Apr 21 2026.
views 27By Rihaab Mowlana
Last week, I posted a short, frustrated note on my personal social media account. I didn't expect much. We have been screaming into the digital void for years, and usually, the void just stares back. But as the comments and direct messages began to roll in, and as I watched the news cycle break open the global rot of internet-enabled sexual violence, I realized we are no longer just talking about bad apples. We are talking about an orchard that has been meticulously tended to by the silence of good men.
The world was first forced to look at this in 2024 during the trial of Dominique Pelicot in France. We watched in horror as a 71-year-old man admitted to drugging his wife, Gisèle, into a state of comatose sleep so that strangers—recruited from a chatroom titled “Without Her Knowledge”—could rape her. She was violated multiple times by over 50 different men. But while the website he used was shut down, the behavior did not disappear. It merely migrated.
When we first heard about Dominique Pelicot, we wanted to believe he was an anomaly; a monster from a different era. But the most haunting question hanging over the trial isn't just how he did it, but who he recruited to help him. When the 50 co-defendants stood in that French courtroom, the world looked for monsters. Instead, we saw a local journalist, a forklift driver, an electrician, and a nurse. Most were fathers; many were married.
Here is the hard truth women have to face: How do we know who the good man is? The answer is that we don’t. We can’t.
Hidden in the shadows of platforms like Telegram, a "sleep" community has turned sexual assault into a technical hobby. These men don’t just share fantasies; they trade a protocol. They discuss sedative dosages with clinical precision. They film eye-check videos (lifting the eyelids of unconscious women to show they are sedated) for an audience of thousands. Some even run businesses shipping sleeping liquids globally, promising buyers that their wives "won’t feel or remember a thing."
The men sharing these protocols weren't using anonymous avatars of villains. They were using photos of their kids, their pets, and their vacations. They looked exactly like the men we feel safe with - the men we let into our homes, the colleagues we work with, and the friends we trust with our drinks. This camouflage is what makes the "good man" defense so dangerous. When a man’s only criteria for being good is that he hasn't been caught yet, the bar is on the floor.
These are not outcasts living in caves. They are the professionals who find a digital dark room where they can mentor each other on the mechanics of violation. And they feel safe doing it because they know their social circles will never look closely enough to see what they are.
This isn’t just a Western problem. In March 2026, Nigerian police had to arrest 15 men after viral videos from the Alue-Do fertility festival showed groups of young men chasing, stripping, and assaulting women in public spaces while others filmed. More recently, an Indonesian university had to suspend a group of law students for a lewd chat that revealed a terrifyingly casual attitude toward gender-based violence among educated young men.
To the men reading this: being a good guy is not a passive state. You think you are innocent because you aren't the one leaning in, making the comment, or holding the camera. But while you are busy not being the villain, you are the audience.
You’ve been there when the group chat turned from banter into a hunt. You’ve seen your friend refuse to take "no" for an answer at the bar, while the woman across from him slowly stopped smiling. You’ve watched a girl’s face go pale as a hand stayed on her waist a second too long, and you looked at your drink instead of her eyes. You didn’t want to be the buzzkill who called him out. You didn’t want to ruin a Saturday night over a misunderstanding.
In that moment of silence, you made a calculated trade. You watched a woman trade her physical and emotional safety for your social comfort. And you let her. In that moment, you chose yourself. You chose the ease of your friendship over the humanity of the woman standing three feet away.
When women talk about the fear of men, the immediate response from many is defensive: "Not all men." But "not all men" is a statistical shield used to avoid a hard truth.
The math of our reality is that men are the greatest living threat to women and children. That isn't an inflammatory opinion; it is the data of our hospitals, our police stations, and our morgues.
But here is the flip side of that dark coin: The cure is the cause. Because men are the primary perpetrators, men are also the only ones who can truly dismantle this culture. We don’t need your awareness. We’ve been aware since we were five years old, taught to hold our keys between our knuckles. We don’t need you to feel bad for us. We need you to be willing to lose a friend.
The predators among us operate under the assumption that they are in good company. They believe that even if their friends don’t participate, those friends will ultimately look the other way to keep the peace. When you stay silent, you are the safety net that allows them to fall back into polite society without consequence.
For decades, the standard plea to men has been: "Think of your mother. Think of your daughter." It is meant to evoke empathy, but it actually reveals a deep-seated rot.
If you need a DNA test or a marriage certificate to justify a woman’s right to safety, you don't actually see us as people. You see us as extensions of you. When you say you care because of your sister, you aren't disgusted by the harm; you’re just worried about the property damage to your own life. A woman shouldn't have to belong to a man for her pain to matter. Her humanity should be enough.
In the Pelicot case, the most chilling detail wasn't just the husband's betrayal; it was the 50-plus ordinary men who walked into that house. They saw a woman who was clearly unconscious, and they proceeded anyway because they felt entitled to. They felt safe in their depravity because they knew the world’s good men rarely break the code of silence.
The news emerging from around the globe is a mirror being held up to the world, and the reflection is ugly. It shows us that the "sanctity of the home" or the "tradition of a festival" is often a shroud used to hide calculated violence.
In Sri Lanka, we often talk about family values and the protection of women. But protection is not a suit of armor you put on us; it is a standard you hold your peers to. It is the courage to walk into a room, pull a predator out, and say: "Not in my company."
We are tired of being the ones who have to carry the burden of safety. We are tired of the good guys who watch the world burn for everyone else while they stand guard over what’s theirs.
The time for passive goodness is over. If you aren't willing to ruin the vibe, if you aren't willing to break a friendship, and if you aren't willing to speak when it’s uncomfortable, then you are part of the architecture that allows this global network of violence to exist.
Stop telling us you aren't part of the problem. Start proving it.
0 Comments