A “Rape Academy,” Deepfakes, and the Industry of Men Who Hate Women
From “sleep” content on Motherless to Telegram spyware markets to AI nudification in schools, misogyny is scaling through platforms and institutions.
In just a matter of weeks, we’ve seen the unveiling of a “Rape Academy,” a black market for hacking tools to use against wives and friends, the epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools, and now a conference to “save masculinity” in Mexico. What the hell is going on?
It is impossible to turn a deaf ear to the expanding epidemic of domestic violence and its “creative” new outlets anymore. It is not that gender based violence was ignorable before—quite the opposite. But international institutions built a framework, however imperfect, that offered a glimmer of hope that we were making progress.
Recent weeks suggest something else. Instead of healing gender based violence at its root, we have watched the genesis of a medusa of violence, a sort of thousand-headed monster that “adapts” to new circumstances with terrifying creativity.
A “Rape Academy”? What do you even do with that
The first and most shocking news story of recent weeks was a CNN investigation that uncovered how, in disturbing group chats, a significant number of men “encourage one another to drug and assault their wives,” and swap tips on getting away with it.
In a report from CNN’s As Equals series, the investigation places this phenomenon in context: men organizing privately through platforms to unleash the worst of their monstrosity. Since the case of Gisèle Pelicot, who her husband had drugged so he could charge men to rape her over 200 times, became public, the nature of these platforms has also come to light. Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle’s ex-husband, used a chatroom called “Without Her Knowledge.”
Today, one year after the trial, CNN found “a hidden, online world where the commodification and amplification of sexual violence against women is flourishing.”
One porn site, Motherless.com, hosts more than 20,000 videos of so-called “sleep” content uploaded by users, with hundreds of thousands of views.
The website, which had around 62 million visits in February alone and whose core audience is in the United States, describes itself as a “morally free file host where anything legal is hosted forever.”
The legality of some material posted is in serious doubt.
So-called “sleep” content is categorized using descriptive tags such as #passedout and #eyecheck.
In these videos, men film themselves lifting women’s closed eyelids to prove they are sleeping or sedated, and some “eyecheck” videos have over 50,000 views. Within Motherless’s “sleep” community, first reported on by German investigative journalists Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh, members exchange tips on how to drug their partners.
In the “Zzz” chat group, which a Motherless user had linked to and where CNN first met Piotr, members do the same. CNN does not disclose the names or dosages of the specific medications users claim to use.
A Motherless user claimed he ran a business selling and shipping “sleep liquids” to any address worldwide. The man, who said he was based in Ceuta, a small Spanish enclave on the North African coast, stated on his Telegram account that a bottle of the liquid, which he claimed was tasteless and odorless, would cost 150 euros (approximately $175). “Your wife won’t notice a thing and won’t remember a thing,” he said.
Misogyny as infrastructure
As if a “rape academy” wasn’t enough, Wired reported that men around the world are buying hacking tools to use against their wives and girlfriends. An investigation by a European nonprofit organization found that thousands of men are members of Telegram groups and channels that advertise and sell hacking and surveillance services that can be used to harass friends, wives, and girlfriends, as well as ex-partners.
The investigation found that these communities engage in “the widespread trade, sale, and promotion of a wide variety of abusive content,” including non-consensual intimate images of women, so-called “nudification” services, as well as image folders that, according to the sellers, include child sexual abuse material and depictions of incest and rape.
Over six weeks earlier this year, researchers from the algorithmic auditing group AI Forensics analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages sent through 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities that regularly post abusive content targeting women and girls, Wired reported.
More than 24,000 members of Telegram groups and channels contributed 82,723 images, videos, and audio files during the study, according to the analysis. Many posts target celebrities and influencers, but men in the groups also frequently victimize women they know.
Among the extensive types of abusive content and services observed by the AI Forensics researchers were frequent references to “accessing, publishing, and doxing women’s private information,” sharing their Instagram or TikTok content, as well as references to spying or hacking. “Victims are often named, tagged, and locatable via shared profile links,” the group’s report states.
One translated post on Telegram titled “Professional hacking on commission” claimed to be able to give customers “access to phone gallery and extraction of photos and videos,” as well as “anonymous social media hacking.” Another message says: “I hack and recover any type of social media service. I can spy on your partner’s account. Send me a private message.”
Across the dataset, there were more than 18,000 references to spying or spy-related content. One post reads: “Hi, do you want to spy on a girl’s gallery? We sell a bot that does it, DM for info.” Meanwhile, users were observed asking if people could find phone numbers linked to Instagram accounts and making other requests, such as “who exchanges spy photos and videos?”
Schools are the new front line of the deepfake nude crisis
And the bad news keep coming. Wired also reported how these trends are seeping into the lives of young people and becoming the new normal.
According to the outlet’s reporting, teenagers are saving images of girls they know from school on Instagram and Snapchat and using harmful “nude” apps to create fake photos or videos of them naked. These deepfakes can spread rapidly throughout the school, leaving victims feeling humiliated, violated, desperate, and afraid that the images will haunt them forever.
The deepfake crisis affecting schools began slowly a couple of years ago, Wired reported, but has since grown significantly as the technology used to create explicit images has become more accessible. Incidents of sexual abuse involving deepfakes have affected “some 90 schools worldwide and impacted more than 600 students,” according to an analysis of publicly reported incidents conducted by WIRED and Indicator, a publication focused on digital deception and misinformation.
The findings show that, since 2023, students, mostly middle schoolers, from at least 28 countries have been accused of using generative AI to send sexualized deepfakes to their classmates. The explicit images, which feature minors, are considered child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This analysis is believed to be the first to examine real-world cases of abuse involving AI-generated deepfakes occurring in schools around the world.
The true extent of sexual abuse involving deepfakes in schools is likely much greater. A survey by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, estimates that sexual deepfakes of 1.2 million children were created last year. One in five young people in Spain told Save the Children researchers that deepfake nudes of them had been created. The child protection organization Thorn found that one in eight teenagers knows someone who has been a victim of this. In 2024, 15% of students surveyed by the Center for Democracy and Technology reported being aware of AI-generated deepfakes related to their school.
“I think you’d be hard pressed to find a school that has not been affected by this,” says Lloyd Richardson, director of technology at the Canadian Center for Child Protection. “The most important thing is how we’re able to help the victims when this happens, because the effects of this can be massive.”
So, why is Mexico hosting a summit to “save masculinity”?
And massive they already seem. Because instead of causing an uproar and an urgent call to action, in places like Mexico, where gender based violence is endemic, the so-called “Fearless Masculinity” summit was held. And no, we are not making this up.
According to Forbes, the event took place last weekend at the Santuario de los Mártires in Guadalajara and featured misogynistic figures such as Jordan Peterson and Eduardo Verástegui. Worse still, given that Jalisco is one of the most violent places for women, the event received state funding.
In just the first two months of this year, 756 Mexican women were violently murdered, most in accidental cases, some 2,812 were raped, and more than 162,000 calls were received by emergency services related to gender based and domestic violence, according to government data.
The event targets men who are “confused, empty, and disconnected.” The website claims it all began “From an attack on masculinity and the need for virtuous men… with our personal needs, life stories, and wounds, we sought a path of healing that we shared with our friends through retreats, workshops, boot camps, and now… a congress!”
The group features “spiritual guests,” including priests, bishops, and even an archbishop, all Catholics who promise to “save” masculinity. Their argument: “We are living through a silent crisis: men who are confused, empty, and disconnected from their purpose. Masculine identity has been weakened, leaving profound questions: Am I enough? Do I have what it takes?”
The event promotes a return to “traditional values” and even invites women “who wish to understand the heart of a man and better accompany him.” Other audiences they aim to reach include married couples “who want to strengthen their bond as a couple,” families “who want to reconcile, strengthen ties, and reinforce their mission as a family, and young people “who need guidance, identity, direction, and brotherhood.” It also targets priests, consecrated persons, and educators who accompany men, young people, and families on their spiritual journey.
Misogyny in 2026 wants therapy language and state funding
Put those pieces together, and a pattern emerges. Private platforms market assault as a technique. Telegram groups sell coercion as a service. Schools become laboratories for violation through deepfakes. Meanwhile, public life offers “healing” narratives for masculinity that funnel resentment back into “traditional values,” backed by institutions that still command legitimacy for millions of people.
This is how misogyny survives. It borrows the language of self-help, the aura of religion. It borrows technology's scalability and frames women as the problem.
The monster keeps adapting, and the cost is always women
However, it seems we are doing something right, because the feminist movement has exposed the failure of patriarchy and machismo to such an extent that the monster now retreats into private sites, hides in the deepest corners of the web, or relies on institutionalized Catholic propaganda to throw a last-ditch tantrum.
That is a bleak kind of proof. Yet it is proof all the same.
Because when violence has to keep reinventing itself to maintain control, it tells you the old story no longer holds on its own.