‘Rape academy’ shows why so many women are right to fear men | Opinion
Warning: This commentary references sexual assault and may be triggering to survivors.
There are days when you come upon something that shakes you to your core, a reality that is so antithetical to humanity, so sickening in its perversion, that you feel your guts twisting around themselves, your face heating, your blood pressure skyrocketing.
I’m still not sure how to process this, but I’m trying, because it’s something that, as a man, I know has to be reckoned with.
CNN has exposed the existence of what they describe as a massive online “rape academy,” where men from around the world gather on group chats and message boards to encourage and celebrate the drugging, recording and sexual assault of their wives and partners for the pleasure of other similarly depraved men.
They describe a sprawling virtual horror scape filled with husbands, partners, fiancés and boyfriends violating the bodies, the trust and the privacy of the women they share a home, a family and a bed with.
These sites sit under the ghastly umbrella of what is termed “sleep content,” featuring the abuse of sleeping or medically-incapacitated women, with hundreds of thousands of posts dedicated to the procurement and administering of drugs enabling these unthinkable acts. Just one of the websites, which draws primarily from an American audience, received 62 million views in a single month this year alone.
That kind of widespread degeneracy is almost unfathomable, but maybe that’s because I’m a man. As unimaginably repugnant as the reality of this curated collective sickness is, I have a feeling it’s probably not shocking to most of the women who’ve read about it this week.
They likely aren’t all that surprised.
For decades, the women in my life and those I’ve met doing this work have shared the ever-present fear that comes from realizing you are always a potential target of violence, always on alert, always within arm’s reach of harm, always in the company of danger.
They know they aren’t safe when they jog on greenways.
They aren’t safe when they’re walking to their cars at night.
They aren’t safe at on-campus parties.
They aren’t safe when grabbing a drink with co-workers.
They aren’t safe while they’re working out.
They aren’t safe when on vacation.
As a man, I can’t fathom the way such realities shape your worldview, renovate your identity, alter your behavior and hover like a dark cloud in the background operating system of your mind.
But to realize that you may not even be safe when you’re in bed, asleep with a man you’ve built a life with, shared your heart with, revealed your dreams to, had children with; someone you’ve walked through illness and joy and grief alongside — that must be an atomic bomb to the psyche. The emotional devastation of such a revelation seems irreparable.
Danger not only from ‘manosphere’
And as enormous as the crimes CNN has uncovered are, they have even wider implications, as it isn’t only these women who are impacted by this grotesque corner of the so-called “manosphere” of online influencers.
It is the middle school girls in the classrooms where these monstrous men teach.
It’s the young women pulled over in late-night traffic stops by the officers who frequent these websites after work.
It’s the recent college graduate whose new boss spends his free time watching the violation of strangers’ wives.
It’s the daughters being raised by fathers who see women as less than human, who find pleasure in their degradation.
It is the boys and young men whose father figures, mentors, coaches, teachers and idols have such disregard for women that they see violence against them as entertainment content.
Where do we even begin to dismantle such accepted brutality and confront this male-pattern inhumanity?
I confess I’m not quite sure. What I do know is that women don’t need to answer this question; men do, all of us.
The monsters who haunt the blackest spaces of the dark web, the internally broken men who are capable of exploiting and injuring their loved ones, the guys who share cubicles, locker rooms, hedgerows and family gatherings with them, whether they know it or not.
In fact, fixing this collective moral male cancer is firmly on the shoulders of the “not all men” men, who swear they abhor these “rape academies,” and everything they uncover about us as a species.
Decent men must become advocates
The brothers, sons, fathers, grandfathers, boyfriends, fiancés and husbands on this planet who truly aspire to be men of decency, of conscience, of morality, are going to need to become the loudest advocates for the women we share this space and time with.
We who tell ourselves we’re the good guys are going to need to get in the faces of the men in our orbits and let them know where we stand, what we will not accept, and how unwelcome the dehumanization of women is in tossed off comments, in casual jokes, in perverted theology, in misogynistic policy and in violence of any kind.
The battle for the soul and the collective conscience of men isn’t going to be won by women, as they shouldn’t need to convince anyone of their inherent worth and beauty. That simply is.
This war has to be won by men who are sick to their stomachs by what we’ve become, and who refuse to let any other man off the hook for the shared mess we’ve made here, whether in our actions or inactions, our words or our silences.
In a popular 2024 TikTok post, an interviewer asked eight women: “Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?” Seven of them picked the bear. The video went viral, with many other women making the same choice.
Women deserve to be safe in parks and schools and gyms and nightclubs, and definitely in their homes and their beds.
That day may eventually come, though sadly, it will not be soon.
Until then, women are right to choose the bear.
If you or someone you know are the victim of sexual abuse, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or at RAINN.org/hotline
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. This commentary originally appeared on his Substack, The Beautiful Mess.
