A Note From The House · April 2026
On Vigilance: Certain Corners of the Modern Internet.
We’ll drop the brand voice for a moment.
There is a website currently receiving approximately 63 million monthly visits that functions, in practice, as an instruction manual for sexual violence. It uses the familiar language of personal development — “academy,” “coaching,” “community” — to teach coercion, grooming, and assault tactics. It is marketed to men as self-improvement. It is, functionally, a training site. You can report content like this to the CyberTipline and the FBI tip line — both links are below in the Modern Apothecary.
On “Not All Men” and the Bear in the Woods.
We know the discourse. The viral question — would you rather encounter a strange man or a bear in the woods? — where a startling number of women chose the bear, and a startling number of men took it personally.
Here is what we would gently offer: the women choosing the bear were not making a statement about all men. They were doing the same risk math women have always done. Tofana’s clients in 1633 made the same calculation at a different scale. It has never been about whether every man is dangerous — obviously, every man is not. It has always been about the fact that you cannot tell which one is, and the consequences of being wrong are catastrophic.
The answer to that risk math is not “not all men.” The answer is building a world where the math comes out differently. That means resources like the ones below. That means men holding other men accountable when they see the tactics being taught on that academy site showing up in their friend groups. That means listening when someone tells you they’re afraid, and believing them the first time.
On Who Experiences Abuse.
This site uses a feminine voice for the satire because Giulia Tofana’s network in 1633 specifically served women. That is historical fact, not a statement about who abuse happens to today.
In 2026, abuse crosses every line. Roughly 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner violence. Roughly 1 in 6 men experience sexual abuse or assault in their lifetime. LGBTQ+ people — especially trans and nonbinary people — experience rates of intimate partner and sexual violence as high or higher than cisgender women. Male, trans, and nonbinary survivors face additional barriers: fewer shelters that will accept them, more stigma, more dismissal, less research.
Every resource in the Modern Apothecary below is available to you regardless of gender. Where a resource is specifically designed for a particular community, we’ve noted it. The advocates working these lines have heard every story. They will not flinch. They will not minimize. They will help you plan the next step, whatever that needs to look like.
On A Note To A Particular Gentleman.
You know who you are. The one whose browser history features that academy — perhaps in February, perhaps more recently. The one who recognized his own patterns in the statistics above and felt, for a moment, something that might have been accountability knocking.
This house was not built for you. It was built because of you. Giulia Tofana’s clients came to her door in 1633 because the men who made those visits necessary faced no consequence. No law that recognized what was happening. No shelter, no hotline, no system that would believe the women. Giulia was their system. She was what accountability looked like when no other form existed. Her records were meticulous. She kept names.
You are living in a different century, with a choice available to you that those men never gave their victims. The National DV Hotline takes calls from people who recognize they are being abusive and want help stopping — 1-800-799-7233. In Australia, the Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) specializes in exactly this. Change is possible. It requires a call you probably don’t want to make.
We would gently suggest you make it. The ice does not hold. It never did. Giulia knew this before you were born, and history has been keeping score ever since.
On The Matter of Consent. Since Apparently It Bears Stating.
Consent is enthusiastic, ongoing, sober, and freely given. It is not the absence of a no. It is not compliance under duress or fear. It is not what someone agrees to while incapacitated. It is not silence. It is not “she didn’t fight back.” It is not “she was flirting earlier.” It is not “she’d said yes before.” Intoxication — including intoxication you provided — is not a loophole. It is a crime scene.
Specifically, for those who learned differently from certain academies:
On drinks: Introducing a substance to someone’s drink without their knowledge — to reduce their capacity to refuse or to remember — is drug-facilitated sexual assault. It is prosecutable. GHB, Rohypnol, and ketamine are detectable in urine for up to 72 hours and in hair follicles for up to 90 days. Forensic SANE nurses are trained specifically to document exactly this. Test strips are now available at pharmacies. Bystanders are more likely than ever to notice and act. The evidence does not disappear because you think it did.
On phones and tracking: Installing monitoring software on someone’s phone or device without their knowledge or consent is a federal crime under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Placing a tracking device in someone’s bag, car, or belongings without their consent is illegal under stalking and harassment statutes in most jurisdictions. Metadata survives. Logs survive. Device activity survives. The Coalition Against Stalkerware works directly with law enforcement on exactly these cases.
On the record: Giulia Tofana’s network worked by observation. Kitchen staff, midwives, servants, neighbours — people who noticed things and kept quiet about what they knew. The domestic sphere of 1633 had its own intelligence network, and it was meticulous. The domestic sphere of 2026 has cameras, metadata, text message logs, cloud backups, and a community of women who have learned to screenshot everything. The architecture of observation is the same. The tools are simply better.
This is not a gray area. It has never been a gray area. We say so plainly because some corners of the internet have gone to considerable effort to make it appear otherwise.
A Word From The Crones of Generation X, On Behalf of the Village of Fafo.
We are the women who were told, at seventeen, that what happened to us was a misunderstanding. Who were told, at twenty-two, that the way he looked at us was a compliment. Who were told, at thirty-five, that we should be flattered. Who were told, at forty-eight, that we were remembering it wrong. We have been keeping score since before some of you were born.
We watched Anita Hill sit in that hearing room in 1991 and tell the absolute truth and be called a liar by men who knew she wasn’t. We were in the workforce when the word for what was happening to us hadn’t been attached to a hashtag yet. We raised the daughters who are now reporting what the men in their lives learned from that academy. We are the crones now — the elders, the ones with the long memory and the permanent record — and we are telling you plainly:
We have been patient for forty years. That patience is structurally complete.
The village of Fafo is a real place. It has always existed. It is where consequences live — the ones that arrive quietly, without announcement, in the form of daughters who finally talk, of women who finally screenshot, of networks that finally connect, of a cultural moment that finally has a name. The village runs on the principle its name implies. You know what the principle is. You know which half applies to you.
The crones are not angry. Anger runs hot and burns out. What we have is colder and more durable: documentation, community, and an extremely long memory. Giulia Tofana kept records for twenty years. Generation X has been keeping them longer. The village of Fafo does not send warnings. It sends outcomes. Consider this the one exception we have agreed to make.
On What To Do With This.
If you recognize the tactics being taught on that academy site in someone in your own life — trust that recognition. If you have already encountered content that shouldn’t exist online, there are places to report it that actually act. If you are in a situation that feels like it requires a desperate solution — the resources below exist for exactly that moment.
Our foremothers would have wept for what you are holding in your hand right now — a device, a network, a door into a room full of people who have been trained specifically to believe you. We built this in their honor. We built it for everyone they couldn’t reach in time. Use it.
The academy and its files — sixty-two million monthly visitors, the playbooks, the tactics pressed into their hands like coins for a ferryman — were the last tokens paid to the grim reaper of the patriarchy. A dying order tendering its debts in the currency it has always preferred: the bodies and dignity of other people.
The grim reaper of the patriarchy does not work for them. She has always worked for us. The account has been kept for centuries. The balance is due.
This ends now. We are the ones who end it.
— The House of Tofana