Men are “protectors”. Or so we’re told. In theory, we assume this means they protect those most vulnerable. But in practice what we see is that they protect the most powerful. In a patriarchy men are assigned the role of protector- but who they protect isn’t women, it’s other men.
The father that tells his daughter she can’t date yet, the brother that tells his sister she can’t have guy friends, the husband that tells his wife to put on a longer skirt. Those men, whether they realize it or not, do not enact those “unspoken rules” curtailing women’s freedom to protect women. Although that’s what they tell us they’re doing- “protecting”- but what they’re doing is policing women to protect men, because they view women as the danger to men not vice versa. That is why women are the ones who are labelled as temptresses, told they’re “asking for it”, and victim blamed for when men sexually assault them. Society believes it’s our fault because they see women as the danger by default. It is by design that our foremother, Eve, is portrayed as the source of the demise of humankind.
It is an obvious realization but one rarely acknowledged:
Men are protectors, sure, but they’re protectors of patriarchy (and of other men) not of women. Can’t you see how they’re quick to say “not all men” when we talk about men’s violence? Can’t you see how they’re suddenly silent when another man or men make headlines for violating women? As women we often ask; why are men silent, where are our alleged protectors?
We should no longer be sad, disappointed, or shocked when we discover that our alleged protectors are our perpetrators. Those emotions make us “freeze”. For the sake of our safety and sanity, it shouldn’t be “breaking news” anymore when a husband is outed as harming his wife. This is a fact: 1 in 3 women are violated mostly by their intimate partners. The faster we grasp it, the faster we move on to dismantling the system that survives on us being in a “freeze” response instead of a fight response.
Something to think about: The chances of being attacked by a bear are 1 in 2.1 million. The chances of being a woman assaulted by her husband is 1 in 3. Here’s the difference; the bear protects itself from a perceived predator. The husband hunts his wife like prey. In other words, in the “man vs. bear” scenario, the bear is the one acting in defense- making the “husband” the only true predator in the story.
The Paradox of the Protector/ Perpetrator
In March 2026, CNN reported an investigation that uncovered what has been named “a global rape academy”. Husbands exchanging tips on how to drug and then rape their unconscious wives, filming them, and selling the “movies” to other fellow men. According to the CNN report, husbands perform an “eye check” (lifting the eyelids of the partners they successfully sedated) to prove they are unconscious before raping them. It is a literal transformation of a human into an inanimate (unconscious) object. This content posted on “adult sex sites” isn’t about “sex”; it is about the objectification of women and the sexualization of rape.
This investigation is the real-life rendition of the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale (read: nightmare). From Sleeping Beauty to Snow White- we were taught that women being “claimed” while unconscious is romantic. Such fairy tales are blueprints for sexual violence. The CNN report shows how the horrific “Sleeping Beauty” script is being enacted in real life by “prince charming” (read: perpetrator) to an audience of men who see him as the “hero” of the story. It’s not a symptom of a broken system; it’s exactly how patriarchy is supposed to work. We don’t “break the spell” of this fairy tale by waking up wives with a nonconsensual act that leads to a “nightmare”; we break it by waking up from the “dream” that husbands are the protectors, heroes, saviours- when they’re violent predators.
The husband is a perpetrator by design; he has wrongly been revamped and sold to us as a protector through fairy tales. Let’s peddle back into history to explain this. Historically, marriage originated as a “property transfer” where women (as property along with other assets) are transferred from one man (father) to another (husband). Today we’re taught to think of marriage through the lens of love and partnership, but its roots as a “business deal” still haunt our collective.
Many modern marriage practices dubbed as “traditional” or “religious” originate from the era of marriage as a property transfer. Examples: potential groom asking the father’s permission to marry his daughter (property), father walking daughter down the aisle to “transfer” her to another man (husband), changing from maiden name (i.e. father’s name) to taking husband’s last name (transfer of ownership), the bride price or dowry (both are different financial aspects of the business deal), the expectation of wife (as man’s personal “bought” worker) to perform unpaid labour in the home, the treatment of wives bodies as property that belong to husbands thus exempting marital rape (marital rape wasn’t a crime in all 50 U.S. states until 1993 and is still not a crime in several countries today), religions teaching women that sex is a “wifely duty” thus effectively erasing the concept of lack of consent in marriage. I could go on. And don’t even get me started on forced arranged marriage and child bride marriage- my rage at those practices is indistinguishable from my blood; I am born from generations of women who lived and died as property of those practices.
Looking back at our history: the husband wasn’t originally a woman’s partner, he was her owner. In English common law (which influenced much of the world), the doctrine of coverture meant that upon marriage, a woman’s legal identity (who used to belong to her father) was now “covered” by her husband. In this system, the husband was seen as the “protector” only because he was the owner. You “protect” your property from other people, but you have the right to do whatever you want with it yourself, even “rape it” (this is the reason why marital rape wasn’t recognized). And that is how the husband also becomes the wife’s perpetrator by design.
In fact, historically, rape was considered a “property crime” against a woman’s father or husband (not against the woman herself) because women were seen as property of male relatives. So, if a woman was raped by a stranger it was viewed as a damage to her father/ husband’s honour and estate- and the penalties for rape in the form of fines were paid to the woman’s father/ husband. To date, some countries have “marry your rapist” laws where victims are seen as damaged property no longer wanted by male relatives thus given as wives to their rapists to punish said rapists!
Moreover, historically, a rape victim also had to prove she was not an accomplice with the rapist in facilitating the “theft” or “trespass” of herself as property i.e. placing the burden on women to prove non-consent to rape (a precedent which persists today). To prove it was non-consensual, the victim had to report immediately and provide evidence of injuries and physical resistance requiring her to have “cried out” for help. This established the “ideal victim” stereotype. To date, “honour killings” remain a problem worldwide- where if a woman is suspected to have had consensual sex outside of marriage, her male relatives have a right to kill her to protect their “honour”. Again, our protectors are our perpetrators by design. You can see how, in this legal context, it becomes impossible to view the father/ husband as a rapist of his own daughter/ wife. He can be her perpetrator, but the law still sees him as her protector. Imagine the amount of gaslighting our foremothers were put through. Told your husband is your protector- but he has the right to rape you and kill you.
Here’s the thing: you cannot have a “global rape academy” without this historical foundation that allows husbands to violate their wives. The website that platforms the rape academy claims they only host “legal” content and markets itself as a “moral-free file host” that only removes content if it is proven illegal. Like historical doctrines, this puts the burden on the victim reporting to prove the video depicts a real crime. This is an impossible bar to meet considering those women don’t even know their husbands are drugging them with odorless/ tasteless sedatives sneaked in their tea before raping and filming them. The men who watch or take part in a man’s rape of his wife via those platforms also often place the burden on sedated wives by claiming they thought “this was a consensual fantasy”. This was actually the excuse used by some of Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists.
Beyond this particular platform in the CNN investigation, this level of victim blaming in “revenge porn” is widespread and forces women to have to battle to get porn websites to remove content of them that their intimate partners have uploaded without their consent. Even when images are taken down, they often resurface. In 2024, reports of previously removed images circulating again rose by 260%.
Even though the 19th century “Married Women’s Property Acts” marked the start of changing many of the laws about marriage as property transfer and marital rape; the collective subconscious that views women as properties of men hasn’t changed. We can literally hear that mindset through the loud culture of men’s silence when it comes to men’s violence against women.
The silence of men is not merely an absence of action; it is the modern echo of the ancient legal doctrines. By remaining silent witnesses to “rape academies”, men uphold an unspoken pact: that a man’s ‘private’ use of his wife is a boundary no other man should cross, even to prevent a crime. To speak out would be to admit that women are not private property, but autonomous beings- a realization that would dismantle the very structure of dominance that patriarchy is built upon.
Men are protectors…of patriarchy and other men.
The most powerful way in which men protect other men is silence. They do nothing. They ignore locker room talk, they pretend they don’t know their best buddy is a rapist, they watch women struggle every day fighting men’s violence and their first thought is “that’s a women’s issue, not mine, not me, not all men”. They see a report of a global rape academy with 62 million visits and they say, “it’s visits, not men”.
What most men don’t realize is that they ALL belong to a system designed to privilege them BY harming women. ALL men, by birth. Whether they’re good guys, bad guys, allies, villains- it doesn’t matter- patriarchy gives them ALL privileges by harming women. The silence of the good guys doesn’t revoke their membership to patriarchy; it reaffirms it. Silence about patriarchy’s harm maintains all men’s access to privileges.
Men’s roles as “protectors of other men” is a practice that is taught from a young age. Through unspoken rules like the bro code, not being a “cock-blocker”, and toxic masculinity which views the passive acceptance of aggression as a form of manhood and dominance. Men are taught to care more about the approval of other men than the safety of women. Men are taught to want to be “picked” by other men more than they want to not be pricks to women (“bros before hoes”). And it makes sense. In a patriarchy, everybody (including men themselves) is trained to seek the love and adoration and validation of men above any other gender.
Men also protect other men not necessarily out of love for the “brotherhood”, but also out of fear. Some studies show that men’s brains are highly sensitive to threats from other men. Neuroimaging suggests that men perceive a physically strong male expressing threat as a significant risk, which can trigger a “freeze” response rather than an intervention. Indeed, men’s violence is often used not just to dominate and violate women, but to also ensure that men maintain patriarchal hierarchies. It’s a form of “surveillance” that men enact on one another to protect the patriarchy. Men who are seen as “alpha” or aggressive often set the tone for the group. Others may stay silent or even laugh at a sexist joke not because they agree, but because they fear that if they don’t, that same aggression will be turned on them. An example in recent news; Dirk Peglow (a German Chief of police) suggested in an interview that women should avoid getting in relationships with men if they want to stay safe. Outraged men sent him and the journalist death threats, which made him relativize his statement saying, “my statement was an exaggeration not meant to be taken literally”.
Men are afraid of other men. They are afraid that the violence men inflict on women will turn onto them if they speak against it. They are afraid of being beaten up by other men, abused, raped, killed by other men. Indeed, men are more likely to be raped by other men, they are more likely to be killed by other men. And paradoxically, this should be the reason men call out men’s violence; they truly understand it. However, when men do bring up the violence they experience in patriarchy, they frame it as a battle to silence feminism. They’ll say stuff like “Men are the real victims! Men get raped too, men are hurt, men have high suicide rates, men are forced to go to war!” All of those issues are valid- but they aren’t caused by feminism, they’re caused by patriarchy, and feminism is the only hope we have to tackle those problems. By liberating women from the grasp of toxic masculinity, we liberate everybody else. There is a price men pay for their privilege in patriarchy- this is it. And if men choose to stay in “fear” of calling this out (or worse, present it as if it’s the reason why we don’t need feminism)- I’m not sorry to say they will continue paying the price with their silence. Women, also, live in fear of men’s violence every day. That fear is the reason we speak.
According to the CNN investigation, the website which hosts the global rape academy had 62 million visits in February alone. The striking fact about that is that it ultimately took a team of women to finally treat this as a serious crime story rather than just “dark internet culture”. It took women journalists (Saskya Vandoorne, Kara Fox, Niamh Kennedy, Eleanor Stubbs), women journalist investigators (Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh) to go undercover to do the initial digging, and the bravery of survivors like Gisèle Pelicot to demand that the world actually look at what was happening. That sentiment is at the heart of why this specific investigation feels so heavy. When you look at the facts of the CNN report, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion: men were the audience (the “rape academy” was built by men, for men), men were the perpetrators (men were raping their wives and sharing “tips” with other men on how to hurt women), men were the silent bystanders (for years, the silence from the men who saw this content allowed it to grow into a global network).
Every time men stay silent in the face of other men’s sexism, misogyny, violence against women- what they’re actually saying is: I’m glad this isn’t directed at me even if it means women have to take it to protect me. Every time a man is silent against men’s violence- he is paying patriarchy to direct its rage at women not him. Effectively, women are the human shields that men use to protect themselves from other men. We see this in its most extreme forms in instances of war– where men literally are willing to leave women to die, sacrificing them to defend whatever is the greater patriarchal political purpose they’re fighting for.
From #MeToo to Women, Life, Freedom; women across the world are speaking against men’s violence, they’re loud and they’re creating global movements. But how long will men hide behind women’s movements to resolve men’s violence? When will men have the “ovaries” to speak out as loudly as women do?
When will men “woman up”?
And by “woman up” I mean the opposite of “man up”. To “man up” means being part of the “man box” that perpetrates harmful toxic masculinity. To “woman up” is to fearlessly step outside that box.
I can attest that more and more men are waking up and speaking out. But still not enough men. I say not enough because men’s violence against women still persists which means not enough men are calling it out. And men know their voices, in a patriarchy, travel faster than women’s- if only they were brave enough to use that privilege for a greater good. Historically, male allyship played a critical role in women’s movements Because men held (and continue to hold) the majority of positions in legislative and institutional power, their active support often provided the final leverage needed to pass laws for suffrage, work, and education. Today, it can also help dismantle men’s violence.
Unfortunately, men who are outspoken against men’s violence and are pro-feminism have also, time and time again, used their voices to paradoxically betray women’s movements. We need men to speak out, but we also need men to realize why women are currently skeptical of men speaking out. We have been let down by men “performing allyship” for so long that skepticism is logical. I personally have a very high threshold for male allies and I’m not sorry. From my own experience, the number of men who use “feminism” as a guise for their unchecked misogyny- whether for clout, profit, or sexual access- is astounding. I have personally been a victim of a man who stole my feminist content and built a platform for fame (see the 3 part full story on my Instagram profile here, and here, and here).
When I express that I have a high threshold for male allies, I’m sometimes met with pushback. It goes something along the lines of: At least they’re speaking! You’re alienating allies! They’re saying something, it’s better than nothing! They’re learning they’ll get it right eventually. When that man stole years of my labour and published it under his name, I’ve heard from some people telling me “well at least he’s spreading the word about feminism”. But here’s the thing; as women the patriarchy conditions us to accept men’s weaponized incompetence and be glad about bare minimum. This is the same as the pattern of thought that says: “your husband cooks and cleans? OMG you’re so lucky”. But bare minimum doesn’t make us lucky. Bare minimum is where the bar begins, not ends.
And so- do you really think that men who use feminism as a performance for clout, profit or sexual access- really don’t know what they’re doing?! You’re happy they’re “at least speaking”? You’re willing to indulge it until they learn to do better?! Here’s the breaking news: they aren’t learning shit. They’re operating under a form of patriarchy where they exploit women’s pain for their gain and call it “allyship”. They are not serving feminism; they are using feminism to serve themselves. And that is why we must not tolerate this form of allyship in any form. This performative allyship isn’t helping us; it is another form of how “men stay silent” to the systems of harm by wearing the masks of “good guys”, “protectors”, “allies”- yet it’s only a disguise for being perpetrators, liars, and thieves.
If you’re a man using social media or any public platform to call out misogyny- we need to know first and foremost; Who are the women you learned all this from? Give us names, tags, book titles, any form of reference. Give women credit so that women can give you credibility as an ally. Because let’s face it, it’s always another woman that you learned from. And if you’re telling us that you just woke up one day and realized the harms of misogyny all by yourself without relying on women’s experiences- then you’re also telling us you’re centering your own narrative over the actual experiences of women. You are erasing and overwriting women. Which makes you no different from other misogynists- you just happen to have a mic in your mouth and advocacy on your tongue.
Women do not have the privilege to give men the benefit of the doubt; the price we pay for that can cost us our lives. We do not trust men because men have proved to be untrustworthy. This is not a women’s issue; it is very much a male problem. To put it simply: I am not waiting for men to be ‘better’ allies. I am waiting for them to stop being the reason we need allies in the first place. That is the standard I set; what are you, as a man, doing to make sure I don’t need you as an ally anymore? Until you can answer that clearly, my guard stays up indefinitely. I am waiting for men to betray patriarchy; to use their privilege to be traitors to the very system that privileges them. That is allyship, and nothing less. Because “ally” has become just another word for “saviour”; and women don’t need to be saved, we need be safe. This isn’t cynical- it’s survival.
Men are largely silent about men’s violence, and women are fed up with men’s silence. Women are fed up with paying the price of men’s silence. Everybody benefits when male violence is dismantled- but only women are leading that fight. Experts argue that the key to men’s fight against men’s violence is to move toward collective action. It may be scary for one man to stand up and face an aggressor- but when a group of men together decide that certain behaviors are unacceptable, the “fear of the other man” starts to lose its power. And when men stand alongside the women already speaking and call out other men, imagine how much bigger that collective impact becomes. Will men “woman up”?
Women are ready for a world where men “woman up”; where men get out of their man caves and man boxes and stand up next to women. We’ve already paved the path of ending men’s violence with our sweat and blood and lives, and we’re walking it alone. We will keep walking it. But we’re still wondering where are the so-called good men, the partners, the protectors?
Because here’s the thing: A man’s silence about men’s violence against women shows that his actual partner is the violent man. A man’s silence about men’s violence against women shows that he’s actually a protector of the patriarchy. There is no excuse in the world that justifies gaslighting women into thinking that silent men are our partners and protectors.
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Farida D. is an Arab gender researcher and poet, studying Arab women’s everyday oppressions for over a decade. Check out her books!
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