I could report on her experience, the mother said, if I kept it anonymous. Fair enough, I said, intrigued.

It was the phrase “dish pig,” that had really started her thinking, she explained. She’d seen the phrase in a news story.

The article reported that Sonas, Ireland’s largest domestic violence service provider, was warning that online misogynistic influencers were normalising hatred of women. And that it was shaping our children’s behaviour.

“Dish pig” was a new one on her, she said, adding that Sonas had explained the phrase had been used by a boy who called his mother one and threw things at her when he didn’t like his dinner. Dish pig is apparently slang for kitchen dishwashing personnel.

The organisation warned that such incidents reflect a growing concern that online misogynistic content is shaping deeply hostile and negative attitudes towards women. Sonas had said staff were seeing worrying examples of boys repeating extreme views about women, displaying hostility towards their mothers and exhibiting controlling and degrading behaviour in the home.

This mother, for reasons that will become clear, googled the manosphere and its views on women, discovering that it viewed most females as inferior, manipulative and/or deserving of contempt.

A professional in her fifties, she had a husband and children, some of whom were still in education and two grown adults.

One of the latter two, a male in his twenties, had been a cause of concern for some time.

It was some years since he’d moved out of home to work in a different part of the........

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