Red pill content, a genre on social media promoting hypermasculinity, is often the target of lots of online hate due to the controversial ideologies that creators have about gender, relationships, and the patriarchy. This community, which originally started on Reddit, has taken over the internet with its’ bold ideologies and values. With that being said, it may be hard to believe — despite all the harmful things said towards women in the “manosphere” — that a subreddit titled “Red Pill Women” would be created.
If users just take one, deeper look at their social media feeds, however, it’s not so unbelievable. These ideals are promoted right in front of our faces, but they’re just tied up in a pink bow for us to swallow easier.
Before getting into the ways in which Red Pill Women (RPW) has grown beyond its subreddit, it’s important to understand how the community even came about.
The Origins of Red Pill
What is called the “manosphere” includes various social media communities for men’s rights and activism. This is where popular internet lingo like “incel” and “red pill” are used. The Red Pill is the neoconservative ideology that is shared in the manosphere, which advocates for male supremacy by selectively employing evolutionary psychology. The Red Pill forum on Reddit has an estimated over 70 million daily active users which are distributed among subreddits.
The term comes from “The Matrix” film, in which the blue and red pills are used to symbolize being asleep and blinded to reality, or awake and exposed to what reality truly is. For users in the manosphere, the Red Pill is the reality where “women run the world without taking responsibility.”
Not only do these spaces trash on women, but they also ask for relationship advice with women and are filled with curiosity on the topic. The forum was started by a user that goes by Morpheus Manfred, who eventually found a long-term girlfriend, which he says the subreddit helped him with.
Seeing how much discourse exists in this community surrounding women and all the reasons to hate them, there has to be some reason why Red Pill Women align themselves with these ideas.
Red Pill women subreddit.
In similar format to the men’s Red Pill community, the Red Pill Women subreddit allows users to pose questions or share their thoughts and interact with them. Despite the male-centered ideology that is “Red Pill,” the subreddit doesn’t allow men to comment unless they are considered “experts” in the space. This means they must be “older, married and long time participants in the RP community.”
Despite the primary idea in Red Pill that women should be subordinate to men, Red Pill women carefully select the ideologies they choose to participate in. This is thought to be because it allows them to keep at least some of their agency and say in the matter, despite being in a community that wants the opposite for them.
Of course, this isn’t always realistic, because even though the discourse in the subreddit deals with similar beliefs and topics, the men’s communities still disregard their validity.
Some of the conversations posed by users in the RPW subreddit include men being biologically inherent risk-takers, men’s sexuality as something to submit to, traditional gender roles, and the obstacles that come with achieving the Red Pill ideal.
The talks of a high-value man are brought up often, which refers to men with status, resourcefulness, and the ability to provide for submissive women. All of this to say, it is still hard to understand why a woman may align herself with views that feel almost dehumanizing. What is clear is that women aren’t dopes that follow along with harmful ideologies; there has to be a reason.
Why Red Pill Women Participate.
It has long been argued that femininity cannot be hegemonic or rule over masculinity because of the patriarchal societal standards. Femininity is associated with passivity and subordination, and often times overtly feminine people are ridiculed on the internet.
So, if femininity is looked down upon, but Red Pill spaces push that women must be traditionally feminine, why do women get involved?
It’s been proposed that within the categories and boxes men have put women in, femininity is the most ideal out of all of them. That being said, according to Red Pill ideology, women who are in tune with their femininity receive a “femininity premium” which puts them at an advantage and higher desirability compared to other women. In internet terms, it’s a similar concept to “pretty privilege.”
Even though this only further instills harmful stereotypes and beliefs against women into our society, the instant gratification from conforming to those stereotypes is what makes communities like Red Pill appealing, even to some women. It can be seen as a “strategic bargain,” as most RPW simply strive for social status, financial security, and high-value men.
Red Pill shift towards social media.
A 2024 study saw a decrease in the percentage of women who disagreed with gendered roles, a number that can be partially attributed to the rise of these ideologies on social media, with remnants of RPW seen in the emergence of tradwife content on TikTok.
Referring to “traditional wife,” tradwife content is made by women presenting the traditional domestic responsibilities placed upon women in a more aesthetic way. Though being a tradwife doesn’t automatically signal an alignment with Red Pill ideology, far-right women who do follow this lifestyle reinforce it.
Estee Williams, a tradwife influencer with more than 134,000 followers on TikTok, is one example that often talks about submitting to her husband and letting him have the final say always.
Pushing these ideas of subordinance to men using a soft, feminine aesthetic is only a distraction. It hides the true, and dangerous, idea that the submission of women is simply the natural order of the world, and “justifies violence” when it’s disrupted.
Though many trends like this one pass in a matter of weeks and the world moves on to the next micro-trend, it’s important to shed light on this type of popular content. No matter how small of a scale these forums and trends may feel, they can have an immense impact on the youth in such a digital-centered age.