From MeToo To MenToo: The Rise Of The Indian Manosphere

Weeks after Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now X), a group of men’s rights activists from the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) NGO organised a pooja at Bengaluru’s Freedom Park, complete with incense sticks, flowers, and a special aarti dedicated to the American billionaire. In a controversial new freedom of speech policy, Musk reinstated numerous accounts, including that of the SIFF which was banned for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules by sharing negative, hateful and extremist content. 

“We were labelled as a hate group supporting far-right ideologies on Twitter and Facebook,” says Anil Murty, co-founder of the SIFF, one of the largest organised networks of the men’s rights movement (MRM) in India. The MRM in America is considered to be dangerous and toxic with several MRAs connected to alt-right extremist groups. “After Musk took over Twitter, we got a new lease of life, our reach improved and our numbers increased. We organised a pooja to thank him for giving space to men to express themselves,” he says. 

The SIFF’s Twitter account was shadow-banned and temporarily suspended four times curtailing its online reach for posting provocative content. Several of its hashtags like #MarriageStrike, #WomanIsABurden, #BanAliaBhatt, and #Darlings movie went viral on the social media platform leading to a barrage of tweets on protecting men’s rights, opposing the criminalisation of marital rape, and demanding a ban on alimony and sharing of property for divorced wives among others. 

“Indian laws on matrimony-related issues are lopsided. Government redressal mechanisms are partial to women. The feminist movement too has poisoned the minds of society by spreading lies, one-sided statistics, and false narratives against men,” says Murty. The SIFF’s provocative hashtags and anti-feminist propaganda on social media, he adds, are a way for men to express their frustration about the current system heavily leaning in favour of justice for women, and create awareness on men’s human rights. “We want to highlight atrocities against men who are suffering because of false cases of rape, dowry and sexual harassment at the workplace. No woman has ever been convicted for filing false cases against men,” he says.

With nearly 40,000 followers, the SIFF is a prominent account in the Indian manosphere—an online MRM community that advocates ideas of masculinity, and misogyny and opposes feminism. Other MRAs, such as lawyer Amit Lakhani’s Men Welfare Trust, Save Family Foundation, Voice for Men, Sahodar India, and influencers like Shonee Kapoor, Deepika Bharadwaj, and Arnaz Hathiram, use their accounts to highlight the “oppression of men”, demand gender-neutral laws and concessions to men in cases of marital disputes, sexual violence and child protection laws. 

The Indian MRM started in 2005 as an online Yahoo group by a bunch of troubled young techies, engineers and professionals who began to write blogs and connect in chatrooms to discuss their woes of matrimonial disputes and seek legal support. The movement gained popularity after it began to advocate for the prevention of cruelty against married men falsely implicated by their wives and in-laws in cases of domestic violence, dowry harassment, and sexual abuse. It has since grown into a network of several NGOs with state-wise chapters, that organise annual conferences on men’s rights, provide counselling, and legal aid and run helplines for distressed men facing harassment or criminal charges of abuse from their spouses. The SIFF has also made representations in the Parliament for changes in the divorce laws and played a pivotal role in campaigning against arbitrary arrests of men accused under Section 498A--deterrent against domestic violence--without a thorough investigation. 

Today, the MRM has evolved from niche activism into an influential online subculture involving men and women--married, unmarried and divorced--who are not just campaigning for men’s rights but promoting violent narratives of gender-based abuse, regressive forms of femininity, female subservience and harmful attitudes of male dominance. The movement has witnessed a tremendous spurt, particularly in the aftermath of the 2018 women’s MeToo movement. After scores of women including film actors and journalists publicly shared harrowing accounts of workplace sexual harassment, the MRMs started a counter-protest using the hashtag #MenToo, highlighting allegedly false cases filed against men. 

“Men are no longer hiding out of shame. They are more vocal and come out publicly on social media to share their stories of how they are affected by the misuse of laws by women. This has created more noise on distressed men and awareness on gender-biased laws,” says Shonee Kapoor, an MRA influencer and the founder of Sahodar Trust. He uses his X account (65,000 followers) to highlight stories of violence against men and highlight skewed relief mechanisms for men.  

Lakhani, who became a men’s rights activist in 2008 following a prolonged divorce fight recalled that in the past, the MRM members included troubled married men or their family members, who were looking for legal help or some form of assistance. But now, he says there is a growing interest from college students, young unmarried men, engaged men in relationships or professionals facing cases of sexual harassment and POSH, in joining the online community. 

Lakhani is currently mounting the #SatyagrahaForMen campaign ahead of the April 19 demonstration at Jantar Mantar Delhi, online under the umbrella of the Save Indian Family (SIF) Movement. Several accounts are using the hashtag to demand justice for male victims of female violence such as the suicide of software engineer Atul Subhash, who recorded a video blaming his wife and in-laws for harassment related to divorce and child custody, and the murder of Saurabh Rajput, a merchant navy officer whose wife and lover dismembered his body and dumped it in a cement-filled drum. “Justice for Atul Subhash”, “I am Atul” and “Justice for Saurabh Rajput” were trending topics on social media after the cases came to light.

Kapoor, who was among the earliest X users to highlight Subhash’s case, said that MRAs consistently posted about his case and shared the harrowing video testimony, which ultimately pressured authorities to take action against the in-laws' family. Several other individual cases shared by MRAs also gained attention on social media and were subsequently covered by the mainstream media, leading to some form of official action. 

But the Indian manosphere at large remains infested with toxicity and anti-feminist content. It is replete with narratives which emphasise that women are responsible for destroying the traditional Indian family system; women take undue advantage of laws, trapping innocent men in the guise of false sexual harassment charges; and ideas supporting women’s agency like ‘my body, my choice’ and cancel patriarchy are harmful to men. 

The rise of misogynistic culture, gender war discourse and the popularity of extremist influencers like Andrew Tate, Warren Farrell, Karen Straughan, Myron Gaines and Mike Thurston, among others, have generated wide interest among Indian men in harmful sub-cultures like Incel (involuntary celibate) and MGTOW (MenGoingTheirOwnWay). 

A 2022 study led by the University of Michigan researchers Joyojeet Pal, Sheyril Agarwal and Urvashi Patel analysed thousands of MRM-linked accounts sharing misogynistic content using the hashtags #MenToo, #AblaNari, #MaritalRape, #BoycottMarriage, #FeminismIsCancer and #MensRightsMatter. Anonymity on social media has given rise to online intimidation, rape and murder threats. Such tweets with abusive and harmful language were also being used to target the accounts of outspoken liberal women, journalists, activists, actresses and others talking about gender-based violence.

Men’s rights groups defended the spread of provocative misogynistic content by certain users by calling them ‘reactionary’ but added that they do not encourage members to wield personal attacks against individual women's accounts.   

Kapoor admits that on certain occasions he has shared misogynistic content or controversial hashtags out of frustration and anger. “If one starts a campaign like men are trash, it is bound to create a counter-reaction from the other gender. This is how the #MeToo gave rise to #MenToo.” Murty also points out that while disagreements and hate run on both sides of the gender, it is men who bear the brunt. According to him, “Toxicity is only associated with men. Women’s groups received no criticism when they started hate campaigns like #KillAllMen and #SlutWalk.” 

Although the Indian MRM remains on the fringe and hasn’t gained the same notoriety as its Western counterparts, both its online and offline versions are instrumental in generating new concepts around family values, gender laws and communities, which are likely to influence societal changes in the future. 

Murty says that the SIFF aims to create a community-oriented family system with or without women and teaches men to remain focused on themselves, rather than their wives, mothers or families. “Women may have started the gender war with feminism but we men will finish it,” he concludes.