You’ve heard of the manosphere - but what about the risks of the femosphere?

By the time Andrew Tate became a byword for misogyny in schools, his ideas had already been circulating among young people for a long time. But waiting for an ideology to become headline news before addressing it means you’re playing catch-up, which is why a set of ideas known as the “femosphere” should be getting teachers’ attention now.

The term was coined by Dr Jilly Kay, a senior lecturer in media and communication at Loughborough University. She has spent years tracking women’s anger online, and has found that many female-centric communities that stand in opposition to the manosphere are, on closer inspection, reproducing a lot of its logic.

“These communities often purport to be feminist and to be speaking in women’s interests, but what they’re actually doing is mirroring a lot of the manosphere’s core ideas of fatalism, bio-essentialism and this very anti-political sense that the world is fundamentally unchangeable,” Dr Kay explains.

At its simplest, the femosphere describes a loose constellation of online content aimed at women that blends legitimate feminist concerns with reactionary conclusions. It is not a unified movement but rather a set of ideas appearing with increasing regularity across sites including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

The content often starts from positions that many would deem hard to argue with: that misogyny is real, that some women have had difficult or exploitative experiences in relationships, and that so-called “rape culture” exists.

Where femosphere content takes a sharp turn, however, is in what it proposes to do about any of this. Rather than collective action or structural change, the solution offered is individualistic, advising women to find a “high-value man” (almost always defined by wealth), never let romantic feelings cloud their judgement, treat dating as a game to be won, and accept that men are fundamentally untrustworthy.

“The overriding ideology is the idea that liberal feminism has lied to you, that gender equality is a dangerous idea, and actually what you need to do is work out how men and women are different, fundamentally, and then use that knowledge to strategise for your own advantage,” Kay says.

This is the “pink pill”, a mirror image of the manosphere’s “red pill” philosophy. Where the red pill tells men to wake up to the truth that feminism has been catastrophic for society, the pink pill tells women to wake up to the truth that feminism has been catastrophic for them, personally. The conclusions may be different but the structure of the argument is almost identical.

Warning signs of femosphere influence

While the femosphere hasn’t so far developed figureheads with profiles as significant as Andrew Tate, there are some names for teachers to be aware of.

Kanika Batra is an Australian influencer who bases her advice on her self-described diagnosis as a “sociopath”. She offers tips on emotional detachment and manipulation in dating as a form of strategic self-protection. Shera Seven, based in the US, offers guidance on identifying and securing a financially secure man, warning women not to let physical attraction distract from the economic calculations. Then there is The Wizard Liz, an influencer who is already known to many students in secondary schools, and whose appeal illustrates the central difficulty in identifying femosphere content: that on the surface it all sounds quite positive.

Charli Faux is subject lead for life skills and school mental health lead at Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School in Hertfordshire. She informally asked some of her sixth-formers about The Wizard Liz and reports that: “They said, ‘Oh, she talks about how to get men, how to get money, how to empower yourself.’”

“That’s really interesting, because it’s the same way Andrew Tate started,” Faux says. “That idea of getting people to have more confidence in themselves, which all sounds really positive and encouraging. But when you dig deeper into what she’s actually saying, it’s encouraging women to manipulate, to carefully curate a persona, to think of dating as a game to win or lose.”

These views may be more difficult for teachers to challenge than those of the manosphere. If a male student, for example, claims that women belong in the kitchen, or that men are the natural authority in relationships, teachers can address the fact that these views would widely be considered sexist.

But what happens when a female student expresses anti-male sentiment? This can, as Kay acknowledges, be “a much more complicated question”. A statement might reflect genuine experience of misogyny or mistreatment. Or, on the other hand, it might be the expression of a potentially unhelpful belief that men are biologically programmed to exploit women and nothing can ever change that.

Faux draws a parallel with what she describes as the “confused” feminism of the 1990s, when women were told that going to strip clubs with their boyfriends or embracing a lads’-mag aesthetic was “empowerment”.

“It was making us complicit in our own objectification, and we were sold it as feminism. Although it’s not entirely the same, there is something similar happening now. It’s a kind of internalised misogyny of ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’.”

The term “femosphere” itself is not in wide use among secondary school students. Faux says her sixth-formers drew a blank when she mentioned it, but she notes that this kind of transactional relationship content is hard to miss once you know to look for it.

She gives the example of Arsenal winning the Premier League this year. She found that her Instagram feed was full of content advising women that this was the time to “get him to buy you the handbag, book you the holiday, get his credit card out”.

“It was just so vile,” Faux says. “Are we not aware that in 2026 there are just as many female football fans? But it just kept coming up, women sitting in their cars with their handbags, going, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot.’”

So what can be done to counteract these influences, before they completely take root, in the way that many now believe the manosphere has?

Some hope that the recently announced social media ban for under-16s may help to reduce exposure to damaging ideas online, including “pink pill” ideology. But others have raised concerns that the ban could simply push young people to less-regulated corners of the internet. Teachers, therefore, need to be on the lookout for signs that a student may have taken these views on board.

There is no simple checklist of red-flag phrases because the content is slippery, contextual and often mixed in with legitimate concerns. But there are key ideas that can signal potential cause for concern.

‘Bio-essentialism’

Kay notes that the load-bearing assumptions of femosphere content are the same as those in the manosphere: that men are naturally inclined to seek multiple partners, that women are suited to monogamy and domesticity, and that these differences are inevitable. When these ideas surface, whether from female or male students, they are worth examining.

The commodification of relationships

Language around “high-value” men, the reduction of potential partners to their financial status, and the framing of intimacy as a transaction to be won or lost are also markers worth noting.

Anti-political fatalism

When discussions of gender or relationships drift towards the conclusion that nothing can ever change, that fighting back is futile and that individual strategy is the only rational response, this is the ideological signature of both the manosphere and the femosphere, says Kay.

Teachers should be aware that girls can become indoctrinated with these worldviews just as easily as boys can. While there have been national conversations focused on the manosphere, this may be another example of girls flying under the radar.

Faux’s advice for teachers is to stay curious and stay connected to what students are being exposed to.

“Listen to them, engage them in conversations about what they’re seeing online,” she says. “If you’re a form tutor, you have that 15 or 20 minutes with them every morning, so use it. You have to educate yourself, too. I am not a TikTok user myself, but I had to create an account so I can see what comes up, and how the algorithms work, to make sure I am as up-to-date as I can be when I teach about social media.”

However, Faux is also optimistic. She believes that the right curriculum can go a long way towards protecting girls against the power of “pink pill” influencers.

Robust, embedded relationships and sex education that tackles sexism, misogyny, red flags and coercive control from Year 7 onwards means that when students encounter femosphere content, they will have the critical vocabulary to name what is wrong with it, she suggests.

“When I see these influencers, I think, ‘Brilliant, more content for my lessons.’ And usually my students can pinpoint why it’s ridiculous straight away,” Faux says.

In thinking about how to teach about these topics, it is also worth noting that the term “femosphere” has more than one meaning.

Kay uses it specifically to describe the reactionary, manosphere-mirroring phenomenon outlined above. But a recent New Statesman article used the word differently, to describe a more broadly progressive space of female-led online politics, including student activists and pro-trans voices. Teachers researching the topic may encounter both uses.

But for schools, the specific label matters less than the underlying ideas. Whether students encounter it as the “femosphere”, as the pink pill, as #boysober TikToks or as an unnamed feeling that relationships are fundamentally transactional and men are fundamentally untrustworthy, the response should be the same: offering curiosity, critical engagement and instilling a sense of hope that the world is not, in fact, unchangeable.

Zofia Niemtus is a freelance writer