“This is how it starts — not with a weapon, but with words.” Libby Purves’ refusal to join the war on men lands even harder when set against the chilling warning delivered by Netflix’s Adolescence. Starring Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper, and Ashley Walters, the drama dares to trace a straight, uncomfortable line from casual classroom misogyny to irreversible violence. The series doesn’t exaggerate — it dissects, showing how contempt for women is learned, normalized, and quietly weaponized long before blood is spilled. Its most shocking message is not the murder itself, but how ordinary the steps leading to it feel. And it is precisely here, Purves argues, that society must be careful: condemning hatred without declaring masculinity itself guilty.
LIBBY PURVES: Sorry sisters, I’m not going to join the war on men. And here’s why… Sound the trumpet! Let 2026 call a truce in the war…