“Marc Lépine must have updated his list from the otherworld.” That sentence, written 10 years ago by a man on Twitter (now X), troubles me to this day.

There was nothing trivial about the statement. It came from someone whose ideological leanings are close to the incel movement — “involuntary celibates” — which is part of the wider masculinist movement.

He felt justified uttering these words after novelist Marie-Hélène Poitras and I published Les Superbes: une enquête sur le succès et les femmes (The Fabulous Ones: An Investigation into Success and Women). His message was clear: the women we had interviewed for this book deserved to be eliminated.

The hatred expressed by this man on Twitter led the Sûreté du Québec police to launch an investigation, which was later closed with no further action. The comment was a sign of how a hostile online environment was already taking shape.

As a researcher at Concordia University, my team and I study gender-based cyberviolence and the manosphere — the constellation of forums, groups and influencers united by a masculinist ideology who orchestrate co-ordinated attacks against women on social media.

Read more: ‘Quiet, piggy’ and other slurs: Powerful men fuel online abuse against women in politics and media

Masculinist narratives

A decade later, this comment would be drowned in the sea of masculinist discourse we are now seeing online. That’s how much there is of it.

Masculinism is also a driver of cyberviolence against women, as the latest report from France’s High Council on Equality Between Men and Women shows. According to a major study published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, 85 per cent of women have experienced this type of violence.

Since this style of rhetoric first appeared online, masculinism has gone mainstream. For example, Andrew Tate has been a leading figure in the movement since 2016. His videos on TikTok have........

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