The Rabbit Hole

An anti-feminist masculinity is attracting young boys on the Internet. Blaming women for the pressure on men, its champions believe they are only opening men’s eyes to the misery in their lives

- Avantika Mehta

SHERDIL Singh is quite annoyed these days. The 18-year-old’s best friend has started dating a woman and he feels like a third wheel around the couple. “What could be worse?” rues the teenager, who is about to graduate from a school in his city Delhi and has never been in a romantic relationship. Influenced by the woman, Sherdil believes, his friend seems to be turning into something like a “feminist”. Why else would his friend overreact now to the kind of jokes they didn’t mind cracking earlier or appear to be extra-sensitive about the sort of comments they would have easily passed otherwise, Sherdil wonders. What’s more, he even lectures him sometimes about how to behave with the opposite gender.

As his father is too busy with work and he doesn’t speak of “these kinds of things” with his mother, Sherdil turns to the Internet for advice. He has seen male content creators on his YouTube and Instagram feed talking about dating, grooming, body building and even how to start a successful business. He has browsed some of the content in boredom but never paid attention. They may not be completely right, but they aren’t entirely wrong either, he thinks. There is all this focus on Beti Bachao and women’s rights, after all, while no one is talking about how hard it is to be a young man in this world. Isn’t there a lot of pressure on men to provide and to be strong, he wonders. Coming from a middle-class family with strict parents and little attention from the opposite gender, Sherdil hates it when the girls in his school talk about male privilege. He doesn’t feel privileged.