This book is not about trolls: it’s about frames. About how a narrative is built that turns the loss of privilege into grievance, shared responsibility into persecution, and feminism into the culprit of everything.
Its author dissects the discourse of reactive masculinity: what it says, how it says it, and who profits from spreading it. The discomfort of some men is real. What they are told it means, not always.
You won’t find a manual to calm anyone down. You will find precise words for what you sensed but didn’t know how to name.
For years they have been telling us that angry men are an internet problem, teenagers with too much free time, the far right. They say it so much that it almost sounds like the truth. María Martín Barranco takes that anger to the operating room. Not to revive it, but to see what it’s made of.
And what she finds is not an anomaly: it’s a pattern.
One you will recognize in the brother-in-law’s comment that “he’s just saying what he thinks,” in TV talk shows, in some politicians’ rallies. Because the manosphere is not a dark corner inhabited by a few radicals: it’s something we have been normalizing for centuries.
María Martín Barranco is a feminist, holds a law degree, and is a specialist in social intervention with a gender perspective. She founded the Virtual School of Feminist Empowerment (EVEFem) in 2013, where she is director and trainer. She has also published Ni por favor ni por favora, La desfachatez machista, Punto en boca, and Mujer tenías que ser with Los Libros de la Catarata.
