Six years ago, when I was a writer at British Vogue, I interviewed Laura Bates, author and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, about her latest book, Men Who Hate Women. I had sought out a copy, curious to read what I didn’t yet fully know of. Bates had entered the manosphere for her book, posing as “Alex”, spending just under two years conducting undercover work in toxic online communities. It was my first time inside it, and it was more chilling and horrifying to read than any Stephen King novel. In it, she met with incels or “involuntary celibates” who fantasised about murdering women who wouldn’t have sex with them. I found myself panting with rage and disbelief that I needed to keep pausing, pressing the opened book against my chest. “The more I uncovered, particularly around grooming and radicalisation, and realizing the extent to which they were infiltrating young men’s networks online, the more it felt like there was a sense of huge urgency,” Bates told British Vogue in 2020. “I had to keep going, I had to write this book. There’s this huge threat to our society really, and particularly to women, that nobody even knew existed…”