Misogyny: let’s start with why

By Saskia Lightburn-Ritchie, CEO of MyCWA (Cheshire Without Abuse)

There is a lot of noise right now about misogyny, the so-called ‘manosphere’, and what young people are consuming online. Talk to almost any teacher and they will tell you the same thing: something has shifted. You can feel it in the language young people use, in the way some boys talk about girls, and in the way girls talk about themselves. This is not abstract. It’s showing up in classrooms, corridors and relationships every day.

It’s tempting to look for one obvious source to blame. One influencer. One toxic podcast. One extreme corner of the internet. But that’s not really what’s happening. What we’re seeing is much bigger than that.

Young people are growing up inside a whole ecosystem of content that is often funny, polished and wrapped in the language of self-improvement. It offers certainty, status and belonging. And for some boys and young men, it offers a simple explanation for uncomfortable feelings such as rejection, insecurity or shame. It tells them their unhappiness has a cause, and that cause is women.

That message is dangerous. But it is also effective, because it meets a real need. When we see misogyny, our instinct is to respond to the behaviour. We challenge the comment, punish the incident, block the account, condemn the language. Sometimes that’s necessary. But if that is all we do, we’ll keep missing the point.

For over 30 years I have worked in domestic abuse, with survivors and with those who harm. One of the clearest things this work teaches you is that behaviour does not appear out of nowhere. If we want to stop harm, we have to look underneath it. We have to ask what belief sits beneath it and what need is being met.

Misogyny is no different. It is not a starting point. It is an outcome.

It is learned, reinforced and normalised. It grows in environments where control is confused with care, where rejection is framed as humiliation rather than a normal part of life, where status is tied to dominance, and where emotional literacy is missing.

So when a fourteen-year-old boy says something dismissive about women, the first question shouldn’t be ‘what’s wrong with him?’ It should be ‘what has he been taught, what need is being met, and how can we talk to him?’

That is not about excusing harmful attitudes. It is about understanding how they take hold, so we can challenge them properly.

Young people are learning about relationships from places that bear little resemblance to anything healthy. Boys are exposed to content that frames women as something to be judged, controlled or dominated. Girls are bombarded with messages that tell them their value lies in appearance and being chosen. Both absorb ideas about power, gender and worth long before most adults have had a meaningful conversation with them.

Most adults have not been equipped for those conversations. This is not a criticism, but an observation.

Parents often ask how they can stop their children seeing harmful content online. The honest answer is that they can’t. We cannot build a wall high enough. What we can do is help young people think critically about what they are seeing and create relationships in which they can talk honestly about it.

That starts with conversation, not control. It starts with making sure a child knows they can say “this confused me”, “this made me uncomfortable” or “I don’t know what to think”, and be met with curiosity and support rather than judgement.

That is why I produced a free guide for parents and carers on talking to children and young people about healthy and unhealthy relationships. It is not a script or a lecture, but a set of honest starting points for conversations about jealousy, rejection, pornography, sexual images, control and pressure. The aim is simple: to help parents keep the conversation open.

We see the same need in schools and colleges. Through Domestic Abuse Experts, the training and consultancy arm of MyCWA, we work with teachers who know something is changing, but do not always feel equipped to respond. That is why we developed Engage: RESET, a practical healthy relationships programme for schools. It supports teachers to have real conversations about consent, online pressure, harmful attitudes and relationship dynamics.

This work matters. Misogynistic behaviour cannot be addressed through a one-off school assembly about respect. It requires open conversations, equipping young people to think critically about the world around them and their own behaviour, and building a culture of accountability.

If we are serious about tackling it, we need to move beyond outrage and into understanding. We need to be willing to talk openly about sex, power, rejection, respect and online influence. We need to teach emotional literacy as a core life skill. We need to support parents to stay connected to their children, even when those conversations feel awkward. And we need to be honest that prevention is not passive. It requires adults to step in early and consistently.

The most important thing I have learned in this work is that harm rarely begins where we first notice it. By the time it becomes visible, it has usually been growing quietly for some time. This is why, when it comes to misogyny, we need to start with one simple question: why?

Because if we are willing to ask it, and stay long enough to hear the answer, we stand a far better chance of preventing harm before it takes root.

For a copy of the parent guide, visit www.mycwa.org.uk/helpful-resources and to find out more about Engage: RESET, visit www.DomesticAbuseExperts.org.uk