When Harshita started dating a guy she had met online, things seemed rosy in the beginning.   

Then, the red flags started to show. 

"Whenever we talked, he'd bring up Andrew Tate," she said, referring to the 38-year-old self-styled misogynist and British-American social media influencer. "At first, I brushed it off, but it became clear he was deeply misogynistic because of Andrew Tate."

Tate is a prominent voice in the "manosphere," the online communities promoting male dominance over women.

Impressionable young men such as Harshita's partner are drawn to Tate's idea of hypermasculinity — despite the serious criminal charges against him, which include human trafficking and rape.

Tate's repeated demeaning and violent statements about women and his mocking of the seriousness of sexual assault are usually brushed aside by his followers, or worse adulated.

For Harshita, the short-lived relationship was marred by emotional manipulation and deeply ingrained misogyny.

He policed her social media, accusing her of seeking male validation.

She also shared that he judged her for her sexual past — not just her, but all women.

"He would say things like, 'Girls like that [with a sexual past] are only for dating, not for marriage,'" she said.

To her, the hypocrisy was obvious: despite having a high number of past sexual partners himself, he still looked down on her for hers.

One of the final straws came during a conversation when she asked him if he would date a woman with as many sexual partners as he had.

"And he said — 'No. It's fine for guys, but not for girls.'"

What is the incel culture?

In a country where violence against women is on the rise, the growing number of young men embracing the manosphere and the incel subculture is another alarming reality for Indian women.

The manosphere comprises of online communities which vary from those focused on self-help to downright misogyny. The manosphere includes MRAs (men's rights activists), pickup artists, and "redpill" influencers, who are accused of promoting toxic masculinity and misogyny. 

Within the manosphere, the "incels" or "involuntary celibates" are a subset of men who feel they are deprived of romantic and sexual relationships because of feminism. They believe that female independence and empowerment allows potential partners to reject them and thereby depriving them of sexual relations.

Often, online incel communities devolve into breeding grounds for anti-feminist rhetoric, the dehumanization of women, self-loathing, and even violence.

Dr. Chinchu C., a psychologist and assistant professor at Pondicherry University in southern India, warned that the incel ideology and other manosphere ideas are becoming more mainstream in India.

"The manosphere propaganda gives men simple-sounding answers — for example, blaming feminism for why they struggle to find relationships, claiming that girls have been brainwashed," he said.

Why some young men admire Andrew Tate

Akashdip Singh, who has found meaning in what Andrew Tate has to say, has a very bleak view of the dating scene for men in India.

"Women are just seeking validation, and men are only after sex. It's a losing battle for men, they end up simping for sex, while women use them and discard them without giving anything in return," he said. Simping refers to somone who fawns over another person, particuarly someone they are romantically interested in. 

Singh blames this situation on what he sees as a distorted version of feminism, which he said has "turned into man-hating and the validation of psychotic or promiscuous behavior."

In his view, "Tate, who plays the character of an alpha who tells women their place, calling out pseudo feminists, who are borderline psychotic, isn't wrong."

"If you ignore his vices, a lot of what he says makes sense when he drops the act," Singh said. "His dating advice is gold."

According to Singh, men retreating into misogynist online spaces is a direct reaction to their struggles in modern dating, especially on dating apps, where women have far more options due to the abundance of men vying for their attention.

A recent study showed the ratio of men to women on Tinder is 78% to 22%.

Singh said this "proves what men have been saying — modern women are self-absorbed and drunk on attention."

"They swipe for the top 10% of men and ignore the rest like trash, then cry about being single at 30," he said. "Women created this mess, now these purple-haired Karens can die alone with their cats — without a man."

Manosphere goes Indian

According to Chinchu, international manosphere figures such as Tate have sizable followings among Indian youth. But now, Indian influencers are also adopting similar rhetoric.

"One example would be that of the person called Dev Tyagi who calls himself a dating coach," he said. "Other influencers with large following, such as Elvish Yadav and Ranveer Allahabadia, have also been seen using manosphere ideas and terminologies often in their content."

Before both his Instagram and YouTube accounts were taken down, Tyagi had more than 80,000 subscribers whom he pontificated about things like what kind of men women prefer having sex with and preached that women don't opt for guys who respect them because they are attracted to "real men."

His video where he declared no girlfriend of his can have male friends, had over 500,000 likes on Instagram, according to a report in the Mint newspaper.

"Indian manosphere has not yet caused physical violence being perpetrated, at least to our knowledge, but the threat is real," Chinchu said.

Young men in need of help

Dr. Samir M. Soni, author of Currycel: A Novel, has extensively researched online incel culture.

He explains that "currycel" — a localized, often pejorative term for Indian incels — is used both by online racists and by Indian men to shame themselves.

Many who adopt the label struggle with mental health challenges and see themselves as "failed men," especially when they feel emotions beyond anger. A lack of sexual experience can also reinforce this identity interpreting this as a personal failure, Soni said.

Soni added that some valid concerns lie behind the frustrations expressed by those who follow incel ideology and by men critical of dating, women, and feminism.

However, many misdirect their anger at women and feminism instead of recognizing the real issue: "socially-enforced conceptions of ideal masculinity."

A 2013 study by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that around 40% of over 9,000 men in seven northern Indian states held "rigid and discriminatory" gender views, strongly supporting actions to control women. The highest percentage was seen among 18-24-year-old men.

This is especially concerning given that a 2018 government demographic report showed nearly a quarter of India's population were men under 25.

"While they do victimize women in the name of patriarchy, they are also unwitting victims of patriarchy," Soni said.

Emotional toll on women

Like Harshita, myriad Indian women are now grappling to come to terms with the misogyny fueled by the ideologies the young Indian men are being exposed to.

Child and adolescent psychotherapist Ambika Singh said the dehumanizing rhetoric and harassment directed at women in both digital and physical spaces, while not unique to the manosphere and incel culture, affects the nervous system like any form of violence. It triggers anxiety, the fight-or-flight response, a disrupted self-image, and strained relationships, she said.

This also comes at a time when India has seen cases of violence against women only increase each successive year. From 2017 to 2022, reported crimes against women in India rose 23.7%, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau data.

In the end, for some women, like Jasleen* who once dated an "alpha" man, dissociation is the only answer.

"After this relationship, I stayed single for several years as a conscious attempt to decenter romantic relationships in my life," she said. "This life is sometimes lonely, but always peaceful."

*Name changed on request

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru