Taking the Red Pill: Conspiracy Theories, Gender, and the ‘elusive epistemologies’ of the Manosphere

In this article we analyse the gender politics of the anti-feminist “red pill” or Matrix conspiracy theory. Extending the work of Jaron Harambam and Stef Aupers on how conspiracy theorists legitimise their truth claims in part through ‘futuristic imaginaries’, we draw attention to the role of popular culture and of intertextuality for generating the ‘commonsense’ of these beliefs. More specifically, based on a discourse analysis of a representative sample of “red pill” community YouTube videos we find that the conspiracy theory draws deliberately on the potent ‘image bank’ of the landmark science fiction film The Matrix (1999) in ways that are more extensive and important for legitimising violence than currently understood. Beyond pill metaphors, The Matrix conspiracy theory serves to entrench hierarchical differentiations between masculinities, reproduce narratives of aggrieved sexual entitlement against ‘feminist oppression’, and advocates for a violent ‘return’ to a more ‘traditional’ gender, race and sexual order.