Affective Factors in Autistic Manosphere Entry: An Autistic Perspective on Masking and Cruel Optimism

Abstract

An examination of research on autistic radicalization shows a preoccupation with direct entry into incel and blackpill communities, missing the beginning of radicalization via engagement with manosphere content. This article combines affect theory, particularly Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’, Connell’s gender order theory, recent literature on autistic sensory experiences, and autistic stigma to make the case that autistic men and boys are motivated to seek out masculine instruction to avoid the mental and physical harms associated with said stigmatization. This purportedly instructive content instead integrates cruelly optimistic attachments to hegemonic masculine embodiment with preexisting attachments to neurotypical performance. Furthermore, the internalized ableist epistemologies inherent in masking performances are likewise easily integrated with hyper-individualist and essentialist manosphere rhetoric. As manosphere content is predicated upon highlighting masculine, and by extension, neurotypical insecurities, these instructions will inevitably fail to result in the societal acceptance and internal emotional security that viewers seek. The negative feelings from these contradictions are redirected out onto mainstream society and women by manosphere rhetoric. This creates a situation where the subject is incentivized to further isolate themselves within anti-feminine communities, leaving them vulnerable to further radicalization into incel and blackpill subcultures. This article provides a novel perspective on how the perceived need to integrate hegemonic masculine performance into autistic camouflage represents a vector for radicalization via the manosphere.

Community Brief

Why is this topic important?

There is comparatively little research on what might make autistic people vulnerable to entering gateways toward such radicalization. In fact, there is very little research on autistic masculinity at all.

What is the purpose of this article?

To show how anxieties around autistic stigma, reinforced by emotional dysregulation, motivate autistic men to use online platforms to get guidance on how to act like society says men are supposed to act to ‘mask’ as non-autistic. Online platforms may feel less stressful to use than face-to-face social interaction. Unfortunately, because social platforms bombard male users with misogynistic content, autistic users are likely to be exposed to highly toxic and counter-productive content. This link is especially powerful in social contexts like schools, where manosphere content is common, and fear of stigmatization is particularly intense.

What personal or professional experience does the author bring to this topic?

The author is an autistic male whose life experience has been marked by struggles with acting in a way that satisfied societal expectations for men and for whom online communities represented a ‘safer’ social space than comparative offline spaces until later in life. He is also an experienced researcher of online communities and media whose doctoral dissertation heavily involved affective analysis of manosphere content.

How does this article progress theory, practice, or policy?

The intent of this article is to encourage research on links between autism and extremism to focus more upon social forces that push autistic people into engagement with spaces and groups that present a greater risk of exposure to extremist content. It also highlights how lack of accommodation for autistic emotional expressions can be a key factor for exposure to said spaces.

What is a key limitation of this article?

Although this article was written by an autistic researcher, I cannot claim to speak for all autistic people. Autistic presentation is extremely varied. Two people with a level 1 ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis will not necessarily present in the same manner. Furthermore, while I am writing from an autistic perspective, it is equally relevant that I have the perspective of a straight, white, cisgendered male in his late thirties. Autism does not discriminate by race, gender, sexuality, or another attribute. Each of these intersections of identity, many of which remain woefully understudied, likewise shape the autistic experience.^1–5

How will this help autistic adults now or in the future?

It is important for researchers and other stakeholders to consider how autistic life and behavior is influenced by the emotional experiences of living within their social context. Having that consideration in mind could encourage people to create accommodations for autistic people that would allow them to be able to better function in public society without having to constantly fear stigmatization. It also encourages people to view autistic people as social actors rather than hyper-isolated individuals detached from society.

Keywords

affect theory emotional dysregulation masking cruel optimism manosphere

Introduction

The available literature on connections between autism and the manosphere has focused on the extreme ‘endpoint’ of the manosphere spectrum, namely, incel and ‘blackpill’ communities.^6–10 Conversely, there has been little research on initial manosphere engagement. This article addresses this research gap by applying cruel optimism¹¹ and emotional economies^12,13 combined with literature on autistic gender performance,^14–20 social stigma,^21–34 masking,^35–38 and emotional dysregulation^39–53 to analyze how anxieties that underpin masking create a space for alignment with manosphere content, written from an autistic scholar’s perspective. The premise of this analysis is that fear of autistic stigmatization combines with social traumas^{22,27,41,43,44,52,53} to encourage retreat into the comparatively safe online world.^54–58 These social anxieties are especially pronounced regarding adolescent masculine performance among one’s peers.^59,60 this drive to seek guidance for masculine/neurotypical performance is a key gateway factor to manosphere engagement, with the ability to embody neurotypical behavior as an object of desire.^{11,25,61–63}

This does not imply that autistic men are inherently predisposed to become incels. As pointed out by Gheorghe & Clement,⁷ this ableist narrative has been reinforced by a trend in academic literature to link the two together, despite the lack of statistical evidence. The purpose of this analysis is to, instead, offer insights into how the stigmatization of autistic identity and the precarity of masking lead autistic men to be particularly vulnerable to entry into the manosphere, at which time they will become more vulnerable to further radicalization due to affective alignment with misogynistic communities.^12,64

This article proceeds from three main assumptions rooted in the neurodiversity paradigm.^22,23 First, subjective autistic experience is worthy of analysis and respect.^{21–23,38,65} Second, autistic existence is distinguished from neurotypical mentality in embodied sensory experiences^{39,41,43,46–49,51,52,66} as well as cognitive differences. Third, autistic identity is intersectional.^{23,25,43,52,55,67} Thus, understanding how ‘autistic masculinity’ is performed and understood requires an examination of how societal narratives and orientations towards autism interact with individual characteristics and social contexts.^{15–28,30–36}

Literature Review

Autism and masculinity

Subjective autistic experiences of gender performance and sexuality remain a significantly under-examined field of research.²¹ Current literature consistently shows greater diversity of gender identity compared with neurotypical populations.^{2,4,15–17,19,20,68,69} Contrary to stereotypes of autistic people as asexual, research shows autistic people exhibit the same desire for romantic and sexual relationships as neurotypical populations,^15,16 but also report lowered access to sexual and relationship-building education.^15–17,70 Autistic people of all genders report difficulties conforming to gender expectations.^17,21 Despite longstanding cultural associations with ‘maleness’,^2,3,17,18,71 literature on autistic masculinity remains particularly scarce.^14,17,21

Autism and internet use

While there is a significant amount of literature on autistic digital media use, the majority of articles found were written in the context of gaming addiction or problematic internet use (PIU).^68–79 A recent systematic review of 30 studies by Eltahir, Delfabbro, and King⁷³ noted that the question of what actually causes autistic people to be more likely to develop problematic digital media use remains unclear. There is particular disagreement on whether the cause is inherent to autism or a co-occurring variable such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), high parental stress, or anxiety. However, there is widespread consent that autistic people do use digital media more often than their neurotypical peers.^68–76 Relevant to PIU, Sallifranque St Louis and Normand⁸⁰ note that autistic people may have a higher vulnerability to malicious online actors due to communication challenges, and a desire to maintain relationships.

On the positive side, online autistic communities have been found to be a source of community for people who often suffer from loneliness, stigmatization, and social anxiety.^{56–58,78,80–85} Jedrzejewska and Dewey⁸⁵ found that both autistic men and women camouflaged less when interacting online than offline. Online blogs by autistic writers are also a key source of self-expression, advocacy, and knowledge transmission for autistic culture.^47,56

Autism and the manosphere

The manosphere, defined here as “…a diverse ecosystem of online anti-feminist and male supremacist groups (p2)…”⁸⁶ has drawn significant scholarly attention in recent years. To put that in perspective, Gerrand, Ging, Roose, and Flood’s recent meta-analysis drew on approximately 100 scholarly articles posted since 2019.⁸⁶ Their analysis found that while the manosphere was previously a loose conglomeration of distinct communities, such as MRAs (men’s rights activists), MGTOWs (men going their own way), PUAs (pick-up artists), and Christian conservatives,^87,88 social media platforms have led to a more cross-community radicalization pipeline that has increased in misogyny and extremism, such as PUAs losing ground to incels.⁸⁹ As previously mentioned, literature on autism and the manosphere has focused almost exclusively on autistic engagement with the incel subgroup.^6–10,86

Critical feminist scholarship has noted that exclusive, uncritical focus on ‘lone wolf’ mental health and victimhood narratives of incel radicalization ignores the social and technological factors that encourage alignment with the manosphere.^90,91 These factors include algorithmic processes on social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube that quickly expose male users to misogynistic content,^92,93 alongside the intentional harnessing of that algorithm by ‘manfluencers’ such as Andrew Tate and his followers to spread his content and thwart moderation through affiliate links.^92–95

Socio-economic factors have also been indicated by theorists such as Bratich,^63,96 who contextualizes the manosphere with the failures of neoliberal society to provide stable opportunities for masculine performance due to increasing economic precarity. The rise of the entrepreneurial ‘manfluencer’ guru, who claims their wellness rhetoric, extreme misogyny, and quasi-stoic ‘bootstraps’ advice can provide an antidote to masculine insecurities endemic to capitalist life.^97–100 These unqualified but charismatic influencers use benign-appearing algorithm-friendly hashtags and titles (#motivation, #discipline, etc.)^89,92 to hide rhetoric preoccupied with hypermasculine supremacy that defines progressivism, emotional expression, and gender equality as inherently emasculating.⁹² Manfluencers maintain audience capture by alternating affective narratives of masculine sovereignty and precarity, as well as linking economic and gender anxieties in their content.^63,96–98 They declare the inevitable victory of hypermasculine domination through capitalist hustle culture,^97,99,100 athleticism, and cruelty one moment; than warn that men are constantly threatened by female subordination the next.^{88,89,97–99,102} Finally, Czerwinsky’s¹⁰³ analysis of incel-related studies warns that current research risks ignoring how incel rhetoric is within continuity of mainstream masculine supremacist norms. While violent extremism is outside of the scope of this article, literature shows connections between participation in online misogynist spaces and engagement with other extremist far-right ideologies.^64,104

Theoretical Perspective

Affect theory

This article defines affect theory as a method of social analysis that focuses on how ‘feelings’, both somatic and emotional, influence our actions and identities on both individual and societal levels.^105–107

The ‘affect’ is key to this perspective. Here, it describes preconscious reactions to sensory stimulus that underpins conscious thought.¹⁰⁵ These reactions manifest as involuntary bodily changes, such as an increased heartbeat and one’s body hair standing up in response to a threat. Interoceptive awareness of the affect¹⁰⁶ transforms it into an emotion, a socially constructed framework for interpreting what a given affective reaction means.^{11–13,105,107} This is why affect theorists like Ahmed argue that much of how we define our feelings and our responses to them are influenced by external social forces instead of springing from purely individual contemplation of stimuli.^12,13

An example I like to use to explain the affect/emotion distinction is comparing an armed mugger lunging at someone out of a dark alley versus a group of friends jumping out from behind furniture for a surprise birthday party. The affective reaction to both events is the same, surprise-startle.¹⁰⁵ However, the emotional interpretation of the event is markedly different due to the social contexts around both events. We are taught that surprise birthday parties are exciting and good, whereas a mugging is terrifying.

These are the results of internal preexisting emotional networks of affect, which are used to contextualize affective reactions within one’s epistemology.^12,13 These are fundamental mechanisms for the maintenance of social groups. For example, a homophobe might feel disgust when seeing an LGBTQ+ Pride flag.¹⁰⁸ The homophobe has internalized signifiers of LGBTQ+ existence as something disgusting and repellent,^12,13 and their desire to remove a source of unpleasant sensory feeling is rationalized as a desire to remove a perceived corrupt element from their community.^12,13,108 This is a reason why affect theory rejects the Cartesian mind–body divide, as one’s bodily sensations and conscious thoughts both influence each another.^{11,12,63,64,108}

This process is key to this article’s perspective on autistic people’s ability to recognize and regulate emotions. Because autistic people experience sensory information differently from neurotypical people,^{39,47–49,51,66,109–111} it must follow that cognitive interpretations will also differ. Autistic emotional processing is defined as a deficiency because dominant social expectations regarding experiences of stimuli are likewise constructed around a neurotypical framework.^21,22 For example, a neurotypical person might observe an autistic person at a loud rock concert suddenly start weeping and leave, and connect it with common stereotypes of autistic people being irrational and childish.²⁴ Yet from the autistic person’s perspective, they are removing themselves from a situation that is so painfully overstimulating that it is causing them to weep.^112–114 What could possibly be more rational?

A relevant characteristic of autistic emotional processing is emotional dysregulation,¹⁰⁹ defined as challenges conforming to neurotypical norms of emotional self-regulation.^109–111 Dysregulation can externally manifest as irritability, uncontrolled emotional expression, such as weeping, and in extreme cases, meltdowns.^39,40,47,51 While emotional dysregulation is a characteristic of alexithymia,^111–113 alexithymia as a whole is outside of the scope of this article.

Speaking from personal experience, a significant complicating factor with emotional dysregulation is that it is extremely difficult to predict when one will enter a ‘dysregulated’ state. Like a trapdoor, it is undetectable until it is sprung. Furthermore, dysregulation is most commonly triggered by unexpected stimuli, intersecting with tendencies towards anxiety and hyper-sensitivity to stimuli to encourage a desire for routine and difficulty adapting to environmental changes.^{109,114–116} Maintaining cognitive control over emotional arousal and expression is a key factor in why autistic camouflage is so mentally exhausting.^{35–37,57,83} However, autistic people’s desire for social and community connection¹⁶ within an unaccommodating social context,^21–23 can lead to the internalization of ableist narratives that associate autistic traits with failure, shame, and emasculation,^{24,25,31,117–119} in the pursuit of greater emotional and behavioural alignment with neurotypical peers.

Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism¹¹ provides a useful perspective on this process of self-stigmatization. An important component of that concept is optimistic attachments. These are the emotional attachments one ‘invests’ in external objects, subjects, and concepts that provide (although not necessarily actually hopeful or even positively experienced) motivation to change one’s situation. The acquisition or achievement of that external object of desire is seen as key to the subject’s ability to ‘flourish’. In the context of this article, the anticipated ‘flourishing’ is about freedom from fear of autism-related stigmatization.^{25–28,30–33,44,45}

The dark side of this optimistic attachment is ‘cruel optimism’, a situation in which the optimistic pursuit of an object of desire damages the ability of the pursuer to attain the flourishing they hope to attain from that pursuit. Lauren Berlant’s example is the pursuit of the ‘American Dream’, wherein one’s hard work is inevitably rewarded with wealth and freedom from economic anxiety. The reality is that for the majority, pursuit of that dream results in a wearing out of mind and body that Berlant calls a ‘slow death.’¹²⁰

Cruelly optimistic attachments put the bearer in a difficult scenario because affective attachments are continually ‘invested’ with affective intensity. That investment provides a constant affective feedback loop that helps motivate the continual pursuit of the goal attached to it. Halting that loop, even a cruelly optimistic one, can feel unbearable due to a sudden lack of affective reinforcement. While the intensity of one’s ‘withdrawal’ naturally differs from attachment to attachment, it should be remembered that this article is focused upon the pursuit of a goal (that of optimal masculine and neurotypical performativity) that is constantly reinforced by society. This makes it exceptionally emotionally fraught to discard.

Gender theory

This article discusses masculinity in the context of gender order theory, a social constructivist theory that is largely associated with Connell and her work on masculinity studies,^121,122 as well as Butler’s gender performativity theory.¹²³ It proposes that gender norms are social constructs that are reified as being ontologically true. Different cultures produce different ‘gender orders’, informed by the material and social contexts in which they are placed. For example, it is considered a perfectly typical expression of platonic friendship for two men to hold hands in some parts of the world, while in others it would be seen as signifying a romantic relationship. Furthermore, each gender order constructs different versions of gender performance, focusing on masculinity in this article. However, these gender performances are not equal. Each gender order is dominated by a form of what Connell refers to as hegemonic masculinity. “Hegemonic masculinity was not assumed to be normal in the statistical sense…but it was certainly normative. It embodied the currently most honored way of being a man, it required all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimated the global subordination of women to men (p. 832).”¹²² Because hegemonic masculinity is inherently defined by its dominance over all other forms of being, it’s traits are largely defined by the capacity to exert one’s will upon the world while remaining unchanged.⁷¹ The ideal male is thus often associated with physical prowess, authority, emotional distance, rationality, the capacity for violence, and sexual prowess.^{12,13,61,96,124} Meanwhile, because femininity exists to define masculinity through embodying what masculinity is not, it is largely defined by being influenced. Thus, traits constructed as feminine norms, such as emotional expressiveness, vulnerability, and receptivity to masculine dominance, are often framed to align feminine performance with submission to masculinity, especially within Western patriarchal contexts.¹²² It should be noted that the existence of hegemonic femininity,¹²⁵ is outside the scope of this article.

Connell¹²² describes a hierarchy of masculinities, ordered by their closeness to hegemonic masculinity. The closer that one embodies hegemonic gender norms, the more privilege one is afforded by society. Underneath hegemonic masculinity are those masculinities that “received the benefits of patriarchy without enacting a strong version of masculine dominance (p832),”¹²² which fit into the category of complicit masculinities. These still gain legitimacy from the hegemonic masculine gender order, even if they cannot fully embody it. Finally, there are those masculinities with traits that hegemonic masculinity is held in opposition to. The ideal male in Western contexts is associated with wealth, whiteness, heterosexuality, sexual experience, physical ability and a specific standard of male beauty that shows off athleticism. Because hegemony is defined by dominance, embodiment of the hegemonic masculine ideal requires the suppression of those who cannot meet it.^121,122 For example, Black masculinity is often marginalized due to it being in opposition to the socially constructed ideal. The Black man is seen as performing masculinity, but a masculinity associated with danger and unpredictability in sites of social production such as popular media or the news. Such stereotypes have significant effects on cultural and even physical perception of Black male bodies, with significant consequences for Black men.^126,127 For example, the stereotype of the angry, violent Black man makes Black men less able to emotionally express themselves without being seen as threatening by others, especially negative emotions.¹²⁷ Similarly, although autistic people are stereotypically viewed as male, stereotypes about autistic people frame them as volatile, socially awkward, child-like, and sexless,^{7,21,24,76,77} all of which conflict with hegemonic masculine traits. Therefore, an autistic man would be considered less masculine than a hypothetical neurotypical identical twin, even if they were both exactly the same otherwise. Nonetheless, the internalization of hegemonic gender norms makes the pursuit of hegemonic masculine privilege a priority for many of those whose identities render them unable to embody it.^{121–123,125,126}

Precarious manhood

Another relevant masculinity-related concept is precarious manhood.⁶¹ Because hegemonic masculinity is an abstract ideal, composed of many often mutually contradictory norms, consistent embodiment is impossible. Thus, masculinity performance requires constant reinforcement through external validation. Furthermore, because “…themes of agency, instrumentality, and achievement are central to most psychological definitions of manhood (p1326)”,⁶¹ a lapse in that performance risks a loss of masculine status. In situations where a man perceives that their masculine status is at risk, they experience psychological stress and even increased thoughts of physical aggression.⁶¹ While different cultures have different degrees of precarity¹²⁴ the relevance here lies in the fact that pursuing the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity can itself constitute a relationship of cruel optimism.^11,62 This constant need for external validation mixed with constant anxiety over loss of that validation is a key component of how ‘manfluencers’ maintain their audience.^{63,88,97–100} When one considers the previously referenced stigma attached to autistic identity with regards to masculinity^{7,14,21,24,70} compared with neurotypical identities, it is clear that autistic men would be vulnerable to these inducements.

Emotional Dysregulation, Camouflage, and Incentives for Manosphere Engagement: An Auto-Ethnographic Synthesis

As a teenager in the early to mid 2000s, I was given a very supportive and stable upbringing. Nonetheless, I still ended up internalizing a lot of ableist rhetoric and beliefs around autism. While I was taught that my subjective experiences and feelings were valid and I was quite able to communicate with my friends and family,^56,128 I had internalized throughout my development that it was very important to look and act ‘normal’, not because that was inherently better, but for self-preservation from stigmatization from adults and peers.²⁷ This required a mentally exhausting masking regime and the accompanying social anxiety and cognitive overload.^{22,25,34–36,54,78,79,115} This represented a cruelly optimistic attachment to the belief that I could train the autism out of me and in doing so, flourish.

As Ahmed explains,^12,13 one’s emotional orientation is heavily influenced by one’s social context. These affective orientations are, in fact, a key factor in how one constructs their self-identity. In my personal experience and understanding, displaying signifiers of autism led to negative emotional and physical outcomes. This was not only a matter of explicit instruction, but also implicitly learned from exposure to ableist narratives and portrayals of autism within society. Although I was terrible at masking at the time and often felt very uncomfortable while doing so, I and those around me believed that sufficient dedication to memorizing and imitating social norms would eventually make conformity a matter of reflex rather than conscious effort.

There is a great irony here that connects both affective dysregulation and cruel optimism with masking regimes.^{22,25,34–36,54,78,79,121} In the pursuit of greater ability to function in neurotypical society, I had to repress reactions to stimuli that did not align with hegemonic expectations, since doing so would risk scrutiny.^42,44,51,52 In other words, in trying to feel more comfortable in public, I became more uncontrollably anxious about being in public. This fear of scrutiny was intensified by awareness of what I call ‘precarious normality’, an adaptation of ‘precarious manhood.’⁶¹

Precarious normality refers to the sense that autistic masking is always vulnerable to outside, particularly neurotypical, scrutiny. This is similar to how gender can be ‘policed’ by those who are most able to embody those norms.¹²³ When growing up, I internalized the belief that my difficulties interpreting neurotypical social cues meant that any other person’s evaluation of my social performance took precedence over my own. Just like a colorblind person being corrected by a typically sighted person about a painting, I felt I was unqualified to dispute it. This produced a more pervasive sense of self-doubt than a motivation to fit in and ‘be normal’, because any internal understanding of ‘normality’ became, much like manhood, dependent on constant external validation.

Because autism exists on a sensory and somatic level,^{22,45,47,49,51,64} one’s ‘autistic-ness’ can only be ‘trained away’ on a superficial level. Thus, attempts to convert autistic people into complete neurotypical existence are futile. Yet, because behaviors done to react to those non-neurotypical sensory experiences are stigmatized, we are nonetheless taught to repress them. Consider stimming, repetitive movements that autistic people often use to self-regulate. These stimming behaviors are used to bring relief to over-stimulation, and are reported to be very useful in that regard.^129,130 Yet because they ‘look autistic’ and we are taught that appearing autistic is dangerous and undesirable, we likewise learn to be repulsed by the very behaviors that allow for better function in stressful situations. In other words, we are taught to value the mask of neurotypicality over the welfare of the living person behind it.^{21,22,25,26,38,57} Inevitably, the sheer fatigue and precarity of such performances, such as fear of missing an implicit social cue¹³¹ made me more socially avoidant.¹³²

This led me to spend more time on the internet than the offline social interaction that I had been working so hard on. The internet is the point where the cruel optimism of masking pushes autistic men towards the cruel optimism of manosphere discourse, particularly ‘manfluencers’ like Andrew Tate. It is notable that by this point, my chief insecurity was about being accepted as a proper human, not necessarily about being seen as manly. I was a nerd, but the nerd identity is associated with a form of masculinity, albeit a subordinate one.^122,133

This is where my experiences and the experiences of a present-day autistic teenager massively diverge, because the internet of the early 2000s was significantly different then the one we have now. There was no social media, or smartphones. The internet was seen as something that had a firm disconnection from offline life. We were still in the dial-up internet on a single family desktop PC era. Thus the idea of gaining instruction in social interaction, let alone romantic social interaction, never truly occurred to me. The internet was the place I went to escape having to worry about that. However, the internet of today is clearly different. If I was a teenager now, the different techno-social contexts, particularly algorithmic exposure to manfluencer content,^91–94 would easily intersect with the social anxieties I had discussed previously to introduce additional overlapping affective circuits of masculine anxieties,^97–100 producing interlocking and mutually intensifying networks of cruelly optimistic attachments. Let us discuss how hypothetical 2025 teenage Jordan could become engaged with manosphere content, assuming that my situation as discussed in the auto-ethnography beforehand was still true.

When I first began writing this article, I assumed it would be about a desire for masculine instruction for the purpose of dating. Research shows that autistic people report a significant gap in sexual education and knowledge compared with their peers^16,116,134 despite both groups exhibiting the same level of desire for romantic relationships.^{15,19,134–136} This would be a preferable alternative to offline instruction from peers and adults due to social anxiety around stigmatization,^26,27,31 as well as accompanying affective associations between unfamiliar, volatile social situations,^44–46,66 and performance anxiety.^25,54,55 In comparison, online communication is more controllable, predictable, and requires significantly less camouflage.^57,58,83 With the internet being associated with feelings of comparative safety and stability,^137,138 they would be more likely to seek dating instruction there, thus becoming open to engagement with toxic manosphere rhetoric.^74–77,139 However, as I recalled my experiences as a teenager and my research into the manosphere for my PhD dissertation,¹⁴⁰ I now believe that overly focusing on searching for dating advice may be missing the forest for the trees.

Most importantly, while difficulties with sexual loneliness and desire for sex are a clear motivation for seeking out manosphere content, that is not distinctive to autism. That is because the manosphere as a whole tends to view women less as people one builds relationships with, and more as objects used to prove one’s masculinity through ongoing dominance.⁹⁶ That is to say that while displaying sexual success is portrayed as an essential element of hegemonic masculinity,^86,88,122 the purpose behind the most mainstream and common manosphere content is more insidious, that being to project feelings of anger, frustration, and entitlement associated with anxieties around masculine embodiment onto institutions, peoples, and practices that are associated with threats to hegemonic masculine dominance,^96,97 particularly those that signify feminine agency.^64,96,102

Where it truly connects to autism and links cruel optimistic attachments around precarious normality and precarious masculinity is in the way that manosphere content claims to offer a behavioral guide to alignment with accepted masculine norms,⁹² a key element of camouflage. This content being available online also places it in a context that does not require difficult social learning or impossible to notice implicit social cues, instead simply following charismatic guru figures such as Andrew Tate,¹⁴¹ Iman Gadzi,¹⁴² and Patrick Bet-David¹⁴³ in both word and deed.^84,85,91 These influencers have massive online followings that reinforce their legitimacy to curious onlookers, especially if one is motivated by a desire to achieve social acceptance from their social circle.¹⁴⁴ These manfluencers also do not need to be sought out on social media, as algorithms on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok are quick to recommend videos from these manosphere gurus unprompted to users identified as male,^92–95 as well as digital gaming spaces popular with autistic people.^72,79,145 These initial offerings are often presented as anodyne motivational or self-help content that claims to improve one’s discipline, mindfulness, and confidence, often steeped in a bowdlerized version of stoicism to give it a frisson of intellectual legitimacy.^{92,99,100,146} In addition, the rhetoric used by these influencers is already widespread amongst teenage males in offline social spaces like classrooms.¹⁴⁷

This toxic content, and the cruel optimisms related to hypermasculine embodiment insecurities that follow, are not exclusive to autistic people. Any teenage male living in our precarious times, with their tendency to focus on social standing around their peers and sensitive to any perceived loss of status.^52,59,60 Yet there are extra ways that even the gateway content of the manosphere aligns with the life experiences of autistic people who have internalized dominant ableist narratives around autism,^21–25 particularly those that feed optimistic attachments to camouflage. Examples include the neoliberal belief that masculinity can only be reached by individual self-optimization,^{63,99,100,146} and that men are obligated to conform to hegemonic masculine norms or else risk social rejection and identity failure.¹²² This easily integrates with the understanding produced by experiences of autistic stigmatization, that being that the autistic individual is obliged to conform to neurotypical society, or likewise face social,^33,115 and even physical harm.^27,30,32 This further links to deeply embedded affective connections to one’s socially interpolated understanding of hegemonic masculinity.^{12,13,120,121} Just as patriarchal dominance is fundamentally dependent on maintaining a pure state that requires constant dominance over femininity,^11,12,95 so too are autistic people taught that one’s ‘true self’ must be kept pure by rejecting any compromise with autistic traits, which are themselves associated with brokenness, dehumanization, and solitude.^21–24,48 The resulting anxieties are intensified when they overlap over multiple axes of stigmatization, such as cases where autism is associated with emasculation, infantilization, and an inability to engage in genuine sexual relationships.^24,117 Finally, just like the manosphere is based upon followers delegating the understanding of their masculine self-identity to charismatic guru-figures,^86,89,92 dominant models of autistic socialization require the autistic person to delegate their understanding of social values, and epistemological perceptions to external neurotypical figures.^21,38

These socially produced understandings of both autistic and masculine existence make it easier for autistic men to integrate toxic manosphere content into their pre-existing affective orientation towards the world. The constant feelings of alienation, insecurity, and performance anxiety on both masculine and neurotypical axes produced by this internalized need to constantly police one’s own body and mind^{35–37,47,51} are both intensified by manosphere content^96–98,100 and projected out onto external society, particularly onto women.¹⁰²

To summarize, if I were an autistic teenager in 2025, I would have been constantly exposed to experiences and narratives that would teach me that autism is not a part of my identity, but a flaw in my being that must be overcome for me to truly enter human society. Displaying these traits results in mockery, shame, and even violence against me from outside society. It would be clear that to avoid those experiences and be able to ‘flourish’¹¹ and be accepted and secure in my social place within my community, I should work hard to act like my peers. In my current social context, it is clear that it requires to act like a real man. Fortunately, guidance on how to act like a real man is very easy to access online and is clearly very well-regarded by my peers. The content talks about being disciplined and being stoic and offers guidance on how to be confident and focused. Those are all things that I often have trouble with and clearly have to improve on, so that I won’t seem disabled to my school peers. Even better, these are all available online, where I can learn about this behavior without having to feel judged by others for not knowing it already. After I learn all of this, I won’t have to constantly feel anxious about being made fun of or worry that people will not want to be my friend because I have a momentary lapse in appearing non-autistic. In other words, rather than social isolation being the sole major factor in engaging with manosphere content, my experiences with mainstream society have provided a rational incentive for me to engage with and internalize the rhetoric of Andrew Tate and his ilk. Even if I did not myself like or even believe in the cruelty inherent to manosphere masculinity, I would still be pragmatically incentivized to conform to them just to avoid being stigmatized and excluded by other male students.

Of course, while these may be understandable reasons why autistic individuals may choose to seek social instruction in masculinity through online media, it still follows that the understanding of masculinity taught by these manfluencers is overwhelmingly likely to make followers less rather than more able to integrate with neurotypical society in a fulfilling manner. The negative affective experiences of those unsuccessful interactions, and the misogynistic deflection of those negative experiences onto signifiers of femininity as a whole can serve as a motivation for entry into more radicalized communities, such as incel and blackpill subcultures. But it is important to remember, for now, that dominant social narratives about autism that emphasize it as an illegitimate deviation away from an ontologically pure ‘normal’ mentality^{21–23,65,118,119} is one that pushes autistic youth towards gateways into the manosphere rather than providing a protective effect against such maladaptive, harmful ideologies. Furthermore, one must keep in mind that engagement with the manosphere by autistic youth cannot be disentangled from broader social norms that see masculine domination and rejection of ‘femininity’ as intrinsic to the maintenance of masculine identity.

Conclusion

This article contributes to the continuing study of manosphere radicalization, affect theory, and autism by synthesizing research in those areas to propose a novel perspective on affective factors that ‘push’ autistic men and boys towards the manosphere, distinct from research linking autism with the incel community^7–9 and violent extremism.^6–9 It also contributes to these research fields by introducing an academic perspective written by an autistic, rather than neurotypical writer. Combining an auto-ethnographic examination of the author’s own experiences as an autistic teenager with current literature on autistic stigmatization, camouflage, and subjective affective experiences with affect theory and manosphere literature to discuss how emotional dysregulation intersects with the internalization of ableist understandings of autism to create an increased vulnerability to manosphere radicalization for both ideological and pragmatic purposes. Cruelly optimistic attachments to neurotypical camouflage provide priming for alignment with similarly cruelly optimistic attachments to embodying hegemonic masculinity. Manosphere content connects affective networks of anxiety over precarious performances of normality to anxieties around precarious masculinity. Intensifying the stress experienced over both by making a failure in neurotypical performance also becomes experienced as a failure of masculinity.

It is important to understand that the intent of this paper is not to paint autistic people as inherently more vulnerable to manosphere radicalization. While emotional dysregulation and sensory hypersensitivity are common to autism, these do not inherently draw one towards misogynistic ideology. Instead, the intent is to draw attention to the socially constructed incentives and factors that draw autistic people into the manosphere through a desire to avoid the consequences of autistic stigmatization, and in so doing, continually construct and reinforce affective connections to those communities that incentivize further radicalization and isolation. Be it on a micro-scale through increased rates of bullying in school²⁷ or on a macro-scale where the autistic identity is associated with an inability to perform masculinity, with the associated penalties of nonconformity.¹²² In other words, it is unjust to pathologize autistic men engaging with the manosphere when a myriad of social forces clearly make it an attractive option for avoiding stigmatization by satisfying societal demands for impossible conformity with neurotypicality.

Actions taken on a societal level to reduce autistic stigma and increase tolerance for actions that do not strictly conform to social norms, particularly regarding hegemonic masculinity, are therefore recommended to reduce negative affective associations with social interaction and, therefore, reduce incentives to withdraw into alienating social environments such as the manosphere.

Future research on intersections of identity that connect autism to more marginalized masculinities such as Black men, Indigenous men in Canada, as well as men who live in the Global South. Applying this perspective to cultures with significantly different epistemologies around masculinities and autism would also be extremely valuable. Not only does the online nature of the manosphere give it global reach, but it would also be valuable to determine how different cultural contexts may interact with concepts like cruel optimism and precarious masculinity.¹²⁴

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Funding Information

No funding was received for this article.

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