Violent misogyny at the heart of the Southport attacks is still being ignored.
On 29th July 2024, a Taylor Swift-themed dance class was attended by twenty-six young girls. Of those girls, three were murdered and another eight injured by seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who entered the dance class with a knife.
In the new BBC Panorama, a 13-year-old girl who was stabbed in the attacks was interviewed. She tells the BBC, 'I thought he wasn't going to stop until he killed everyone…'I thought he wanted to kill us all.'
The girl's best friend was nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, who described the event as 'the best day of her life' before Rudakabana arrived. Following the attack, she was taken to hospital in critical condition, and died later that night.
Axel Rudakubana, a UK citizen born in Cardiff, was arrested at the scene. He showed no remorse or empathy for the young girls who he had murdered and severely injured.
Merseyside police provided few details during the initial police briefing on the attack. However, they did rule out that this was a terrorist attack. During an interview for the BBC, Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that the information the police gave was inadequate and that people got the feeling that something was being withheld; this is what led the 'social media types' who wanted to spread misinformation being able to do so successfully as riots broke out across the UK.
The night after the attack, groups of people targeted a Southport mosque. In videos, you can hear cheers in the crowd, as the attacker had been falsely accused of being a Muslim asylum seeker on social media. In videos used by the BBC, men in the crowd shout, 'He is a fucking terrorist' and 'My country! Let's have it!' while England's flag waves in the background.
Whilst men rioted in the streets in the name of protecting women and girls, Leanne, leader of the dance class, was blamed on social media for the girl's deaths. She also blamed herself for the riots in the streets.
In the wake of the riots, the police identified Rudakubana, releasing the information that, contrary to the right-wing social media rumours, he was a UK national, not an asylum seeker. However, it soon became clear that many opportunities to intervene before the Southport attack took place had been missed. On three separate occasions, Rudakubana was referred to the UK's counter-extremism programme PREVENT, but was rejected. The BBC report that a large number of people referred to PREVENT fall into the same category as Rudakbana, obsessed with violence but with no clear ideology. Many of these individuals are slipping through the net.
Whilst Rudakabana was obsessed with violence, he did not choose a Taylor Swift-themed dance class full of young girls for no reason. It was because this class was full of young girls that he decided to arrive with a knife.
Being interviewed for the Sunday times a pupil who went to school with RudaKubana said ‘He never spoke to girls, When my mates saw the attack they guessed it was because he was…like an incel.’ and Leanne, leader of the dance class in her victim impact statement said Rudakubana targetted them ‘because [they] were women and girls, vulnerable and easy prey.’
It’s interesting how women and young people can see the attack for what is it, violent misogyny. Yet the government don’t believe that this growing radicalisation of young men can be called terrorism.
Since the attack, there has been a report which calls for the government to broaden the definition of extremism and terrorism to include a 'behaviour-based and ideologically agnostic approach' to ensure that people like Rudakabana cannot fall through the net again. However, Yvette Cooper has rejected the Home Office's advice to widen the definition of terrorism to include violent misogyny. The government says it wants to continue its focus on Islamist and far-right threats.
As the Southport attack and other incidents of misogynistic, terroristic violence show, this is a misstep. Violent misogyny is a dangerous ideology, one that is growing rapidly in online spaces such as the manosphere and incel spaces.
So why isn't it being treated as the threat that it is?
In a leaked Home Office report, misogyny and violence against women have been identified as gateways to further extremism. The report points out the online subculture of the ‘manosphere’ as a gateway to far-fight extremism. This should be worrying us with 57% of Gen Z men saying we have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men and only 28% of British men class themselves as feminists.
Why are we acting like the misogynistic attacks on women are coming out of nowhere?
Violent misogyny grows out of rape culture that is created when sexual harassment is not dealt with seriously enough by governments; when sexual harassment is just being put down to boys being boys; when education is not being taught comprehensively enough to combat the algorithms pushing misogynistic content to young boys.
Research states that 54% of girls aged 12-14 have experienced public sexual harassment. So why are we not fighting against the misogyny that affects young girls daily and showing men that all forms of misogyny are wrong?
Because if not, many, many more young girls will have to suffer at the hands of violent men due to rampant misogyny.
Panorama - The Southport Attack - BBC iPlayer
Gen Z men and women most divided on gender equality, global study shows | King's College London
Fears 'incel' Axel Rudakubana attacked Taylor Swift class due to hatred of women - Mirror Online
The Southport Killer Was Fixated on Extreme Violence. But Was it Terrorism? - The New York Times
