As a chronically single woman in her 30s, I’m well aware that conventional wisdom dictates time is running out for me. The crow’s feet are rapidly advancing, my hair is becoming greyer by the day, and my ovaries are shrivelling up like raisins inside me.
It’s been something of a mixed bag, this whole dating thing. On the one hand, I have met some truly delightful people; the cyber-security specialist who encouraged me to start reading sci-fi again, the philosophy student who reminded me that you never really know what’s rattling around in someone’s head, and the accountant who introduced me to the brilliance that is What We Do in the Shadows.
There’s even one sweet young man in Glasgow who rocked up to our first date with a loaf of home-made sourdough bread. (It was delicious and is the main reason I’ll be seeing him again — consider me a "bread-digger").
But, on the other hand, venturing into the wastelands of Tinder, Bumble and Hinge has also exposed me to the perils and privations of red-pilled men. It’s astounding the number of dating profiles that have comments like "don’t bother if you’re a feminist", "swipe right if you don’t have baggage", "if you’re not like other girls", "if you haven’t hit the wall" or — my personal favourite — "looking for someone who is feminine and submissive".
In this scenario, the red pill represents choosing to learn the unsettling truth about reality — that the world humans perceive is a computer simulation and their bodies are enslaved by machines. On the other hand, the blue pill represents choosing to remain in "blissful ignorance", staying in the simulated reality.
Neo, of course, chooses the red pill. (It wouldn’t be much of a movie if he picked the blue one).
However, the metaphor of the "red pill" has metastasized (like a malignant melanoma) into a sprawling digital universe devoted to convincing men and boys that they are the real oppressed class.
Enter the manosphere — a charming ecosystem of misogyny, pseudo-science, narcissism and men who fancy themselves "alpha males" — which paints feminism as a vast conspiracy to emasculate the world.
You’ve probably heard of a few manosphere influencers — Andrew Tate is perhaps the virulent example.
Red-pilled men hold a number of ridiculous and internally incoherent beliefs. Many of these men, for example, believe that women are simultaneously manipulative geniuses and vacuous idiots; both conniving temptresses and empty-headed gold diggers. For them, women’s primary functions are beauty, purity, submissiveness and fertility.
I wish I could assure you this stupidity is only confined to teenage boys on TikTok. However, a recent nationwide study from Equimundo and Beyond Equality found that 50% of men in the UK endorse red-pill rhetoric.
Documentary makers, researchers and organisations like Equimundo warn that red-pill ideology is entrancing men in their 30s, 40s and 50s namely, men who really should know better.
I have no concerns about matching with a through-and-through red-pilled man. After all, such men fly their red flags proudly, much like how the lurid colours of a poison dart frog signal its toxicity.
But I am a little concerned about going on a date with someone, developing feelings for them, only to eventually discover a wellspring of quiet misogyny or the gentle drip-feed of condescension months into a tentative relationship. It’s happened before.
I watched a documentary the other day on BBC iPlayer, titled Men of the Manosphere, presented by digital influencer James Blake. The men featured in this documentary (as loathsome as some of their attitudes were) are not monsters, but rather sad young men — lonely, disappointed, frustrated and cynical.
They have been preyed upon by Tate and his ilk and taught that vulnerability is weakness, empathy is emasculation and women are the enemy.
Let me be clear: I am in no way excusing the misogyny of these men. I have no patience for grown men who genuinely believe that women solely exist to provide sex, emotional labour and aesthetic pleasure and I’m sick of encountering them every which way I move.
But I do think that it’s worth pointing out that perhaps the people most harmed by red-pill ideology are the men who believe in it.
By viewing women solely as manipulative obstacles or interchangeable rewards, red-pilled men rob themselves of discovering who women are and what friendships or relationships with said women can be: funny, infuriating, brilliant, sensitive, sharp, soft, contradictory, whole.
It is impossible to form genuine romantic relationships when you treat half the population as statistics to be optimised. And, what’s more, you also can’t form friendships.
What a loss this is. Some of the warmest, most emotionally textured and rewarding relationships in my life are with men — men who see women like me as complex humans rather than threats.
The manosphere’s marketing of "empowerment" — this attitude of treating dating like a numbers game with its impersonal language of "sexual market value", "high value men", "body counts" and the like — barely disguises the emotional poverty underneath.
These men, by reducing women to categories and submitting to red-pill ideology, are depriving themselves of one of the most meaningful of human experiences — genuine relationships with half the human population.
We women deserve so much better than red-pilled men. But men deserve better than the red pill too.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
