246 - Neil Shyminsky - Detoxifying the Manosphere With Soft Masculinity and Research-Backed Rebuttals
“One of the things that I loved about Ted Lasso is it wasn't easy for him; there was a cost. It took work, and you can't just give of yourself selflessly, endlessly.” - Neil Shyminsky
Red pill-ers! Trad gender roles! Manly men, rawr! With an introduction like that, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Anne and I had joined the manosphere. No worries there. Instead, Anne has found a male ally who is making modest but meaningful inroads with cishet dudes, specifically the ones prone to tumbling down rabbit holes of toxic masculinity and misogyny. And his tool of choice is peer-reviewed, evidence-based research.
Meet Neil Shyminsky. By day, he’s an English professor at a community college in Canada. But by night. Professor Neil, as he’s known on most socials, is a content creator focusing on social theory and masculinity. Professor Neil specializes in refuting misogynistic arguments and, as Anne says, restoring a modicum of sanity to the interwebz. “I try to engage with young men who have very strong opinions about gender and gender roles and appear to have absolutely no factual basis for anything they're saying. My usual shtick,” Neil explains, “is to dive into the research which, spoiler alert: usually doesn’t align with what they’re claiming.”
Neil’s posts are approachable, understandable, and non-condescending––a wise tactic considering the demographic he hopes to reach has access to an endless scroll of hostile rhetoric authored by men who promise solutions to problems that they created. Being on the counteroffensive is lonely work, says Neil. ”We’re badly outnumbered,” he laments. “There's a need for men to be out there, pushing back and providing role models for the same young and adolescent men watching the Andrew Tates of the world.”
With all that alpha-male messaging seeping into everyday consciousness, it’s comforting (and necessary!) to celebrate examples of soft masculinity when they appear in the mainstream. Ted Lasso and Our Flag Means Death highlighted unapologetically vulnerable male characters in sports and swashbuckling settings, respectively. Both were well-received if ultimately canceled by their networks. Still, Neil remains hopeful that he can engage a few manosphere adherents in meaningful discourse. “I enjoy discussions around topics like vulnerability for that reason––because they're so readily dismissed by the sorts of men I'm responding to, so readily dismissed as feminine and, therefore, bad.”
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Neil Shyminsky (he/him) is an English professor at a community college by day, currently teaching courses on Contemporary Literature and Human Sexuality. By night, he’s a content creator who talks mostly about social theory and masculinity, specializing in refuting the misogynist arguments coming out of the Manosphere.
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