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North America Regional Hub: Enhancing Local Efforts to Address Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Misogyny as Drivers of Social Polarisation and Violence

Publication Date:

02/12/2025

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Event Reports

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CanadaMisogynyNorth America Regional HubOnline MisogynySocial PolarisationTechnology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence

— 6 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the webinar and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Summary

On 2 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network North America Regional Hub hosted a Canada-focused webinar on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and online misogyny, and how these harms intersect with hate, targeted violence and violent extremism. This marked the launch of a Strong Cities Canada Webinar Series, which will provide Canadian municipalities and community-based partners with evidence-based insights, emerging research and practical tools to strengthen local prevention and response ecosystems.

Presenters from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which hosts Strong Cities, provided an overview of the misogyny-extremism relationship, Canadian policy and legal frameworks and methodologies for identifying misogynistic and extremist online ecosystems.

Speakers: 

• Jakob Guhl, Director Research and Policy, Counter-Extremism, Institute for Strategic Dialogue
• Anne Craanen, Senior Research and Policy Manager, Extremism, Institute for Strategic Dialogue
• Steven Rai, Senior Research Manager, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Key Findings

1. Misogyny is a significant but often overlooked driver of violent extremism. Support for violence against women is correlated with support for violent extremism and misogyny frequently appears in individual radicalisation trajectories as well as their targeting choices when they engage in violence or harassment.
2. Misogynistic online communities are cross-platform and interconnected. Content flows between mainstream social media, gaming platforms and fringe forums such as incel boards, complicating detection and response.
3. Certain linguistic and aesthetic markers are prevalent across misogynistic and extremist subcultures, and humour and irony may enhance their appeal. Recognising these signs helps practitioners assess risk earlier.
4. Canadian legal and policy frameworks are comparatively strong but remain fragmented. While criminal, workplace and human rights provisions apply to aspects of TFGBV, there is no overarching legal framework that fully addresses technology-facilitated harms.
5. Municipalities need training and stronger tools to recognise online risk indicators, assess escalation patterns and understand how online misogyny intersects with broader extremist ecosystems.

Key Themes

Misogyny and Extremism

Jakob Guhl, Director Research and Policy, Counter-Extremism, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, opened the session by outlining how misogyny functions as a risk factor, warning sign and, in some cases, a standalone form of extremism. Men who endorse violence against women are up to three times more likely to support violent extremism — a pattern reflected in survey data and individual case histories, where many perpetrators have histories of intimate partner violence. He noted that misogyny does not stay online or in private relationships. For many perpetrators, it becomes part of a belief system that justifies broader acts of violence. He also described gender attitudes as existing along a spectrum, from socially conservative views to hostile attitudes, to explicit male-supremacist beliefs and to violent misogynistic extremism. As attitudes or stereotypes harden into ideologies that portray women as subordinate or as existential threats, they can serve to justify or encourage violence.

He also examined the manosphere, a broad ecosystem of online subcultures that is not inherently extremist but contains communities that normalise hostility toward women. Incel spaces, for example, began as support forums but now contain pervasive misogynistic narratives. Globally, incel-motivated attacks have resulted in 53 deaths and Canada was the first country to issue a terrorism charge for an incel-inspired fatal attack. Research shows that incels report significantly poorer well-being, including higher rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness. He cautioned that premature terrorism designations risk further isolating vulnerable individuals and limiting access to mental-health support. Recognising varying levels of misogynistic content — and identifying when attitudes escalate into harm or extremism— remains essential for early intervention.

Legal and Policy Frameworks: Understanding Canada’s Current Landscape

Anne Craanen, Senior Research and Policy Manager, Extremism, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, provided an overview of the mechanisms Canada uses to address TFGBV. She noted that while Canada is comparatively advanced in recognising and legislating around digital, gendered harms, its overall approach remains fragmented. At the legislative level, TFGBV is addressed indirectly through multiple statutes, including Criminal Code offences (harassment, threats, non-consensual image sharing), human rights protections for gender identity and expression, workplace harassment legislation and red-flag firearm laws.

At the strategic level, the Strategy to Prevent and Address GBV (2017) and the National Action Plan to End GBV (2022) set national prevention and service priorities and emphasise shifting social norms and improving justice, health and socio-economic outcomes.

Despite these tools, there is no stand-alone TFGBV offence or unified legal category and provisions are spread across several statutes. The proposed Online Harms Act would amend several laws but would not create a dedicated TFGBV-specific framework.

A continuum of harm distinguishing TFGBV was also introduced, including targeted hate and violence, and violent extremism. The taxonomy seeks to clarify differences in perpetrators, intent, targets and forms of violence, and supports practitioners in recognising escalation.

Identifying and Assessing Online Misogynistic Content

Steven Rai, Senior Research Manager, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, provided an overview of how violent misogyny operates across online platforms, highlighting the fluid movement of users between mainstream, fringe and gaming-adjacent spaces. He emphasised that these environments should not be treated in isolation, as at-risk users often migrate between platforms and adapt their engagement depending on moderation levels and community norms.

Violent misogyny appears across a wide range of platforms, he shared, including:

• Mainstream platforms (X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube)
• Gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces (Discord, Roblox, Twitch, Rumble)
• Forum-based communities and imageboards (Incel.is, Reddit, 4chan /pol/ and /r9k/)

This cross-platform presence makes harmful content harder to track, as users move fluidly between spaces with varying degrees of moderation and anonymity.

He noted that digital communities can incubate misogynistic attitudes by:

• Gamifying hate
• Reinforcing echo chambers that validate grievances
• Normalising harmful content through repeated exposure
• Creating bridges to extremism by linking misogynistic themes with broader extremist networks

Practical Indicators for Municipal Awareness

The presentation highlighted signals that can help municipal staff recognise when online behaviour may be escalating toward offline risk, including threats or harassment targeting women in public life:

• Expressions of violence against women
• Glorification of mass attackers or serial killers
• Coded language or slang referencing misogynistic concepts or attackers (red pill, black pill, femoids, ‘ER’)
• Aesthetic markers (memes, GIFs, stylised imagery) linked to misogynistic or extremist subcultures
• Increasingly graphic or dehumanising rhetoric
• Discussion of weapons, tactical planning or grievances escalating toward physical harm
• Cross-over with extremist spaces (e.g., neo-Nazi communities or subcultures of nihilistic violence)

Being aware of these indicators can strengthen municipal situational awareness, reporting pathways and community-safety planning.

Next Steps

This webinar was the launch of a Strong Cities Canada Webinar Series, which will provide Canadian municipalities and community-based partners with evidence-based insights, emerging research and practical tools to strengthen local prevention and response ecosystems.

Please sign up for Strong Cities Network’s mailing list to receive invitations for upcoming webinars and other events.

Additional Resources

• The ‘Manosphere’ – ISD
• Fostering Healthy Masculinities: Building Resilience Against Online Misogyny – ISD
• Squaring the circle on men’s health, online harms and gender-based violence – ISD
• Misogyny incubators: how gaming helps channel everyday sexism into violent extremism – PMC
• What to Know About Tech-Facilitated Gender Based Violence in Canada, Tech Safety Canada
• Legal Remedies for Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence Toolkit, Tech Safety Canada
• Facts, stats and WAGE’s impact: Gender-based violence, Government of Canada
• Fact Sheet: Technology-facilitated gender-based violence, Government of Canada
• Mapping policy responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence in the G7 countries: OECD Public Governance Policy Papers, OECD
• Breaking the Cycle of Gender-based Violence: TRANSLATING EVIDENCE INTO ACTION FOR VICTIM/SURVIVOR-CENTRED GOVERNANCE. OECD
• Canada overhauls Criminal Code to protect victims and keep kids safe from predators. Department of Justice Canada
• Who Designates Terrorism? The Need for Legal Clarity to Moderate Terrorist Content Online. Tech Against Terrorism
• Tech Policy Press, An Overview of Canada’s Online Harms Act, Mandy Lau
• How anti-SLAPP laws work in Canada: And how the case of Steven Galloway points to their limits. CANADALAND
• THE ONLINE REGULATION SERIES 2021 | CANADA (Update). Tech Against Terrorism

Contact Information 

For more information on this event, please contact Strong Cities at [email protected].

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