Misogyny 2026: It’s a Choice.
In my first ever sales job, I walked into a customer’s office to pick up a $12 million purchase order. The guy looked me straight in the eye and told me if I wanted the PO, I’d have to sleep with him.
I must’ve looked more stunned than I was. He started laughing. Muttered about little girls in pink suits. Went to the doorway to loudly tell his secretary to set up a dinner with me. Soon.
I made it to the elevator before the tears started. Hands shaking so badly I couldn’t get the key in the car door.
I drove straight to my office, sure the company would handle it.
I told my boss, who gave me his best nuisance look, and said “What’s the problem?” Shrugged his shoulders and walked out. Throwing a “figure it out,” over his shoulder as he swaggered away.
Me? I started wondering what I’d done to cause it. Yup, I still shake my head and wonder why the hell I went there.
My introduction to the wild west of tech, in what we called the old boys club back then.
I never thought we’d go back there.
I was wrong.
Back then, it was status quo in action.
Now? It’s a damned choice.
When I started in tech, boys being boys was the water we few women swam in. “How things are.”
The old boys’ club was the way they’d always done it. We were the interlopers.
We learned to navigate it because there wasn’t another option. I still have the scars from cracking my skull on low slung glass ceilings.
Today? It’s back with a force I never imagined.
We’re all feeling it.
Sure, you speak in a meeting and it’s like you aren’t even there. Then the guy says exactly what you just said, he’s BRILLIANT.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
That iceberg is the Manosphere. And it’s rising FAST.
I’ve felt it lurking through my career. I guess I just stopped noticing when it got to a dull roar. It shifted, blended into the background of every room I walked into.
When you've been fighting tsunamis, you don’t see the little waves. That’s my own personal status quo.
I see it now.
The camouflage is being lifted with the bravado of a fait accompli. Like they just know they can and will dominate us.
The manosphere is actively programming young men to see women as their problem. The sole reason for their unhappy, lost selves.
That programming?
It doesn’t start with a young man looking for something to hate. It starts with young men seeking the help, guidance, and mentoring lost during covid and beyond.
A young man searches for advice on dating, fitness, and making money. Real struggles.
The manosphere meets him right there where his heart is. With exactly what he’s looking for. Advice and support that begins as something reasonable. Helpful, even.
Then it shifts. Slowly. Subtly. By the time he’s deeper in it, he’s being slowly programmed to truly believe that women are manipulative, that feminism destroyed his chances at everything in life, and that male dominance is the only natural order.
He didn’t sign up for that. The algorithm took him there. Quickly. Cunningly.
Example? A teenage boy watches one fitness video. Five or six swipes later he’s being told women are the enemy.
Silicon Valley built the delivery system. The manosphere just loads the ammunition.
This isn’t fringe. The numbers speak for themselves.
Two-thirds of young men consume masculinity influencer content every day.
57% of men say their social media feeds have become more extreme over time.
Gen Z men are less gender-neutral than their fathers. Younger Republican men are actually more sexist than their grandfathers.
75% of secondary school teachers say they’re extremely concerned about this influence in their schools.
This isn't going to look like your boss's hand on your knee at the company Christmas Party. Or the CEO of a massive software firm doing the same. What’s coming?
That 21-year-old junior associate weaponizing incompetence while subtly blowing off your feedback because his favorite podcaster told him female authority is a joke.
How exactly are we supposed to mentor a kid who's been algorithmically trained to believe we stole his seat at the table?
What does that portend for the next generation of women?
Let’s be clear.
These are not a bunch of weird guys in their corner of the internet. These are the men sitting across from you in your next meeting.
This Time, It’s a Choice
When that customer propositioned me decades ago and my boss told me to figure it out, that was the system as it had played out for millennia. Nobody questioned it because nobody ever had to. It was invisible. It was just the way we’d always done it.
What’s happening now is way different.
Men are being actively recruited into an ideology that teaches them women are the enemy. They’re being driven to content that programs them to see a woman in authority as a threat to their natural order.
The bro club I survived was passive. It was inherited.
The manosphere is deliberate. It’s industrialized. The men consuming it think they’re the good guys. The women supporting it think they are right.
That’s what made me sit up and pay attention.
The old boys club knew what they were doing was wrong. They just didn’t care.
This time around? These men believe pushing women down is self-defense. They’ve been trained that they’re the victims.
When you believe you’re the victim, everything you do feels righteous.
The boys being radicalized today are the men running companies in 15 years. Even if every influencer disappeared tomorrow, the programming is already installed in millions of minds.
That's one thing that drove me to step up and face this reality, head on. For every woman who fought like hell the first time around. Especially for every young woman who's about to.
We are not going back. Not even. And we’re sure as hell not accepting this. Not if I have any say about it.
YOUR TURN
Where are you seeing it? Whether it’s the guy on your team. The shift in their attitudes. The outright insults that no one seems to mind. The more subtle ways they diss you.
I want to know it all.
Because the way we win the game is by recognizing it for what it is, then using our kickass skills to become Masters of the Game.