Patsy Stevenson, an award-winning campaigner and equal rights activist, added:

“I think it’s a way for men, especially those on the far-right, to feel better about themselves. It’s all about power, isn’t it? It’s like, ‘Ha! You got owned’ as if it’s some game and not an actual political debate with context and nuance.”

It’s not just political debates which are being repackaged for entertainment in this disturbing trend. A video on X went viral this week from the Soccer Aid tournament, which showed male footballer Leonardo Bonucci slide-tackling ex-England women’s captain, Steph Houghton. The tackle itself is up for debate (some called it ‘brutal’, others said he fairly won the ball), but it was the hundreds of men who gathered in the comments to share their excitement at her pain which ignited my female rage.

One user posted the video alongside the text, “Bonucci absolutely crunching a woman in Soccer Aid is phenomenal viewing,” accompanied by laughing emojis. Users in the comments offered up their poison: “Equality they said”, “Women aren’t built to compete with men”, and “We wait for them at the ER” alongside more laughing yellow faces. The post currently stands at 28,000 likes.

I decided to do some digging on YouTube to see if similar videos of men being ‘owned’ or ‘humbled’ exist. Considering there’s so much conversation around the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ as of late, which has been blamed on a generation of modern women who reportedly hate all men, it seemed plausible to imagine counter videos made by young women may exist.

But instead of suggestions for men being ‘humbled’ or being served a reality check, typing “man gets” in the search bar resulted in suggestions for a man being eaten by a whale or an anaconda, or being hit by a football. Zero humble pies served here. Even when I searched the term “man gets humbled”, I was shown just eight results. Six of them featured videos of women with similar references to a “delusional woman” or “Karen” being humbled, owned or exposed. One video was a compilation of “Fake Tough Guys” being “put in their place” by other men, which mostly involved violence. Just one video claimed to show a man being humbled by an “older woman”, who told a young man she didn’t like his choice of trousers.

When a user on Reddit posted about the uptick in videos online of men ‘humbling’ women and questioning why no counteract videos of men being humbled by women existed, another user quoted Margaret Atwood:

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them”

Alongside a link the user posted for a subreddit titled “When women refuse” that featured horrific news stories of women who have been stalked, harassed or murdered by men.

So, why has watching women be ‘humbled’ or harmed become its own genre of entertainment for thousands of men?

Andrew ‘Bernie’ Bernard is a professional speaker and educator who facilitates workshops with men and boys about masculinity and male violence. When I asked for his thoughts on what was driving the desire for this content, he pointed to Cathy Newman’s infamous Channel 4 interview with Canadian psychologist and manosphere guru Jordan Peterson, which racked up 50 million views: