How women suffer when their partners fall into the manosphere

More and more boyfriends and husbands are being seduced by the increasingly mainstream ideology of toxic masculinity, putting entire families at risk. Maya Oppenheim meets women who are still dealing with the wreckage

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Samantha thought of her partner as the most progressive man she had ever had a relationship with. Her Swedish boyfriend seemed, to her, more feminist than many British men she had dated.

"I never had to ask him to clear up," she says. "All our labour was shared. He had done therapy. He was happy to talk about his emotions."

When they broke up, however, Samantha, who is in her 30s and based in Sheffield, saw a very different side to him. She recalls going to his flat to collect her belongings. "I got into a debate with him," she says. "It became clear his beliefs had become centred around the idea that men are more sexual than women, and men and women can't be friends.

"He said: 'Now we are not together, I don't need to agree with everything you say."

He told her he had become involved during the pandemic in what he described as a men's mental health group. Samantha has since discovered the group was influenced by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who has expressed controversial views about women, and a far-right Swedish influencer whom her ex-boyfriend had appeared with in photos on social media. "It's that strand of the manosphere that is focused on self-help and spirituality," she says. "The whole time we were together, there were no warning signs."

Samantha's experience is not an isolated case. Several women told the Observer their partners had been sucked into the manosphere - the name given to parts of the internet that circulate misogynist content - or consumed far-right material online.