I did the math that most people won’t do. I looked at the research on male violence in the United States: 60 million men perpetrating physical or sexual harm, 130 million when you include exploitative pornography consumption.
And then I asked the question that makes it unbearable:
What about the rest of the world?
There are approximately 4.7 billion men on earth. If we apply the same percentages we found in US research, and there’s no reason to think the US is exceptional in this regard, if anything we might have better reporting, we’re looking at:
2.7 billion men have perpetrated or will perpetrate physical or sexual violence against women and children in their lifetime.
Two. Point. Seven. Billion.
This is not something we address with education reform or better policing or stricter laws. That’s over a third of all humans on earth.
When I sat with that number, I understood for the first time why people believe in apocalyptic floods. Why ancient peoples imagined gods who looked at humanity and said “start over.” Because what the fuck else do you do with 2.7 billion?
I’m not religious, anymore. I don’t believe in the god of the Bible. But I understand now why the flood story exists. I understand the appeal of imagining something bigger than us: a god, aliens, or some cosmic force, that would just… fix this. Wipe the slate clean. Press reset on a species that has clearly gone wrong.
When you’re staring at 2.7 billion men causing harm, you start fantasizing about solutions that match the scale of the problem. A flood that drowns the violent and spares the innocent. Alien intervention that removes the capacity for cruelty. Divine judgment that actually holds abusers accountable in ways human systems never will.
Because the alternative, that we have to somehow address 2.7 billion perpetrators with the tools we have: feels impossible. It feels like standing in front of a tsunami with a bucket.
And then I remembered: Even in the flood story, God saved Noah. And Noah was gross too. He got drunk, probably sexually abused by his son or vice versa depending on how you read it, and then cursed entire lineages. Even the divine intervention story saved a patriarch. Even the fantasy of starting over began with more of the same.
I have about 33,000 followers on all my social media platforms. I’m writing a dissertation on the Sacred Embodied Human Animal. I’m trying to help people remember we’re part of the earth, not separate from it. I’m trying to build a foundation for living differently.
And it feels fucking ridiculous when I know that 200 million Americans would rather watch their sports and drink their sodas than be inconvenienced by evolution. When I know that 2.7 billion men globally are perpetrating violence and most will never face consequences. When I know that the systems designed to protect us are actually designed to protect them.
What am I supposed to do with these numbers? Write another article? Host another workshop? Build another community? While 2.7 billion men continue harming women and children and the world keeps spinning like this is normal?
The defeat is real. The desire for something, anything, bigger than human effort to come save us is real. Because if I’m honest, I don’t believe we can fix this with human tools. Not at this scale. Not with these numbers.
But here’s what I know that’s worse than the defeat: No one is coming to save us.
No God. No Aliens. No Cavalry.
There is no god waiting to burn the world and start over. There are no aliens coming to remove our capacity for violence. There is no divine intervention that will hold 2.7 billion men accountable.
There is just us. Human animals who have forgotten what we are. Who have built civilizations on domination instead of reciprocity. Who have normalized violence on a scale that should be species-ending.
And the truth, the hard, terrible, liberating truth, is this:
If we’re going to survive this, we have to save ourselves.
Not with a movement that converts 2.7 billion men. Not with a social media campaign that reaches the masses. Not with legislation or education or therapy programs that have already proven they don’t work at scale.
Saving ourselves means something different. Something smaller and simultaneously more radical:
It means trusting our intuition. Women have been told for generations that we’re overreacting, being paranoid, seeing danger where there is none. But the numbers prove we’re not paranoid enough. When 70-80% of men globally perpetrate violence, our gut feeling that we’re not safe is ACCURATE. Our animal instinct to be wary is CORRECT. Stop apologizing for it. Stop second-guessing it. Trust it.
It means looking at the hard facts. Stop letting people convince you that the numbers are exaggerated or that you’re being dramatic. 2.7 billion men. That’s the fact. Sit with it. Let it radicalize you. Let it break you and then rebuild you into someone who refuses to raise children in a world that treats this as acceptable.
It means remembering we are human animals. We are part of the earth, not separate from it. We have animal instincts that tell us when we’re in danger, when a system is unsustainable, when something is fundamentally wrong. We’ve been trained to ignore those instincts, to override them with logic and politeness and social conditioning. Stop. Your body knows. Listen to it.
It means shifting consciousness, not changing minds. I will not convince the masses. I will not reach 2.7 billion men with a better argument.
We can stop participating in systems that normalize harm.
We can stop teaching our children to accommodate violence.
We can stop pretending this is fine.
It means building lifeboats, not stopping the tsunami. The system is collapsing. A civilization built on this much violence cannot sustain itself. The question is not whether it will fall but what we build in its place. Every person who wakes up to these numbers, who refuses to accept this reality, who remembers what it means to be a human animal living in reciprocity with the earth and each other, that’s one more person who can help build what comes next.
The work is still worth doing, even though I still feel the defeat. I still wish something bigger than us would intervene. I still look at 2.7 billion and think “how the fuck am I supposed to address this with a dissertation and 33,000 followers?”
But here’s what I know:
The defeat is part of the process. You can’t look at numbers like this and NOT break. You can’t sit with the scale of male violence against women and children and NOT feel the impossibility of fixing it. That breaking is important. It’s the moment when you stop trying to reform the system and start building something new.
The longing for divine intervention is understandable. But it’s also a distraction. No god is coming. No aliens are landing. No cosmic force is going to hold 2.7 billion men accountable. We are the intervention. We are the ones who have to decide this ends with us.
The work is still worth doing, not because it will save anyone, but because it might help someone. Every woman who reads these numbers and stops gaslighting herself. Every mother who trusts her instincts about who to keep away from her children. Every person who refuses to raise another generation the same way. That’s how change happens. Not top-down. Not all at once. But person by person, choice by choice, consciousness by consciousness.
You can’t save 2.7 billion men from themselves. But you can help people remember they were never meant to live like this.
But this is why we NEED the Sacred Embodied Human Animal. This is why the work of remembering what we are matters. Not because it will convert the masses. Not because it will stop 2.7 billion men from causing harm.
But because:
Human animals know when a system is killing them. We have instincts that tell us when we’re living wrong. We’ve just been trained to ignore those instincts, to override them with civilization and progress and “that’s just how things are.”
Embodied beings can’t sustain disconnection indefinitely. You can’t live in a body and pretend the earth isn’t dying. You can’t be a mammal and pretend it’s normal for 2.7 billion males to harm females and young. Your body knows this is wrong even when your mind has been convinced it’s inevitable.
Sacred living means being in right relationship. With the earth. With each other. With our own animal nature. The civilization we’ve built is fundamentally wrong relationship: domination instead of reciprocity, extraction instead of regeneration, violence instead of care. Remembering the sacred means remembering that this violence is not normal, not inevitable, not acceptable.
The Sacred Embodied Human Animal is not a nice theory. It’s survival. It’s the only way out of a civilization built on 2.7 billion men harming women and children and expecting us all to just keep going.
Their is truth in the numbers. Your intuition was right. You knew something was deeply wrong. You knew the danger was real. You knew “not all men” was gaslighting.
If you’re reading this and feeling the same defeat I feel: I am so sorry and I am grateful, maybe even glad. That means you haven’t numbed yourself. That means the numbers hit you the way they should. That means you’re still human enough to be horrified.
Sit with the defeat for as long as you need to. Grieve for the world we thought we lived in. Rage at the scale of harm that’s been normalized. Long for divine intervention if that’s what you need.
And then remember:
You are a human animal. You have instincts that tell you this is wrong. You have a body that knows how to live in reciprocity with the earth. You have the capacity to refuse to participate in systems that normalize harm.
And maybe, just maybe, when this civilization collapses under the weight of its own violence, there will be enough of us who remember what it means to be Sacred Embodied Human Animals that we can build something different.
Leave a Reply