A YOUNG man, isolated, angry and radicalised by an online community. A vehicle run off the road, innocent bystanders killed.

Thoughts turn to terrorism, as they did on Monday when a van was driven onto a Toronto pavement leaving 10 dead and 14 injured.

And it was terrorism of a type, but not Islamist, as was assumed by right-wing media and commentators in the immediate aftermath.

The driver of the van identifies as a member of an internet-based sect called “incels”, a male supremacist world view stemming from the men’s rights movement.

Firstly, incel means “involuntary celibate”, a man who believes women should want to sleep with him but their heads are turned by “Chads” and “Alphas” (attractive men). Attractive women are “Stacys”.

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Who are men’s rights activists? Various groups in the dark corners of the internet with hatred of women as a shared trait.

It’s odd language, odd enough to give pause about taking it seriously. Should we? The car attack shows we must.

Incels are misogynists who often advocate violence against women. The Toronto van driver, Alex Minassian, was the second such incel mass killer. In 2014 Elliot Rodger murdered six people in a stabbing and shooting spree before turning the gun on himself.

Shortly before his violent drive along Yonge Street, Minassian posted to Facebook: “All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” Had the post been, “All hail ISIS” Canadian authorities would presumably have had Minassian on their radar.

Reddit, a muster point for these misogynistic groups, banned the incel community in November last year citing its policies on hate speech but there are plenty more online recesses for like-minded men to gather, and they do gather – in their hundreds of thousands.

There is a deep insecurity at the root of this hatred of women. Incels speak, often obsessively, of their own physical faults being to blame for their lack of romantic success. Yet they also believe that women owe them sex; they believe they are entitled to a woman’s body and are being denied what is rightfully theirs.

While this specific online culture is relatively new, its ideology is long standing and familiar. It is part of a spectrum of behaviours bred from male entitlement and anger towards women, the same motivation that drives rapists and domestic abusers.

Supporting it is a patriarchal system that minimises men’s behaviour. It is reflected in reporting of male violence.

Shortly after the Canada attack, a newspaper asked “Did the Toronto killer murder 10 people because women wouldn’t sleep with him?” Another newspaper story described a stalker as “lovesick”, undermining and trivialising his behaviour.

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A third story reduced a 10-year campaign of domestic abuse to a temper tantrum over a pair of matching socks.

There is a US president who is the definition of toxic masculinity, who objectifies women and values reductive gender roles.

We have a culture that teaches women who are failing in romantic partnerships to strive to make themselves “better” – thinner, smoother, glossier. Men, however, are taught they are owed something.

Feminism, instead of being seen as part of the solution, is an enemy. Women are depleting men’s power, they are denying men what is rightfully theirs.

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Men whose expectations have not been met become angry. This blind rage must be projected somewhere and that somewhere is at women.

Male privilege, then, harms everyone. Separating masculinity from misogyny and turning it into a healthy identity is no easy task but it is a vital task.