At University College London’s Brueni Gallery Theatre, the Wollstonecraft Society Lecture became a platform for one of the most urgent conversations of our time. In a powerful exchange with broadcaster Gemma Cairney, author and campaigner Laura Bates exposed the rising tide of online misogyny, extremism, and radicalisation – a spreading digital world known as the Manosphere.
What could have been a grim diagnosis of the internet’s darkest corners instead became a strong call for collective resistance, deep institutional reform, and a cultural transformation led by truth, rage, and action.
The Crisis Exposed
Bates opened with a stark declaration: violence against women is not isolated incidents, but a public health crisis. “We’re used to violence against women,” she said. “We’re just not used to calling it terrorism”. The Manosphere is an integrated system operating both online and offline. A breeding ground for hatred, it brings together incel culture, influencer content, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories, all designed to radicalise men.
Pointing to shocking research, such as it takes only 17 minutes for a boy on TikTok to encounter misogynistic content. Influencers like Andrew Tate have amassed more than 11 billion views, proving how efficiently these ideologies reach children through algorithmic design. The Manosphere isn’t just spreading hate, it’s grooming a generation. And it’s happening in broad daylight.
Tech Companies Are Not Bystanders. They’re Architects
Bates was unequivocal: this is not only a parenting issue, but also a platform issue. While parents are often blamed or burdened with protecting their children from online harm, she pointed out that they are navigating a world they didn’t grow up in. “This is the first generation of parents being asked to manage something they never experienced.”
The real power lies with tech companies, and they are choosing profits over safety. Platforms are designed to reward extremity, amplify division, and keep users hooked. When that incentive structure is left unchecked, misogyny is not just permitted, it’s promoted.
“This isn’t about bad parenting,” Bates said. “It’s about a complete failure of regulation.” Her message was clear: women and girls are dying because of tech, and governments have a duty to intervene. International cooperation, legal accountability, and political will are essential to dismantle the infrastructure of digital misogyny.
Building a “Beautiful Mosaic of Resistance”
Despite the urgency, Bates and Cairney emphasised the power of collective actions, not always in grand gestures, but in small, persistent acts. Bates shared an example from an all-girls school where boys were invited to attend one of her talks. Some were openly dismissive. In response, the girls deliberately sat in every other chair, forcing the boys to be spaced out and pay attention. “That was resistance,” Bates said. “That was leadership.”
She stressed that these acts matter deeply but are not a substitute for institutional change. Schools, governments, and media platforms must also act. “Start small,” she said, ” but never stop demanding more”.
The New Age of Sexism: A Warning We Can’t Afford to Ignore
Much of the evening drew on Bates’s new book, The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny. It’s a harrowing, meticulously researched investigation into how digital technologies are accelerating the dehumanisation of women.
Bates doesn’t just observe the problem; she immerses herself in it. She visited sex robot venues, downloaded deepfake porn apps, and uncovered how easily synthetic, non-consensual content can be created and shared. These AI-powered systems are not being built to challenge inequality; they’re reinforcing it, often quite literally programming women to obey.
It isn’t easy to read. And it should be. These threats aren’t hypothetical. They’re here, growing fast, and largely ignored. Yet female-led research teams receive six times less funding than male-led ones. Black women’s warnings about algorithmic bias are routinely overlooked. The future is being coded by those least likely to question its harms, and most likely to profit from them.
But Bates refuses to stay silent. When asked whether we need a political revolution or a cultural renaissance, she didn’t hesitate: “Both. You can’t fix the system if you don’t fix the culture.” Regulation, funding, and global cooperation are essential, but so is rewriting the stories we hand to our children about gender, power, and possibility.
This isn’t just a fight against misogyny online. It’s a fight for the kind of world we’re willing to imagine and the future we’re ready to demand. The manosphere is growing. Extremism is mutating. But so is the resistance. And if this lecture proved anything, it’s this: the battle is not lost. We are not outnumbered. We are just out-algorithmed. But not for long.
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