Her self-confidence and self-esteem can be so damaged as to bring about significant changes in the way she feels about herself and how she relates to the rest of the world. They saw themselves as sacrificial lambs, and their mothers as passive, weak, and unwilling to take a stand against the abuser on their children's behalf. It will explore the ways in which these groups expand, a vast spiderweb of sites, blogs, forums, chatrooms, groups and social media accounts, and reveal just how easily boys can blunder across the edges of this web and find themselves stuck, then gently rolled closer and closer to its centre with smooth efficiency. The mother becomes too powerful, and he views his partner in the exact same way: an overly powerful figure that can frustrate him, command him, make him feel weak, or hurt him.

The outbursts are sporadic until the relationships enters a milestone, such as committment, moving in, or marriage. Imagine a world in which such hatred blends seamlessly with racist rage: ‘whores’ blamed for contaminating superior bloodlines; invading ‘savages’, conjured from hate-fuelled imaginations, framed as plunderers of the dehumanised commodity of fragile, white women.Financial control: there are two types of misogynists, the “good provider”, and the one who’s always broke. They are right, but there are definitely too many men, and their numbers don’t seem to be decreasing. And this stuff filters upwards through friendly media and middlemen such as far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, so that men at the top can speak in code to their supporters. For this brilliantly fierce and eye-opening book, Bates has descended into the vast underworld sewage system of online misogyny, and brought back a persuasive and alarming thesis. She has also served widely as a group therapist, instructor, and consultant in many southern California medical and psychiatric facilities, and she formed the first private sexual abuse treatment center in California.

Alana would later tell a Guardian journalist: ‘It feels like being the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war.He quickly became a member of more and more forums, joining Facebook groups and private chatrooms, watching video after video on YouTube, and learning more and more.