Women must be chaste housewives and successful men are entitled to multiple girlfriends.
That is the message in many podcasts and YouTube channels within the so-called “Redpill movement”, which reaches an audience of millions right now.
– On the internet and among many men out there, this movement is quite big, says Swedish influencer Melina Göransson, who takes the debate with some of the movement’s leading figures.
The “Redpill movement” is a digital subculture that propagates female submission and male supremacy. The movement, which idolizes, among others, rapist-accused Internet phenomenon Andrew Tate, preaches, among other things, that women should not work, that women’s sexuality should be suppressed and that abortion should be punishable.
The name “Red pill” is taken from the cult science fiction film The Matrix, where the main character Neo is offered a choice between two pills. If he chooses the blue pill, he gets to return to his normal and comfortable but false existence, while the red pill reveals the truth about the dark and false nature of the world.
And it’s a metaphor that strikes a chord with followers of the “Redpill movement”. Namely, they believe that we live in a post-patriarchal world where it is in fact the men and not the women who are oppressed – a fact that, according to the movement’s followers, is obscured by the media and dictated by the woke culture.
The influencer who takes the debate
The Swedish influencer Melina Göransson is one of those who got involved in this topic. She lives in the United States, where she is regularly invited to debates and participates in various podcast forums with some of the movement’s leading figures.
– I think it’s fun. And so I feel like it’s pretty important to actually talk to these people, because no one else is doing it. And I think one of the reasons why Andrew Tate is as big as he is, is because a lot of the problems that men have have been overlooked. So I think it’s important to talk to them, and that they feel seen, that you take up the debate, says Melina Göransson.
No longer a “man’s movement”
“Taking the red pill” has become an established term on the internet and among the movement’s sympathizers. The industrial magnate Elon Musk is one of those who encouraged his followers to do just this on the media platform X. And the great impact of the “Redpill movement” points to a dangerous trend, according to columnist Irena Pozar, among others, who described it as “contemporary’s most dangerous men’s movement”.
However, it should also be noted that the movement does not exclude female members, but on the contrary also has the majority of female sympathizers. In recent months, a lot of focus has been on the women who have begun to distinguish themselves within the movement, something that is highlighted in SvD’s podcast “Dagens story”.