On Modern-Day Misogyny Part 3: Why Aren’t We Looking?

by Asante Haughton for The 44 North, Emotional Health Editor, Contributing Writer, and Host of Life Outside the Box

This essay is the third in a three-part project on modern-day misogyny. You can read our introduction and the other two essays by Jeff Perera and Cole Martin in our October-November 2026 issue, or follow our newsletter to receive them directly in your inbox.

Artwork by Paweł Kuczyński

When I first heard about the “rape academy” web networks, I was shocked that such a thing could exist. Surely, as a society, we couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow something like this to fester. However, not only did it exist, but as I learned after a quick Google search, it was an extensive community that had proliferated for years before being ‘exposed.’ I put ‘exposed’ in quotations because this community of men, who traded strategies on how to incapacitate women without their knowledge to perform sex acts or other acts of humiliation, operated openly. This wasn’t happening in the shadowed back alleys of the internet, but right under its streetlights, roots above ground and unmasked. All we had to do to find it was look. So why, as a society, weren’t we looking?

When it comes to child protection, the watchful eye of society is perpetually alert. As such, the networks of individuals that seek to harm children operate underground, carefully concealed from the gaze of bystanders and the law. Even when we look, it’s hard to find them.

By contrast, as reported by CNN, the “rape academy” and other similar networks branched out rather publicly on the Telegram messaging app, as well as multiple popular porn sites (that I have made the decision not to mention here). Why weren’t they hiding? There is a reason they didn’t even bother.

The most obvious answer is sobering: They didn’t need to. Nobody was looking. And it’s not because the need to look wasn’t there. 

According to a 2025 Statistics Canada report, 49% of women aged 25 to 34 have experienced at least one sexual assault. In 91% of these cases, the perpetrator was a man. 

We should have been looking.

That we weren’t, or that we were too slow,  says something about whose safety society deems urgent: We didn’t find it important enough to look; we don’t value women enough in our society to look. This is a pervasive cultural problem.

And it leaves us with two issues to tackle.

In the immediate term, we must do everything we can to prevent online communities housing men who harm women from operating. One idea is to expand the breadth of Canada’s Mandatory Reporting Act. Currently, this act requires internet service providers to report to law enforcement any IP addresses or web domains where child sexual abuse and exploitation material is suspected to be available. This act needs to adopt similar mandates obligating internet service providers to report when cyber spaces depicting or facilitating harm toward women are found. To ensure these mandates are followed, government officials and policymakers should levy painful fines upon internet service providers who neglect to comprehensively regulate user activities, particularly if such neglect leads to harm or could feasibly lead to harm against women via their networks. Actions such as these could catalyze further prevention approaches,  halting online communities promoting violence against women from taking root.

In the longer term, we as a society must address the seed that threatens to take root in the first place. It’s vital that we eviscerate patriarchal pedagogies that position a devastating normalization: That women are vessels whose most important function is to serve men—instrumentally, sexually, or otherwise. We must then replace these deeply embedded societal beliefs with notions that consider women to have inherent worth equal to all other human beings. In simpler terms, we need to enact a complete cultural overhaul to address misogyny—the kind that teaches scores of men that exploiting women physically and emotionally is acceptable, as well as the kind that doesn’t value them enough to write measures that would protect them from exploitation online (or elsewhere) into law.

Platform design, regulation, recommendation systems, and legal profit incentives can all be interrogated, excavated, and revised as such to better reflect what we value—once we commit, decisively, to valuing it out in the open. That’s where men who harm women are circulating violence and expressing what they don’t value. We need to confront them there with what we do. 

If we say protect all women, our values and actions as a society need to demonstrate that we mean it. 

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: The Freedom Not to Think

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor-in-Chief

"Spring Greening Along The River" by Pat Katz

As I ran alongside the riverbank on a clear, crisp fall afternoon in my new city, following a dirt path through a canopy of trees just beginning to turn colour, I should have felt relaxed. Instead, the moment when I normally let go, letting the music from my headphones seep into my consciousness and my mind drift and clear, didn’t come.

My thoughts were jumbled and scattered—moving between the beauty of my surroundings, whether I was alone on the trail, the warmth of the sun, and: How safe is it to run alone here?

That particular section of the trail was a paradox. Covered in foliage and sheltered from view of the nearby road, what made it so lovely was also what made it potentially dangerous. An acquaintance had recently reminded me of a murder that occurred decades ago, somewhere along this riverbank. How safe is it now? Should I have an alarm or pepper spray? Should I not be wearing a ponytail, because someone could jump out of the bushes and grab it? How long would it take for someone to get to me if I were attacked and screamed?

Am I overreacting, overthinking? Maybe.

Images of the men in my life, past and present, filled my head. Some were rolling their eyes. I wanted to let my mind drift. I wanted to turn up the volume on my music and daydream, but I couldn’t.

The memory of Alyssa Lokits surfaces—a horrific story that happened on a trail not unlike this one. With a shiver, I wonder how far I am from the paved trail and more people.

What lingered after that run was not whether I was overthinking the situation, but the fact that the calculations had to happen at all. Alongside that was another uncomfortable realization: How many years of my life have contained a similar mental calculus—the times when I got it right, and the moments when I realized I’d made a costly error.

Some of us move through the world carrying questions daily that others rarely have to ask; still others inherit forms of watchfulness so embedded in our psyches that we barely notice the effort they require.

That idea—of attention, and of who is required to pay it—runs quietly through many of the pieces in this issue. What do we learn to notice? What are we afforded the freedom not to think about? And once something enters our awareness, what responsibility follows?

"The Meewasin Trail" by Pat Katz

“Braiding a Ladder” is a pivotal piece, bringing together three different but equally powerful perspectives on modern-day misogyny. At its heart is a question about what happens when the burden of noticing misogyny is disproportionately carried by the people most likely to experience its consequences. Women are often asked to remain alert to risk, to recognize warning signs, to modify our behaviour, to protect ourselves, to explain what happened afterward. But what changes when the work of paying attention is more widely shared? When men look more closely at the language, assumptions, jokes, behaviours and systems around them, and begin to ask what responsibility follows from what they see?

The same movement from attention to awareness to responsibility appears elsewhere in this issue, although in very different forms.

Our Artist Spotlight takes an unexpected turn this issue, placing Earth itself at the centre. In “Earth is the Artist,” memory, land, family history, displacement, grief and environmental harm become tangled together. The piece asks us to look differently at something we so often relegate to the background: The ground beneath us. What changes when the Earth is not scenery, property, or resource, but witness and maker; something that carries memory, bears wounds, and responds to what we ask it to absorb?

Wardah Malik’s essay on tradwife and girlboss culture turns that same act of attention inward. Her question—are our desires truly our own?—is deceptively simple. The lifestyles we imagine we’ve freely chosen do not emerge in a vacuum; they’re shaped by economics, gender expectations, cultural narratives, algorithms, and the particular forms of security or escape available to us at a given moment. What feels entirely personal may also carry the fingerprints of forces we have stopped noticing.

Elsewhere in the issue, attention becomes an act of care. “The Wake of the Nepal Flash Floods: Keeping Each Other Alive” looks at what remains when catastrophe strips away the illusion of self-sufficiency. Our conversation with Rohit Doel asks us to distinguish between grief, loneliness, and isolation within disabled friendships rather than flattening different experiences into one. And Fernn Eastman’s “From Feeding Tube to Paramedic: Your Body Is Not Your Enemy” turns toward the intimate work of learning to inhabit the body differently.

These pieces are not making the same argument, nor are the experiences they explore equivalent. But together, they ask us to look beneath the surface of what’s immediately visible—at the assumptions, histories, systems, desires, memories, and burdens that sit just underneath ordinary life. 

At its core, this is an issue about freedom and what that means: The freedom not to think, the cost of constant attention, and the responsibility that begins when we finally notice.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor-in-Chief, The 44 North Media

On Tradwife & Girlboss Trends: Are Our Desires Truly Our Own?

by Wardah Malik for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics

Artwork by Logan Brewer

As part of a college women’s studies seminar, a quote from The Robber Bride was frequently discussed. In it, Margaret Atwood addresses the concept of the male gaze, writing: “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” For many of us in the class, the idea of constantly surveilling ourselves to meet men’s expectations was unsettling. It forced us to reflect on whether our desires were truly our own, or rather, an extension of what was expected from us by not only men, but culture and society more broadly. 

At that time, this desire was largely centred on the “girlboss” figure: A woman who doesn’t rely on men to achieve success, yet still seeks validation within their systems and rules—an obviously hollow symbol of empowerment built within a fundamentally unequal environment. 

Now, nearly a decade later and perhaps in recognition of its hollowness, the “girlboss” has disappeared. In its place, the “tradwife” has emerged as the new ideal for young women. 

The overwhelming message of the tradwife subculture is that “submissive wives live happy lives.” Free from the stress of corporate careers and the pressure to carve out spaces for themselves in conventional workplaces, these women showcase seemingly idyllic lifestyles on social media. On TikTok alone, videos promoting traditional values—featuring perfectly styled women tending to babies and making food from scratch—have accumulated over 300 million views. Their popularity has become a key debate point in the current culture war; many conservative commentators insist that women naturally want to be homemakers and that men pursue and choose women who embody traditional values such as motherhood and domestic housework. Unsurprisingly, most of these commentators are men claiming to speak for women, arguing that feminism has failed modern women. 

Via Europeana

While the “girlboss” and “tradwife” archetypes appear to be opposites, the rapid cultural shifting between these two lifestyles highlights larger societal forces that push women toward certain narratives and choices beyond their direct control. For instance, most millennial women accepted the “girlboss” figure and strove for financial independence as a strategic escape from the trauma of the financial crisis they witnessed in their youth. Similarly, the rise of the tradwife movement can be viewed as a response to escape the engine of late-stage capitalism, exploitative corporate jobs, and contemporary economic instability, marked by high inflation and widespread unemployment. Ultimately, it is no coincidence that these lifestyle ideals, as promoted through cultural conversations and media, align with larger economic shifts, quietly dictating how women navigate labor, autonomy, and security. 

To understand why young women are drawn to the tradwife movement, we have to look back at its predecessor: The suburban housewife. Today’s trend conveniently ignores the realities of that role—the social isolation, complete financial dependence, and systemic domestic abuse and vulnerability—to focus entirely on what it symbolizes: The pure luxury of not working. Online, this fantasy manifests as total scheduling freedom, flawless homes, and nourishing meals. But this domestic bliss is actually a business, and top influencers earn millions selling it. By aggressively commercializing motherhood, they spark envy, shame, and sense of failure in everyday viewers who cannot match an unattainable, algorithms-driven ideal. 

“How do they have time to do all of that?” my friend asked me one day, expressing her own shame about not making homemade meals every night.

“You’re only seeing a portion of her day,” I responded. “The part she uses to make money—this is her job.”

Via the New York Public Library

That is the crucial distinction. Despite praising the traditional housewife, the modern, online tradwife is financially independent. She enjoys the privilege of writing a new narrative that affords her personal wealth, all while upholding traditional, conservative gender norms and causing others to feel insufficient. This contradiction is exactly what keeps the content engaging and profitable.

 “Domesticity here becomes a consumable product, which is circulated and repackaged in ways that ultimately feed the same conditions of neoliberal capital accumulation the [tradwife] movement claims in many ways to reject,” Imogen Richards, a criminologist at Deakin University, writes. In order to sell that product, the online tradwife relies on a curated, aesthetic performance of domesticity that appeals to a wide range of young women. However, while the content is popular, it’s not relatable, and not everyone has the privilege to perform this version of romanticized domestic labour. In fact, in a recent article for The Atlantic, writer Faith Hill outlines a “precarity-to-tradwife pipeline” that proves many stay-at-home moms have become so out of financial necessity, limited social support services, and the soaring cost of childcare in America. 

Beyond the online career tradwives and low-income mothers, a 2025 poll found that young women are drawn to tradwife content not for the male-breadwinner female-caregiver model, but for the aesthetic of simplicity, leisure, and an escape from increasingly demanding yet unstable work. In other words, the tradwife figure is desirable or enviable because of her autonomy and relationship to labour: She has the freedom to choose her own work-life balance and has escaped the “ideal worker” mould. This also means that enjoying tradwife content or wanting a balanced family life does not necessarily translate to the adoption of conservative values or anti-feminist worldviews. Instead, it signals widespread frustration with the current job market and the conditions that have forced so many women to tolerate intense burnout and economic stress. 

Although some version of the tradwife figure is ever-present in cultural discourse, the current online trend would arguably not exist if economic conditions were better. Because her popularity is a reflection of the current fractured cultural and political space, her mainstream staying power is weak. Maybe that’s for the best. As an aspirational figure, the movement’s attempt to frame “submission as an empowering personal choice,” alongside other conservative points, presents a dangerous path for young women. More than anything, the rise of the tradwife is a warning sign, revealing the desperation of a generation struggling to find stability in an increasingly tense economic climate.

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Wardah Malik is a Toronto-based researcher, editor, and historian. She is the founder of Historyless Magazine, an independent publication covering global affairs and underreported political narratives. Her work spans media, human rights, and community-based research, including projects on press freedom, public health, and gender-based violence. Her research interests include governance, decolonizing language, and the preservation of underrepresented histories. Wardah holds an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge.

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