TOM’s Talks – Into the Manosphere with Dr Shelby Judge

Wednesday 30th July 7pm

The “manosphere” is the umbrella term for communities of men online who are unified by their anti-feminist and anti-women beliefs. Included within this term are disparate, often warring, factions, including Incels, Pick Up Artists, Men Going Their Own Way, Men’s Rights Activists, and Trolls. Each of these groups have their own language, culture, and belief system, and though there are common (misogynistic) threads between them, they differ vastly in their philosophies and behaviors. They all hold violent and discriminatory beliefs, which have filtered into more mainstream social media and the offline world in the forms of acts of mass violence and increasing hostility towards women and girls in schools and workplaces, as well as dating and family life.

So, what do we do in the face of this crisis? We listen to women. Women’s non-fiction (Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women; Caitlin Moran, What About Men?) and women’s online activism are active interventions in the manosphere, working to raise awareness of this shrouded problem and offer pathways to change. 

Dr. Shelby Judge is Lecturer in English Literature and Media at the University of Derby, researching Incels and the Manosphere. She wrote her PhD on feminist adaptations of Greek mythology, and is currently on tour with a talk on folklore & feminism. Shelby is a regular contributor to the Literary Encyclopedia, for which she has written articles on Carol Ann Duffy, Margaret Atwood, Laura Bates, and others. She has won several awards, including a Community Engagement Award and an Early Career Research Excellence grant. She is the author of Mythosphere, a book that uses Greek myth to explain the manosphere, which is due to be published in autumn 2026. In her free time, she likes reading books, shopping for books, looking at books … and spending time with her dog and four cats.

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