Locker Room Rants: A sociological study about the "manosphere", its forms of subjectivation of violence and elective affinities with school shootings.

• Grant number: 25/03046-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Veridiana Domingos Cordeiro
• Grantee: Renato Kelvin Lopes da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This master's project focuses on the meanings produced in male homosociality spaces in cyberspace, with the research question: what are the meanings constructed by masculinist movements and their elective affinities with school shootings? To answer it, based on the bibliography on school shootings and their connections with the phenomenon of masculinism, two hypotheses were produced: i) there are meaning reflections between the motivations of the shooters and the foundational meanings of masculinist philosophy; ii) masculinism contributes to the establishment of the search for a denied masculinity. The general objective of this investigation is to capture the meanings of "masculinity" and "injustice" propagated by masculinism and understand their elective affinities with the meanings mobilized in the shootings. For this, qualitative methods and techniques of analysis will be adopted, such as digital ethnography in the masculinist forum Legado Realista, semi-structured interviews with members of the forum, and documentary and discursive analysis of manifestos and diaries of mass shooters. It is intended that this investigation contributes sociologically to the understanding of the symbolic roots that give meaning to these massacres and fosters the newly emerged discussion about school shootings in Brazil. (AU)