Holy Manosphere - How the manosphere and patriarchal churches learned to speak the same language of control

If you’ve spent time in a patriarchal church, you might have had a strange moment the first time you stumbled across manosphere content online. Something in the language felt oddly familiar - not comfortable, but recognisable.

Words like “headship,” “submission,” “rebellion,” and “divine order” echo phrases you probably heard from the pulpit for years. The conviction that questioning male authority is basically the same as questioning God. The idea that women’s independence is a kind of social sickness. The suggestion that if men are struggling, it must be women’s fault. That recognition isn’t a coincidence. The manosphere and patriarchal churches don’t just share similar conclusions - they share a vocabulary, a logic, and a set of controlling mechanisms that work in strikingly similar ways. For those of us who’ve been inside these churches, understanding this overlap isn’t just interesting. It’s part of making sense of what actually happened to us. So what even is the manosphere? The term sounds almost comical, but the reality isn’t funny. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner describes it as “an umbrella term for a mix of online spaces that talk about men, masculinity and gender relations” - spaces that frequently push narrow, rigid ideas about what a “real man” looks like, and position feminism and gender equality as an attack on men’s rights. It covers a lot of ground: men’s rights activists who believe feminism has rigged the system against men; pick-up artists who teach techniques to pressure women into sex; Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), who advocate withdrawing from women and mainstream society altogether; and incels “involuntary celibates” who blame women for their romantic isolation and can tip into genuine hatred. They squabble with each other, but they agree on the fundamentals: male dominance is natural, women who assert themselves are the problem, and the world needs to go back to the way it was. The glue holding it all together is the “red pill” - borrowed from The Matrix. Taking the red pill means “waking up” to the supposed hidden truth that the world is rigged against men. Those who disagree have simply taken the blue pill and chosen comfortable lies. If that framework sounds familiar to you, it should because it’s the same logic patriarchal churches use when they frame their interpretation of Scripture as the only true reading, and doubt as spiritual blindness. Both systems tell you: once you see the truth, questioning it is proof you’ve been deceived. Doubt isn’t information. It’s evidence of your own failure. And it’s everywhere now. The eSafety Commissioner warns that manosphere content is “seeping into mainstream online culture” through algorithms, influencers, and platform design. It often starts with something reasonable like fitness tips, financial advice, confidence-building, before sliding into increasingly hostile messaging about women. Two-thirds of young men now regularly engage with masculinity influencers online (UN Women, 2024). The pipeline is real, and it’s working. The part that’ll make your skin crawl Here’s where it gets particularly unsettling for people from high-control evangelical backgrounds: the manosphere has a theological arm. There’s a growing alliance between manosphere ideology and fundamentalist Christianity, most visibly in the “TheoBros” - young, podcast-hosting evangelical preachers who have fused the language of biblical manhood with red pill masculinity. Jordan Peterson’s secular arguments about gender hierarchy have given many evangelical leaders a culturally credible framework for views they already held. Sheila Wray Gregoire, who has spent years researching evangelical women’s experiences, put it plainly: “It’s the idea that men are meant to have authority over women and women are supposed to serve, especially sexually. There’s very little light between the two.” The church gave it chapter and verse. The manosphere gave it a podcast and a gym selfie. The message was always the same. They literally use the same words Let’s get specific, because the linguistic overlap is striking once you see it. In patriarchal churches, male “headship” is positioned as God-ordained: husbands lead, wives submit - not sometimes, not in big decisions, but in everything. The theological framework says this is love. In the manosphere, the same conclusion arrives dressed in evolutionary language: “alpha,” “dominance hierarchy,” “the natural order.” Whether God or Darwin is invoked, the destination is identical, male authority is non-negotiable, and resisting it means resisting reality itself. The silencing mechanisms match too. In patriarchal churches, a woman who questions her husband’s authority or raises concerns about her treatment gets labelled “rebellious” or “unsubmissive.” There is no legitimate avenue for complaint, because to push back is to sin. The manosphere runs the exact same play with different terminology - AWALT (“All Women Are Like That”) dismisses anything a woman says as manipulative by nature. Hypergamy frames women as inherently self-serving. In both systems, a woman’s resistance is reinterpreted as evidence that the system was right about her all along. The church said she was rebellious. The manosphere says she’s just being a woman. Either way, she doesn’t get to have a legitimate grievance. Then there’s the “protection” language. Patriarchal churches talk about “spiritual covering” - the idea that women and children need to remain under male authority to be spiritually safe. Step outside that covering and you’re exposed, vulnerable, inviting harm. The manosphere tells men they should be “the captain of the ship” and women are happiest and most secure when they surrender to male leadership. The framing in both cases is care. The function in both cases is control. The eSafety Commissioner also flags something worth naming: manosphere communities use a hierarchy of contempt to enforce conformity. Men who don’t perform dominance correctly are “betas,” “cucks,” or “simps.” Women who don’t comply are “Stacys” or “feminists.” Patriarchal churches do the same thing through spiritual shaming where the woman who asks too many questions is divisive, the man who doesn’t lead firmly enough is weak, failing his family and his God. The slow boil One of the most important things the eSafety Commissioner notes about the manosphere is that it doesn’t usually announce itself. Content starts with relatable problems like loneliness, dating frustration, feeling directionless, and then channels those real feelings toward increasingly hostile conclusions. The pivot happens gradually, and by the time the content is openly contemptuous of women, the viewer already trusts the voice delivering it. This is the part every patriarchal church survivor will recognise immediately. You didn’t sign up for control. You signed up for community, for truth, for belonging - and the control was already baked in, introduced slowly enough that it felt like it had always been there. Complementarian theology often enters the same way - gently, wrapped in language about love, mutual respect, and family. It’s only once you’re inside that the structure becomes clear: submit in everything, don’t question, your spiritual safety depends on his leadership. By then, the community, the friendships, the identity are all tied up in the system. Leaving feels like losing everything. Complementarian theology privileges male voices in ways that allow abuse to flourish and not as an accident, but as a structural outcome. The manosphere operates in a similar way when people in these communities move from online contempt into real-world harm. The pipeline matters. The echo chamber you already know Both systems also isolate. In patriarchal churches, the world outside the community is dangerous, worldly, spiritually contaminated, a threat to your faith and your family. Leaving, or even taking outside perspectives seriously is framed as rebellion. People who might challenge the church’s teachings are cut off or discredited before they can get close. In the manosphere, men who haven’t “woken up” are simps and betas who are contemptible and brainwashed by feminist culture. Once you’re inside the community, the echo chamber does its work. Every experience that doesn’t fit the ideology gets reinterpreted to confirm it. A woman being kind? She’s manipulating you. A woman being distant? See, AWALT. A pastor being challenged? Spiritual attack. The system is designed to be unfalsifiable. You can’t think your way out of a system that’s already explained away every thought that might lead you out. Research on people who’ve left manosphere communities describes a pattern that will feel very familiar to church survivors: finding community in a place that felt like it finally understood you, gradually absorbing a worldview that reframed every relationship through the lens of power and betrayal, and then a slow, disorienting process of working out who you actually are without the framework. What this means if you’ve been in a patriarchal church If you’ve left a patriarchal church, recognising the manosphere’s language as familiar isn’t a sign you’re confused, it’s a sign you’re pattern-matching accurately. These systems share roots and increasingly share infrastructure. Pastors appear on manosphere-adjacent podcasts. Influencers invoke Scripture. The same arguments about natural gender hierarchy circulate across both worlds, reinforcing each other. That cross-pollination matters. When the same ideology shows up in your church and in your algorithm, it starts to feel like consensus. Like reality. Like the way things just are. It wasn’t reality. It was a coordinated story, told in enough places that it felt inevitable. Understanding the overlap is part of recovery, because it helps you see that what happened in your church wasn’t unique to your church, or to Christianity, or to you. It was one expression of a much older and much wider system of ideas about who gets to have authority and who has to accept it. Naming that system, wherever it appears, is one of the most clarifying things you can do. The eSafety Commissioner notes that young people are far more likely to get help when open conversation is already normalised. The same is true for adults leaving patriarchal systems: community, honest conversation, and people who will believe you are protective. The antidote to a closed system is a genuinely open one. When you can see that “rebellion” and “AWALT” are doing the same work to make sure women don’t get to have legitimate grievances then you can see both systems more clearly. When you notice that “spiritual covering” and “captain of the ship” are both demanding the same unilateral authority, you can name what was actually happening. And naming it, it turns out, matters more than you might think.

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Elise Heerde is a qualified trauma-informed counsellor and coach who helps people heal from religious trauma and high-control systems. With lived experience, professional training, and a passion for creating safe, judgment-free spaces with a splash of sarcasm. Elise blends authenticity and hope in all she offers. Co-founder of The Religious Trauma Collective (Australia/New Zealand). Author of Holy Hell: Saved So Hard I Needed Therapy and After the Exit: The Long Tail of Coercive Control https://www.eliseheerde.com/

Resources

eSafety Commissioner. (2025). The manosphere: What it is and what parents and carers need to know. Australian Government. https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/the-manosphere-what-it-is-and-what-parents-and-carers-need-to-know

UN Women. (2024). What is the manosphere and why should we care? https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-the-manosphere-and-why-should-we-care

Wray Gregoire, S. (2024). What do complementarianism and coercive control have in common? Bare Marriage. https://baremarriage.com/2024/08/what-do-complementarianism-and-coercive-control-have-in-common/

Barr, B. A. (2021). The making of biblical womanhood. Brazos Press.

Weightmans. (2024). Spiritual abuse and coercive control. https://www.weightmans.com/insights/spiritual-abuse-and-coercive-control/

Skogan, M. (2025). The rising intersection of the manosphere and conservative Christianity. https://www.skogan.org

Christians for Biblical Equality International. (2025). The wife as a training ground: Complementarian theology and coercive control. https://www.cbeinternational.org