The ‘online rape academy’ confirmed the continuum of harm women live with every day
Dr Kelly Bracewell responds to CNN’s investigation into online groups where men shared advice on drugging and sexually assaulting women. Drawing on decades of feminist research, she argues that the findings belong to a wider continuum of harm women already recognise.
Her challenge is to confront the everyday attitudes and institutional responses that allow that continuum to persist.
When CNN released its investigation into online spaces where men shared advice on drugging and sexually assaulting women, one word surfaced repeatedly: shock. A hidden network. Extreme behaviour. A horrifying discovery. Or should I say, another horrifying discovery, following the landmark case of survivor Gisèle Pelicot.
For women, survivors and those of us who have worked on violence against women and girls for decades, the dominant emotion was not shock. It was recognition. There was anger and rage, of course. I have felt both. I still cannot finish watching the investigation. But this is something we confront every day, and now it was being seen.
The investigation confirmed that sexual violence is not an isolated horror at the edges of society: the stranger in the dark, or something that happens because a woman did something “wrong”. It is part of a continuum of violence and harm that women navigate daily, including in the places where we should feel safest.
From “banter” to rape tutorials: the same continuum
Nearly four decades ago, feminist scholar Liz Kelly introduced the concept of the continuum of sexual violence. She challenged the idea that harassment, coercion, assault and rape are separate, disconnected experiences. Instead, she showed how they overlap and are experienced by women as part of a wider pattern of male entitlement and control (Kelly, 1988).
Another key text I encountered during my undergraduate studies 20 years ago was Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975). Brownmiller’s analysis helps explain why everyday harassment, coercion and dismissal matter. They are not merely unpleasant experiences; they are part of a system in which more extreme violence can become possible and predictable. The insights of these texts still matter: Kelly helps us see how harms connect, while Brownmiller helps us understand how the threat of harm can control women’s lives.
The men exchanging “tips” online about drug-facilitated rape do not emerge from nowhere. They are shaped by a culture that routinely downplays sexual jokes, intrusive comments, unwanted touching and pressure for sex that relies on obligation rather than consent. It is a culture that treats women’s discomfort as oversensitivity. If we say yes, we are judged; if we say no, we are judged all the same.
Women already assess risks in the people around us. CNN’s investigation confirms why, but that does not make it easier. Self-defence classes, safety devices, changing how we dress, policing our movements and checking in with friends cannot protect us from harm in our own homes, including harm inflicted by people we should be able to trust.
The “online rape academy” does not sit outside ordinary life. It sits at one end of a continuum of behaviour that is already normalised. Kelly’s argument is not that all acts are equally severe. It is that tolerating everyday harms helps create the conditions in which more serious violence can be excused or defended.
Our bystander work at university has prompted many discussions about this. Some of the most thoughtful contributions have come from male students who reflect on behaviour they previously dismissed as “banter”. They begin to see how it contributes to a culture that is dangerous for women, even when recognising that makes them uncomfortable. But those students are a handful. What about their friends, families and colleagues?
Brownmiller described rape as a means of intimidation that can keep women in fear (1975). Her argument is often read as an accusation against every individual man. The point here is about the wider effect: women’s knowledge that sexual violence can happen shapes how we live, move and make decisions.
These harms are widespread. Figures for England and Wales help illustrate their reach:
An estimated 25.6% of women aged 16 and over have experienced sexual assault, including attempted assault, since the age of 16 (ONS, year ending March 2025).
13% of women experienced at least one form of harassment in the year ending March 2023, compared with 7% of men. The difference partly reflects women’s higher exposure to sexual harassment (ONS, 2023).
An estimated 739,000 women aged 16 and over experienced sexual assault, including attempted assault, in the year ending March 2025 (ONS).
12.8% of women aged 16 and over experienced at least one of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking in that year (ONS).
Much of this harm never reaches a criminal charge. The Home Office reported that 3.4% of rape offences recorded in the year ending March 2026 had been assigned a charge or summons outcome when the figures were first published. That figure can rise as investigations conclude. Many survivors do not report to the police at all. Yet the familiar claim that “women lie” persists. An absence of conviction does not establish that a rape did not take place.
This is the continuum in operation: widespread harm, limited accountability and routine disbelief. Those of us who speak up may be called “man-haters”, when what we are asking for is the right to be safe.
Othering: “But that’s not me”
One predictable response to the CNN investigation, as with other cases that come to light, is to put distance between ourselves and the perpetrators:
"That’s not me"
"They are monsters"
"That’s the extreme"
"Not all men".
"That’s incel culture"
But focusing only on the most extreme or criminalised acts can allow people and institutions to avoid examining the everyday behaviours that sustain the same culture. The continuum asks more difficult questions:
Who laughs at sexist jokes or jokes about rape and calls them harmless?
Who dismisses women when they say they feel uncomfortable?
Who minimises coercion because “she didn’t say no”?
Who treats harassment as inevitable rather than unacceptable?
You do not need to commit an extreme act to help sustain a culture in which these behaviours are tolerated. Stop laughing, dismissing and minimising. Start listening and reflecting. Think about the groups you belong to: are they challenging this culture or reinforcing it?
Digital spaces
CNN traced how online platforms and messaging spaces enabled men to find one another, share tactics and reinforce abusive behaviour. The internet did not invent misogyny, but it has helped people organise around it.
We see in practice how perpetrators can learn from peers, justify their behaviour through shared narratives and escalate over time. Digital spaces can accelerate that process and reduce the chances of challenge. When one online group is shut down, another may appear. Tackling individual groups matters, but the problem extends beyond any single platform.
If we treat the “online rape academy” as an anomaly, our responses will fall short. We must demand more.
Criminal justice and policing: Examine patterns of behaviour rather than treating each assault as an isolated incident. Take harassment, coercive control and earlier sexualised behaviour seriously when assessing risk. Recognise that drug-facilitated sexual assault can occur within relationships and domestic abuse.
Safeguarding and professional practice: Listen to women’s disclosures earlier. Understand that fragmented memories can follow trauma and should not, by themselves, be treated as evidence of deceit. Consider patterns of harm alongside individual offence thresholds.
Prevention policy: Prevention must address entitlement, consent, respect and boundaries long before violence escalates to rape. Education belongs beyond schools, too. Responses to online abuse should connect with wider strategies to tackle violence against women and girls.
As the End Violence Against Women Coalition has warned, measuring only narrow categories of violence risks shaping policy around what is easiest to count rather than the full range of harm women experience.
This was not new information
What upsets me most about the “online rape academy” is not that it existed. I was not shocked. It is how closely it fits what we already know about violence against women, and how often that violence is enabled by minimisation, disbelief and institutional inaction.
Women have long understood the links. Feminist researchers have mapped them for decades. Survivors have been trying to tell us. CNN’s investigation refused to look away. Yet I have noticed much of the discussion taking place on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, rather than in mainstream media. Why is that?
The continuum survives in the gap between what women are expected to tolerate and what men are expected to reflect on. The question is no longer whether the investigation is shocking. It is whether we are willing to confront the continuum before another exposé confirms it all over again.
Acknowledgement: Thank you to Dr Will Hughes for the discussion that led to this piece and for reading an earlier draft.
Dr Kelly Bracewell
Kelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lancashire focusing on gender-based violence, research & evaluation, survivor voices
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