Jack Donovan is an American far-right writer and activist. A self-described masculinist, Donovan was an influential figure in the alt-right until he disavowed the movement in 2017. Donovan was born in 1974 and grew up in a blue-collar household in rural Pennsylvania. He moved to New York in the 1990s to study fine art. During this period, he says that he attended and worked as a dancer at gay clubs, marched in gay pride parades, and associated with drag queens. He later dropped out of college and became a manual laborer. Donovan has also lived in California and Portland, Oregon. He has worked as a club dancer, truck driver, and tattoo artist. Donovan has been described as gay, though he does not use the label for himself and has criticized gay culture as effeminate. He has described himself as an "androphile", a term he uses to describe romance and sex between masculine men. In his 2006 book Androphilia: A Manifesto, he wrote, "I am not gay because the word gay connotes so much more than same-sex desire... The word gay describes a whole cultural and political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics." He removed the book from print in 2017, and has said he has "transcended both that identity and that sexuality".