A Saskatchewan family lawyer says he sees a disturbing new trend tearing marriages apart, which is husbands consumed by online "manosphere" ideas promoting toxic masculinity and misogyny from people like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.Scott Byers, who practises law in Swift Current, told CBC News that he and colleagues increasingly see these toxic masculinity online influences as the main reason for divorce. While COVID-19 pandemic disagreements caused initial marital issues, Byers pointed out there’s been a shift."As the years have passed since the pandemic, I'm certainly seeing more clients come in telling me, 'My spouse isn't the person that I knew when we met,'" said Byers. "'He puts his earbuds in and he's listening to these podcasts and a lot of thinkers associated with the so-called manosphere.'"Byers believes this online misogyny feeds a culture of coercion and abuse within marriages. "It's a new and unsettling dynamic," said Byers..Byers described one client whose husband, injured at work and stuck at home, began consuming what Byers termed "radical ideas" about inherent differences between boys and girls. "He started to express views about how their children should be raised that my client just couldn't accept," said Byers.Neil Shyminsky, an English professor at Cambrian College who has studied the “manosphere,” defines it as a misogynist movement reacting against feminism. "Women have not just achieved equality, but now women are in the driver's seat and that this is wrong," Shyminsky told CBC News."It is both natural and good for men to be in positions of power and leadership."Broadly, the manosphere advocates a return to “traditional” gender roles of man and woman. Shyminsky pointed out that influencers within this manosphere often reduce women's value to "sex and popping out babies or maybe picking up after you.".While these online trends emerged about a decade ago primarily among single men, Shyminsky finds it now influencing married men."This is a sign that those tendrils of the manosphere that I was talking about earlier are just permeating deeper and deeper into spaces that are mostly populated by men," said Shyminsky. Shyminsky suggested rejection by a woman often predicts involvement, though he provided no proof to back up that assertion.Byers sees a direct courtroom impact. Men influenced by these ideas often insist on representing themselves during divorce, driven by a belief that family courts are biased against husbands and fathers. "They see this as the fight of their lives, and they're fighting the good fight on behalf of men and boys everywhere," said Byers..This mindset, he added, makes practical discussions about child support or parenting schedules extremely difficult. "Their head is just not there,” said Byers.Both Byers and Shyminsky see the manosphere as offering dangerously simplistic answers to complex economic and societal problems men face. "The problem [in their view] is that men aren't men anymore," said Shyminsky.“You got laid off from your job, because you are not manly, your boss is not [manly]. Maybe your boss is a woman. If we want to fix it, if we want to solve the problem, men just have to be men … You gotta be that much more manly, that much more masculine. And that's when we slip into being toxically masculine.".While not a relationship counsellor, Byers said he has a unique perspective watching relationships fall apart. Byers suggests couples can potentially avoid breakdowns fuelled by online misogyny through open communication and talking honestly about the online content each partner consumes."If it's not enough to salvage that relationship, it would at least allow people to catch this at an earlier stage," said Byers. "They could then make educated decisions about whether to stay and whether to go."
