July 2026 Newsletter
How Far Does the Perpetrator Circle Reach?
Why the success of misogynistic influencers and emerging networks of abuse should make us question what we thought we knew
Over recent months, two very different stories have occupied my thoughts.
The first concerns Andrew and Tristan Tate, former kickboxers who built an international following through messages about wealth, masculinity, power, and relationships between men and women.
Authorities arrested the brothers in Miami on 18 July 2026, after receiving a British extradition request. The Crown Prosecution Service has allowed 59 charges against them involving seven alleged victims. The allegations include rape, sexual assault, assault, and arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation. Andrew Tate also faces charges relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography. Both brothers deny wrongdoing, and the allegations have not yet been determined by a British court.
The second story is quieter, hidden behind the doors of apparently ordinary homes.
A growing number of women have reported discovering that husbands or intimate partners drugged them, sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious, recorded the abuse or invited other men to take part.
In January 2026, Philip Young pleaded guilty to 48 sexual offences committed against his former wife, Joanne Young. The offences included rape, administering substances to overpower her, voyeurism and publishing obscene material. Other men also face charges in connected proceedings, but courts have yet to decide those allegations.
In another case reported by ITV News, a woman identified as “Lucy” described discovering that her former husband had drugged her and invited strangers into their home to abuse her while she was unconscious. Recorded prison conversations reportedly captured him admitting what he had done. Lucy continues to search for the men who entered her home.
The National Crime Agency has since warned that deeply concerning international organised networks drug and sexually abuse women known to the perpetrators, and they share recordings online. Survivors have also launched the #EndEyeCheck campaign. This campaign exposes networks that reportedly promote, exchange, and trade the abuse of unconscious women.
These cases are not legally or factually identical.
Following Andrew Tate does not make a person a sexual offender. One must not treat allegations as convictions. We should not categorise every man who expresses a traditional view of relationships with someone who commits rape.
But these stories raise a common and deeply unsettling question:
Why were so many men ready to listen, take part, consume, or remain silent?
That is the actual subject of this newsletter.
Did they create the audience or find it waiting?
Andrew Tate did not invent misogyny.
He presented it in a highly marketable form, wrapped in luxury, physical strength, financial ambition, sexual success, and defiance of the modern world.
Ofcom-commissioned research showed that men frequently joined online manosphere communities. These communities offered humour, irreverence, self-improvement tips, fitness advice, discussions about traditional gender roles, and a sense that men’s issues were overlooked. Personal crises such as relationship breakdown, rejection or isolation sometimes made those messages more attractive. The study was qualitative and cannot tell us how widespread these beliefs are, but it helps explain the routes through which men may encounter and remain within such communities.
The misogyny does not always stand at the entrance announcing itself.
A young man may arrive because he wants to improve his body, earn more money, or become more confident. He may hear sensible advice about discipline alongside claims that women manipulate, feminism has weakened men, or men must restore their authority.
The useful message creates trust. The harmful message travels beside it.
Some followers may gradually absorb a worldview they did not previously possess. Others may already hold fragments of it.
They may already believe that women have gained too much power, that men are no longer respected, that wives should defer to husbands, or that female independence has damaged relationships.
The influencer does not need to build belief from nothing. He gives it language, confidence, and community.
The disturbing question is not how two men invented misogyny. It is why their message felt so familiar to so many.
Public equality and private hierarchy
Many men sincerely describe themselves as supporters of women’s equality.
Women work alongside them. They accept female doctors, lawyers, politicians, and business leaders. They praise women’s achievements and condemn obvious violence.
But the genuine test of equality may occur much closer to home.
A man may sincerely believe in equality while it remains abstract. The real test begins when equality costs him comfort, authority or social approval.
Imagine that his wife earns more than he does. She expects him to carry an equal share of the domestic work. She refuses sex, questions a cultural or religious tradition, or makes a decision without first seeking his permission. None of these acts harms him. Yet each may be experienced as a challenge if he has learned that masculinity depends upon control.
Watch what happens next.
Can he tolerate disagreement without punishing her? Can he hear “no” without treating it as humiliation? When she objects to his behaviour, does he reflect, retaliate or recruit others to discipline her?
Equality is not revealed by what a man says when he feels respected. It is revealed by what he does when a woman exercises the same freedom he assumes for himself.
A global survey conducted by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London found that 31 percent of Gen Z men agreed that a wife should always obey her husband, while 33 percent believed that the husband should have the final word in important decisions. The survey included approximately 23,000 people across several countries.
These figures do not establish violent intent. They reveal something more complicated: support for women’s public participation can coexist with strongly hierarchical expectations inside marriage.
Some men may welcome the modern woman in the workplace, the university and public life while still expecting the traditional wife at home. They support equality until it alters who decides, who sacrifices and who is expected to obey. But this pattern does not only live in surveys and statistics. I have seen it in my lifetime.
They appear comfortable with equality until equality asks something of them personally.
The misogyny hidden inside humour
During my lifetime, I have watched versions of the same scene unfold in apparently ordinary relationships.
A woman raises an issue at the dinner table. Perhaps she says that both partners should share the domestic work, or objects to a remark about women.
Her husband rolls his eyes.
“God, are you starting on your stupid feminist stuff again?”
Someone laughs. Another person looks down at their plate. The woman attempts to explain what she meant, but the conversation has already shifted. Her argument no longer matters. She has become the entertainment.
On another occasion, a woman speaks strongly about women’s rights and someone calls her a lesbian, as though heterosexuality should require compliance with male authority. Again, the room laughs. When she objects, she is accused of being humourless.
“You can’t take a joke.”
But the joke has already done its work. It has made raising the issue embarrassing, invited witnesses to participate in her humiliation and provided the speaker with an escape route from responsibility.
“I was only joking.”
This humour does more than amuse. It instils discipline. It teaches women that challenging male authority may bring ridicule, social isolation or the weary accusation that they are creating conflict where none exists.
A misogynistic joke is not equivalent to rape or physical violence. Most people who make offensive jokes will never commit a serious sexual offence. But that does not make the joke culturally harmless.
When women’s demands for dignity are repeatedly turned into comic material, the people around them learn to treat their objections as exaggerated, tiresome or absurd. The laughter may last only a few seconds. The warning it delivers is unmistakable: speak again, and this is what the room will do to you.
The contradiction can appear in quieter ways inside marriage.
Imagine a man who is proud that his wife is educated and successful. He praises her career to friends and insists that he supports women’s equality. One evening, she tells him that she has accepted a promotion. The new role will mean longer hours, a higher salary and a greater need for him to share childcare and domestic work.
His expression changes.
“You should have discussed it with me first.”
She reminds him that he has made career decisions without asking her permission.
“That’s different,” he replies. “Someone has to think about the family.”
Nothing in his public language has changed. He still believes women should work, vote, lead and succeed. Yet when equality enters his own home and requires him to surrender authority, absorb inconvenience or accept that his wife may decide for herself, it suddenly becomes negotiable.
Not every man who mocks his wife will become violent. But a culture that treats women’s dignity as a joke makes more serious harm easier to dismiss.
Have we mistaken restraint for progress?
Laws matter. They protect rights, establish boundaries, and restrain conduct. Social condemnation also changes how people behave. But restraint is not always transformation.
A man may avoid expressing misogynistic beliefs at work because he could lose his job. He may behave appropriately in public because open discrimination would damage his reputation. He may learn the language of equality without accepting its meaning.
Anonymous forums, private friendship groups, and intimate relationships may reveal beliefs that public life has taught him to conceal.
This does not mean that every outwardly respectable man secretly wishes to harm women.
It means that socially acceptable behaviour is not reliable proof that the underlying belief has disappeared.
We may have mistaken socially managed behaviour for the disappearance of misogyny.
Technology gave the grievance an audience
The internet did not create male entitlement, sexual objectification, or hostility towards women.
It changed their reach.
People can now find instant confirmation for their private resentments from thousands of strangers. A man who feels rejected can be told that women, feminism, and modern society are responsible. An online community can continuously reinforce a belief that family or community members might once have challenged.
Research involving teenage boys has found that Tate-related content circulates not only through direct belief but also through humour, imitation, controversy, and male peer approval. Even boys who claim not to take the content seriously may help spread its language and imagery through jokes and social performance.
Technology can operate as: an amplifier, a community, a marketplace, an instruction manual, a recruitment mechanism, and applause.
The Tate phenomenon shows how a worldview spreads widely.
The sleeping-wife cases show what may happen when technology also connects people prepared to take part in, watch, record or exchange abuse.
The cases are distinct. The connecting thread is the movement from private belief to collective validation.
Technology did not plant the grievance. It gave the grievance a meeting place, a business model and an audience.
Who counts as a perpetrator?
The person who physically commits the recognised offense is central to our traditional understanding of the perpetrator.
That person must remain at the centre of responsibility.
But novel forms of digitally organised and collectively enabled abuse suggest that the surrounding circle may be much wider than we previously acknowledged.
At the centre are the direct perpetrators: those who commit rape, assault, deliberate incapacitation or other direct abuse.
Around them are the organisers and facilitators, those who recruit participants, arrange access, provide substances, locations, technology, or help.
The next circle contains the consumers and distributors, those who request, watch, purchase, store, or circulate abusive material. They extend the violation and create a demand for more.
Beyond them are the encouragers and validators, those who praise, normalise, joke about, or defend the degradation of women.
The outer circle contains the protectors and enablers, those who deny, conceal, minimise or protect the person responsible.
These people are not all equally culpable. A cruel joke is not the same as a physical assault. Remaining silent is not identical to arranging a rape.
The purpose of the circles is not to erase those distinctions but to reveal the system.
The man at the centre may commit the assault, but the surrounding circles can make it possible, repeatable, profitable and safe from exposure.
Perhaps the perpetrator circle is not suddenly growing, but we are finally seeing its full perimeter.
When the same beliefs enter protective systems
The culture in which their upbringing occurred influences police officers, doctors, teachers, lawyers, judges, and social workers as they start their professions.
The same beliefs can follow them into institutions:
“She was wearing a tight skirt.”
“She had been drinking.”
“Children make things up.”
“She looked older than thirteen.”
“He is a respected man.”
“We must be careful not to ruin his future.”
Each statement performs the same quiet transfer.
The person with power relinquishes responsibility, and the harmed woman or child assumes it. The victim must explain her clothing, behaviour, memory, maturity, or failure to expect danger. People soften the offender’s behaviour into temptation, confusion, or a terrible mistake.
Victim-blaming reinterprets harm done to a woman or child as something they brought upon themselves.
Systems certainly fail through underfunding, poor training, administrative errors, and lack of resources.
But systems may also fail because the people within them do not fully recognise the equal human value, bodily autonomy, and credibility of the women and children they protect.
Institutions do not stand outside culture. They carry their assumptions through the door.
What can we honestly conclude?
We can’t conclude that most men are violent.
One cannot presume that every person who follows a misogynistic influencer subscribes to all of his viewpoints.
We cannot treat humour, silence, consumption, and direct sexual violence as morally or legally identical.
My training in research and ethics would not allow such claims.
But neither should we continue offering the comforting reassurance that serious misogyny belongs only to a tiny and easily identifiable group of abnormal men.
We have not yet determined how widespread these beliefs are.
We do not know how many men would act upon them under conditions of secrecy, opportunity, and approval.
We know even less about how many would take part indirectly by watching, purchasing, sharing, encouraging, concealing or dismissing the behaviour.
What we know is that our existing definition of perpetration has allowed much of the surrounding structure to remain invisible.
We have spent decades asking:
How many men commit violence against women?
Perhaps we must now ask a wider set of questions:
The men who organise abuse are only at the centre of the circle. Around them are those who participate when invited, consume what has been produced, encourage the behaviour or protect the men responsible.
Picture a private group chat. One man introduces the material. Another asks to see it. Several watch. Someone congratulates him. Others say nothing. Later, when the behaviour is exposed, a friend insists that he is “not that kind of man,” while another attacks the woman who spoke.
Beyond them is a wider circle: those who dismiss the beliefs preparing the ground as banter, fantasy or harmless jokes. They may never organise an offence themselves, but they help create an atmosphere in which contempt for women is normalised and warning signs become easier to ignore.
The responsibility does not end with the man who commits the act. It extends to everyone who makes participation easier, protection stronger and accountability less likely.
The cases that brought us here are horrifying.
But the larger question is not only what individual men have done.
It is what the world around them made possible.
Violence is an act. Perpetration is a system.
Until we talk again, lets pray for a world free of violence.
Related Reading from Destiny Motif
Can Understanding Perpetrators Help Prevent Violence?
Why examining entitlement, control and learned behaviour is essential to prevention, without confusing understanding with excuse.
Domestic Violence Is Not Always Visible: Breaking Common Myths
A closer look at the quieter patterns of belittling, coercion and psychological control that may leave no visible injuries.
The Psychology of Silence: Why Abuse Often Goes Unspoken
Exploring the fear, shame, power imbalances and social responses that can make silence feel safer than disclosure.
Finding Your Voice After Years of Emotional Control
How repeated dismissal and domination can erode a woman’s trust in her own perceptions, and what it means to begin reclaiming her voice.