Social media comments often give a sobering insight into what men are thinking.
And today I’d like to show you what a thematic analysis of social media comments would look like!
As you may know, we’re quite busy behind the scenes drafting academic papers, some in collaboration with Ph.D. students and professors from various universities. We currently have eight at various stages of submission, and I hope to have some good news about more publications soon (but it’s a long process!). (And thank you for those of you who donate to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation, which allows us to continue this work.)
When it comes to data, you’ve all seen the charts in our books, showing things like when people believe the husband has the tie breaking vote, her chance of feeling heard in the marriage decreases.
But there are other types of data, and I want to talk today about thematic analysis.
Instead of having survey results that we can code, sometimes what we have is a whole ton of words–comments people have left, open ended responses in surveys. What do we do with those? How do we analyze those? We currently have a student going through the open ended responses from our original survey of 20,000 women for our book The Great Sex Rescue, mining it for responses about sexual pain disorders.
Well, one woman who has experience in doing thematic analysis sent me a quick thematic analysis she did of the replies she left to a comment on social media. We were talking back and forth last week, and she allowed me to publish it today so you could all see what a very small and quick analysis might look like! I thought you all may be interested.
The context of the comment
She left this comment in reply to a popular social media influencer who had created a video reel that was basically arguing for obligation sex, soon after the baby came. The complaint was that women prioritize the children too much and forget about the husbands. I can’t include links to the reel, the original comment, or the name of the researcher for ethical reasons. But I have seen and verified what is here. So let’s take a look!
The Original Comment
Research shows that when couples more equally share responsibility in domestic and child care tasks, sexual frequency increases, as does sexual and relationship satisfaction for both partners. Cut the “prioritizing the children” crap. Children literally can’t take care of themselves. Research shows women do the overwhelming share of domestic labor and childcare in all paid and unpaid arrangements that couples have. Research shows that men have more leisure on average and when they do participate in parenting, it’s more likely to be in activities and play mode. Meanwhile women are exhausted from breastfeeding (which takes an average of approximately 40 hours a week- some of it several times during night) and trying to figure out how to take a shower or go to the grocery store. When men parent, treat their wives as equal human beings, do a fair share in the domestic sphere and learn to manage their emotions. They are very likely to be treated like desirable partners, because they will be.
A simple, research-based comment about domestic labor and sexual satisfaction unexpectedly triggered a large volume of hostile replies.
When the responses were analyzed together, a clear pattern emerged consistent with what gender scholars describe as masculinity threat and aggrieved entitlement (I call it masculinity panic). In other words, many of the men experienced the comment as a personal attack on their identity and status, leading to a defensive backlash rather than substantive engagement.
Core Patterns in the Replies
Across 38 comments (a few more have come in since that we’ll talk about later) several themes emerged:
1. Personal Attacks (47%)
- Almost half of the replies included insults (“bitter,” “frigid,” “deadbeat,” “stfu”). This is a common gendered silencing tactic used when a woman violates expectations of deference.
2. Hostility Toward Women (47%)
- Many of the comments generalized negatively about women (“women always…,” “women betray,” “women are controlling”). This reflects broader cultural resentment rather than disagreement with the post itself.
3. Male Victim Narratives (45%)
- A high percentage of men reframed the issue as men being mistreated by women — describing themselves as unappreciated, sexually rejected, or emotionally neglected. These narratives mirror documented “aggrieved entitlement” patterns in masculinity research (Kimmel).
4. Anecdotal Rebuttals (21%)
- Instead of engaging with data, many men used personal stories as counter-evidence (“I did everything and still got nothing”). This is a form of epistemic resistance when structural evidence threatens identity (Medina).
5. Dismissal of Research (18%)
- Men often rejected the research altogether (“research is BS,” “self-reported isn’t research,” “the data doesn’t show that”). These responses protect status: if my evidence is valid, their worldview becomes unstable (Connell).
6. Sexual Entitlement (16%)
- A subset framed sex as something owed to men regardless of context, or suggested that disinterest equals infidelity. This reveals deep sexual insecurity and power anxiety.
7. Minimizing Domestic Labor (8%)
- A few comments dismissed caregiving as “a few hours a week,” reinforcing the invisibility of women’s labor.
The Emotional Landscape in the Replies
Sentiment analysis showed:
- High anger and contempt
- Frequent projection of past grievances
- Strong defensiveness and denial
- Underlying resentment about sex, divorce, and unmet expectations
Why This Is a “Masculinity Panic” Episode
My comment touched three pressure points:
- Identity
- Status
- Sexual Entitlement
Gender scholars describe:
- Connell: men defending threatened hegemonic status
- Kimmel: aggrieved entitlement
- Schwalbe: manhood acts (insults, dominance moves)
- Pascoe & Bridges: elastic masculinity snapping back to dominance when challenged
- Glick & Fiske: benevolent sexism collapsing into hostile sexism
The Bottom Line about the Comments
The research based, evidence-based comment was a threat to identity. The replies reveal:
- resentment about sex and intimacy
- fear of losing traditional male authority
- deep mistrust of women
- strong resistance to female expertise
This analysis shows how a single evidence-based comment can activate a predictable masculinity panic: a cascade of anecdotes, anger, misogyny, and epistemic rejection aimed at restoring threatened status.
After she created this report, the researcher went back and analyzed some of the new comments that had come in! Let’s look at the secondary analysis below:
Do you want to help us do more analysis of our datasets?
This is just a tiny thematic analysis of one comment thread. But there is so much data still to be mied in our surveys. If you’d like to support our work in analyzing these surveys, both quantiatively (with statistical analysis) and qualitatively (looking at the themes), will you consider donating to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative this Giving Tuesday?
We’re also raising money for a number of other initiatives this year, including getting podcasts translated into Spanish and working on The Great Sex Rescue coming out in Spanish; getting Armenian and Swahili translations of our book; creating stand alone podcast documentary series that will hopefully reach new people; and creating more high quality videos explaining our themes.
The Good Fruit Faith Initiative can offer tax deductible receipts in the United States (if you’re outside of the United States, you can also join our Patreon group and support us that way, and become part of our Patreon Facebook group!).
We’re looking for more monthly supporters as well, even for just $10 a month, along with any other donations people may want to give at the end of the tax year. Please think of us in this time of giving!
Updated Integrated Summary of the Comments
A new wave of comments reinforced and intensified the original pattern: when a woman presents research linking domestic labor sharing to sexual and relational satisfaction, many men respond not with discussion, but with identity-defense and hostility.
“What Changed” Overview
The newest comments intensified the original pattern: instead of engaging with research, many men responded with stronger hostility, increased dismissal of evidence, and heightened claims of victimization. Most notably, sexual entitlement expanded into intimacy entitlement, where men framed emotional connection and orgasmic satisfaction as obligations women owe. Traditional gender role appeals and attacks on your expertise also increased, suggesting a deeper masculinity threat reaction. Overall, the thread shifted from disagreement to a clearer masculinity panic response aimed at restoring threatened male status.
The new comments reveal a crucial contradiction
Men claim:
- “It’s not about sex, I want intimacy.”
But these same men define intimacy as:
- orgasm
- emotional labor from women
- validation
- sexual availability
This supports:
- patriarchal bargain theory
- sexual entitlement literature
- labor inequality research
- evangelical marital duty discourse
Updated Frequencies with the New Comments Added In
- Male Victim Narratives (MV): 55%
- Hostility to Women (HM): 53%
- Personal Attacks (PA): 51%
- Epistemic Dismissal (ED): 33%
- Sexual Entitlement (SE): 31%
- Anecdotal Rebuttals (AR): 27%
- Traditional Gender Roles (TR): 22%
- Domestic Labor Minimization (DL): 12%
- Cheating Insinuation (CI): 6%
- NEW: Intimacy Entitlement (IE): 6%
With the new comments, two patterns significantly increased:
Epistemic Dismissal
More men rejected:
- research
- expertise
- the idea of evidence
- my academic qualifications
Instead, they relied on personal stories as “proof,” a classic example of identity-protective cognition and epistemologies of ignorance (Medina).
Sexual and Intimacy Entitlement
Men increasingly framed:
- sex as a duty women owe
- withholding sex as moral failure
- cheating as justified
- intimacy as something women must provide
Several of the new comments expressed not just sexual entitlement, but intimacy entitlement — the belief that women owe emotional connection and orgasmic outcomes regardless of their own context.
Interpretation: when traditional expectations of male privilege are threatened, many men react with anger, grievance, and dismissal rather than reflection.
Revised Thematic Narrative with all the Comments
With the additional comments, the thread now displays:
Escalation
Responses moved from disagreement to:
- name-calling
- accusations of manipulation
- claims that women “have nothing without men”
- justifications for infidelity
Role Reassertion
More men invoked:
- provider identity
- traditional gender roles
- sex as marital duty
This reflects hegemonic masculinity repair work (Connell).
Entitlement Expansion
Earlier comments focused on access to sex. New comments emphasize: “I want intimacy, but on my terms.”
This represents a shift from:
- sexual entitlement → relational entitlement
Deepened Victim Identity
More men positioned themselves as:
- self-sacrificing
- unappreciated
- emotionally abandoned
- sexually deprived
This aligns with aggrieved entitlement (Kimmel), where loss of expected rewards is experienced as injustice.
What should we think after this comment analysis?
I found her analysis so striking because it’s so similar to interactions that I’ve seen on social media. And I find this especially on FEMALE content creator accounts who uphold the male entitlement narrative (who preach obligation sex!). A lot of men flock to watch these women’s channels, and then you’ll see comments like these.
I think what it reveals is that many men are trying to assert dominance again by shouting women down and dismissing all evidence, and just trying to reassert gender roles. It shows that the men who have not done the emotional work to become emotionally healthy can only function in relationships where they are entitled, and so, when that entitlement is threatened, they lash out.
Much of what we see on social media is these insecure and aggrieved men lashing out.
They do not represent all men; most healthy men don’t watch this sort of content, after all! But aggrieved men gravitate to this content, and it’s why you’ll often see more comments from MEN on some of these channels than women, even though the channels purport to be for giving women advice.
I hope this gives you some new lenses to look at some of these comment threats and find some themes. I found this pretty interesting, and I hope you did too! And remember, you can help us as we do this on a much bigger scale with the Good Fruit Faith Initiative!
What did you find most interesting about this comment analysis? Let me know in the comments!
So are you going to do more research on men now?
We are working on some papers with our dataset of men, yes.
When you say papers do you mean you will be surveying men or that you already did some research? I am now very interested in what you will be doing.
We already did a large survey of men for our book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, and a large proportion of our most recent survey for The Marriage You Want is of men!
The sad irony being that if they are the kind of man who will leave a comment like these, then it’s really no mystery at all why their wives don’t want sex with them.
Yep!
What I find most interesting is that all of these responses are textbook toxic shame/fragile ego/narcissistic wounding responses, both in wording and in theme. They also show up on intake evaluations to determine criminal thinking in male juvenile offenders (yes. I do know this from first-hand professional experience).
What this says about today’s Evangelical men—or at least the ones holding to patriarchal party line—should be chilling to anyone able to understand the analysis.
Absolutely! Now, again, this isn’t representative. It’s the kind of men who watch social media accounts that lecture women to be more giving to men. But still…
I find it hilarious that the men who obviously think women have nothing to teach men follow accounts of women with a voice and support those gals’ messages… in doing so, they are actively opposing what they say they believe. I’m sure they explain it with some “technicality” like, “she isn’t teaching scripture” or, “she’s teaching women,” but seriously- if a guy is following a woman when he believes women should not be teaching men then he is opening himself up to being taught by a woman. And they cannot even see that.
Great point!
I was debating this guy online, and he brought up a you tube video showing Mary Kassian preaching at a woman’s conference to support his views on female subordination. Mary Kassian is a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Society, and a council member at The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). I asked him why he was against women teaching men, but followed Mary Kassian’s teachings, and how hypocritical that was. He said it was different because Mary Kassian was teaching women at a Southern Baptist Women’s Conference, and there weren’t any men in the room. He seemed to think that watching her on a video was okay as long as he wasn’t live in the audience. I told this dude that didn’t matter because he was still following her teachings, and his location didn’t matter if it was in person or not. Plus, how could he be sure there wasn’t some guy in the room? I told him he was a hyprocrite who wanted to keep women from preaching unless the woman in question supported his beliefs on female subordination. And watching her on a video was still the same as if he was in the room. That just boggles the mind how these guys twist stuff.
Good for you! And, yes, talk about how they’re willing to split hairs in order to maintain their false doctrine that doesn’t hold up to basic logic!
Wow. SMH
Honestly it makes me wonder if any of these guys even want kids or really put thought into that decision. A lot of Christian churches not only have this obligation sex message but also by extension the obligation to be “fruitful and multiply” even the ones that are fine with birth control for married couples and guilt you if you can’t/don’t have kids for whatever reason. These men remind me of young children who want a pet and beg their parents for a pet because it looks cool but don’t do any research on said pet then get surprised when it is more work than they thought and the parents end up taking care of it.
I love that you’re drawing on the masculinities scholarship here — it really does provide a fascinating lens through which to understand some of the gendered narratives. Kimmel, Connell, Bridges & Pascoe etc informed my analysis of adolescent masculinities in my PhD.
I’m seeing the “masculinity panic response” in Christian circles in Australia, and just yesterday another book aimed at “restoring threatened male status” was recommended to me by a family friend who is trying to convert me away from feminism (because I research in the gender equity space) and it’s wearying!
I wish I could say the analysis of the comments surprised me. But it didn’t. Very grateful for the good guys who comment here, and for all those I know in real life who remind me that not all men are bratty, entitled men-children!
Thank you for including terms (if not definitions) and sources/authors. I didn’t have language for these concepts before, so this provides a starting point.
I’m glad!
Made me think of this:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/style/350528535/auckland-bar-frames-hole-punched-in-men-s-toilet-as-fragile-masculinity-becomes-viral-hit-online
That was so funny!
I find it interesting that this is the post that brought out the commenters who 1) use full names and 2) have professional/academic experience in related topics. No deep comment here, just a curiosity about what caused that shift in who comments (or which name was chosen to comment under).