HomeNewsValerie signs joint letter on ‘Manosphere’

Valerie signs joint letter on ‘Manosphere’

  • 22/03/2026
  • Posted by: Valerie Vaz MP
  • Category: News

Together with 61 other MPs I signed Peter Lamb MP’s letter to Ofcom Chief Executive, Dame Melanie Dawes, calling on her to protect men and boys from “manosphere” influencers online, by setting out guidance for platforms to monitor and guard against the specific online harms they face.

The full content of the letter is below:

“As Members of Parliament, we are gravely concerned about the growing risks individuals, particularly children, face when using a range of online platforms.

In November, we were pleased to see Ofcom fulfil its statutory duty to address to produce guidance addressing how platforms can take action against the specific and disproportionate harms affecting women and girls online. However, we are disappointed to hear that Ofcom has so far refused requests from several organisations to undertake similar guidance on the harms facing boys and men online.

While we understand that Ofcom is not compelled to produce this guidance under the Online Safety Act, we do not believe that the Act precludes Ofcom from undertaking this work.

We therefore urge Ofcom to recognise that there are specific harms that disproportionately affect boys and men online and take action to reduce the incidence of these by recognising the gendered dimension of these challenges. Given there are several types of online content where research shows men and boys are significantly more likely to be at risk, or to face different kinds of risk to women and girls, providing parallel guidance on specific ways platforms can act to reduce the harms facing men and boys would improve overall online safety.

Men and boys appear to be more at risk, in particular, for financial harms. According to the Gambling Commission, 53% of 11–17-year-old boys see gambling adverts online each week, compared with 31% of their female peers. 70% of cryptocurrency owners are male, and organisations working with teenage boys increasingly report this to be an issue among under-18s, with FCA research showing 8% of 13-16-year-olds owning cryptocurrency. Sextortion victims are much more likely to be male (91% according to the Internet Watch Foundation) and men are slightly more likely to encounter scams and fraud overall.

In terms of the harms that are more evenly faced by men and women, we believe a gendered lens would still be useful in understanding the different ways in which harms such as mis- and disinformation, pornography and misogynistic content reach men and women online. This would allow platforms and policymakers to gain a fuller picture of the overall harms facing boys and men online and a clearer understanding of how these can be acted upon in a targeted and effective way.

We are confident that addressing the harms faced by men and boys online will have a significant impact on women’s safety too. The consumption of misogynistic and violent pornographic content online has serious implications for violence against women and, particularly where men are the higher earner within heterosexual partnerships, financial harms carry significant risk for their female family members.

We would therefore like to ask to Ofcom if they will reconsider their decision not to produce guidance on online harms affecting boys and men.“