I didn’t want to believe the “rape academy” story.
But the more I think about it I realised this didn’t come out of nowhere.
It’s a pattern.
It starts small.
A joke.
A comment.
Something that feels off, but no one says anything.
You laugh it off.
You stay quiet.
And then it builds.
Until it’s no longer “just a joke.”
I remember trying to make sense of the case of Gisèle Pelicot and her husband, Dominique Pelicot by telling myself it was extreme.
Something monstrous, a pocket of cruelty. A level of depravity far removed from everyday life. Something we could point to and say, that’s not normal. Its isolated.
I think, like a lot of people, I was trying to protect myself from the truth.
Because it’s not isolated.
It’s men.
Not all men, but enough to be frightening.
Enough that it could be the ones we trust.
The ones who promise to love us.
The ones handing us a cup of tea.
And then you look at everything else, and it becomes impossible to pretend it’s a one-off.
Now it’s entire online communities, men teaching each other how to harm women and get away with it.
A website with millions of visits isn’t an accident. It is isolated.
It’s what happens when misogyny goes unchallenged.
So start there.
Say something.
Call it out.
Make it uncomfortable.
Challenge misogyny. Every time.
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