Response to an article by an Anonymous 15-year-old girl

Our Executive Director, Corey Idleburg, wrote a response to an article in The Guardian. Read his response below.

I want to speak directly to the 15-year-old who wrote this piece: I believe you. Every word.

I'm a man, and reading your account made me sit with a hard truth; men built the world you're describing. Social media didn't invent misogyny; it just gave it a megaphone and an algorithm. The degradation you see daily in your feed existed in whispers, jokes, and locker rooms long before TikTok. We just made it louder.

Here's what I want to ask every boy reading this: Would you say those things to your mother? Would you type them in front of your grandmother? The same women who held you when you were scared, who celebrated your small victories, who showed you what strength looks like,  would you call them what you call girls online? You wouldn't. So why do you treat someone else's daughter any differently?

And let's be honest about what's really happening. The boys calling girls "sub5" and "females" aren't operating from strength. They hate themselves more than they could ever hate the girls they're targeting, and that self-loathing is easier to aim at someone else than to face. That doesn't excuse a single word of it. But it tells us where the work needs to happen.

Men, we must own this. We built the culture these boys are inheriting. We can't call the women in our lives queens while staying silent when boys degrade girls online. Either we step up and show young men what real strength looks like, vulnerability, respect, accountability, or we step off and admit we're part of the problem.

To the young woman who wrote this: you deserve a world where being a girl isn't something you're taught to hate. We owe you that.