It was midnight. I was mindlessly scrolling through my FYP before I realized I had somehow found my way into TikTok’s manosphere. First, it was subtle: bro code this, alpha male that. Then, boom. Suddenly, it was filled with clips from podcasts trying to convince me that women are destined to live for attention, and men, in turn, are destined to use them for sex. (This was about when I shut my phone off and called it a night.)
The scary thing is that it can take me an embarrassing amount of scrolling to realize the amount of toxic masculinity I’m consuming on my FYP — and I know I’m not the only one. But amid what feels like an apocalyptic world of “bros before hoes” and “Saturdays are for the boys,” chances are you’ve seen a group of Colby College students on your FYP countering the manosphere through positive masculinity… and I’m here for it.
Tackling complex sex-related topics with humour and ease, Sex Ed For Guys is a student-run TikTok account geared toward teaching young men about more than just sex. (But don’t worry, they still teach them about sex.) What they describe as a comprehensive approach to sex education, the group makes educational content that goes beyond the typical sex curriculum, targeted at anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, and contraception, confronting the manosphere by emphasizing topics like consent, respecting women, women’s pleasure, and more. After two years of creating sex education content, the account has grown considerably, currently sitting at over 100,000 followers and millions of likes.
The account launched in 2023 after the conclusion of a research study sponsored by Colby professor Adam Howard. Inspired by the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings about his time at Georgetown Prep, Howard began to research elite all-boys schools and their sex ed curriculum in particular. To his surprise, Howard found that sex education was lacking in almost all of these institutions.
“None of these schools had hardly any kind of sex ed,” Howard tells Her Campus exclusively. “The closest they came was abstinence only.” (And let’s be real, who can really make informed decisions about their sexual well-being when they’re taught about abstinence only?)
So, Howard recruited some of his Colby College students to volunteer and help reach young men through social media, and off went the TikTok account. Aiming to educate the young men who didn’t learn about sex from a comprehensive approach, or didn’t learn about it at all, the account is also geared toward young men who only know what’s been taught in the manosphere and want to learn more about healthy sex rhetoric. (And really, shouldn’t everyone?)
“We started this TikTok where you talk about issues like masculinity, sexuality, consent, relationships,” says Howard. “You know, overall, personal skills like decision making, communication, negotiation, larger society, culture, and how that’s influencing you.”
What the manosphere lacks is an understanding of balance, not only during sex, but in life. Because the manosphere is filled with extremist influencers and groups, the discourse is extremely unbalanced.
So, to keep viewers engaged, the team comes up with their content not through what gets the most clicks and likes, but through their comment section and what’s sparking debate, conversation, and interest. (Like these topics that surround the idea of balance).
One of the group’s most popular trends is a game they call “What’s up with that? / That’s what’s up!” where students list different topics related to comprehensive sex education. They respond to each by either agreeing with the statement by saying “That’s what’s up!” or disagreeing with the statement by saying “What’s up with that?”
What the group enjoys most is seeing people resonate and connect with their content. “We did one about how wearing two condoms is a bad idea, and it was amazing to see how informative that was to a lot of people and that it was news to them that you’re not supposed to do that,” Howard says.
Although their comment section is flooded with girls, 60% of their followers are young men ages 16 to 24, according to Howard. And a lot of it has to do with the humor they incorporate in their educational videos.
But despite this, most of the account’s comment section is made up of young women, says Ava Shapiro, the only female student creating content for the account. “We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about girls being like, ‘This is the bare minimum but we’re so glad that guys are learning empathy,’ and they’re like ‘We love to see it,’” she says. “I think for girls, seeing that there is that positive masculinity and healthy dating culture rhetoric out there, I think, is really important.”
Much like the manosphere’s tactics, Sex Ed For Guys uses humor to disguise the message behind their content. “It’s that funny material that you get a good laugh out of,” says Chris Maichin, a male student behind the account.
Another one of their viral trends is a series of gym exercises about respecting women. For example, they’ve done reverse bicep curls as they repeat “gotcha flowers.” (Get it? Because it looks like they’re handing their date flowers.) Or for another example, they’ve done dumbbell flyes while repeating “close the pay gap.”
Because the group’s goal is to educate as many young men (and women) as possible on healthy sex discourse, they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon (and I’m OK with that). For now, the group is focused on avoiding as many shadow bans as possible, keeping viewers off the dark side of TikTok (the manosphere, I mean), and reaching as many people as they can.
“As people are scrolling through their feeds, it really gets them to engage with the content, learn something, and come out of it with a different perspective rather than if somebody was lecturing them or directly telling them to think and act a certain way,” says Maichin. “It’s a great tool to be able to educate people without them actually knowing they’re getting educated.”