Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, racism, bullying, sexual violence and harassment, cursing, and emotional abuse.

Bates states that it is important to pay attention to the manosphere’s most prominent figures to understand how their ideals have infiltrated the mainstream. She says they are responsible for presenting this ideology in a more sanitized and acceptable form for public consumption. A “buffer of plausible deniability” (216) is required, as many of these figureheads publicly disavow the different facets of the manosphere even while promoting its ideals and profiting from the manosphere’s support. 

Bates reveals the extent to which the manosphere’s most prominent voices—from infamous pickup artist Daryush Valizadeh (“Roosh V”) to men’s rights activist Paul Elam—are more concerned with their own profits than with their followers or the causes they claim to support. As Men Who Hate Women has previously outlined, manosphere communities frequently attract struggling men, and Bates criticizes these figureheads for exploiting vulnerable men for financial gain. Paul Elam, for instance, has berated his male followers for not donating enough and tells his troubled audience to “go f*cking bother someone else with [their] problems” (219).