While I’m not an expert on the manosphere and have no involvement or interest in it beyond analyzing and fixing it, I think the problem is layered and the result of society constantly harming the dignity of people and then doing things to deny wrongdoing. For example, people are culturally expected to achieve certain things which are impossible in the modern world like owning a home, going to college, or finding a job. Instead of everyone supporting the modern generation on how society has failed and dishonored them, they medicalize those who don’t fit into modern corporate jobs, claim no laws were broken so no harm was done, or that there is no recourse for injustice by modern systems so everyone just needs to deal with the lives they ended up with. If men say that they are struggling with the system they live under, they are invalidated. Women don’t have it much better, but social support and cultural expectations make it so that women aren’t as invalidated or ridiculed for their struggles. Modern Western countries lack honor culture so many men cannot even articulate their emotions without needing to externalize problems or using therapy-speak that we despise since we were culturally conditioned to not have emotions let alone talk about them. In the Ancient world, the men could articulate that they were being dishonored or someone was harming their dignity. In the modern world, they would be ridiculed or seen as dangerous. As it currently stands, men are viewed as dangerous or crazy if they are angered by anything which creates a situation where any government or group of people can mistreat us with the expectation of impunity.
Honor culture isn’t pretty and I’m not saying it would magically solve the grievances people have in the modern world, but we should seek to normalize saying “I was dishonored” or “This is a dishonor” to give recourse to modern people that cannot articulate their problems in any better way. Instead of invalidating these grievances and leaving them alienated to be radicalized, acknowledging honor would effectively remove many of the prerequisite conditions that the manosphere needs in order to exist. We would not need to allow duels or other kinds of combat for honor since most grievances today are political or institutional, but people still need socially sanctioned ways to restore honor. People need positive recognition by society and recourse against a system that degrades everyone involved. The powerlessness and humiliation of modern people needs to be remedied to end the reliance on destructive outlets.
What do you guys think? Is it worth it to bring back honor culture to stop the manosphere from existing, or would the potential problems be worse?