Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

We've released our new white paper, “The Foundations of Male Supremacism: Dehumanization, Entitlement, and Conspiracism.” This paper, a transnational, multidisciplinary collaboration among eight authors affiliated with IRMS, identifies the core elements of male supremacism as groundwork for research. We discuss biological essentialism, anti-consent ideology, and justification of violence as three core elements of male supremacism that derive from the supremacist belief system of dehumanization and entitlement. The paper finishes with a discussion of conspiracism as a tool for mobilization against advances for equality and justice.

IRMS Releases White Paper on Dehumanization, Entitlement, Anti-Consent Ideology — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism In my first full-time job, I worked on a campaign pushing Facebook to enforce their own policies against violence and hateful content by removing pro-r**e pages from its website. One such page was titled, “Riding your Girlfriend softly, Cause you dont want to wake her up.” CNN recently reported ...

“I notice overall a lack of references to ‘hate speech’ or a ‘hate crime’ in searching media coverage on the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, which I think goes to a problem we identify in our forthcoming white paper, the ‘invisibility of the universal,’” says IRMS executive director Alex DiBranco, “in which gender-based violence and harassment is so ubiquitous it becomes unseen as an ideological and dehumanizing force. How many times have I been called a ‘f**king bitch’ because I kept walking past a man harassing me on the street from the time I was a teenager? Yet this is rarely acknowledged as hate speech, a slur, or dangerous speech; it’s normalized discourse.”

Renee Good: ICE, Misogyny, and State Violence — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism On January 7th, 2026, an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Good’s murder, and the subsequent violence and dangerous speech from ICE agents and other supremacist actors, represents an intersection of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism as these forces are deploy...

Good’s murder, and the subsequent violence and dangerous speech from ICE agents and other supremacist actors, represents an intersection of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism as these forces are deployed to create and uphold an authoritarian state.

In our soon-to-be-released white paper, "Restructuring Thought Around Male Supremacism and Violence Prevention," IRMS identifies the “justification of violence” as core to male supremacism: "Male supremacism is linked to the justification of all kinds of violence, from domestic violence and r**e, to hate crimes against women and LGBTQ+ communities, to mass violence - whether explicitly motivated by misogyny or associated with another ideology."

Renee Good: ICE, Misogyny, and State Violence — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism On January 7th, 2026, an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Good’s murder, and the subsequent violence and dangerous speech from ICE agents and other supremacist actors, represents an intersection of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism as these forces are deploy...

On this day in 2019, IRMS made its initial public debut with a Patreon fundraiser to raise $150/month to support the launch of our website to "provide content on male supremacist ideology and mobilization and highlight fellows who are available to inform media and activists." We're excited to announce that this fall we'll be launching our first impact report, illustrating how much we've accomplished since those first days! Stay tuned over the upcoming months for more posts highlighting our fellows, research, upcoming events, ideas, and more.

Institute for Research on Male Supremacism | Patreon creating research on male supremacist ideology and misogynist vi

Our interdisciplinary virtual conference is held April 24-26, 2025, with panels and discussions from researchers, policy-makers, and activists working at the intersections of supremacist studies, with attendee Q&As for every panel. PLUS: preconference roundtables on April 23.

General registration remains open until the start of the conference on 24th April.

Attendees will have access to panels from a global community of presenters, with presentations running in all time zones across the conference. Live panels will include an opportunity for attendees to ask questions of the panelists.

Call for Proposals: 2025 Male Supremacism Studies Conference — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism General Registration OPEN for 2025 Male Supremacism Studies ConferenceMale Supremacism Studies Conference 2025 (MSSC)Registration to attend The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism’s 2025 Male Supremacism Studies Conference is now open!Register here.Our interdisciplinary virtual conference i...

Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, said some anti-fascist and gender-focused nonprofits are concerned again about the Trump administration seeking to discredit or even prosecute them by classifying them as far-left domestic terrorist groups.

“When you think about Trump and the way he talks about anti-fascist organizations, it’s very easy to think about him delineating lots of organizations as terrorist-supporting,” DiBranco said.

Trump could hobble renewed fight against domestic terrorism, analysts warn Based on his first term, researchers expect the next Trump administration to shift the government’s focus from white supremacists and other far-right militants.

Strategies Mary’s Pence Grantees are Using to Create Social Change - Mary's Pence funding grassroots organizations dedicated to changing unjust systems.

“Those in the manosphere selectively draw upon cherry-picked studies and sources to ‘prove’ that women always engage in this process of ‘mating up,’ asserting that rigid biological gender differences in sexual desire cause such hypergamous tendencies,” Catherine Baker, a postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University and a fellow at the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, told Hatewatch in an email.

White nationalist and male supremacist author identified Hatewatch has identified a previously pseudonymous author and ideologue whose writings in the 2000s and early 2010s heavily influenced the “manosphere,” a loose network of blogs, forums, websites and influencers who support rolling back women’s rights, reject feminism and advocate for rigid ge...

In 2019, while a Yale Sociology Ph.D. candidate, Alex DiBranco founded the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS), comprised of “a team of predominantly women scholars [who] believe that women must be respected leaders in responding to an ideology threatening our own lives.” As the executive director, DiBranco supports a transnational community of 60 fellows and mentees working to challenge misogynist ideology and violence through research and analysis.

Yale Alum Founds Institute to Study Male Supremacism | Institution for Social and Policy Studies But as a graduate policy fellow with Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), she gained insights into leadership and how she might apply her sociology training toward influencing policy and democracy.

Join Us — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism Open Roles New Board Members The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS) is seeking applicants to join our board of directors to lead and support our organization. We are a small, primarily volunteer organization that is able to have a significant impact through our network of dozens of fe...

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the male supremacist terror attack that took the lives of 6 innocent people and inspired misogynist incel violence over the last decade. Since then, the threat of male supremacy has only grown, but so has our understanding of it. The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism was founded in 2019 to analyze this ideology and provide resources for scholars, activists, and the media. If you are interested in supporting intersectional, independent research on this topic, please consider donating to the IRMS.

Donate — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism Make a donation.Thank you for considering a contribution to IRMS! We encourage you to donate online via credit card using the Paypal button below, or email [email protected] to donate via check or other method. Donations to the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism are tax-deductible under ou...

For journalists: check out our media guidelines for reporting on misogynist incels and on male supremacist mass violence.

For Journalists — Institute for Research on Male Supremacism Recommendations for Media Reporting on Incels Media coverage tends to engage in a form of “deviance amplification” wherein they paint the incel movement as something apart and sinister from larger society. Media outlets like the BBC, CNN, and many major publications like The New York Times have ...