“Every woman has a suppressed hoe in her.”
“Damn.”
“Ain't nothing like a hoe that knows she a hoe and loves being a hoe.”
“Can a hoe become a queen?”
Do you recognise this conversation? It's a real example of the conversations that men are having about women around the world. And the worst part? We can all listen in – because they're sharing these views – proudly – on a podcast.
Over the past decade or so, bro podcasters have built huge audiences online, amplifying problematic views against women and minorities. They present their shows as ‘unfiltered’ and use humour as a line of defence when faced with accusations of sexism. But now, as the likes of Donald Trump and other international political leaders join their shows, they have growing political clout. And it's a dire warning for women in the UK.
If we lived in a society that genuinely cared about women, Trump's presidential bid would have ended the moment he first uttered his plan out loud.
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But first, let's start by taking a look at how podcasts were utilised in the run-up to the US Presidential election. The Kick streamer Adin Ross, who was deplatformed from Twitch for using racist and homophobic slurs, invited Trump for a livestream with his 1.5 million followers in August, during which several women politicians in the US were described as ‘ranting’ and ‘weak’. In the past, Ross also hosted Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist streamer and self-identified ‘incel’ with a long history of hate speech and violently misogynistic comments.
The top bro of all, though, is Joe Rogan of The Joe Rogan Experience, widely considered the biggest podcast in the world and whose audience is primarily young men. Rogan has long cultivated a moderate and bi-partisan image, hosting Trump (who during the interview called his opponent ‘low IQ’) in the election's run-up and inviting his Democrat opponent Kamala Harris, who declined to appear. However, he has also given a platform to overt misogynists such as Gavin McInnes, founder of the violent far-right Proud Boys militia, who said that appearing on the show boosted recruitment. Rogan himself has been accused of using misogynistic language.
While Rogan, whose podcast is number one in the UK, with over half of listeners being 18-34-year-old men, is the big name, there's a growing number of bro-esque streamers and podcasters with hundreds of thousands of followers speaking to young men across the English-speaking world.
These podcast bros are thriving in the UK and spreading the key ideas of the manosphere and the ‘red pill’: namely that young men are losing out in a more gender-equal society and need to re-establish their dominance by becoming ‘alphas’. These shows spread pseudo-scientific views about sexual hierarchies and encourage men to accrue money and status, and to view romantic relationships with women as transactional.
From reproductive rights to women in conflict.
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The infamous influencer Andrew Tate, for example, made headlines in 2022 after sucking thousands of boys into his online academy and sparking waves of harassment against girls in schools. While Tate, who is now facing a rape and sex trafficking trial in Romania, is an extreme misogynist, many more influencers are following in his footsteps, using their YouTube channels, podcasts, and Rumble accounts to shape young men’s worldviews and feed their resentment towards women. They create online bubbles, encouraging young men to cut themselves off from support structures.
Take the smooth-talking Brit Adrian Markovac, who has close to 4 million followers on TikTok. His social media contains a series of anti-public education videos telling young British men that school has nothing to offer them. He runs an alternative school for boys, the ‘Winners Academy’ and has encouraged young men to give up medication for mental health conditions. He also made crudely misogynistic comments about women’s ‘body count’.
Or Iman Gadzhi (5 million followers on YouTube), who presents himself as a self-made millionaire and declares that “modern feminism teaches women to hate men”. Or Canadian podcasters the Nelk Boys, who first made a name for themselves with prank videos and misogynistic dating advice on YouTube. They, too, have waded into politics, launching a pro-Trump voter registration campaign directed at Gen Z men.
Then there are the more polished mainstream podcasters such as Chris Williamson. A former Love Island contestant, Williamson runs the self-improvement podcast A Modern Wisdom (with reportedly over 400 million downloads), where he has hosted Men’s Rights Activists and distilled watered-down talking manosphere talking points birthed on fringe forums, notably about female ‘hypergamy’ (the pseudo-scientific view that women are hard-wired to want men with a higher social status).
Other popular podcasts geared towards young men have been accused of normalising misogynistic rhetoric; the British duo behind ShxtsNGigs faced accusations of condoning misogynoir and making racist jokes while appearing on another podcast, this time run by the American Andrew Schulz. James Duncan and Fuhad Dawodu apologised for their behaviour in a later podcast, saying their reaction was a “fight or flight” response to the US hosts of the podcast. “We f***** it, and we're sorry,” Duncan said.
A new BBC Panorama documentary suggests that men and boys are being pushed violent and misogynistic content – without deliberately searching for or engaging with it.
The consequences for women’s freedom and autonomy are only too clear. In the last few days, arch-misogynists, who believe they speak widely for young men, have felt emboldened. After the U.S. election, Fuentes, who has 114k followers on Rumble, tweeted, ‘Your body, my choice. Forever’, a slogan that has since spread widely on social media and offline, driving abuse against women and girls. Far-right groups in the US have shared calls for the creation of ‘rape squads’. Meanwhile, women are targeted by unprecedented levels of digital abuse, from harassment to nonconsensual explicit deepfakes.
In the UK and beyond, there are signs that contrarian podcasters geared towards young men are gaining political clout. In February, the male-led podcast Strike It Big hosted Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. During the interview, Farage described Tate as an ‘important voice’ for young men, though adding that he had gone ‘over the top’. In France, the Gen Z-oriented YouTuber Guillaume Pley, who started out with crude prank videos and is facing accusations of sexual harassment and spreading sexist views through his show, interviewed 2022 presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Pley has since apologised for his actions.
Mainstream bro podcasters may seem like they’re ‘just bros’, but they are normalising sexist rhetoric and bringing previously fringe talking points to millions of men. In doing so, they shape a worldview where women are the enemy, and their rights are up for grabs. And we must call it out in the UK before it goes any further.
The YouTuber has been arrested in Australia.
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