'Timely and disturbing': Sarah Owen reviews 'Lost Boys'
Romania, May 2025: Andrew Tate laughs as he enters a police station| Image by: Associated Press
3 min read
James Bloodworth's book is a crucial exploration of the modern misogyny ecosystem
There is nothing new about misogyny: the staggering prevalence of behaviours which control and subjugate women – from restrictions on our rights through to actual acts of physical violence against us – is a tale long and tragically written through our history.
What is new, and has grown rapidly the last few years, is the complexity and volume of new forms of online misogyny, capitalising on grievance politics and the backlash against hard-fought gains in women’s rights. If you found Netflix’s Adolescence to be eye-opening, then James Bloodworth’s Lost Boys is the perfect companion piece: an in-depth, personal and authoritative account of the spaces where this new misogyny takes hold.
To those unfamiliar, the ‘manosphere’ is a collection of loosely connected online blogs, forums, social media accounts and podcasts claiming to speak for men and their interests – usually in reductive and regressive ways. Through chairing the Women and Equalities Select Committee, I have heard harrowing stories about the way in which the manosphere is changing the social dynamics of our schools, workplaces and wider culture.
Enabling this is a tech industry that is dangerously out of control
Bloodworth takes the reader through his own engagement with the manosphere in the early 2000s in the form of ‘pick-up artists’ (who capitalise on the insecurities of single young men) and tracks the ideological evolution of this space through its main characters.
Some may be familiar with the names mentioned, like Canadian philosopher Jordan Peterson (whose own radicalisation is worthy of a book on its own), Andrew Tate and American influencer, Dan Bilzerian. Accompanying the big names are tens of other ‘smaller’ influencers, whose accounts nonetheless attract millions of views, locked in an arms race of extreme and hate-filled content. As is often the case, misogyny walks arm-in-arm with racism and homophobia. There is a direct link between the manosphere and the far-right, who see politicians like Donald Trump as the ‘peak’ of masculinity.
At its most extreme, this is a violent misogyny that inspires mass killings, with women often the explicit target – and though influencers may distance themselves from these ‘lone wolves’, there is a clear pattern of radicalisation borne by social media. It’s a form of grooming. Manosphere influences lure in vulnerable and insecure young men with easy answers and someone else to blame for their problems: women.
Enabling this is a tech industry that is dangerously out of control, as my committee heard in a recent session with Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates. Bates spoke powerfully about algorithm-driven content, designed to capture attention above all else, putting more and more extreme content on people’s feeds.
The real strength in Bloodworth’s account is his quick and direct debunking of the lies and manipulation: the manosphere rails against a world that simply does not exist. It is fighting an imaginary war, blaming women where all the pressures and expectations that often harm young men are actually created and perpetuated by other men.
Lost Boys could not be better timed, as far-right and reactionary politics grows across the world, enabled by tech companies who disregard safety in pursuit of profit. We should all be talking more about this – and Lost Boys is a good place to start.
Sarah Owen is Labour MP for Luton North
Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere
By: James Bloodworth
Publisher: Atlantic Books
