In 2026, there’s still no scarcity of male violence directed at women.
In houses of worship or clubs and casinos, in city slums or expensive mansions, or even at a train station or a walking path where people travel every day, it feels like women aren’t truly safe from violence anywhere.
The internet has only enhanced this. Things like addiction to pornography or meme-y admiration of individuals such as notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein or the “incel killer” Elliot Rodgers – a 22 year old man who in 2014 went on a killing spree ending in six fatalities and, in YouTube videos, as well as his manifesto, blamed women for many of his internal issues – create a certain normalization or even idolization of violence against women.
“The [younger generations] exposure to pornography earlier on and the type of pornography that people are viewing is much, much more violent [than older forms of pornography], and is reinforcing those themes of the power differentials and the idea women enjoy that,” said Kirsten Lawhon, a licensed social worker and clinical evaluator for sex offender recidivism risk.
Sexually motivated criminals, as well as their crimes, being so validated in internet spaces creates a steep slope to far-right extremism for young men to fall down, leading into an echo chamber of the kind of misogynistic entitlement that must have led Epstein or Rodgers to commit their heinous acts.
Whether the violence is quiet, like the sound of an Afghan woman breathing through the heavy cloth covering her face, or loud, like the sound of the neighbor’s wife’s head hitting the coffee table in their living room, the outcome in society is the same; many of our women live in anguish, die without justice, and birth daughters who may live and die just the same. Misogyny isn’t just hatred for women; it can also appear as entitlement to women’s bodies and lives.
The recent Atlanta cases of Alyssa Paige and Margaret Swan disturb me to no end. According to a 2026 press release by America’s Department of Justice, Margaret Swan, 66, was stabbed on a MARTA train by John Elijah Matthews, 25, on May 30. The two were seemingly complete strangers with no prior interaction.
On May 14, Alyssa Paige, 23, was stabbed to death by Jahmere Brown, 21, on Atlanta’s Northeast Beltline trail, according to a 2026 article by 11Alive.
Both of these attacks happened in public, in broad daylight, and to completely random victims.
While women more often face violence at the hands of individuals they know, such as intimate partners, studies suggest that men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger. The CDC’s 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey suggests that females are two times more likely to be victims of rape, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence, while a 2026 study from Consumer Shield, titled “Victims of Violent Crime by Gender,” shows that males are significantly more likely to be victims of violent, nonsexual crimes such as homicide or robbery.
This only creates more questions: what made these men choose two young women in these particular crimes? This unanswerable question leaves many Atlanta women feeling as though they are unsafe in their day-to-day lives.
But male-on-female violence isn’t a new concept in Georgia; according to the Poynter Institute, Georgia comes in at number nine for the state with the most male-on-female murders in the United States. This study also suggests that about 93% of said female murder victims were killed by someone they had known.
These killings are likely an outworking of the patriarchal entitlement that is so deeply ingrained in our society, and of the lack of care American society gives to the feelings and emotions of its young men.
“There’s this real issue with teenage boys sexualizing their female peers. Like, this toxic idea that women only exist for them.” Lilly Piotrowicz, 17, said.
The idea that men, or anyone, can “have” a woman or a human of any sort is, in itself, a factor of entitlement. This issue is deeply rooted in our culture in various ways. The ever-present idea of a man owning a woman has appeared in American Culture since its beginning; fathers handing off their daughters for marriage, women being unable to hold a bank account or earnings up until 1974, or a one-vote household- all of these were to keep women from their autonomy.
But even as some things get better, others get worse. Many popular influencers, both male and female, such as the late Charlie Kirk, JustPearlyThings, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens, have openly or offhandedly renounced the 19th Amendment, which grants women in America the right to vote. While some of these anti-suffrage influencers are online figures like Andrew Tate, others are influential business or political figures, such as Peter Thiel, the creator of the US government-affiliated software company Palantir, who push the same rhetoric. But this outright entitlement to women’s personhood isn’t the only way the humanity of women is stripped by misogyny.
It would be irresponsible not to address the effect of the internet, especially online pornography, on today’s youth, particularly on young men.
Online spaces also open up doors for the promotion of extreme ideas, such as the idolization of misogynistic criminals, including people like Elliot Rodgers. Many ignore the small yet extreme communities that often create this content; however, these communities will grow and flourish if given the chance. This instills in young men the idea that “average” men think or act like extreme far-right figures, or that men must live up to a standard set by these radical spaces in order to be loved or respected.
“[The internet] creates these little silos where people can have their thoughts and ideas echoed back and forth, and there’s not much opportunity to correct or create more appropriate norms. So, I do think that the Internet and some of these subcultures, the incels and what have you, are not healthy for society at large.” Clinical Psychologist Dr. David Triemer said.
Often, these groups end up instilling harmful and skewed ideas in young men, including ideas about the roles that men and women play in society. With the rise of concepts such as “Looksmaxxing” or “Blackpill,” which both promote the idea that both men and women must pertain to a specific societal beauty standard – the PSL Scale, in this case; a scale originating in incel forums used to rate one’s attractiveness – and the idea that men are unworthy or “subhuman” if their skull shape, eye area, maxilla, or nasolabial folds aren’t up to par with their favorite internet “mogger.”
It would be irresponsible not to address the effect of the internet, especially online pornography, on today’s youth, particularly on young men.
2026 and the age of the internet, and now AI and social media, are undoubtedly troublesome to navigate, especially for younger people. Often, one becomes disconnected from reality in small, disjointed communities, creating internal conflict that can lead to external conflict.
“ What the internet has allowed us to do is it’s allowed us to pull away from in real-life interactions,” Dr. Triemer said. “And so I think that the answer to this, while not easy, is a re-engagement in real-life groups and communities.”
The internet, though, certainly isn’t the only cause of violent misogynistic crime: things like mental illness and skewed, but deeply held political values often result in the same kinds of violence, making much of it impossible to fully understand.
According to an article from the National Library of Medicine, titled “Magnitude of Gender-Based Violence and Its Associated Factors among Female Night Students in Bahir Dar City, Amhara Region, Ethiopia,” about 71% of women worldwide face gender-based violence in their lifetime.
What we do know is that younger men seem to be facing struggles with mental health in current times; according to a 2020 article, titled “Males and Mental Health Stigma” by the National Library of Medicine, about 6 million men in the United States face depression, and the male suicide rate is four times higher than the female suicide rate in the United States. These statistics help to show the negative effects of our current patriarchal society: men are held to such an intense standard that many resort to mental instability and violence instead of healthier habits such as therapy, often blaming women rather than centuries-old societal norms.
