Managing misogyny
BACP University and College Counselling November 2025

It seems to me that barely a day goes by without headlines about Gen Z and the rise of misogynistic views.

I wrote that sentence in January 2024 when headlines ran: ‘Sexist language increasing in schools as more boys are exposed to misogyny online’.¹ In May 2025, the same sort of headlines came around again: ‘Misogyny: are boys wired to behave badly?’.² In July 2025, the Government issued official guidance to schools on their role in tackling misogyny (yet another item added to the already long list of things schools are asked to do). The Safer Scrolling report by UCL and the University of Kent, published in early 2024, stated that ‘micro-dosing on highly toxic content is leading to the saturation of extremist misogynistic ideas among young people’.³ The Netflix show Adolescence⁴ dramatised what everyone fears: the worst outcomes imaginable for our young people if extremist misogynistic views become normalised. But if extremist ideas are saturating the population, then how is this showing up in university counselling services? How do we, as a profession of mostly women, handle misogyny when it comes into the room? When I saw this topic on a list of articles the division was looking for, I felt drawn towards it as an important cultural conversation and at the same time, resistant to it. I feared putting my head above the parapet and being dragged into a culture war. But I also wanted to explore the disconnect between the headlines and what I see in the counselling room. I know the fear of misogyny and its impact is real; I feel it myself as a woman and I hear it in the voices of the mums at school who have boys, and want to protect them from exactly the kind of content the headlines discuss. 

Defining misogyny 

As soon as I started researching this topic, I realised why the word can feel like a contested one. Being called ‘a misogynist’, similar to being called ‘a racist’, can have a powerful impact on your identity (whether that label is rejected or embraced). The current Oxford English Dictionary definition is: ‘Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women’.⁵ For the purposes of this article, I will also work on the basis that it exists on a spectrum – from subtle biases to overt hostility or violence – and can be enacted by people of any gender (although I am aware that some people do not believe it exists on a spectrum).⁶ I have chosen here not to talk in great detail about misandry: ‘The hatred of males; hatred of men as a sex’⁷ or transphobia because the headlines I refer to are about misogyny. 

I realise this is imperfect at best. Holding a bias against women – for example, believing they are less good at certain skills – can feel a long way from the type of hatred which might justify or lead to an act of violence. Holding a belief will not inevitably and always lead to violent action. The Netflix drama Adolescence⁴ and the many publications that came before it are both responding to and shaping the current context we work in as counsellors in HE and FE. The awareness of various types of prejudice and its real-world harms is now a normalised topic of conversation, including among students, and there is a collective trend of changing our language because of this. For example, I have become more aware of my own tendency to see the male body as default and say ‘he’ when I’m talking about a character, toy or inanimate object with my children. But does saying ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ or ‘she’ make me a misogynist? Is it my own internalised misogyny to see men as the default humans? Or is this cultural bias? 

Ancient history

Misogyny is old. Bitzer noted that Holland⁸ summarises its historical presence in four words: ‘pervasive, persistent, pernicious and protean’. Feminist theory argues that misogyny is essential to the maintenance of what it sees as patriarchal structures – a society where men predominantly hold positions of power. One theory traces this back to the invention of agriculture, when inheritance became important and controlling women’s sexuality was seen as necessary to ensure lineage. 

Within this context, the founders of Western philosophy lived in deeply patriarchal societies, where slavery was also normalised. Aristotle, for example, reinforced the idea of the male body as the default, describing women as ‘mutilated males.’⁹ In Politics, he argued that men should rule women just as the mind rules the body – associating men with reason and women with wildness and nature. ‘The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior,’⁹ he wrote. Perhaps this legacy explains why I still unconsciously default to male pronouns when referring to inanimate objects.

History repeats itself 

The European witch trials, in which thousands of people, mostly women, were executed, spanned from the early 1400s, peaked around 1560 and continued into the late 1700s.¹⁰ They represent one of the most extreme cultural and historical examples of misogynistic violence. Chollet¹⁰ links the rise of the witch myth to the invention of the printing press in 1454, which enabled the publication of texts like the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer. Chollet asserted that the new technology enabled mass cultural distribution of misogynistic materials that were used as a handbook for the trials. 

This raises a provocative question: are today’s digital platforms echoing that same pattern? Historian Eleanor Janega notes that Kramer’s ideas in the Malleus were largely dismissed by his contemporaries.¹¹ Without the printing press, his work might have faded into obscurity. But the new technology allowed his ideas to circulate widely, often detached from their author, bundled with other texts, and distributed across Europe. At the time, anyone with means could publish – just as anyone can now with social media. 

Modern misogyny 

Freud’s work, though groundbreaking, was deeply rooted in the patriarchal traditions that preceded him. Like Aristotle, he positioned the male experience as the norm. In his theories of psychosexual development, Freud suggested that women were inherently less moral than men, arguing that they could not resolve the Oedipus complex in the same way.⁹ As a result, he claimed, women’s superegos were weaker, their sense of justice less developed, and that ‘they are more often influenced in their judgments by feelings of affection or hostility.’⁹ 

These views reflect the biases of his time, yet Freud’s influence remains significant in contemporary psychological theory. Many of his insights articulate phenomena that still resonate in the counselling room today. However, his assumptions about gender reveal a clear prejudice against women. Recognising this helps us critically examine the foundations of our own profession, and the ways in which misogynistic ideas have shaped even the most respected psychological frameworks. With this historical perspective, it is hard to see how any of us could live in this society – or work in this profession – and not be shaped by ideas that are rooted in misogyny. We must also recognise, both in practice and in popular culture, the long history of women being the patients and men being the experts in the mental health field.

Post #MeToo and the digital backlash 

The #MeToo movement¹² and platforms like Everyone’s Invited¹³ marked a powerful wave of feminist activism, fuelled by collective anger over sexual assault and gender-based violence. These movements made it more socially acceptable to speak openly about the worst consequences of misogyny – violence, harassment, sexual violence and murder, as seen in high-profile cases like Sarah Everard’s.¹⁴ 

However, as sociologist Raewen Connel notes, every wave of feminism has been followed by a reaction against it.¹⁵ In this case, the backlash has been amplified by digital algorithms that prioritise engagement over nuance. Content that provokes strong emotional reactions – whether agreement or outrage – is more likely to be promoted. As a result, moral outrage spreads rapidly, sometimes fuelling polarisation and reinforcing harmful narratives. Some men, feeling blamed for the actions of a violent minority, have responded with counter-narratives like #NotAllMen.¹⁶ Others have aligned with influencers who openly embrace misogynistic views. This reactionary content often frames gender equality as a zero-sum game, where gains for women are perceived as losses for men. The Safer Scrolling report³ highlights how such ideas are not new – but the technology delivering them is more pervasive and personal than ever, reaching young people in their most private spaces.  

In the counselling room 

The following examples are from fictionalised composite cases and have been designed to reflect the themes that I am seeing across many different students. I do not believe that any of these students were expressing extremist misogynistic views which might require a safeguarding response or a Prevent referral, but I can see how misogynistic ideas are present in what they bring to counselling.

‘It’s [feminism’s] gone too far’ 

This phrase came from a mature student going through a divorce who felt manipulated by a controlling ex-partner. He arrived in counselling convinced that talking would help. He thinks everyone should talk more – especially men. His childhood friend died by suicide a few years back and since then he’s made sure to check in on his friends regularly. Since his marriage broke up, he’s been working on himself, exploring what it means to be a man. He’s found podcasts and workshops that have helped him grow, in his own words: ‘from a boy into a man’. In passing, he identified as a feminist in a conversation about his uni work. But when talking about the court process for divorce, he said that feminism had gone too far. He was talking about the privileging of women as caretakers for children after divorce and the poor outcomes for men’s mental heath. Things felt unfair and the narrative that men are now disadvantaged fitted with how he felt. 

How did I work with it? I noticed this for what it was – the narrative of equality as a zero-sum game. But in that moment, I don’t think it would have been helpful to challenge him on that. Instead, I responded to the man in front of me who felt persecuted, ignored and unheard in his experiences of loss. I tried to meet his need to be heard in a situation which felt incredibly unfair; to be present for his whole story; to make space for all his feelings, good, bad and indifferent. We talked about what it meant for him to be a man and what it was like to be talking to a woman about his feelings. My experience has been that across the age groups, men are hungry for discussions about what masculinity means to them. As counsellors, I believe we are well placed to facilitate these; to encourage the same kind of self-reflective critique about masculinity and its limitations as women have been doing about femininity for decades – allowing space for men to name how stereotypes and norms have harmed them too.  

‘The top 10% of men’ 

This young man spoke of the ache to have a meaningful satisfying relationship. He was disappointed he had to message so many women on dating apps before he got just one response that might lead to a date. When he is finally there, his dates openly tell him how frequently they are messaged by other men (sometimes they even show him the unsolicited d*** pics). He perceives that women don’t have to work hard to meet people or to have sex. He tells me he knows ‘it’s easier for girls’. He has heard this statistic that 90% of women are all looking for the top 10% of men: ‘so obviously it’s going to be harder’ for him to get dates, but asks: ‘Should it be this hard?’ The stats feel true. It feels unfair. He doesn’t think he’s in the top 10% of men, nor will he be any time soon. He is a young man and a student – he doesn’t have money, power or property, and he isn’t muscular. He has a profound sense of not being seen. To explain this emptiness, this lack of connection he feels, he has accepted the misogynistic belief that women are ‘too picky’ – that men like him are disadvantaged. He doesn’t think of himself as a misogynist. 

How did I work with it? First of all, I recognised these stats as perpetuating a myth that needed to be busted. I gently challenged him and encouraged him to think critically about where this information came from. This included reflecting on his own dissertation bibliography and the standards of what would be acceptable to reference there. I shared my understanding from the counselling room of other student experiences of online dating – and that it wasn’t working out so well for the women either. I shared with him that I think he is suffering from what Esther Perel calls ‘artificial intimacy’¹⁷ – the technology of dating apps that promises to connect us quickly and simply with just the swipe of a finger, but leaves us feeling empty and alone, with only the smooth edges of our phones for comfort. He had received the message loud and clear that women don’t want to be chatted up at the bar or on public transport. We talked about other ways he might meet someone and express interest, in his words: ‘in a non-creepy way’. We thought about the quality of his relationships with his course mates and the wider university community, identifying areas where he could strengthen these. I listened to his legitimate concern about meeting someone and reflected back to him the things he said he cared about. I also wrote to the BBC’s More or Less statistics programme¹⁸ asking if they could do some myth-busting on the numbers – and shortly after the release of Adolescence, they did. 

‘I just don’t think women think as deeply as men’ 

This was not the main topic of our counselling session. The woman who recounted her boyfriend’s words did so with a roll of the eyes. She was trying to work out how the person who made her feel good (an intelligent young man at a high-tariff university) could at the same time hold such a belief. Comments that are so obviously misogynistic like this are still relatively uncommon in my counselling room but perhaps support the idea that a ‘saturation of extremist misogynistic ideas’³ is leading public and private discourse to be more extreme. 

How did I work with it? ‘Splitting’ in psychodynamic theory – when a person or situation is viewed as either all good or all bad – and cognitive distortions in CBT, such as overgeneralising or dichotomous thinking, can all perpetuate hatred or prejudice. Misogyny and misandry seem to neatly fit into this category. My client didn’t feel able to tell her friends this comment, as they would have just told her to dump him and move on. Instead, she came to me trying to understand this in the context of a bereavement which had brought her to counselling. My client was not the one who was splitting or overgeneralising. We focused on the main topic she had brought: loss – and also her relationships and her boundaries. We explored how her anger and newfound nonchalant attitude could develop her skills in asserting herself, and challenging statements like the one above. We briefly touched on what might have made him say that, allowing her to think about him as a whole human with many influences. I also helped her reflect on when she might choose to let go of a relationship if she was not feeling respected. 

Accelerating populism and moral outrage 

Misogyny is not new – but technology has a pattern of accelerating the spread of populist ideas, including both feminist movements like #MeToo and the backlash against them. Online spaces are fertile ground for moral outrage, which can galvanise social change but also fuel division and hate. As counsellors, we must recognise that the foundations of our profession – like much of Western thought – are shaped by misogynistic, Eurocentric and colonial influences. While progress has been made, we still have work to do. The witch trials may feel distant, but the mechanisms of othering and scapegoating remain alarmingly relevant. 

Fuller reminds us that misogyny is a social construct with real implications for mental health practice.¹⁹ It shapes the lives of our clients, whether they are directly harmed by it or unknowingly perpetuating it. Over the past decade, I’ve noticed a shift: women are naming misogyny more explicitly. Men are more frequently voicing beliefs that, while not always hateful, are rooted in misogynistic narratives – without that being part of their identity. I have always heard a small number of second-hand blatantly misogynistic comments in my work. People often blame others when things feel unfair. But the frequency with which men are bringing deeply misogynistic views – such as women being ‘too picky’ or equality as a zero-sum game – reflects a cultural moment where men’s and women’s rights are increasingly seen as being in opposition. This can be deeply damaging. 

So how do we respond? We need to listen to the legitimate concerns. Men come to therapy for the same reasons as anyone else: to be heard, to make sense of their experiences, to feel less alone. When each personal story has the potential to be co-opted into a broader narrative of anger or blame, we must hold space for nuance. 

We can:

• Affirm what our clients care about: connection, fairness, respect – and reflect that back to them
• Challenge myths gently, encouraging critical thinking without shame
• Normalise their experiences, especially around rejection, loneliness or confusion
• Make space for the grey areas, where people are not all good or all bad, but works in progress.

Therapeutically, this means: 

• Creating a non-judgmental space where clients can explore their beliefs
• Understanding the unmet needs that may underlie misogynistic thinking
• Using psychoeducation to contextualise beliefs and help clients understand the impact of social constructs on their identity and relationships
• Supporting boundary-setting and assertiveness
• Reflecting on our own biases and using supervision to stay grounded. 

I’ve shared how I’ve approached this work in my own practice, and I hope it sparks further conversation.