Not All Dead White Men by Donna Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg is quick to acknowledge that the manosphere’s readings of these works tend to be naïve and based on serious misunderstandings, although she argues that this phenomenon must be taken seriously. Zuckerberg’s choice of subject is truly original, and that alone makes ‘Not All Dead White Men’ worth reading.Ĭlassical scholars have observed as the manosphere (and the Alt-Right more broadly) has latched itself to works by authors such as Marcus Aurelius and Ovid, interpreting them through their anti-women lenses and defending the idea that “white men are the guardians of intellectual authority”. While many readers will already be familiar with the beliefs and behaviour of these communities, I suspect that few will be aware of the curious intersection between online misogyny and classics worship. While their characters, concerns and unpalatability vary, these groups can all be gathered under the umbrella of the “manosphere” or the “Red Pill” community, which is in itself a part of the loose coalition of the extremist and reactionary “Alt-Right”. It is these almost exclusively web-based communities that Zuckerberg examines: the anti-feminist “Men’s Rights Activists”, the “Pick-Up Artists” obsessed with using women as sex objects, and the “Men Going Their Own Way” (MGTOW) who often advocate for the stripping away of women’s rights.

Zuckerberg refuses to be drawn into direct assaults on her brother Mark’s legacy, but acknowledges that social media has allowed misogynist communities to grow larger and more toxic: social media has “elevated misogyny to entirely new levels of violence and virulence”, she says. It’s hard to deny that Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age (Harvard University Press, £20, ISBN 9780674975552) is made just that bit more interesting given that it comes from the pen of the sole Zuckerberg sibling not to have worked in tech.

Not All Dead White Men by Donna Zuckerberg