital public sphere. What is different about the Gillette short film as a case study is that it predominantly centres men as both perpetrators and saviours, while women are largely absent from the commercial other than when they are presented as objects (Nebeling and Hvidtfeldt, 2020). A male voice calls into question long-standing traits associated with toxic masculinity and racially diverse men model behaviours associated with more egalitarian masculinities. This establishes a context in which a backlash has to respond to other men; men who represent egalitarian or positive masculinities (Messerschmidt, 2018) as opposed to women who have been the target of many masculine backlash campaigns previously studied (Blodgett and Salter, 2018). It is also important to note that the positioning of Black men as the ‘hero’ in some of the scenarios within the video (a Black man stops a White man from following a woman in the street) also touches on the intersect of White and geek fragility that Salter and Blodgett (2017) identify.

Method

This article incorporates a multiphase analysis of the backlash of the Gillette We Believe: The Best Men Can Be YouTube ‘short film’ that was published on 13 January 2019. The study involves a social network analysis and a thematic analysis of the comments posted in response to the YouTube video to develop an understanding of the nature of the backlash, the configurations of masculinity that manifest within the comments, the structure and configuration of the public involved in the backlash and how masculinities are (re)produced and reinforced within the backlash.

Data were collected on 13 February 2019, 1 month after the video was published, using the YouTube Data Tools which employ the YouTube application programming interface (API; Rieder, 2015). The YouTube Data Tools were used to extract information about the specific video and to retrieve the comments associated to the video. The data collected included statistics about the video, the top level of comments and replies, comment authors and their comment count, and a network file detailing the interactions between users in the comment section. Overall, 400,000 of the most recent comments on the video were collected. A smaller sample of the top 3000 comments was extracted to conduct a thematic analysis. A thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was employed to group and organise the data set and as an analytical tool because of its ability to enable the identification of patterns within the dataset.

A social network analysis of the commenters on the YouTube video was also conducted to visualise the key users who were driving and framing the discussion and the backlash. Social network analysis (SNA) has previously been used to visualise and capture snapshots of dynamic, ephemeral or unstable digitally networked publics (Trott, 2020). In this case, SNA is valuable for providing data about the network of the backlash, the nature and shape of the discussions within the comments, along with structural information about the configuration(s) of the public(s) present within the comments. It is employed to shed light on how masculine publics manifest, communicate and propagate hegemonic masculinity. With an understanding of gender and masculinity as relational, SNA can help map out a snapshot of the gendered power dynamics at play and how they manifest in a networked public. The SNA visualisation was generated using the open-source software Gephi and used the algorithm Force Atlas 2 that spatially presents the data in a process of attraction and repulsion according to patterns of connectivity (Trott, 2020). The modularity algorithm was also utilised to detect and visualise neighbourhoods or clusters within the network.

Several ethical considerations were made in the development of this study. The current ethical guidelines detailed by the Association of Internet Researchers (Franzke et al., 2020) outline the reframing of public or quasi-public online data as private from a research perspective due to the expected and assumed nature of privacy by individual users when creating data online. As a result, it is important to protect online exchanges as anonymous or pseudo-anonymous or to acquire informed consent in their use (Franzke et al., 2020: 8). YouTube has a culture of pseudo-anonymity with most users operating under a pseudonym. In the YouTube data privacy policy (detailed by the parent company Google), it is made clear that users should consider the public nature of their engagement such as commenting on YouTube videos, although users have the ability to privatise their own accounts and uploaded videos. YouTube also provides API access to tools such as the YouTube Data Tools for research purposes. However, there can be ethical issues (such as harassment as a consequence of increased attention by drawing attention to specific users in research publications) that can create risks to specifically identifying even pseudonymous users (Jones et al., 2019).

For this study, careful steps were taken to protect commenters. Usernames and full quotes are not included to mitigate the potential for re-identification. To assess the role of key users within the networked public as well as verify their gender identity and their alignment or connection with other manosphere groups, (public) individual user information such as the username was collected but these data are stored separately from all other data including user comments. It was important to collect these data as valuable information were encoded within the usernames of top commenters that provided detail about the configuration of the networked public and how notions of masculinity were (co)produced and reproduced in deliberate ways that subvert platform moderation processes.

Networking masculinities and the configuration of a backlash public

The social network visualisations generated in this article illustrate the interactions between users in the comment section of the Gillette video on YouTube. The network visualised is directed and represents 53 of the top commenters (nodes) and contains 78 comments and replies (edges). The networks are coloured according to modularity class, which signifies neighbourhoods or communities that are clusters of users who are more densely connected to each other. In Figure 1, the nodes (users) are sized based on in-degree that is how many replies or comments are directed to them, whereas in Figure 2, the nodes are sized based on out-degree, which signifies how many comments the users have directed to others. Comparing the in-degree and out-degree social networks, we can see the positioning and the role of the top users within the network shifts.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Gillette comment network sized in relation to in-degree.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Gillette comment network sized in relation to out-degree.

Traditionally, high in-degree scores represent users who are seen as ‘authorities’ within a network compared to high scoring out-degree users who have been described as ‘hubs’ that link frequently to authorities, while receiving very few incoming links themselves (Kleinberg, 1999). Authorities tend to not maintain connections or links between each other and are often positioned as competitors as they are considered to be holding positions of power and influence within a network (Kleinberg, 1999). However, within Figure 1, the users with the highest in-degree scores and who hold centralised positions within the network were not viewed as authorities by the rest of the network. These three users (labelled as n35, n9 and n40) were self-identified male users who made a comment demonstrating support for the Gillette video.

These initial comments attempt to break down and challenge traditional hegemonic masculine performances: ‘As a man myself I like this commercial’, ‘I too believe there are a lot of dumb behaviors and norms associated with the male gender that we need to fix’, ‘This commercial isn’t saying ALL masculinity is bad’, ‘Imagine . . . a commercial that tells you not to harass women makes you angry’. However, the comments were perceived as a threat to the hegemonic order as they critique and challenge a way of enacting masculinity that has become normative and that naturalises male dominance. As a result, these comments were subject to the highest amount of incoming replies with comments attempting to challenge, discredit or silence them. The responses contained several patterns in terms of how critiques were framed. The most prevalent pattern was to attack or call into question the original poster’s own masculinity. Several users made disparaging comments that supporters of the video were not ‘real men’, for example ‘you aren’t a real man, you already surrendered and gave up your manhood over to SJWs and toxic feminists’. By calling into question supporters’ masculinity, these users attempt to de-legitimise male voices that advocate for more egalitarian masculinities and police the boundaries of normative masculine practices.

The more positive forms of masculinity (as expressed by the comments endorsing an egalitarian relationship between men and women) are made subordinate by the incoming replies that label them aberrant despite reflecting the vision of a more socially dominant masculinity as celebrated within the Gillette video. Interestingly, the three users also identified as part of the gaming community (determined from references within their usernames along with their other activity on YouTube). This indicates that within a community previously described as dominated by toxic geek masculinity (Salter and Blodgett, 2012), there exists a desire for a reconfiguration of masculinity by some in-group members. This is further supported by Maloney et al. (2019) findings, in their analysis into a gaming community on Reddit, that actually, more positive masculinities were dominant. This suggests that these three users are not simply outliers (more broadly) for their expression of positive versions of masculinity, but rather are made subordinate and marginalised within this networked public on YouTube. Within this context, collectives of men (and occasionally women) associated with the manosphere were able to harness the platform affordances to regulate and police expressions of masculinity that deviate from their vision and establish hegemony within the comments.

While the key users depicted within Figure 1 had the highest in-degree scores, they had low out-degree scores, meaning they engaged very little with the users who replied to them. This difference in engagement can be seen when comparing the out-degree network in Figure 2. The users with the largest out-degree scores (meaning they made the most replies) were user n12 with 1040 comments, user n0 with 552 comments and user n11 with 189 comments. Interestingly, these three users self-identified as female (according to their account details and verified with a cross-platform analysis).

These three highly active female users’ comments reflect antifeminist sentiments and they attempted to use their position as women to justify the claims that the short film was reverse sexist or an example of misandry: ‘I am a woman. I do not have masculinity. My disconnect with this add is based on its sexist and racist message’, ‘I’m a woman and I was outraged by this offensive ad towards men’, ‘It has nothing to do with being comfortable with your masculinity’, ‘misandric hate speech aimed at tearing down people just because of their gender’. Other than these three female voices, female users were largely absent from the network.

Men’s rights organisations have previously employed women’s voices as spokespeople for campaigns as their beliefs are framed as evidence for the facticity of arguments made against women (Banet-Weiser, 2018: 59). Previous research (Trott, 2020) has also found that sockpuppeting (pretending to be a different identity for deception) as female users has been a tactic of men’s rights activists to sow discord or delegitimise women’s and feminist voices. However, in this study, the users’ identities were confirmed with a cross-platform analysis.

By foregrounding their identity as women, these two users perform and assert emphasised femininity by complying and supporting gendered subordination and accommodating male desires (Connell, 1987). Within their comments, these users express anti-feminist and slut-shaming sentiments (blaming ‘outspoken feminists’ and ‘sororities’ for false rape allegations) along with racist claims positioning Black men as violent and the ‘real’ threat. These comments also work to reproduce a cultural ideal of White manhood that these women would like to see replicated and performed by their male relatives and associates (Jewkes et al., 2015). Collectively, these comments work to legitimise White male hegemony by positioning the users as the White feminine subordinate under threat by an ethnic minority who is imagined as having ‘excess masculinity’ (Christensen and Jensen, 2014: 70). In this way, women continue to play an important role in their complicity and active consent in hegemonic masculinity both in terms of legitimating unequal gender relations between men and women and in the marginalisation of masculinities online.

Networked affordances and mechanisms of hegemony

There were several other influential users who shaped the configuration of the networked public and who were not present within the network. The most notable example was the popular YouTube channel called The Quartering run by a self-described social commentator and anti-social justice warrior named Jeremy Hambly. With almost 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, The Quartering has amassed a following of incels having posted videos defending them in the wake of fatal attacks committed by members of their community (Hambly, 2018). Several comments within the Gillette backlash explicitly referenced The Quartering, deferring to the channel and Hambly as an authority: ‘I came from The Quartering to dislike this’, ‘Who’s here from The Quartering?’, ‘The Quartering sent me here’, ‘The Quartering covered this ad and brought my attention to it’. These comments indicate users were directed to the video and were responding to a call-to-action made by The Quartering to downvote the Gillette short film.

In a video criticising Gillette, Hambly (2019) described the ad as ‘anti-male’ and accused YouTube and Gillette of deleting downvotes. Furthermore, in some of the replies, users attempted to direct others to The Quartering’s channel, acknowledging Hambly’s perceived authority on the topic of masculinity and men’s rights and attempting to persuade others in their deferral: ‘ . . . if you don’t think this is antimale look at the video from The Quartering’. Following the sentiment of Hambly’s critique, there were hundreds of comments posted below the Gillette video claiming that users’ downvotes had been erased or removed and often calling YouTube ‘soytube’. ¹ A similar trend was also found by Blodgett and Salter (2018) in their examination of YouTube comments in response to the trailer for the Ghostbuster’s 2016 reboot. They note the difficulty of verifying whether comments and downvotes have actually been removed by YouTube but argue it is unlikely (Blodgett and Salter, 2018: 140). However, they contend these types of comments work as a call to action for those reading but who have not yet participated in the backlash (Blodgett and Salter, 2018: 140).

A similar argument can be made in the case of the Gillette backlash. Comments that declare their downvotes have been deleted and that also signal their connection to The Quartering work to create a sense of community resistance by reinforcing and validating the actions of other users; inciting others to participate; discursively representing their community as a larger collective than what is signalled by the number of comments or downvotes; and positioning themselves as the victims oppressed by corporations (Gillette and YouTube), fuelling their sense of aggrievement.

Another cluster within the SNA (visualised in purple) illustrates the presence of users with names that reference rhetoric related to the manosphere including highly misogynistic terms such as ‘red pilled’, ‘femcunt’, ‘cuck’, ‘fanny fister’. The cultural motif of the red pill has been appropriated within the manosphere to indicate men’s awakening to female dominance and misandry (Ging, 2017: 3). As part of this ideology, terminology related to this belief and a perverse version of genetic determinism has developed to describe a range of masculinities including ‘alpha’, ‘beta’ and ‘zeta’ masculinities and the labelling of men that more closely embody conventional idealised masculinity as ‘chads’ and ‘normies’ (Ging, 2017; Nagle, 2017).

The use of these terms within the usernames and the comments signals the cross-pollination of these beliefs into mainstream areas of the web as well as group affiliation. It also demonstrates how usernames can be harnessed for a number of purposes: to indicate one’s affiliation or membership to a specific group, allegiance or belief; as a method of disguising and spreading abuse, including misogyny and profanities that subvert moderation efforts (the abuse is not within the comment but the username); as well as a space in which to (co)produce, reproduce and enforce notions of masculinity (with markers such as ‘beta’ and ‘cuck’).

These terms and the framing of ‘chads’ as the opposition reinforces a world view that aligns with geek masculinity, drawing on the shared values and experiences that underscore geek mythology (such as the suffering outsider in school) (Salter and Blodgett, 2017). The depiction of men in the Gillette video as conventionally good looking and athletic also feeds into this dichotomous framework of geek versus jock/orthodox masculinity. By drawing on traditional geek mythology in their posts, users attempt to mobilise bystanders to join the backlash and reclaim the technologised space they perceive to be under threat by the ‘classic hypermasculine jock’ (Salter and Blodgett, 2017: 12).

One tactic many users employed that drew on geek mythology was the sharing and posting of the meme ‘My wife’s boyfriend . . . ’ in a collective attempt to delegitimise support for the video: ‘My wife’s boyfriend loved this’, ‘I showed this to my wife’s boyfriend and he thought this was an amazing ad’, ‘My wife’s boyfriend’s son loves this too!’. This reoccurring joke plays into the belief common within the manosphere that women marry and financially exploit ‘beta’ males but have sex with ‘alpha’ males (Ging, 2017: 13). Within the meme, users position themselves as the husband, in other words the beta male, while support for the video stems from alpha males. As Ging (2017) would argue, this is an example of how geek masculinity repudiates and reifies elements of hegemonic masculinity.

The individualisation of the meme as it becomes more and more extreme (from ‘my wife’s boyfriend’, to ‘my wife’s boyfriend’s son’ and even further) demonstrates a ‘trollish competition’ characteristic of incel humour (Bratich and Banet-Weiser, 2019: 5017). Through self-deprecating memes, incels transform solidarity networks into networks of hate, inciting and escalating misogynistic beliefs by employing tropes of victimhood (a tactic also employed by MRAs as Ging found).

In addition to this meme, there was a series of comments that shared copy and pasted statistics from fathers’ rights associated websites, which worked as another mechanism of digital hegemony. These comments state, ‘43% of boys are raised by single women. 78% of teachers are female’ and argue that this indicated that the ‘real problem’ was not toxic masculinity but rather a lack of masculinity. In this way, these comments are tactics that attempt to flip the narrative, operationalise tropes of victimhood and frame White men as the oppressed, reinforcing women and feminism as the oppressors, and labelling femininity as a threat to masculinity.

Whiteness, and claims to White victimhood, generally emerged and were defined in relation to Black masculinities within the comments. This trend echoes Christensen and Jensen’s (2014: 70) contention that Whiteness is central to hegemonic masculinity and that it obtains ‘legitimacy and symbolic power’ by defining itself ‘in a relational opposition to other masculinities’, which are often ethnic minority men. For example, there were cries that Gillette was ‘reverse racist’ because of its depiction of Black men as ‘heroes’ preventing White men from harassing women. Some comments contained profoundly racist attacks against Black men such as ‘Murder. Robbery. Fatherless children. Is this the best a black man can get?’ along with statistics claiming, ‘black people commit over 50% of murder’ and complaints that Black crime was not represented within the video. These comments demonstrate an acute anxiety stemming from ‘white vulnerability’ (Bratich and Banet-Weiser, 2019: 5005) and attempt to legitimate White masculine power by marginalising Black men.

However, some users attempted to include Black men within the backlash. For example, one user responded to a self-identifying Black man who expressed support for the video by replying, ‘I assume you were raised by your mom since 80% of black kids are raised by single mothers’. The user continues, attempting to recruit the Black user by arguing that women are to blame for the rate of Black crime, and not Black men, once again reinforcing the narrative that the problem is not toxic masculinity but a lack of masculinity. In a digital space that has been characterised as White, this was an interesting strategy as it demonstrated an effort to unite a broader range of men in the hegemonic process, rendering them complicit to unequal gender relations.

There was also much anxiety around the future of masculinity with comments claiming we are witnessing the ‘emasculation of the American man’ and that there has been a ‘cultural castration’ that threatens a masculine future. These comments also echo Salter and Blodgett’s (2017) findings about how geeks look towards ‘the fabled golden age of geekdom that never was’ (p. 202) as they burry themselves in nostalgia in the effort to find belonging when their social expectations are not met. While Salter and Blodgett’s (2017) comments are specifically about geek masculinity, it also applies more broadly to men who have a sense of aggrieved entitlement stemming from what Bratich and Banet-Weiser (2019) argue is the failure of neoliberalism and the crisis of confidence. These comments articulate the loss of male self-confidence and the failure of the neoliberal promise of success through individualised entrepreneurialism, resulting in a ‘networked masculine subject that feels threatened’ (Bratich and Banet-Weiser, 2019: 5007).

The last digital tactic that arose within the backlash public and that contributed to the configuration of the public was the use of hashtags. One particular hashtag, which was often adapted into a mantra, ‘Get Woke Go Broke’ emerged as prevalent within the comments. ‘Get Woke Go Broke’ is a phrase that was coined by science-fiction author John Ringo and published by the Milo Yiannopoulous-run news site Dangerous on 17 April 2018 to refer to the threat of a backlash organisations may face when they demonstrate politically correct actions. The phrase has since been weaponised as a form of protest in response to the use of feminist messages within popular and commercial media. The reactivation of this hashtag demonstrates how the backlash is not an isolated incident but rather tied to the broader political climate in which we are witnessing an ideological battle between the alt-right and the democratic left grounded in race and gender (Blodgett and Salter, 2018). This is further evidenced by several comments describing the video as part of a ‘leftist agenda’ and ‘toxic neo-Marxist and leftist propaganda which is brainwashing kids starting from kindergarten’.

However, the reactivation of this kind of protest and use of force also suggests that within the broader context of society and within a post-#MeToo ‘moment’, the vision of masculinity promoted here may not actually be hegemonic within the broader public sphere and popular culture (e.g. Hollywood cinema as demonstrated within the 2019 films Terminator: Dark Fate and Birds of Prey that were also targets of this protest). The reactive nature of this protest arises due to a perceived loss of hegemony more broadly, especially in relation to traditional geek spaces and narratives, further fuelling the use of force to reclaim and retain hegemony within digital spaces – the perceived last remaining refuge for members of the manosphere. In this way, networked affordances are central to the (co)production, reproduction and assertion of power in the digital public sphere, across platforms and over time.

Conclusion: digitally hegemonic masculinity

This article examines the case study of the backlash to the Gillette We Believe short film on YouTube to demonstrate how a networked public manifests, configures and operates to propagate and reinforce hegemonic masculinity online. The findings support, validate and extend Ging’s (2017: 16) prediction that the masculinities within the manosphere may travel to other spaces in which there is a perceived threat to male privilege, and defend and reinforce hegemonic masculinity in the digital sphere. In the context of the Gillette backlash, it is clear that digital tactics and networked technologies can be harnessed and weaponised to achieve and reassert White masculine hegemony within networked publics and on social media platforms.

Within the analysis several mechanisms of digital hegemony are identified as strategies utilised by a collective of men (and in some cases, women) that work to reassert masculine and patriarchal power in the digital sphere. Highly networked individuals (publicly visible and known individuals with a high follower count) are crucial at cultivating a public. These individuals may operate outside of the primary networked public but are key in diverting user traffic across platforms and channels. Women’s voices (whether real or fake) are also employed within the networked public to reinforce and police the gender order, legitimise claims of victimhood by male users and reassert gender hegemony.

Platform affordances such as commenting and voting (in this case downvoting) become mechanisms of digital hegemony when they are gamed by collectives of users to respond either in protest to the primary artefact (the YouTube video) or to silence alternative masculine voices. Similarly, usernames become tools for (co)producing hegemonic masculinity when they contain references to group and masculine identities as well as profanities and abuse in a form that subverts comment moderation and spreads misogynistic beliefs.

The configuration and power dynamics within the networked public and the use of memetic content, copy and pasted statistics, and the reactivation of hashtags to unite a large collective of users with allegiance to different masculine identities (geeks, fathers, incels, albeit all White) demonstrate how a particular vision of masculinity can become digitally hegemonic. Within a networked environment, distinct groups of men can employ digital affordances to collectivise, mobilise, (co)produce, reproduce and reinforce hegemonic masculinity.

The backlash towards three vocal male users who posted in support of the video (represented by their high in-degree scores) also reveals a mechanism of hegemony in that a collective of users enabled by networked affordances manifested in a highly visible way to censure critiques of a vision of masculinity supported by members of the manosphere and marginalise competing and more egalitarian forms of masculinity. Although hegemony is primarily about consent to domination, the pattern of incoming replies here serves as a reminder of how force can be used to reclaim and maintain control, and how force is often an idealised aspect of masculinity. Furthermore, YouTube (and parent company Google) are complicit in their cultural consent and institutionalisation of hegemonic masculinity through their failure to effectively moderate misogynistic content and the preservation of existing corporate structures that have served to protect a culture of sexual harassment within the company (see Ghaffary, 2019 report).

The interplay between these three positive male users, the wider networked public and the masculinities depicted within the Gillette video also demonstrates the intersection of masculinities constructed at local, regional and global levels (Messerschmidt, 2018) on a transnational platform such as YouTube. The Gillette video challenges hegemonic masculinity at both local and regional levels; calling into question everyday practices that constitute hegemonic patterns and contribute to a cultural problem of sexual harassment within a US and Western context. While emerging on a transnational platform and from their own different regional contexts, many of the users within the backlash public attempt to influence or rework the framing of masculinity for a global audience. As such, there is not a unitary masculinity present within the comments, but a layering of masculinities (and femininities) that operate in sometimes contradictory or ambivalent ways that are active and complicit in achieving digital hegemony within the networked public. The analysis presented within this study has aimed to make sense of this layering within the context of an anti-feminist backlash and deepen an understanding of how the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and the theory of gender relations, can be used to interrogate the dynamics at play within a digitally networked public on YouTube.

The continued relevancy of the backlash to the Gillette video is made clear by the ongoing activity with new comments posted regularly that work to reinforce and reassert hegemonic masculinity digitally with further claims that Gillette has been adding fake likes and removing the ‘real’ dislikes. In terms of looking forward and considering what conditions are needed for a more productive hegemony to emerge, we must interrogate further the role of platform governance, including the effects of banning and the deplatformisation of channels that elevate divisive, racist and misogynistic attitudes. We must also hold these platforms and ‘geek’ leaders accountable for the toxic cultures that are perpetuated within their corporate offices and that combine with a broader neoliberal culture that views empowerment and equality as achievable through individualised actions to preserve and reproduce a more harmful hegemonic masculinity.