In the event you’ve been on Twitter recently, it’s possible you’ve heard of ‘green line theory’. It’s a straightforward idea, mainly purported by a Twitter user often called Rivelino, which suggests that ‘real’ men don’t lean in towards their female partners. Apparently, you may sort the alphas from the betas by taking photos of heterosexual couples and drawing green lines down their middles: so, Pete Davidson leaning in to present Kim a cuddle is an indication of his weakness; Donald Trump, meanwhile, is a chief example of a powerful man who stands straight and lets women lean into him.

Obviously, it’s bullshit. Based on Vincent Denault, an authority in nonverbal communication, green line theory is a “nonsensical” idea. “Similar claims are widely disseminated by ‘body language experts’, associating specific facial and body positions to specific meanings, all with a single photo,” he explains. “These claims go against many years of scientific research. Anyone remotely accustomed to nonverbal behaviour research would recognise the nonsense.”

Any rational person knows this, and it’s been suggested that Rivelino is a committed troll anyway. As an alternative, it’s more worthwhile to look at why this mishmash of pop psychology and pseudoscience keeps popping up within the manosphere. Take the idea that men, like animals, may be divided into alphas and betas (they’ll’t), with most incels self-identifying as ‘betas’ who’re doomed to a lifetime of being missed by women. Or the insistence that each one women are naturally hypergamous and hardwired to decide on a powerful and successful mate to guard their offspring, while men are supposedly inclined to have sex with as many individuals as possible to spread their genes (this also isn’t true). Or the way in which self-professed alphas disparagingly call liberal (and frequently vegan) men “soy boys”, and argue that soy products reduce men’s testosterone levels (again, they don’t), all while advocating for the consumption of raw, beef as an alternative.

Simon Copland is a PhD candidate in sociology on the Australian National University, whose research focuses on manosphere communities. He explains that men in these communities often use scientific language – often invoking evolutionary psychology and genetic determinism – to lend “a way of legitimacy” to their ideas and justify their misogyny. “Through this pseudoscience, men formulate a belief that there are a lot of inherent differences between men and ladies – differences that, coincidentally, position them as superior to women,” he says. “Science gives a ‘rational’ basis to their ideology, making them feel as if it’s inconceivable to argue against. This offers them an actual sense of legitimacy, which I feel is a really powerful feeling.”

The concept that women are biologically ‘lesser’ than men has been around for hundreds of years. Hippocrates was one in every of the primary writers to argue this, when within the fifth century BC, he argued that ladies were more vulnerable to ‘hysteria’ on account of the womb ‘wandering’ across the body; Darwin once wrote that “man has ultimately turn out to be superior to woman”; Freud suggested within the early twentieth century that ladies’s behaviour might be explained by their experience of ‘penis envy’.

You’d hope that we’d have left these sexist, outdated ideas up to now, but now we’re within the midst of what feminist academic Deborah Cameron has termed “the brand new biologism”, which describes a shift away from socio-cultural explanations for human behaviour and towards a more totalising, biological approach. This manner of pondering generally positions men as natural leaders with high sex drives, and ladies as more submissive and with lower sex drives. Based on Cameron, this latest iteration of sexist pseudoscience and pop psychology began to realize traction within the Nineties following the publication of John Gray’s hugely popular self-help book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which argued that the majority relationship issues arise from immutable psychological differences between the sexes.

It’s often inconceivable to search out any evidence which backs up these sorts of ideas. If anything, the speculation that men and ladies are fundamentally psychologically different has been disproved – a study by Bobbi Carothers and Harry Reis involving over 13,000 individuals found that there was not a taxonomic difference between men and ladies on the overwhelming majority of personality traits and preferences. But, Copland says, it’s unproductive to simply lambast the individuals who buy into these theories – as an alternative, it’s more worthwhile to query how we got to this stage. “It is simple to mock these ideas, and I feel the green line theory is one in every of the stupider ones,” Copland says. “Nonetheless, additionally they arrive from very real feelings quite a lot of men have about their changing position on this world.”

Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is associate professor of digital humanities at UCL with expertise in online misogyny, and he or she reiterates Copland’s sentiments. She explains that using scientific language is primarily a way for disenfranchised young men to “articulate a fear of lack of control” in our rapidly-changing world. “The bottom line is to not deal with topics just like the green line theory or other theories prefer it. These are only symptoms of a much greater phenomenon,” she says.

“Many men do really feel that their lives are pretty shit, they usually are searching for people responsible for this,” Copland continues. “We’ve seen real changes in our society up to now many years, and I do consider quite a lot of men are feeling disenfranchised and alienated. Loads of people on the planet are feeling this manner on the whole.” It’s true: research shows that there are rising numbers of single and lonely straight men.

“Ultimately, what [manosphere] culture – and subsequently the pseudoscience that operates inside it – does is offer a way for young men to articulate a fear of lack of control” – Dr Kaitlyn Regehr

“Then what has happened is that quite a lot of influencers akin to Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and other members of the manosphere have created a very convenient narrative that blames feminism and ladies for this disenfranchisement and alienation,” Copland adds. While any radical movement which seeks to dramatically change the established order will naturally face intense backlash, Copland stresses the idea held by red- and black-pilled men that feminism is one way or the other ‘disrupting the natural order’ is incorrect. “Red pill ideology is a straightforward story that creates a very easy-to-target enemy, and the manosphere gives men a community where they’ll feel empowered again. The story is incorrect,” he says. “Nevertheless it is convincing, at the very least to some men.”

It’s easy to see why alienated men are interested in such totalising, easy conclusions, when the actual reasons for his or her feelings are myriad and complicated – the concept of ‘masculinity’ evolving, women raising their standards, social media’s role in pushing extreme content onto its users, economic and social disenfranchisement. It’s a lot simpler to think about the ‘issue’ as something immutable. But obviously, it isn’t – so where will we go from here? “We should always take their pain seriously,” Copland says. “And we must always be working with these men to supply alternative stories about why their lives have modified in the way in which they’ve.”