Lately, masculinity is in crisis – at least, if you ask the people selling testosterone treatments, magical amulets and male bootcamp retreats. Welcome to the “manosphere:” a booming online economy made for the Trump era.
Professor Timothy Caulfield researches health misinformation, especially when it intersects with celebrity culture. In the new CBC documentary Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Caulfield takes a trip to the “manosphere” and meets the men who buy and sell the promise of masculinity in this growing segment of the $5-trillion wellness market. Caulfield talks to Lately about debunking the pseudoscience of drinking urine, how traditional masculine values can actually harm men’s health, and how the manosphere might have propelled Donald Trump to victory.
Plus, Vass finds out what lightly grilled bull testicle tastes like.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
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Vass Bednar I'm Vass Bednar and I host the Globe and Mail podcast, lately.
Katrina Onstad And I'm Katrina Onstad, the show's executive producer. So we are recording this November 6th, the morning after the U.S. election, and Republican Donald Trump is now officially president elect. While all the analysis isn't in yet, it does look like there was a gender gap in the voting, with women swinging for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and men, including a new segment of men of color favoring Trump. So that's what we know now. But, of course, we saw throughout the campaign that Trump was targeting male voters. He was amplifying his message in the most male spaces of the Internet. We saw him going after and seemingly winning the tech bros, the crypto bros, the podcast bros, all the brros.
Vass Bednar It's a bromocracy. Yes, this was an election forged, at least in part in a place called the manosphere, and that's the subject we were already planning to cover on lately when we conducted our interview, which occurred before the election. And now it's kind of game on. We're all part of the mano phere now, whether we know it or not. Or like it or not.
Katrina Onstad My. Okay, well, let's define the terms. What are we talking about when we say manosphere?
Vass Bednar So you can kind of think of it as a big market of quite varied offerings under the banner of a more man centric wellness. If you've seen ads for aggressive boot camps or dating advice from Hustle Bro's lifestyle coaching branded merch from man flu answers and lots and lots of supplements.
Hasan Minhaj I'm part of a generation of men that don't read but listen to podcasts. Terrifying. All my homies out here texting me alpha male means just hard times. Make hard man. Men make good times, Good times make soft man. Society will never value its men until the wolves are at the door. I'm like, Sanjay, you're a software engineer. Why are you texting me like you're Julius Caesar?
Katrina Onstad That was comedian Hasan Minhaj. It felt a little funnier a week ago, but this morning on LinkedIn...
Vass Bednar you love LinkedIn.
Katrina Onstad Still, I am always on the LinkedIn. I saw a post that said America now puts a masculine force at the helm. The world needs strong men at the top. Weakness has no place. So that's the same language that Minaj was using in his comedy. But it's the real world now, and it's hard not to feel this morning that the rise of the men's sphere is somehow predicated on the repression of women. And yet part of the reason that we wanted to do this episode was to understand really sincerely why men are turning to these masculine spaces and products.
Katrina Onstad Yeah, I think the man who's fear is much memed and often mocked or dismissed, but it's more real than maybe we appreciated. You and I both have sons. We are sympathetic to the fact that there are highly contradictory pressures facing boys today and young men. The the expectation of a post-metoo sensitivity and caution. And they should still be dominant, successful and aggressive. So these manners, fear markets are rising up to meet a moment for sure. And maybe it's not the solution we want, but it is happening. It's here.
Katrina Onstad Right. And I think members of the man is fair might say, well, what's the harm if I want to, like drink my own urine to increase my testosterone? But some of the risk here is related to the misinformation that is behind a lot of the things that are being sold.
Vass Bednar Okay. Our guest today was in a punk band, and he opened for the Ramones in 1983. That's kind of a swerve. Now, he's a member of the Order of Canada, which is also pretty punk. Timothy Coffield is a professor of law at the University of Alberta, the research director of the Health Law Institute. There he does research and writing at the intersections of health and misinformation. And his new documentary, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, can be viewed on CBC Gem. Welcome to the Mannose Sphere. This is lately. Welcome, Tim.
Timothy Caulfield Hello. Thanks for having me on.
Vass Bednar Okay. First things first. What does bull testicle taste like?
Timothy Caulfield I. It tastes terrible. It really, really does. I don't think gamey really captures the vibe. It was terrible. And I really found it difficult and I wanted to highlight. It's lightly grilled because you're actually slightly gross. Yeah. What? You're supposed to eat them raw. And I couldn't bring myself to do that.
Vass Bednar Says who?
Timothy Caulfield Says the manosphere to maximize, though? My gosh, you know, manly man vibes, you're supposed to eat them raw.
Vass Bednar Okay, Well, thank goodness you told me what they taste like. I don't think I'm going to be trying one anytime soon. You mentioned the manosphere. What is a manfluencer?
Timothy Caulfield I think the manosphere is the sort of umbrella term to capture all the influencers, political commentators, pop culture noise that is emphasizing the idea that we all need to be more manly, you know, and that the world, not just individuals, the world needs more manly men. And a man fluence, sir, is exactly what it sounds like an influencer, usually on a social media platform that pushes those ideas, the ideas that we need to be more masculine and they'll push diet supplements, crazy manly man exercises, all with the theme of being more masculine. And the underlying message is that this will make you better. You know, you'll be happier, you'll be healthier. This is what you need and this is what the world needs.
Vass Bednar You mentioned the manosphere is kind of mostly an online space. I'm curious like, how do you get to that Sesame Street and what else are people doing there?
Timothy Caulfield Well, of course, the algorithms take a lot of people. They're the incentives baked in to the social media Platforms often drive many, many people. They're young, young adults, you know, adolescents. And it it has like so many topics these days, become a little bit of an echo chamber, right? So if you live in the mental sphere, this can feel like your entire world. So there's definitely influencers on Tik-tok. On Instagram. Yes, on on X and you know, virtually all the spaces. But you're also seeing it with political commentators. And, you know, Tucker Carlson would be, you know, a very good example of someone who speaks to them out of sphere. And individuals like Jordan Peterson really have become and I think are providing content for the manosphere, too.
Vass Bednar You've made this documentary with the CBC. It's called Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. And it is so full of men doing weird stuff like lifting rocks and drinking their pee. Not at the same time. Some of these people are influencers. Some of them are running wellness adjacent businesses. Could you run us through some of the apparently manly things that you saw and even did yourself?
Timothy Caulfield Yeah. So drinking urine is a thing. I know people say, this is completely. You know, there's one person do it. No, there's it's all over. It really is all over the Internet. And the idea is we have low testosterone and if you drink your urine, you will boost your testosterone and become more more manly. That's the idea. Among other things, there are bizarre exercises that are pushing a lot of these. You have these that people go to, like boot camps where they really extreme weekends. There's a fitness element to it. But it's also this idea of it's almost like you're in a military boot camp and if you do this again, you'll become more manly, you'll be tougher. You know, that's the kind of characteristics you need. You absolutely see extreme diets like, you know, raw meat we talked about. And of course, of course, supplements, so many supplements. And one of the reasons for so many supplements is because this is about making money. Yeah, there's this political element to it. There's this brand building element to it, but there's also, you know, the marketing and profit element to it. And that often involves the selling of supplements, unproven underlying supplements.
Vass Bednar Unproven will be underlined in the episode. So wellness writ large is a massive industry. You've written that when we think of that category, we do tend to think of women, and I definitely do write spies. Gwyneth Paltrow But actually Men and wellness is also a growth industry. Do you have a sense of the size of this masculinity industry?
Timothy Caulfield Well, it's hard to emphasize enough how big the wellness industry itself is. Some people put it in the neighborhood of $5.6 trillion worldwide. And, of course, it's a big Venn diagram. You know, the things that we're putting in there. Right. So it is hard to get an exact sense of how large it is. But certainly because the mannose sphere and and wellness products aimed at men has become a larger portion of the sector. Yeah, I think it's fair to say we're talking multiple billions, probably nudging into the trillions worldwide. And I do think it's a fascinating shift. You know, I have been studying the wellness industry for decades and to see that the lens shift to men is fascinating. Right. And it's using the same strategies that women were subjected to, create insecurity. Right. Create grievance, create anxiety, and then sell products to deal with that anxiety.
Vass Bednar So the stuff that guys tend to be doing or are sharing online, there's definitely an element of unpleasantness to it. Right. Like, I was sort of recoiling. I definitely gagged when I saw the drinking, the pee in the documentary or looking at videos of guys punching themselves in the privates. It's really performative. Why does this kind of pursuit of manliness have to be so gross and painful?
Timothy Caulfield It's an excellent point. And you're right, a very common theme. And you hear, you know, hard times are necessary to make hard, you know, tough human beings. Right. Steel sharpens steel. And it's really kind of leaning in to this, what I would argue completely mythical version of masculinity, where there are these characteristics of, you know, being tough, obviously, you know, stoic and not the idea of, you know, reflection and calm. And you see that definitely in in the boot camps. And it's the idea of, you know, you are the leader, you're the tough person that's needed. And it's interesting because not only is this a mythical vision of of masculinity, I think it's there's this fictitious version of the world, you know, where are these characteristics needed, right? Are we going to be fighting, you know, mutants with kettlebells in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? I don't know where the they think these skills would be needed. It's almost this wish fulfillment that this is the world that we live in, and this is the skills that are necessary to be a real man. And if we had more people like this, we'd all be better. That's sort of the message. But it's never explained why or how. And the other interesting thing, there's this strange parallel messaging going on in the mano sphere, number one, that you should be become more manly and you will become more attractive to romantic partners. Right. That's okay. But at the same time, at the same time, all of this really seems to be done for other men. Right? Other men. Right. And the norms, they're saying that, you know, you want to look like this for other men. Other men will respect you. You're part of this community. So this is the things that you're supposed to do. And that's terrible pressure to put on, you know, someone who doesn't want to walk that path. There is an irony there, I think.
Vass Bednar No, of course. I want to switch gears for a second and gesture back at the feminine, because in the mannose sphere, we're seeing a lot of new products that are aimed at men that feel quite traditionally feminine. Right. Juice subscriptions and facials are part of the mano sphere. Recently, Russell Brand and Toronto Maple Leaf, John Tavares have been touting these magical wi fi blocking amulets, and they're called Life Tune Flex from Aires Tech. They cost $334. That's jewelry by any other name. So what's going on there?
Timothy Caulfield And I think we can put this also in the in the irony column, too, because, you know, you're supposed to be manly and tough and, you know, harking back to this this ancient view of of manhood that's ancestral almost. But at the same time, you're supposed to be grooming your eyebrows to make them more manly. Right? You're supposed to put special cream on your face to make yourself more manly. And and you're supposed to do what's called mewing chewing on this rubber thing, which, of course, I tried to make your jaw more manly. So you're supposed to also be fantastically vain.
Vass Bednar Well, right.
Timothy Caulfield Same time, you know, pretending you're living, you know, in an open field with a with a spear to catch your raw meat. So that is, I think, a deep irony here. But of course, it's all about, as with women creating an. Security and then selling products to satisfy that insecurity.
Vass Bednar So who's making money?
Timothy Caulfield Well, I think with as with wellness more broadly, it is, I think, a little bit of a complex economic world, right? Because you have just the brand building going on. Right. And someone like the Liver King's a good example of that, where he's just trying to get eyeballs on his pages. Right. And the algorithms baked into the platforms, you know, facilitate this because research consistently shows the more extreme you are drinking urine. Right? The louder you are, the more likely you are to get traction. You'll get the page views, the likes, the comments, right, which help build your brand. But there are also many of them selling products even, you know, will Blender feel the naked guy who runs through the woods? He's selling products, right? And he's selling classes. And there, of course, there's partnerships that are happening with brands. So you see that kind of economy emerging in the amount of sphere, too.
Vass Bednar Can we talk about the liver King? Can you tell us more about who this online persona is and what he advocates for?
Timothy Caulfield For sure. And there are other people like the liver King But I think he's he's very symbolic of of the man of Seferis. And he's such a fantastic character. If you Google liver king right now and I'm not sure if I'm advocating that because I don't want to screw up your algorithm. You'll see this guy, he's completely jacked. He's got the beard. He's almost always shirtless. And one of the reasons I love him is you tell people about the liver king and there's this quite a large sector of humanity who've never heard of him. Right. But in the Manno sphere, he's huge. I think he's got on TikTok over 6 million followers and 120 million likes something like that. So we live in that echo chamber. The liver king is near the top of the pecking order. Right. And he advocates for ancestral living. So it's this idea that you harken back to early times when men were men, you know, and women were women. He's also big into guns and he likes to shoot things he doesn't like, such as sunscreen. Why? You know, real men don't use sunscreen. Then he uses a machine gun to blow up a bunch of bottles of sunscreen. He's selling supplements, etc., and diet ideas. There is a wonderful controversy associated with the liver. King So he he's just ridiculously jacked like it almost looks like satire. And he claimed for the longest time that he got that way by drinking bone broth and raw liver reality. He's on steroids, right?
Vass Bednar Expectation versus reality.
Timothy Caulfield But that controversy didn't diminish his popularity, which is, I think, also fascinating because it's a brand, it's an ethos. It's a vibe that he's selling.
Vass Bednar I mean, it's so easy to mock this stuff, but it's not coming out of a vacuum. Right. There seems to be either something that it's filling or reacting to. Why do you think this stuff resonates with some guys and what do you think we should take away from the manners, fear, economy and how it could speak to this economic moment?
Timothy Caulfield Yeah, this is a a really important point. And in the doc, you know, we do hope people find it entertaining and we do have fun. But at its core, this is a really serious topic. We know that adhering to traditional masculine norms, for example, is associated with a host of health issues. We know that there are men and we talk to many of them, and we really do try to empathize with their message that they do feel lost. And part of that, as I said, I blame the man is fear because they're, you know, creating this. They're telling these individuals that there's this rigid path that you have to follow. Right? So there's that part of the equation. But then there's also the reality that whenever you have social change, you know, a move towards more inclusive notions of gender, of masculinity, even if that social change is in a positive direction, it creates stress and anxiety. I think that's real and we have to recognize it and do our best to address it. But what I get angry about is even in that context, people are exploiting that angst, right? For profit and harm. It's very similar to with women in the wellness space. It is true that the health care system has treated women terribly. You know, we haven't done proper research on women or people of color. Women are often not listened to as much or taken seriously in the health care space. Those are all real problems. Right. But those real problems were exploited by the wellness space to sell product. Bottom line, we're not going to solve the problems with masculinity or our health care system with misinformation and pseudoscience. We need empathy and and good evidence.
Vass Bednar Well, you mentioned your sons earlier, and they are in your documentary reflecting on ballet music. I have a little guy. He likes to wear a purple tutu at daycare, but he also really likes trucks. I think it's safe to say that any parent of a boy or a man wants that person to be able to feel really confident in themselves, their abilities, their prospects. But at the same time, what it means to, quote unquote be a man seems so fraught and contested right now, but maybe it always has been. Do you think the man who's fear is responsible for what some have called the crisis of masculinity, or is it simply a response to it?
Timothy Caulfield You're going to hate my answer. I think it's both, right? I think it's both.
Vass Bednar I don't hate that.
Timothy Caulfield But look, there's absolutely no doubt that the man who's fear is creating these pressures that do harm. Right? The pressure to adhere to this rigid definition, and that is doing harm. But I also think it's important to recognize and I think our documentary touches on this in an interesting way. If you enjoy traditional masculine norms, that's fantastic, you know, Good for you. And we interviewed Travis, the racecar driver. Right. The professional racecar driver who calls himself the fastest gay on earth. He enjoys traditional masculine norms. He enjoys the community, the ethos. He just wants to feel welcome within that community. So I think that there's no doubt that the man knows fear is doing harm. But at the same time, we have to be careful not to judge people who also want to lean into it. This is their community. And so the idea, I think, is not to dam every form of masculinity or say this, you're doing it wrong, you're doing manhood wrong. The idea is to make sure that there are many open paths going forward and that people can feel confident. My kids, your son, with whatever path they choose. And I think it's also really important to remember that this is not new. And one of the messages that you hear often in the Meadows sphere is that this is somehow a new contemporary problem, right? That. Right. We've gotten weaker. This is a message that has never gone away. You know, in the 18th century, we need more manly men. You know, early 20th century. We need more manly men. And now we need more manly men. This is a message that's often been there and exploited for various reasons. So we shouldn't forget that either, right? This is not new, but because of things like social media, I think the intensity of the problem is is perhaps more complex and somewhat unique.
Vass Bednar Well, I'm very interested in that generational side of this because I think a lot of us millennials, geriatric or not, an older view, a lot of Gen Z and Gen Alpha is being kind of over gender norms in general. And I wondered if that rang true for you and if there's a particular demographic that's driving this kind of digital masculinity ecosystem.
Timothy Caulfield Yeah, I think you're right. And I wanted to be careful and say over, but I think it's almost over, like the dialog right about it, right. You can almost see the eyes rolling, right? Definitely got some sense of that. And I also think that that demographic is also the target of a lot of the messaging. Right. And we're seeing this play out in politics. It's playing out in the United States, right, where you're seeing young men turn to a political party they may not have historically turned to, because I think a lot of this rhetoric and and I think they're also being told you're being disenfranchized and you're being told to be aggrieved. And it's like, well, now that you mention it, I do feel, you know, a little bit of rage and I do feel aggrieved. And so, unfortunately, that messaging works. And look, and it's worked historically. Right? You know, fear, rage, aggrievement has always sold and it's selling now.
Vass Bednar Well, we're talking to a couple of days before the U.S. election, and this man silencing market is linked toward a turn towards conservative, fatally or loudly kind of misogynistic politics. And a lot of these products are shelved by arguably the poster boys for this type of masculinity. Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate thought leaders for the Banner Sphere with a very clear political endorsement and agendas. Do you think man affluence or is could actually alter democracy or the world order? Or should we be taking it more seriously than maybe we do?
Timothy Caulfield Yes. Okay. I was going to hesitate, you know, because you almost sound like you're being a little bit hyperbolic when you say that. But when you think about how razor close. Right the race is in the United States and the power that a relatively small number of individuals can have on this election, I think there's no doubt that it's having an impact. And you're seeing it in Canada, too, right? You're seeing politicians adopt similar kind of rhetoric in order to market political ideas to particular demographics. And it's it's a seductive message, right, that you've been left out. You know, the woke messaging is all wrong. We've got to go back to these traditional ideas. And I think I can't emphasize this enough. It's a completely fictitious past like this, harkening back to this fictitious past that never really existed. Write this idealized version of the past. You see it in so many different contexts, right? And unfortunately, I think that messaging has worked and we're certainly seeing it play out in the United States.
Vass Bednar The testosterone replacement therapy market is worth over $2 billion. And a lot of that goes to gender affirmation treatments or people with genuine medical need like cancer survivors and that kind of thing. But then you have people like Joe Rogan who are also out there promoting TRT for CIS men to improve libido, focus and energy. How much of that is real?
Timothy Caulfield There's very little evidence to support any of that. So let's break it down real quick. Little evidence to support that. So many the products, you know, we're not talking about pharmaceutically approved products here. We have evidence to back up the testosterone boosting claims. There is also very little evidence that embracing these traditional masculine norms is going to improve your sex life. On the contrary, it's hard to study this well because a lot of correlation data. Right. But the evidence that we do have suggests that embracing traditional masculine norms being, you know, this or that more manly man is actually associated with poorer quality sex, poorer relationship and even things like erectile dysfunction. And researchers speculate because it's that pressure to be manly man that results in that and again have to be careful to not overinterpret that data, but that's the direction the data points. So again, more stuff to put in that irony column. And I think it is important to highlight that this is doing real harm. We interviewed an individual. It didn't make the cut that had an eating disorder that he attributes to the man's fear. He was hospitalized for this eating disorder and he's become an eating disorder advocate. And there's other research that talks about how the pressure to adhere to these completely unrealistic physical norms like the liver king, can create body image issues and eating disorders among young men. So this is like there are serious consequences.
Vass Bednar Well, back in the spring, the FTC warned nearly 700 marketing firms that were pushing kind of over-the-counter drugs, homeopathic products, dietary supplements and functional foods that they could face civil penalties if they couldn't back up their product claims. At the same time, it still feels like a Wild West. Do you have any hope for regulatory oversight of the claims that the man is fears making? Or does the man's fear sort of represent such a rejection of state oversight entirely that it doesn't even matter?
Timothy Caulfield I have long advocated for having better regulation of wellness products. So that's Health Canada, FDA. And look, it's as you say that the Nanospheres influencers say, you know, censorship, government overreach.
Vass Bednar Don't tell us what to do. Right?
Timothy Caulfield Yeah. And it fits so well with their broader narrative, right? That the complaints seem very, very persuasive. But all I and others have argued for is providing accurate information. Right. And the truth and trying to minimize deception in selling products, which enhances autonomy, which enhances the power of the marketplace of ideas. We're not talking about censorship. We're talking about trying to ensure there is accurate information out there with products, which is something that in liberal democracies we've always tried to ensure. So I absolutely do think if people are making concrete claims about a product, I think they should have to have evidence to back up those claims. That's not a big ask right now. People can market almost anything, especially if they're not making concrete health claims. Right. If you're just saying you're going to feel more manly or it's going to increase your energy levels or just make you feel like a better human being, you know, those are the kind of claims that you see. It can be difficult to regulate.
Vass Bednar So you're saying I won't get in trouble if I advertise that this episode will make you more manly?
Timothy Caulfield I think you're safe. I think we're safe.
Vass Bednar Okay, so where does masculinity go from here?
Timothy Caulfield Well, I'm hopeful. You know, despite everything that we've talked about. And I think our doc really ends on a hopeful note because what we're seeing is men coming together. To talk about their view of masculinity. Now, whether they are brought to these communities because of the lies sold to them by the mouse fear, or whether there is this genuine angst that they're feeling about shifting cultural norms. Once they come together, they are having honest conversations about masculinity that I think are very productive. And they all said the same thing, right? That the most constructive path forward is one that allows people to walk sort of this unique and authentic. I know it's a cliché to say this, but we heard the word authentic over and over and over and over again. Their own authentic path, right. Whether that is embracing some view of traditional masculine norms or something else. You know, that's what's going to lead to a happier, more productive society. And everyone everyone said that. And so I'm hopeful. And the other thing that you see are these communities building friendships, walking away from isolation, which is a big problem in the mental sphere. You know, traditional masculine norms are very strongly associated with loneliness, isolation, mental health issues, walking away from that. Building friendships and, yes, building communities.
Vass Bednar Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us on late, late today.
Timothy Caulfield Thank you.
Vass Bednar You've been listening to lately, a Globe and Mail podcast. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn, and our sound designer is Cameron McIvor, and I'm your host, Lasse Bodnar, in our Shownotes. You can subscribe to the Lately newsletter where the Globe's online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology. A new episode of Lately comes out every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.