Netflix’s ‘Manosphere’ Dares to Ask: Should Men Make Documentaries About Sexism? — Opinion

The breakdown of gender relations in the United States isn’t an internet freakshow anymore. In 2026, it’s a real, destabilizing force that’s shaping politics, culture, and daily life in ways that demand rigorous journalism.

Enter Louis Theroux, a British documentarian known for embedding himself in volatile subcultures and extracting sincere insights. And yet, Netflix’s buzzy “Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere” — still eerily popular a week after its release — is misguided, at best.

The contentious film has been brewing in the background of its subjects’ notoriously sexist social media accounts for the past year as Theroux pieced his documentary together behind the scenes. The result has sparked major controversy since hitting Netflix, having promised viewers a vital look behind enemy lines and instead delivering a half-baked survey of Andrew Tate-era misogyny.

Was Theroux doomed to fail? Can a man — even a thoughtful, experienced documentarian of many years — capture the scale of what women are really up against today? Perhaps not.

“Inside the Manosphere” wastes its influential perch on the world’s biggest streaming platform with an approach that ultimately magnifies Theroux’s blind spots. Empathetic but flawed, he seems to genuinely believe he’s exposing a shadowy network that’s paradoxically infamous for streaming 24/7 online.

By placing himself at the center of that ecosystem without the tools needed to seriously challenge it, Theroux risks doing exactly what these influencers want: expanding their reach, lending their ideas legitimacy, and spotlighting the wealth, desirability, and power they crave.

A Journalist Outmatched by the Size of the Moment

Theroux’s reputation precedes him, even among those who don’t know his decades-long background in documentary filmmaking. The award-winning BBC journalist entered the current cultural bloodstream through the viral resurfacing of a clip from his old talk show “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends.”

Yes, it’s his voice behind the popular TikTok sound, “My money don’t jiggle, jiggle, it folds.” Since then, Theroux’s body of work has gained a wider, younger audience who appreciate him as a uniquely empathetic interviewer capable of disarming subjects who others can’t crack. That skillset has served him well across topics, ranging from religion to war.

But “Inside the Manosphere” complicates the trust by boldly displaying a time when even Theroux’s talents fall short. 

‘Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere’

Theroux’s kindness-first approach, typically an asset, becomes a liability when dealing with subjects to whom compassion is coded as weakness and then weaponized for content. He succeeds, to a degree, in getting these generally loathsome men to speak openly about their already very public, anti-woman personas. But talking about yourself is not the same as sharing the truth. Basic questions from Theroux like, “Why not try to be a good person?” are met with bafflement rather than reflection, and these flimsy exchanges tend to illuminate the rigidity of the manosphere ideology rather than penetrate it.

Worse still, the dynamic often flips on Theroux.

The manosphere influencers appear as comfortable performing for him as they do for their fans, occasionally mocking Theroux outright and making him a prop in clips that went viral online months before “Inside the Manosphere” hit Netflix. The film captures an imbalance — between educated men fighting for women and the meatheads who think both groups are a joke — without fully reckoning with it.

The Modern Emotional Apocalypse, Explained

The “manosphere” is not a single ideology, but an ecosystem. It’s a vicious online subculture, an actively growing political movement, and a symptom of a broader societal fracture that most Americans can feel on some level. Misogyny thrives on grievance, and the hatred of women is fueled by a toxic blend of masculinity in crisis and destabilizing late-stage capitalism. Y’know, to put it plainly.

Racism, antisemitism, and homophobia frequently intersect with the manosphere — or “red pill” — communities, creating a feedback loop of radicalization that can be terrifyingly effective. Content ranges from shock humor to overt calls for violence, with some figures openly questioning whether women should be allowed to vote, work, read, or refuse sex.

‘Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere’

Theroux’s documentary captures glimpses of that world in all its absurdity, contradictions, and cruelty. But “Inside the Manosphere” struggles to contextualize the scale of the danger facing women and girls compared to the incentives being offered to the men and boys this movement wants to recruit.

Screenshots of headlines and childhood narratives for specific manosphere personalities hint at a larger problem without fully mapping it, and the result is a banal portrait that paints these guys as mostly thriving. Their wealth, status, and proximity to power, including ties to figures within Donald Trump’s orbit, leaves an impression that could be less cautionary than aspirational for some.

The Women Missing from the Story

The documentary’s most glaring omission is not what it shows, but what it cannot access. Theroux attempts to speak with women connected to his noxious subjects, but his efforts are largely thwarted. Conversations with assistants and girlfriends get cut short or mediated by the very men whose behavior is being questioned. The absence of women is noted, but doesn’t land with the weight it should.

Understanding why these women stay with these men — be it economic dependence, fear of violence, or the allure of visibility — is essential. Their perspectives should be central to the story, and Theroux’s even inadvertent sidelining of their experiences underscore a deeper issue facing the accurate portrayal of sexism and gender dynamics in documentaries. For women, the manosphere is not an intellectual exercise, but a lived reality that requires a true insider’s perspective.

Future projects may attempt to fill the gap Theroux’s work has left behind. Initiatives like Nicola Coughlan’s upcoming Channel 4 series about the manosphere suggest a shift toward female-led considerations of the subject. Whether dramatization can succeed where documentary has struggled remains to be seen, although recent calls from figures like “Adolescence” creator Jack Thorne for government intervention emphasize the need for a solution to an increasingly visible challenge. 

“Inside the Manosphere” hints at the absence of women’s voices without fully overcoming it. The interior worlds of these women remain obscured and their motivations go unexplored. For a journalist of Theroux’s caliber, that feels less like a misstep and more like he was miscast. 

‘Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere’

A Turning Point We Can’t Afford to Miss

The stakes extend far beyond one documentary. In the wake of the most recent U.S. presidential election, surges in misogynistic rhetoric and threats of violence against women have become more common. The manosphere’s celebration of Kamala Harris’ defeat — framed not just as a political victory but as a rejection of female leadership itself — reflects a broader erosion of gender equality.

At the same time, parallel movements like the rise of the “trad wife” on social media complicate the gender landscape, effectively promoting voluntary domestic subservience as its own kind of aspirational lifestyle. Together, those forces contribute to an increasingly tense environment in which women’s autonomy, LGBTQ rights, and the protection of minorities is not just openly contested, but actively undermined.

At the core of the problem: “Inside the Manosphere” already feels outdated.

When a project like this fails to fully interrogate a rapidly evolving subject, the consequences are not limited to critical disappointment but expand to a missed opportunity at a crucial time. It is no longer enough to document the existence of a problem. The work of documentaries must be rigorous, contextualized, and unflinching enough to help stop the progression of an insidious message and movement.

Losing sight of that for even a moment carries a cost that threatens not just the forest and the trees, but the men who can’t see the women caught between them.