What is it, what it gets right and what you might choose to avoid
A few weeks ago I made a video about the Manosphere, about what it is, where it comes from and why I think it matters for women trying to understand the men they are meeting in dating. Today I want to look at the other side of that coin.
The Manosphere has been getting a great deal of attention, particularly off the back of recent documentaries. Now, something else has been steadily growing and it is now getting its own moment in the conversation. It is The Femosphere and I think it deserves the same honest examination I gave to the Manosphere.
I’m not going to validate it uncritically, but actually look at what it is, where it comes from and what it means for women who are navigating love and relationships right now.
So let me start with the definition. The term was coined by Dr Jilly Kay, an expert in Feminist Media at Loughborough University in The U.K. and it describes a growing set of online spaces on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube etc, where women are being encouraged to take a fundamentally different approach to men and relationships.
Where the Manosphere has its red pill, The Femosphere has the pink pill. Where the Manosphere has incels, The Femosphere has femcels. Where the Manosphere has pickup artists coaching men in manipulation, the Femosphere has female dating strategists coaching women in the same.
The core philosophy, as Dr Kay describes it, is this: men will always hurt women, and that will never change, so strategies are needed to conquer the men. The most visible expressions of this are the dark feminine influencers, women with very large followings who advise their audiences to leverage traditional femininity to secure financial support from men, to treat dating as something to win, to be emotionally distant and strategically aloof, to date up and secure provision. “The Week” described it as encouraging women to adopt a more calculated, transactional approach to relationships. The Guardian, which covered this in depth, called it “a dark and toxic corner of the internet” and while that framing is pointed, it is not entirely without basis.
The exhaustion that feeds The Femosphere is real. I recognise it completely from my work with women. There’s the exhaustion of carrying more than your share in so many ways, of being told to be more accommodating, more open, less picky. No doubt this old-fashioned and shallow advice has likely not delivered the relationship you hoped for. I often see the exhaustion brought about by investing wholeheartedly in men who were not capable of really meeting you. That exhaustion is not irrational. It is a completely understandable response to a real pattern of experience.
So, I absolutely understand the appeal of what The Femosphere is offering. There is an actual promise in it. As one Feminist theorist put it, “Liberation from doing everything and still ending up depleted.”
Here is what I see, from many years of working with women on love and relationships, first as a psychotherapist and now as a love and relationship coach. The Femosphere’s answer to male strategy is female strategy. The answer to being used is to use. The answer to a zero-sum world is to play the zero-sum game better and what I know, deeply and from long experience, is that this does not lead where it promises to go. It just creates more disconnection and ultimately misery.
When you enter a relationship as a strategist, maintaining your emotional distance, calculating your leverage, treating the man in front of you as an opponent to be outmanoeuvred, you are not protecting yourself from the pattern but replicating it. You are just on the other side of it. The relationship becomes transactional does not produce the thing most women I work with actually want, which is genuine, mutual, safe, sustaining love.
There is also something worth saying about what this does to men. The Femosphere, at its furthest edges, holds that the majority of men have no value and that men will always hurt women. I work with women who are dating men, so my primary concern is the wellbeing of those women, but I do not think it serves women to build their approach to love on a foundation of contempt. This isn’t because I think men need protecting from it, but because contempt shuts down the very thing you are trying to open toward.
You cannot genuinely receive love from someone you have already decided is the enemy.
Here is what I think the Femosphere gets right.
The insistence that you do not have to abandon yourself for love is exactly correct.
The refusal to accept poor treatment as the price of a relationship is healthy.
The raising of standards.
The willingness and strength to walk away from what does not serve you.
The recognition that you are worth more than you have sometimes settled for.
This is genuinely important work. I say versions of this to the women I work with every single week. Where it goes wrong is in the conclusion it draws.
The conclusion that because love has hurt you, love is a war.
That because some men have been strategic, you must be more strategic.
That the answer to not being seen is to make yourself invisible, to hide yourself behind a performance of aloof, curated, calculated femininity and call that protection.
That is not protection. That is a different kind of self-abandonment and it will produce a different kind of loneliness.
The question I want you to hold going into every interaction, every date, every profile, every early conversation is not, “How do I win this?” It it, “ Is this person safe to be real with?”
Because that question, asked honestly and with your eyes open, is what discernment actually looks like. It is honest, boundaried, clear-eyed presence.
The pink pill and the red pill are the same pill. They both say that the other sex is the problem, life is a competition and your only protection is to play harder or swindle. I do not believe that and in many years of sitting with women who have done the interior work and found their way to genuinely good love, I have never once seen that belief lead them there.
If you want to go deeper into what conscious, boundaried, self-respecting dating actually looks like in practice you can find my free Dating with Clarity Guide on my website www.heathergarbutt.com and I have an email newsletter is where I continue this conversation every week.
I would love to see you there.
It’s my heartfelt wish and life’s work to help you find true committed, romantic love.
With love,
Heather
My name is Heather Garbutt and I send you my love and wish you every success in the search for your true love. If you would like guidance on attracting, true, committed and healthy romantic love, contact now me on Heather@heathergarbutt.com.