All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
The current season of Married at First Sight is shaping up to be one of the most controversial yet, with the inclusion of Tyson Gordon demonstrating how the manosphere has breached containment.
The “manosphere” emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s – but gained momentum during Gamergate in 2014. It’s made up of online subcultures – including incels, pick-up artists and “men’s rights activists” – characterised by their virulent misogyny.
Where these groups were once relegated to niche corners of the internet, in recent years they have been algorithmically amplified – in large part thanks to controversial “manfluencers” such as Andrew Tate – resulting in a wider spread of their beliefs.
According to a 2024 survey of Australian men aged 16 to 34, 15% disagreed with the statement “women deserve equal rights to men” – up from 6% in 2019.
Normiefication precedes normalisation; it exposes the beliefs to a broader audience, but does not necessarily indicate their acceptance. Nonetheless, the exposure itself contributes to the shift of the “Overton window” (the range of views and opinions seen as acceptable by the majority of a population at a given time) towards a culture in which sexist perspectives are deemed legitimate.
In 2025, the series came under fire for normalising behaviour associated with intimate partner violence. It seems they haven’t learnt their lesson. The pursuit of ratings continues to come at the expense of women.
Source: ‘I want someone submissive’: Married At First Sight gives the manosphere a prime time slot