Editor’s note: This conversation with Cynthia Miller-Idriss about her new book, Man Up, is the final piece in Ms.’ three-part series exploring the links between misogyny, gendered violence and political extremism.
Jackson Katz: Throughout Man Up you talk about the many ways that misogyny intersects with racism and heterosexism in the world of violent far-right extremists. Can you briefly discuss some of the key overlaps?
Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Misogyny is threaded through nearly every mass shooting attack in some way, no matter who the targets are—so that’s one way it shows up. But we also see that feminism gets blamed for purportedly stripping away men’s opportunities, which easily bleeds into other conspiracies that explain how the deck is stacked against white men. Or a single umbrella conspiracy with multiple protagonists—like the “great replacement” [conspiracy theory]—blames Jews, Muslims and feminists all at once for supposedly orchestrating a replacement of white civilization through immigration, abortion, the disruption of the gender binary, and abandonment of white women’s “natural” roles as mothers and reproducers of the nation.
The fact that so many domestically violent extremist attacks have both gendered and racialized dimensions shows that racism and misogyny are inseparable in the minds of many perpetrators, whether through rants about white birth rates in mass shootings targeting Black communities, or through hypersexualized tropes about supposed threats from racial, ethnic and religious minorities—as the Charleston church shooter said during his attack: “Y’all are raping our women.”
In deep and abiding ways, the scaffolding of patriarchy, misogyny and male entitlement (to power, to authority, to domestic labor, to women’s bodies) underpins the resurgence of white supremacy and other forms of far-right extremism. Different forms of hate rely on similar hierarchies of superiority and inferiority that are co-constituted and inextricable from each other.
Katz: In Man Up you say that extremist violence is underpinned by conservative mobilization, mainstream normalization, and “liberal silencing of misogyny and gender-based bigotry.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by “liberal silencing” in this context?
Miller-Idriss: The Minnesota shootings of two state Congress people and their spouses this year is a perfect example. The attacker had clear and definitive gendered motivations—he was obsessed with abortion and the control of women’s reproductive capacity, and was angry about trans and gender non-conforming people. His attack was motivated by that anger, and his ‘hit list’ included Planned Parenthood clinics, in addition to politicians who support these gendered issues.
But even the liberal media described the attack as on “progressive politicians”—although those progressive issues were all about gender. The silence is deafening—if we can’t even point to gender in a case like this, what hope do we have for more subtle cases, where the targets of attackers’ rage are not aligned with the misogynistic anger they are incubating in and expressing in their personal lives?
Katz: It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the growth and expansion of the digital universe as it relates to this topic. The online radicalization of boys and young men is a primary path to far-right extremism; MAGA chief strategist Steve Bannon recognized this early on and was determined to mobilize young men’s resentment toward feminists into support for right-wing populist movements. How much of the fight against the rise of the new misogyny and its links to violent extremism is focused on online spaces? What can parents do in the absence of stronger regulatory controls on internet content, as well as the access of children and young teenagers to some of the deeply misogynist content of the manosphere?
Miller-Idriss: It’s impossible to overstate how central online spaces are, both to the fomenting of misogyny and to its normalization and potential to escalate further violence. Misogyny has always been there, of course—but now there are so many new ways to channel it. Direct messaging on social media platforms, live in-game voice chats, and other communication features of online spaces have made the use of gendered slurs, rape and death threats, and other forms of gendered discrimination a ubiquitous part of online engagement. New forms of digital media and the ever-present ease of smartphones enable the effortless sharing of sexually explicit photos and videos, including AI-generated images or videos and revenge porn, alongside cyberstalking, doxing, harassment, sextortion, verbal abuse and hacking.
I think parents should know that social media doesn’t cause misogynistic or racist behaviors, but the platforms amplify and increase exposure to harmful and hateful content and spread harmful attitudes contagiously—in part because the structure of social media incentivizes angry and salacious posts, which garner more attention and are more likely to go viral.
Influencers and entrepreneurs who make a living from subscribed content, in turn, capitalize on these algorithms by selling outrage, which then directs additional anger and hostility toward the targets of any given short-form video rant—and when those videos garner tens of millions of views, it’s easy to see how hate and threats become supersized.
Meanwhile, the anonymity and homogeneous nature of communities online polarize people and create a disinhibition effect that reduces the barriers to engaging in hateful and harassing ways. And so much of our feeds these days are full not of content we signed up to follow, but rather content that is promoted or recommended—and this is where what you consume becomes so much less intentional or accidental.
Katz: You discuss the fact that it is disturbingly common for neo-Nazis and other men on the radical right to be charged with possessing child sexual abuse material or otherwise engaged in child sexual exploitation. This includes organized sex trafficking. You describe the connection in part to “a larger story of power and domination.”
Miller-Idriss: A VICE headline a couple of years ago asked “Why do neo-Nazis keep getting arrested for child sexual abuse material?” detailing repeated cases of white supremacist extremists charged with possessing indecent images and videos of children and toddlers, trading child pornography, keeping folders of child sexual abuse material on their computers, sending or requesting nude photos in exchanges with minors, or attempting to groom or have sex with minors. In case after case over the past several years, men who come under suspicion of plotting far-right terrorist attacks or are investigated in the wake of targeted threats are found during investigations to have child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their computers, tablets and phones.
Child abuse by neo-Nazis and other domestic extremists is part of a larger story of power and domination. Children and adolescents are structurally vulnerable to control and domination by adults in ways that enable the ongoing prevalence of child sexual abuse—including by extremist groups and their members.
Child exploitation is yet another issue where abuses perpetrated by Islamist and international terrorists have been well documented, especially related to the kidnapping and forced marriages of schoolgirls, recruitment and radicalization of minors, and the use of child soldiers. Experts have had much less to say about domestic or far-right extremists’ engagement in the same kinds of horrific abuse, even though public revelations over the past few years about both casual and organized use of child exploitation by domestic extremist groups has made that oversight glaringly obvious.
Katz: In today’s political climate, discussions about right-wing extremism are particularly charged and politically sensitive. This has only increased since Charlie Kirk’s killing on Sept. 10, as members of the Trump Administration and other influential figures in MAGA threatened—and enacted—retribution against people they felt had “celebrated” his death, or even made comments critical of his political views. Before or after Kirk’s death, have you seen a greater reluctance in your line of work to follow lines of inquiry that will inevitably be critical of the people currently in power?
Miller-Idriss: There are so many ways the reluctance is evident. On the one hand, I’ve seen a reluctance on the intervention side. Schools and universities that signed up to have my lab deliver trainings are suddenly nervous that it will cause problems for them.
I had a bookstore decline to have me come give a talk on Man Up because they said it’s “too political.” And I had a co-sponsor of one of the book launches ask to remove their logo so that there would be less attention on them as an organization, after the Department of Homeland Security targeted them with critiques about their support of “DEI” organizations.
I resigned from that organization’s board in protest, and told them the same thing I’ll say here: I have no respect for the “comply in advance” approach to adhering to authoritarian pressure.
The Germans have an even better phrase for this: vorauseilende Gehoersamkeit, which means ‘hurry up and obey.’ That stance is often credited with how the Nazis were able to so sweepingly get so many willing participants in communities. And it’s a stance we have to be extremely wary of in the U.S., where academic freedom, freedom of speech, public protest and critique of leadership and the administration are and must remain essential cornerstones of our democracy.
But it’s also worth noting that these instances aren’t the full story of what I’ve seen and experienced this past year. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s more interest, more urgency and more commitment to fund, promote and scale up the work we do to safeguard communities from harm. I have no shortage of invitations to speak or appear in the media. My research lab’s funding—all philanthropic—has substantially grown, and we’ve added more than a dozen team members who are designing and testing interventions to keep communities safer online. So despite the greater reluctance, I’m finding this is a powerful moment to be doing this work, and I take hope from that.
‘Hurry up and obey’ … is often credited with how the Nazis were able to so sweepingly get so many willing participants in communities. And it’s a stance we have to be extremely wary of in the U.S. …
Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Katz: One of the central themes in your book is that misogyny and hostile sexist attitudes are correlated with increased support for political violence and willingness to engage in it. In 2025, is that still a bold claim to make in the field of extremism studies? Is your premise still controversial in any way?
Miller-Idriss: It’s not exactly controversial—but it’s completely ignored. Every time I say it, people nod. But then I get these same questions with no acknowledgement whatsoever of what we already know. Everyone wants to know how to reduce the threat of mass violence, school shootings, and terrorist threats. But when I say “well, it might help if we looked at one of the biggest predictors of support for mass violence,” it’s like I’m talking underwater—people hear that something is being said but can’t process and act on it.
I feel like what I’m trying to do in this book, in many ways, is get people to see something that resonates with them even though they haven’t reflected on it. Readers will be shocked and surprised by some of it, but in other places I hope they feel seen and recognize what I write.
Katz: You write that what often seems like the “irritating daily reality of sexism that women face is actually an enabling condition and environment that nurtures, cultivates and ultimately explains and mobilizes much of the violence we see in the world today.” The underlying premise sounds similar to the one for the rape culture pyramid, widely used in gender violence prevention education, which connects “low level” behaviors like casual sexist comments and catcalls on the street to more severe criminal acts like sexual assault and rape.
Miller-Idriss: I think that’s a fair comparison—and it makes sense, because if we see that “low level” behaviors motivate more severe interpersonal gendered violence and that kind of violence predicts mobilization to mass violence, then we have something like a pathway where we can interrupt and intervene and build off-ramps to. “Low level” behaviors increase the likelihood of both kinds of violence—even when the targets and victims of mass violence are not women or LGBTQ+ people.
Katz: Throughout Man Up, you employ the definition of misogyny offered by the philosopher Kate Manne: Misogyny is not so much hatred of women as it is the law enforcement arm of patriarchy, the means by which a patriarchal system punishes women for insubordination. Can you explain how misogyny understood in this way contributes to mass violence?
Miller-Idriss: As Manne argues, misogyny targets those who “trespass on men’s historical turf and threaten to take something from him.” Misogyny is a punishment, an enforcement mechanism, and a way of policing, condemning and subordinating women and LGBTQ+ people. I view violent misogyny as a reaction to transgressions of patriarchal expectations, norms, a fixed gender binary, and the erasure of formal laws that support men’s domination.
That policing happens in part because patriarchal norms are so entrenched in mainstream society that rapid changes unsettle the foundational assumptions that help us process and understand what we see and experience every day. And there have been rapid changes and progress over the past decade and more, which means that the basic norms of traditional patriarchies are changing—and producing virulent backlash from conservatives and far-right actors who insist on a fixed gender binary and seek to maintain other traditional patriarchal norms and expectations.
That backlash—delivered through violent harassment and attacks as well as through legislative erasure—should be understood as a response to the disruption to the scaffolding of traditional patriarchy and the perceived transgression of its norms, rules and hierarchies. That’s part of what I mean when I say that misogyny is fueling mass violence.
So for example, there is the kind of backlash against men’s perceived loss of power and status that drove a men’s rights activist to target a New Jersey judge’s family.
There is the backlash against women who don’t pay men enough attention, as illuminated by misogynist incels and male supremacist attacks on women who ignore, reject or refuse men’s sexual advances, as we have seen in mass shootings in California and Florida.
There is backlash against women who don’t put men’s needs first, even when those needs are defined as a life without the sexual temptation that women supposedly create, as we saw in the Atlanta spa shootings.
There is rage that targets other groups after first incubating in toxic online subcultures that are deeply misogynist, as illustrated by the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooter’s online rape and kidnapping threats against teen girls.
Katz: You’re based in the U.S., but you also do a lot of work in Germany. What are some of the similarities you see between the right-wing extremist movements in both countries? Are there any notable differences?
Miller-Idriss: The biggest difference is on the prevention side. There are slight variations in the targets of right-wing hate, most notably because anti-immigration and anti-Islam issues are intertwined there, whereas in the U.S. anti-immigration is mostly anti-Latino and is less rooted in claims about religiosity. But even with these differences, the expressions of hate are pretty similar. It’s on the prevention side that we see real differences.
Because of its history, Germany invests billions of Euro into prevention as part of the work of safeguarding and shoring up democracy. And most of that prevention funding goes to the front lines—to teachers, social workers, youth counselors, mental health practitioners and funding for local NGOs who do youth work and focus on youth identity, wellness and engagement.
Germany hasn’t solved the problem by any means, but they have so many different ideas for what could be done. A lot of what I have been doing in The Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) over the past five years is testing some of those kinds of resources with U.S. communities of parents and caregivers.
Katz: It seems to me you have two (or more) main audiences for Man Up: your colleagues in the field, and members of the general public who want more insight into the links between two of the major scourges of our time, misogyny and far-right extremism. Can you say a bit about who you imagine your audience to be, and what you hope they take away from reading your book?
Miller-Idriss: That’s exactly right.
On the one hand, I do want my colleagues in the field of violent extremism and mass violence prevention to read this book and think deeply about what we have all been missing and where our blind spots are.
But I also hope that everyone—parents, coaches, teachers, faith leaders, tech companies, people who work in health and wellness and violence prevention and so many more—walk away from reading my book feeling empowered to engage in these issues.
I want teachers to create spaces in classrooms to talk about how boys and girls encounter gendered content online and how it shapes them. I want parents to listen in the carpool to the kinds of casual misogyny and racism kids might express. I hope that companies like Nike or Dove, which have launched such compelling advertising campaigns around women’s empowerment, will also invest in women’s protection, especially at a moment when women athletes are facing femicide, harassment, stalking and navigating sex toys being thrown at them on the basketball court, to name just a few.
I hope people see that interrupting early and interpersonal expressions of misogyny might help keep all of us safer at the community level, too. In the end, I hope this is a book for everyone who is curious and is open to change in their everyday lives.
This concludes our three-part series on misogyny and political violence. For more from Cynthia Miller-Idriss, read the book excerpt published earlier this week and Part 1 of this conversation.
Great Job Jackson Katz & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
