About us
We are a free & open group dedicated to exploring issues common to all humanity. We meet almost every other Sunday between 5pm- 7p.m. at a cafe in Publika, Kuala Lumpur. We encourage everyone to join in the discussion, but there's no compulsion to do so.
This is a discussion not a lecture nor debate and you don't need to be a Ph.D holder.
The owners of the cafe have allowed us to use their premises without charging so we urge you to return this generosity by buying at least a drink.
Interested in hosting a meet up? We strongly recommend attending at least 2 meet ups consecutively, so that you know what to expect and also have a good feel for moderating.
Once you’ve done that, send us a message on MeetUp.com with a short write up on the topic you’d like to moderate. This write up must have:
> 1. A title; which lets members know generally what to expect from the discussion.
> 2. A description, which may be in the form statements or questions, we find that crisp bullet points are best.
Try to cover multiple angles and hidden questions in the topic; ideally about 3 different ones. Remember that 2 hours is a pretty long time, thinking about the many dimensions within topic will definitely help drive the discussion.
Once you’ve sent us the write up, give us about a week to get back to you, and if it meets those minimum requirements listed above, we’ll try our best to schedule your topic in the next couple of months.
Upcoming events
1
Toxic Atmosphere: Breathing in the Manosphere
Top G Coffee & Cafe, Lot 05, Level G4, Block D5, Publika Shopping Galery, Solaris Dutamas, Kuala Lumpur, MYTo familiarise yourself with the references before the discussion, please listen to : https://bit.ly/4wVQVvI (5mins).
Picture this: it’s 2am, John Doe is lying in bed, phone inches from his face, and he’s just fallen down a very specific part of the internet where everyone has a podcast, a six-pack, and a deep, personal vendetta against women they’ve never met. Dating is framed like a hostile takeover, emotions are treated like a software bug, and every problem in life can apparently be solved by waking up at 5am, taking cold showers, and “becoming a high value man.”
It’s part self-help, part group therapy — except the loudest voices are usually the least qualified, and the confidence-to-competence ratio is… ambitious. Millions of young men are tuning in, fed with ideas of:
- Involuntary celibates (incels): promote the belief that men are entitled to sexual access, and that women deliberately deny it to them.
- Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs): focus on perceived disadvantages faced by men, such as custody, divorce, education, workplace risk, or legal treatment. Some strands frame feminism and women’s rights as threats to men.
- Pick-up artists (PUAs): promote strategies aimed at manipulating women into sex or attachment, often downplaying or dismissing the importance of consent.
- Red pill ideology: promotes the belief that one has “awakened” to a hidden truth that society favors women over men, and that those who disagree are misled.
- AWALT (“All Women Are Like That”): promotes the belief that all women share the same underlying traits, reducing them to a single, fixed stereotype regardless of individual differences.
This is the manosphere.
The manosphere is an umbrella term for online communities that have increasingly promoted aggressive definitions of what it means to be a man – and that feminism and gender equality have come at the cost of men’s rights.
These communities promote the idea that emotional control, material wealth, physical appearance, dominance, and “winning” are markers of male worth — shaping how men see women, other men, themselves, and anyone who does not fit a rigid gender worldview.
In this session, we’ll explore why these ideas resonate, what draws people into these spaces, how women and others are affected, who benefits from this ecosystem, and what all this reveals about loneliness, insecurity, status, identity, power, and changing gender roles.
Questions:
- What is the manosphere?
- What kind of ideas does it promote about money, dating, work, status, and what it means to be a man?
- How does it define success and failure?
- How are women usually described in these spaces? What about other men, and people outside the manosphere’s gender worldview?
- Why does the manosphere exist?
- What problems or frustrations is it responding to?
- Have changing roles between men and women played a part in its rise?
- Why do the young men listen to the manosphere?
- Why do some of these communities believe men are being treated unfairly—and why do people find that convincing?
- How can being part of these spaces affect someone’s mental health, confidence, or sense of identity?
- If many young men feel lost or misunderstood, are these communities helping them—or are they also victims taken advantage of?
- If early conversations can help counter these ideas, what would those conversations actually look like—and who should be having them?
- Who benefits from the manosphere?
- Do women have spaces similar to the manosphere (womanosphere?)? Discuss.
- If all men adopted the beliefs of the manosphere, what would the world look like?
References:
- Are men ok? - exploring the manosphere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwkLGC7N5aI
- What is the manosphere and why should we care?
https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-the-manosphere-and-why-should-we-care - The draw of the ‘manosphere’: understanding Andrew Tate’s appeal to lost men
https://theconversation.com/the-draw-of-the-manosphere-understanding-andrew-tates-appeal-to-lost-men-199179 - The Manosphere Isn’t What You Think https://youtu.be/ofbr227I7MQ?si=ZkKvjrh_m3Odxrcl
35 attendees
Past events
350
