There is a point at which we have to stop pretending that the events we are seeing unfold around the world are isolated incidents.

What is unfolding is not accidental, and it is not rare. It is patterned, and becoming far too commonplace.[1]

Recent investigations into large-scale online networks have exposed something most people would rather not look at directly: millions of men gathering in one place, sharing information on how to drug and rape their partners, exchanging strategies, normalising behaviour that, in any other context, would be recognised as criminal and abhorrent. Reporting from organisations such as CNN has brought this into public view, and rather than be mere speculation, it has become a documented reality.

Sixty-two million visits in a single month.

That is not a fringe figure, nor is it an anomaly. It is horrific abuse scaling and becoming normalised.

And when something exists at the scale of sixty-two million men per month, it forces a different question. Not how this could happen, but what kind of culture allows it to exist without it being confronted earlier.

These men do not exist in isolation. They are not separate from society. They are colleagues, friends, partners, husbands, and sons. The men women sit next to at work, trust in meetings, rely on in both professional and personal spaces. The normal guys, the ones no one suspects because they are embedded so naturally into ‘normal’ society no one suspects a thing.

Which brings us to the question many people are quietly asking, but rarely say out loud:

How is it possible that this is happening, and yet so many men will say they do not know a single rapist?

It is not that every man knows a rapist, but that far more men have been close to, or part of, the conditions that allow one to exist than they are willing to admit. It is in ways that are unnamed, unproven, or undeniable, and far more likely that what is being missed is not the extreme, but the proximity to the attitudes, jokes, the dismissals, and the silences.

When we look at the numbers, they tell us a more complex story. If one in three women experience sexual violence, and women make up just over half of the global population, then even allowing for repeat offenders, we are not talking about a marginal issue. The reality is that a relatively small proportion of men commit multiple offences, which concentrates harm, but does not remove its presence from everyday life.

That proximity does not always look like violence. It is in the language that goes unchallenged, behaviour that is excused, discomfort that is overlooked and overridden, and the moments that are easier to dismiss than confront – especially when it is a friend or relative, perhaps even the boss. It lives in the gap between what is seen and what is named, and it is within that gap that harm is allowed to continue.

Because behaviours like sixty-two million men visiting sites such as those uncovered by CNN do not appear in a vacuum. They are created, shaped, marketed, reinforced, and normalised long before they reach the point of being exposed – and inconceivable harm has already been done to vast numbers of women and girls the world over.

We have already seen how easily sexual harm can be minimised in plain sight.

In memoirs like This Much Is True, Miriam Margolyes recounts experiences that, by today’s standards, would be recognised as abuse, yet are delivered with humour, detachment, and a lightness that reflects something deeper than storytelling.

In cases like Gisèle Pelicot, the world has been forced to confront what happens when consent is not respected and violations are hidden in plain sight for years.

In testimonies such as that of Charlotte Nichols, we see how distress can be visible long before it is understood, as people notice, suspect, and yet still do not ask.

These conversations cannot be separated from the conversations surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein. They all sit on the same continuum. This is a culture where harm is downgraded, softened to be palatable, where language is adjusted, discomfort is avoided, where “not quite serious enough” becomes a threshold people are willing to live with. It is also where power overrides justice, and where the concept of power is distorted.

And then when something explicit is exposed, the collective response is disbelief and shock.

Let’s be clear, shock is not the same as ignorance, and the signs are rarely invisible, they have just been ignored, far too often, by parents, teachers, friends, colleagues and romantic partners.

Which brings us back to trust.

How are women supposed to trust men, their friends, their colleagues, their partners, when there is a growing awareness that what is said in public does not always reflect what is tolerated in private?

How are women supposed to trust judgement when behaviour that should be challenged is dismissed as humour, or minimised as harmless?

And more than that, how are women supposed to trust themselves?

Healing requires self-trust. It requires reconnecting with your instincts, your body, your sense of safety. It requires us to trust what we see and experience without being manipulated or threatened with bigotry or further abuse for demanding female only safe spaces.

Trust in others, and oneself breaks down and disappears when your nervous system is constantly picking up on something that the culture around you refuses to name. When something feels off, but is laughed away, minimised, or reframed as overreaction, further compounds it.

And when the people you are supposed to feel safe around participate, even passively, in the culture that made the harm possible in the first place, we are reminded that nowhere is safe.

Over time, that dissonance erodes trust at its root. Not just trust in others, but trust in your own perception, your own sanity and your reality. Because if the external world repeatedly contradicts what your internal system is telling you, something has to give, and too often, it is the self that gets overridden.

We talk about healing as if it is an individual responsibility, as if it sits entirely within the person who has experienced harm. But healing, of any kind, does not happen in isolation. It requires safety, care, consistency, and environments where what is said publicly aligns with what is believed privately.

Without that, we are asking people to rebuild trust in themselves while remaining surrounded by the very conditions that disrupted that trust in the first place.

And let’s be clear, that is not resilience; It is survival of the highest order.

There is also a wider expectation at play that rarely gets questioned. We would never ask someone with amnesia or cancer to clearly articulate what is happening within them in a way that makes others comfortable or satisfied. And yet, when it comes to trauma, that expectation is imposed without hesitation. People who have been traumatised are expected to provide clarity where there is fragmentation of memory, vocabulary and identity. They are expected to be coherent where there is overwhelm, and expected to give explanations where there are no words yet available. When articulation does not come in a way that feels recognisable or controlled, it is often doubted, disrespected, upbraided or rebuffed, rather than prompting a deeper understanding of what trauma actually does.

At the same time, it is also true that the body holds what the mind cannot yet process, and that healing the nervous system is not only possible, but increasingly understood. Research across trauma psychology and neuroscience has shown that trauma is not stored purely as narrative memory, but as embodied experience within the nervous system, which is why approaches that work with the body, rather than only through cognition, have become central to recovery .

Practices such as somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and trauma-informed bodywork focus on restoring regulation by working directly with physical sensation, movement, and internal awareness, allowing the body to complete stress responses that were previously interrupted. Breathwork, when used carefully and appropriately, has also been shown to influence the autonomic nervous system, supporting emotional regulation, reducing anxiety, and improving physiological balance through its impact on vagal function and brain activity          .

Equally, approaches grounded in interoception and mindfulness have demonstrated measurable improvements in trauma symptoms by strengthening the connection between bodily awareness and emotional regulation, helping individuals rebuild a sense of internal safety .

Some ill dismissed these therapies as abstract concepts, but they are evidence-based pathways that recognise a simple truth: trauma is experienced in the body, and healing must, at some level, involve the body.

There is a limit to what individual practice can carry.

While the nervous system can be supported, regulated, and gradually retrained, it does not exist in isolation from the environment around it. Safety cannot be practised indefinitely in spaces that repeatedly undermine it, or to put it another way, regulation cannot stabilise where threat, no matter how subtle or overt it is, remains present.

Healing is possible. The nervous system can be recalibrated, and, over time, brought back into a state where safety is not just understood intellectually, but felt with awareness and then automatically without the need for vigilance.

But that process does not happen in a vacuum. It is created with strong and consciously aware foundations, shaped and reinforced with care and considerations, or it is undermined by the environments we move through, the people we trust, and the cultures and communities we are asked to participate in, professional or social.

If our environments continue to minimise, deflect, or ignore what is often so painfully and plainly there, then what is being asked of individuals is not healing, but adaptation.

And there is a difference, because adaptation teaches you to live with it, ‘get over it’, ‘move on’, ‘forget about it’ – in environments that constantly remind you of it.

Healing requires that the people and the environments you are in changes too, either intentionally through your own choices, or by those around you becoming more self-aware and informed.

Until that shift happens, the question is not why women struggle to trust, but how trust was made so difficult to begin with.

Because trust cannot be built in a culture that keeps asking women to ignore what they already feel.

[1] According to the Meriam Webster dictionary, the word commonplace refers to things that are ordinary, typical, or happening often. Top synonyms include ordinary, usual, routine, familiar, everyday, standard, and conventional. It describes something unremarkable or frequently encountered.