I Didn't Throw My Mug at the Manosphere

By Jen D

My friends had warned me. They told me I’d be seething. They promised I’d be enraged. Based on their reviews, I actually sat down to watch it with a strategy: I physically cleared the coffee table.

No hard, throwable objects. No evidence.

I was genuinely ready to launch a ceramic mug at the TV by the twenty-minute mark.

But then, something happened that scared me more than the documentary:

I didn’t throw anything.

I didn’t yell.

I didn’t even tell the TV to fuck off. Not once.

And I’m not going to lie — the content is savage.

I’m talking about grown men ranking women’s bodies on camera like they’re scoring produce. Step-by-step tutorials on how to “train” your girlfriend into submission. Entire philosophies built around the idea that women are fundamentally manipulative creatures who exist to be acquired, managed, kept in line — and loudly complained about when they don’t cooperate.

Women aren’t people in this world. They’re problems to be solved, prizes to be won, or proof of someone else’s failure.

Strip away the ring lights and the posturing and what you’re left with is essentially grown men behaving like children — wrestling with deep-seated wounds they’ve dressed up as ideology.

And when I thought about it more, I came to realise...

I am completely desensitised to this bullshit.

Not resilient. Not above it. Just... used to it.

I sat there, watching another “Alpha” influencer adjusting his ring light, calmly explaining why my existence was a logistical error. But my outrage tank, which I expected to overflow, was sitting at zero,

I wasn’t angry. I was just... done.

I’m a woman in my mid-40s. I’ve recently navigated a divorce that felt like a masterclass in gaslighting.

I thought that getting out of a relationship where my reality was constantly being rewritten - where I was the problem to be solved, the variable to be controlled - would fix it.

But it didn’t stop. It just changed addresses.

I’ve lived in Southeast Asia for sixteen years. I know what it looks like when a culture decides you need to be managed. The same energy that lived inside my marriage lives in the algorithm. In the comments section. In the guy at the open mic who calls his bit “just a joke” while making eye contact with you.

You can leave a marriage. You can’t leave a culture.

It's all over my feed:

They’re signals that I am less safe.

I’ve had to develop a psychological coat of armour to survive.

And I’m not the only one.

Watching Inside the Manosphere didn’t feel like an investigation into a new, dangerous subculture — it felt like a replay of the last five years of my life.

There was a version of me who would have grabbed the microphone and said something. Who would have called the “banter” for what it was, out loud, in front of everyone, without first calculating the social cost.

I don’t know exactly when I stopped being her. It happened gradually, the way all the slow, bad things do. One swallowed comeback. One “let it go.” One decision to be the chill girl in the room because the alternative felt like too much work, too much risk, too much of everything I didn’t have left.

These men with bad facial hair building empires off the insecurities of young men aren’t revolutionary thinkers. Their weaponised brand of misogyny isn’t any different from what I’ve seen as a woman in stand-up comedy — the power plays, bullying, harassment, and “banter” meant to keep us in our place.

My lack of shock is a sign of how I’ve become so good at ignoring it all, that it’s become background noise.

And that’s why I’m so uneasy.

If we stop being shocked, we stop sounding the alarm.

And I’m done with the armour, it’s heavy and I can never find the right shoes to match. I want my capacity for outrage back.

I want to be the kind of person who wants to throw the mug again.

I know what it feels like to be around people who haven’t gone numb, because I coach some of them.

They come to me freshly furious. A woman who just got talked over in a meeting for the third time in a week and has only just noticed it’s a pattern. Someone who realised mid-session that she’d been apologising for being herself for years without knowing why.

And I watch them feel it — that clean, uncomplicated outrage — and I think: I remember that. I remember when it still had edges.

Being around their anger is like standing next to someone at a window they’ve just cracked open. You forgot there was air outside until someone else let it in.

Have I wanted to walk away? Yes. Often.

There have been open mics where I’ve sat in the back, watched the lineup, and done the math: how many women, how many minutes, how many “jokes” tonight that I’ll have to pretend I didn’t hear.

And I’ve thought: I could just go home. Order noodles. Watch something comforting. None of this has to be my problem.

But then something happens. A woman laughs — not the polite kind, the dangerous kind, the laugh that says I have been waiting for someone to say that out loud — and I remember exactly why I’m here.

I stay because leaving is what they’re counting on. Not any single “they” — just the ambient, low-frequency assumption that women who take up space and make noise will eventually get tired enough to stop.

Not yet.

Here’s what I’ve learned from coaching: the emotion is almost always data. The overwhelm is telling you something about load. The shutdown is telling you something about safety. The feelings aren’t random noise — they’re a feedback system, and the mistake is treating them like a malfunction.

Same with anger.

When I feel it properly — not the numb, tired version — it’s because something real just happened. Something actually worth noting. My anger has better pattern recognition than my rational brain does. It was right about my marriage long before I was ready to admit it. It was right about the comedy room. It’s right about this.

Share Jokes Before Blokes

If you’re reading this and recognising the feelings—the empty outrage tank, the calculating-before-speaking, the tiredness that lives in your chest like a tenant you can’t evict—I want you to know something.

In coaching, we call this “Adaptive Shut-down.” When the emotional “hit” is too frequent or too heavy, our brains develop a callus.

We stop flinching, not because we’ve stopped caring, but because our system has prioritised survival over sensation. That numbness you’re feeling isn’t a malfunction; it’s your brain’s way of keeping you safe when the world is turned up too loud. It’s a signal pointing toward your need for rest, not a sign that you’ve lost your soul.

But it’s not the whole story.

Stay angry. Not because anger is comfortable, or because it fixes anything on its own. But because your anger is accurate. And there is nothing happening right now that needs us to be quieter.

Break things. Even small ones. Even just the rule that says you have to keep the outrage to yourself.

The mug is right there.

Jen D wears many hats - daughter, mother, educator, presenter, ex-wife, door bitch, and most recently, Neurodiversity Coach. She kind of ‘fell’ into stand-up after a dare from a friend during COVID, and honestly, no one’s surprised.

A member of the ‘neuro-spicy’ club herself, she identifies as late — (pronouns: almost/there). Jen is unapologetically Australian, perimenopausal, and officially out of fucks to give.

She writes about all of it.