Some months ago, I watched a fictional series that ended with a boy murdering a girl who had rejected him. It was a chilling portrayal. This boy—still a child, legally speaking—was unable to process rejection, stuck in online misogyny, and ultimately turned to violence. Being the father of a girl, I remember feeling disturbed but comforted by the thought that it was only a story.
That kind of thing doesn’t happen, I told myself. Not like that.

Yesterday, it did.

Seventeen-year-old Sana Yusuf, a social media influencer from Pakistan, was shot dead in her home. The killer was a 22-year-old man who, according to initial reports, had been persistently trying to contact her. She had said no—again and again—and he responded in the worst possible way. Suddenly, the fiction didn’t feel distant. It felt like a premonition.

What both the real and fictional cases reveal is not just tragedy, but a terrifyingly common architecture behind it—one we continue to ignore.

First, there is the crisis of male entitlement. Too many boys are raised to believe they are owed a........

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