Like many people, I’ve found myself moving in and out of the news since the recent shootout in Côte-des-Neiges in which a civilian, a police officer and the gunman were killed. Reading updates. Stepping away. Coming back. Trying to understand what happened while also struggling with a feeling I can’t quite shake: None of this feels new.
That feeling is not detachment. It is the accumulated weight of years of warnings from researchers, educators, advocates and survivors that were heard, acknowledged and too often left without meaningful action. The loss of life is devastating. It also sits alongside the recognition that we have been here before, had these conversations before, and watched attention fade before much changed.
In the days following the killings, reports revealed that the shooter had left behind an antifeminist incel manifesto blaming feminism, liberalism and capitalism for what he described as male suffering while calling for a “new order” that would strip women of economic and sexual freedom. Those details matter not because they explain violence on their own, but because they point to something we too often overlook: Misogynistic violence is not simply an individual act. It is shaped by the broader ideas, narratives and environments that make violence easier to justify.
Cellphones light up the Bell Centre during Tuesday’s memorial service for Const. Mohamed Lamine Benredouane. After the C.D.N. shootings, reports revealed the gunman had left behind a misogynistic manifesto. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
In my work in sexual violence prevention, we often talk about gender-based violence as existing on a continuum. It is connected to the beliefs, norms and systems that shape how people understand power, entitlement, gender and relationships. Misogynistic violence does not begin with an act of violence itself. It begins with ideas about who is owed power, who deserves respect, whose voices matter and who is responsible for social problems.
Those ideas are reinforced through messages about masculinity, narratives of entitlement, online communities that normalize hostility toward women, and a broader social environment that often minimizes misogyny until it escalates into something impossible to ignore.
One of the challenges in conversations about misogynistic violence is that our analysis often begins only after violence has occurred. Prevention asks us to look much earlier: at the pathways that made violence possible.
Harmful ideologies rarely begin with violence. They begin with stories people are told about themselves and others, repeated often enough that what once seemed extreme begins to feel normal, reasonable or justified.
The question is what ideas we allow to become normalized before we decide they warrant attention.
Nowhere is this more visible than online. Discussions about misogynistic content are frequently dismissed as overreactions, censorship debates or culture-war distractions. Yet researchers have documented for years how online ecosystems can reinforce misogynistic world views, connect individuals with increasingly extreme communities, and frame women and feminism as the source of personal and societal problems.
Most people who encounter this content will never commit violence. But that has never been the relevant question. The question is what ideas we allow to become normalized before we decide they warrant attention.
What continues to concern me is how often misogyny is treated as a secondary issue rather than a foundational one. We tend to think of misogyny as a women’s issue, despite the fact that its consequences extend far beyond women. It affects families, communities, workplaces, schools and public spaces. It shapes how safe people feel moving through the world. It influences political discourse, social cohesion and public trust.
When misogyny contributes to violence, the consequences are borne by all of us.
As conversations about what happened in Côte-des-Neiges continue, I hope we resist the temptation to treat this as an isolated tragedy. Doing so may feel more comfortable because it allows us to distance ourselves from the broader conditions that make violence possible. But if we are serious about prevention, we need to examine those conditions with the same urgency we bring to the violence itself.
That means treating misogyny not as a cultural inconvenience to debate after the fact, but as a public safety issue that demands sustained attention, institutional response and the willingness to act before tragedy makes it impossible to look away.
Niko Coady holds a master’s degree from McGill University in education and society with a focus on gender and women’s studies, and is the founder of Campus Consent Culture, an online platform and advocacy initiative.
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