Has feminism gone too far?

Spoiler alert: the call is coming from inside the patriarchy

I haven’t stopped thinking about a story I read earlier this week: four teenage boys, some only 14 and 15 years old, were charged over the six-hour gang rape of a young girl in Sydney.¹

The details were horrific.

A boy forced his way into a stranger’s car, assaulted her while FaceTiming his friends, then manipulated her into driving to a park, where three more boys were waiting.

Six hours. Six fucking hours of torture, as they drove around in her car, taking turns to violate her.

Stories like this show up in my newsfeed constantly. They happen constantly. Not just in Australia, but all over the world.

The anger I feel when reading these accounts of abuse is immediate and consuming.

“Fuck men,” I think. “I hate them all.”

Do I really mean that? No, of course not.

I recognise this response isn't entirely rational. But in these moments of rage, I don't want to hear about good guys vs bad guys. I don’t care about “not all men” excuses. I don’t have the capacity for nuance.

In these moments, it feels like all men are dangerous.

I know this rage is shared by women everywhere.

Which is why it's so surreal to me that while women are being abused and murdered daily, the trending question is whether feminism has gone too far.

Still, I want to understand why.

Why are so many people – especially young men – feeling disillusioned with feminism? And how does anti-men rhetoric feed into that perception?

The pipeline from hurt to hate

60% of Gen Z men believe feminism discriminates against men.² That stat is confronting – but in ways, I kinda understand it.

If you're a man trying to do the right thing, and all you're seeing online is "men are trash," and TikToks mocking men as useless or inherently violent, it makes sense that you’d feel attacked. Defensive. Misunderstood.

And when a man feels alienated by feminism, he often looks elsewhere for belonging. The internet, as it turns out, is devastatingly good at giving him what he’s looking for.

Enter the Manosphere: a network of online spaces filled with men’s rights activists, alpha male influencers, and pseudo-intellectuals³.

It starts subtly – a video about how to “become a high-value man.” Motivational content. Productivity tips. Gym routines. Then, the algorithm escalates.

Here's how the radicalisation pipeline works:

• First, he finds "men's rights" content claiming that feminism is just misandry in disguise (aka man-hating).

• Then, algorithms serve him videos about how women are biologically inferior.

• Soon enough, he's watching Andrew Tate explain how female independence is destroying civilisation, how rape accusations are mostly fake, and how women are property.

This isn't some gradual shift. It’s a weaponised pipeline – one designed to transform male insecurity into resentment, resentment into misogyny.

And it's working.

The boys who assaulted that girl in Sydney didn't get there by accident. They were shaped by a culture that systematically dehumanises women. A culture that frames female pain as collateral damage in the pursuit of male dominance.

Every time we treat male alienation as separate from male violence, we miss the fucking point. They are not separate.

Hurt men don’t just hurt themselves. They hurt us.

The uncomfortable truth

When men complain that feminism has gone too far, I think what they often mean is: "I don’t know where I fit in anymore." And that’s genuinely valid.

The traditional model of masculinity – protector, provider, stoic leader – is falling apart. But we haven’t yet replaced it with something better. That vacuum, then, gets filled with fear, resentment, and in the worst cases, rage.

And when we respond to that fear with sarcasm or ridicule, we only deepen the divide. We push men further toward the extremes we’re trying so hard to pull them away from.

My problem with this is: we've created a culture where male emotional discomfort receives the same urgent attention as female physical safety.

I understand that many men feel lost. I understand that economic changes have disrupted familiar roles and created real identity crises. I understand that "men are trash" rhetoric can feel cruel and exclusionary.

But I also understand that I check my car's backseat every time I get in. I walk with keys between my fingers. I keep my headphones in without music at night, and look over my shoulder constantly. I fake phone calls to seem less alone. I share my live location and rehearse escape plans with a friend before a first date – just in case.

One woman is killed every ten minutes by an intimate partner or family member.⁴

So when we’re told to tone down our anger, to be gentler with our words so as not to upset men – that’s when something fundamental in this conversation starts to feel broken.

The crossroads

No, feminism hasn't gone too far. But we are at a crossroads.

We can keep having the same circular debates about tone and rhetoric while women keep dying. We can keep treating male alienation and female survival as competing priorities.

Or we can start having honest conversations about what it actually takes to create a world where everyone is safe. We can finally start addressing the deeper wound at the heart of all this: a broken model of masculinity that leaves everyone harmed.

Right now, both extremes – “men are trash” and “women should go back to the kitchen” – are simply two sides of the same violent coin. They’re just mirroring each other’s rage. And as long as we’re throwing stones across the gender divide, nothing will change.

Those boys who spent six hours torturing that girl weren't born monsters. They were raised in a culture that taught them women are objects to be used. And if that culture was built, it can also be dismantled.

We need partnership

If we want this movement to succeed, we need to build bridges.

We need to call men into the conversation, not just call them out. We need to amplify the voices of men who are already doing the work – who are challenging toxic masculinity, showing emotional vulnerability, supporting equality – and treat them as the allies they are.

I've seen what this looks like in practice: male friends calling out rape jokes in group chats. Fathers having difficult conversations with their sons about consent. Men building communities around emotional intelligence and healthy masculinity.

Feminism can’t do this work alone. Men need to step up. Not as a favour to women, but as an act of responsibility.

The epidemic of violence against women? That's fundamentally a man's issue to solve. Patriarchy? That's not just a woman's burden to dismantle.

When men do this work, that's when real collaboration becomes possible. They must meet us at the table and help imagine a version of masculinity that is built on mutual respect and shared humanity. Not because women are asking nicely, but because it's the only way forward.

So, let’s change the question

The question isn't whether feminism has gone too far. The question is:
Are we ready to go far enough to actually solve this problem, together?

Six hours of torture filmed for entertainment isn't just a story about four boys in Sydney. It's a mirror reflecting back a culture that's failed all of us.

And if we want that to change, it's going to take all of us to fix it.

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-18/nsw-four-charged-six-hour-sexual-assault-teenage-girl-liverpool/105429832

2. https://www.ipsos.com/en/millennials-and-gen-z-less-favour-gender-equality-older-generations

3. https://humanrights.ca/story/online-misogyny-manosphere

4. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2024/11/one-woman-or-girl-is-killed-every-10-minutes-by-their-intimate-partner-or-family-member