Sex Education

Heterosexual Masculinities in and out of Manosphere Communities: Implications for Sexuality Education

Heterosexual masculinities that support popular misogny and gender inequity are enjoying increased visibility globally. This is evidenced in regressive policies around gender and sexuality implemented by countries as diverse as the USA, Iran and Uganda and the growing momentum of extremist right movements and racist ideology internationally (Roose et al, 2022). The recent rapid expansion of the manosphere, a diverse confederacy of masculinist online communities which espouse mysogynist and anti-feminist discourses is another example (Ging, 2019). That  these heterosexual masculinities require our attention, is evidenced by the emergence and popularity of television series such as Adolescence in which a 14 year-old boy is arrested for the murder of a female classmate after being called an ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) on social media by his peers (Thorne & Graham, 2025).      

Existing scholarship into heterosexual masculinities offers a particular understanding of this mobilisation of gender inequity and how it might be disrupted. It suggests the answer lies in changing undesirable characteristics in men so they become less sexist and trans/bi/homophobic, a strategy that has so far failed to fundamentally disrupt inequitable gender and sexuality orders (Allen2025; Waling, 2019). In existing sexuality research, the portrayal of heterosexual masculinity,  tends to be ‘flat’ and conceptualised narrowly as actively predatory, oppressive and menacing (Beasley, 2015). It is also typically focused upon within limited contexts such as sexual assault, sexual coercion, rape and pornography (Allan, Haywood and Karioris, 2018). While acknowledging and exploring negative and harmful expressions and representations of heterosexual masculinities are imperative, this fails to capture more complex and nuanced sexual embodiments that constitute men’s daily lived experience (Bragg and Renold, 2025). This is important because it is in spaces of instability and ambiguity that the greatest potential for change may lie.

This special issue of Sex Education journal invites papers that offer nuanced understandings of heterosexual masculinities and which illuminate their practice as simultaneously powerful and perpetually vulnerable, idolised while vilified, and everywhere, yet invisible. The aim is to generate insight into the complexities of heterosexual masculinities that render this experience more capacious than currently conceptualised in the academic and professional literatures and suggest ways to disrupt unequal relations of power between women, and other men. How these insights might inform the work of sexuality and relationships education in schools and/or educational contexts, must be considered.  

Possible topics for inclusion are:

•       Exploration of practices of heterosexual masculinities within sexual relationships (particularly those that are not sexually predatory and aggressive)
•        Empirical studies of men’s erotic experiences in relationships which reveal how pleasure and consent can be navigated in mutually pleasureable ways
•        How queer, non-binary and gender diverse practices and embodiments of sexuality might inform thinking about heterosexual masculinities
•        Theoretical and methodological explorations of how power in heterosexual relationships might be understood and disrupted
•        Heterosexual young men’s experiences of sexuality and relationships education
•        Explorations of heterosexual men’s sexual embodiment, body image and bodily sensation
•        How spaces such as the manosphere, and alternate digital platforms shape heterosexual masculinities   
•        How manosphere communities, and alternate digital platforms mediate heterosexual masculinities

References

Allan, J., C.  Haywood, and F.  Karioris. 2018. “Introduction to the Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities.” Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities 1(1): 1-12.

Allen, L. 2025. “Hegemonic Masculinity and Addressing Gender Inequality.” The Journal of Men’s Studies 33(3): 575-591.

Beasley, C. 2015. “Libidinal heterodoxy.” Men and Masculinities 18 (2): 140-158.

Bragg, S. and EJ. Renold, 2025. More than toxic masculinities: folding with contemporary masculinity assemblages through creative methodologies and pedagogies, Gender and Education.

Ging, D. 2019. Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere. Men and Masculinities 22(4): 638-657.

Roose, J., M. Flood, A. Greig, M Alfano and S. Copland. 2022. Masculinity and Violent Extremism. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Thorne, J and S. Graham (Writers), J. Johnson (Producer). (13 March 2025) Adolescence [TV Series]. Netflix.

Waling, A. 2019. “Rethinking Masculinity Studies: Feminism, Masculinity, and Post-structural Accounts of Agency and Emotional Reflexivity.” Journal of Men's Studies 27(1): 89-107.