I think it’s relevant, but I admit I failed to acknowledge a critical part of this situation: the ways in which women are harmed by these circumstances. Obviously, there are the direct effects of the kinds of misogyny peddled by men like Tate, but there are also the less direct and mostly unintentional effects of the broader movement that helped create the conditions that made the manosphere possible.

Liberal feminism tried to liberate women, but unintentionally ended up confining them to a different kind of prison, one in which they would remain the person primarily responsible for keeping house and caring for children, but in which they would also be the sole financial provider, as well. Liberal feminism convinced women that it would be liberating for them to take on both traditional, household gender roles, but all it did was saddle women with an even greater burden.

Meanwhile, the movement to make women independent left a lot of men lonely, bitter, and resentful, ideal for manosphere grifters and parasocial cam models to exploit. It really was a scenario that ended up making essentially everyone worse off. It also absolved men of any of their previous responsibilities.

I think people need to abandon the idea that freedom comes from independence. Independence can be liberating, but it can also be isolating, and burdensome. A person who lives totally self sufficiently, alone in a cabin in the woods is independent, but also lonely and saddled with the entire burden of survival. Many hands make the burden light, fewer hands make it heavy.

Where liberalism fails time and time again is in its antisocial tendencies. Liberalism’s focus on the atomized individual so often disregards relationships of interdependence, or even sees them as antithetical or hostile to individual freedom. But this mentality ignores the inherently social nature of our species, as well as the absolute material necessity of social arrangements.