Dear John,

Ms. is proud to host a timely and urgent conversation with Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathy Spillar, Executive Editor of Ms., on Cynthia’s groundbreaking book Man Up: The New Misogyny & the Rise of Violent Extremism, a searing examination of the hidden drivers of mass violence in America. 

We have seen a rise in political assassinations and assassination attempts, along with violent extremist attacks that have ticked upward for years. Mass casualty plots in the U.S. have increased by over 2,000 percent since the 1990s, leading to the deaths or grievous injury of thousands of people in shootings at schools, grocery stores, theaters, parades, concerts, houses of worship and more.

In the search for explanations, the public and policy discourse is most often swept up in heated debates about far-left or far-right ideologies. But the data shows that the biggest and clearest predictor of mass shootings, across ideologies, sits somewhere else: in rising gendered grievances, patriarchal backlash, and the perpetrators’ histories of gender-based violence and misogyny. 

Man Up makes visible what has been invisible for far too long—the bright red thread of misogyny that links nearly all mass violence—and to call for solutions that address these root causes and keep all of us safer.