Not All, But Men

I've been trying to avoid social media recently. I try not to open any apps as much as I can. Maybe that's why this horrendous news didn’t find me at its early stage. But I still remember the moment I first read about it.

Scrolling through my feed for strictly work purpose, the headline hit me like a gut punch: A Rape Academy Had 62 Million Visits in February 2026 Alone.

Not some shadowed corner of the dark web, but right there on mainstream user generated porn sites and Telegram groups where men were giving tips on how to drug and then rape their own wives. Many made their own videos and posted them. And 62 million visits were generated.

My stomach churned and I was about to start a ragebait with my girlfriends when something settled in me. I was expecting a lot of noise about this abomination, but what I received through the internet was denial.

Yes, there are articles and social media contents where people are addressing this issue with the seriousness it deserves but the comments are not some waves of shared anger, but nitpicking: Not that 62 million men actually visited the site, it's 62 million visits.

As if it will make me feel any better. As if pointing out that not all men in this world visited that particular website could somehow soften the reality of tens of millions of deliberate clicks into videos and chats where men are giving tips on slipping drugs into drinks, filming the assaults, trading the videos, and even livestreaming the horror for cryptocurrency as tips from strangers.

These aren't just slip-ups or curiosities that went wrong. They're choices, repeated intentionally. That makes me think, how many times does someone have to return before it stops being "just a visit"?

This instinct to ignore it all, to downplay the actions feel so familiar, doesn't it? It's the same reflex that kicked in after you hear a rape incident in your country, the same denial you feel inside when someone points out a man from your circle for domestic violance. The same happened when CNN's months-long undercover investigation blew the lid off these forums and Telegram groups on March 26, even leading to a Polish man's arrest for drugging and filming an unconscious victim.

We focus on the unimportant fact instead of the monstrosity. We argue numbers to make it feel distant, more manageable, so that we don’t look at the man sitting next to us at our dinner table or sharing our bed with a suspicious mind.

But for me, and I suspect for so many women I know, it's not about the numbers anymore. It's personal.

Let me be honest, reading those details shifted something in me. The alarming part is, these are happening by the trusted men in relationships. Women are taught to be careful around strangers. Don't go out alone at night, stay away from unknown men, don't trust anyone, don't drink anything from a stranger.

But these are the relations we are supposed to trust.These aren't tales of a stranger in alleys. They are husbands drugging wives, boyfriends humiliating girlfriends, then boasting online about the "success" and inviting others to tame their women. The footage circulates like trophies. Suddenly, every quiet night feels loaded. Are we really safe in a sacred relationship? Can I trust my man fully? The assumption of safety in my own home, with the man I want to trust the most; it's rectified now, mixed with a distrust I didn't ask for.

I always find myself scanning faces differently, wondering if men around me look at me with any different intentions. If my actions or expressions are giving any mixed signals to anyone which they can use against me. I trained myself to wear a stone face to save myself from these humiliations.

But what am I going to do now? Now I won't be able to trust the man beside me who was supposed to make sure of my safety. Who knows who else has lingered in those digital shadows? I’m sure women around me feel the same, second-guessing invitations, locking doors a little tighter, pulling back from intimacy not out of paranoia, but out of this new, unwelcome awareness.

But how will they protect themselves behind that closed door? In a society where marital rape doesn't get acknowledge, judges refuse divorce “just because of some beating,” how are we going to sleep at night now?

And what hurts more than the content itself is the silence that follows. If you say, it's not happening with you, I don't even want to acknowledge you as a human being anymore. After all these proofs, if someone still sticks to the regular dialogue like “not all men,” then they are part of the problem.

The men who say, "Not all of us," and leave it there, as if stating the obvious eliminates the need to act. Sure, maybe it's not you, maybe it's not even from your acquaintance but these are men. And the number that you are so reluctant about, even a fraction of it should be alarming enough to create awareness. It shouldn't have been even 62 men.

Yes, not all the men on the Earth, but men only. Have you ever heard of women objectifying men, or drugging men, or gang-raping men? Have you heard of women following a man at night to kidnap and then discarding the body after finishing the heinous crime? No. If women had opened a site to even ragebait about men, there would have been a war cry against women already.

But no one will talk about how platforms like these sites still get to stay on the internet despite years of lawsuits and criticism, why lawmakers in the UK are only now scrambling through post-CNN reports. This silence and ignorance isn't neutral anymore. It becomes a shield for those who monetize the women's body, trampling the concept of consent. Sandrine Josso the French lawmaker who survived her own drugging nightmare, called it what it is, a rape academy. Not just a fringe fantasy, but an organized institution.

If this 62 million visits still feels like a mere number to you, let me share some data. The most used websites like Gmail, Grammarly, Dominos, chatgpt, Spotify, Sony couldn't beat this number in a month. I saw a post on Instagram where the number of visits of all the most used websites were charted to show the difference. I wish I had saved the post but I remember the number of visits to Gmail in a month, and it was 52 million. Think about it, let it settle down, then try to understand what it actually means.

I've seen the backlash too, the quick pivot to accusing women of "man-hating" or hysteria. But that's not it. This isn't hatred; it's exhaustion.

We are exhausted by explaining why sharing assault videos isn't "just porn." Why teaching violation isn't "edgy humor." Why demanding cultural change isn't an attack on all men.

We're not rejecting individuals. We're rejecting the entitlement that presents dominance as desire, that turns women's bodies into content. We just want to be heard, believed, and yes, protected, not only by laws that lag behind but by a shift in the air we all breathe.

But the hate men feel towards women is constructed. This hate is due to the existence of fierce womanhood. When a woman says she hates man, she doesn't want to torture some man to feel good. She doesn't demand to rule the men or make them obey. She wants to co-exist with the opposite gender with the same dignity and rights.

Unfortunately, I can't vouch the same for the men in this wretched world now. When men hate women, they find satisfaction by degrading the woman. They blame them, hurt them, which eventually left a humongous number of footprints on the internet.

And you asked why I would choose the bear instead of a man. Ask me again, please.

I know petitions are circulating now to remove these sites from search engines. Outrage is building, slowly. But the real shift needs to start within us, in these awkward conversations. Stop correcting the numbers, stop making excuses and start confronting what actually happened.

For me, that means refusing the comfort of denial. It means holding space for the fear without dismissing it. Because until the horror brings out accountability over deflection, until silence breaks into questions, this won't just threaten women. It will keep eroding the world we share, making it smaller and far less safe for everyone.

Shanim Tasnim is a member of the Editorial staff of the weekly Counterpoint.