Masculinist threat in France: 18-year-old secondary school student arrested near Saint-Étienne
An 18-year-old youth was arrested near Saint-Étienne in July 2025, armed with two knives, before attacking female secondary school students. He identifies with masculinism.
Armed secondary school student arrested near Saint-Étienne, charged with terrorism offences
In July 2025, an 18-year-old youth was detained near his secondary school close to Saint-Étienne whilst carrying two knives in his rucksack. His stated target was young women. According to franceinfo - Justice, he was arrested before he could carry out his plan and placed under investigation for "criminal terrorist conspiracy".
During his questioning, the suspect identified himself with a masculinist movement, a current that holds the view that men are today threatened by advances in feminism.
What is masculinism?
Masculinism brings together individuals — predominantly young men — who believe that society now favours women to the detriment of men. This current, diffuse and heterogeneous, develops largely online, via forums, videos and social media. Some of its adherents advocate a simple masculine identity withdrawal; others resort to openly hostile rhetoric towards women.
On an international scale, this movement is sometimes referred to as the "manosphere", a set of online communities that share a reactionary vision of relations between the sexes. Figures such as "incels" — a contraction of "involuntary celibates", meaning men who define themselves as involuntarily single — constitute one of its most radicalised branches.
Murderous precedents abroad
This type of violent act is not unprecedented. Attacks motivated by a masculinist ideology have already been recorded in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2018, a man killed ten people in Toronto whilst explicitly identifying with the incel community. These acts have since been analysed by several Western intelligence services as an emerging form of ideologically motivated terrorism.
In France, the Saint-Étienne case constitutes one of the first formal charges under a terrorism qualification linked to this movement. The charge brought — "criminal terrorist conspiracy" — means that investigators established the existence of a deliberate, ideologically motivated plan targeting a group of people because of their gender.
Radicalisation that concerns authorities
Services specialised in preventing radicalisation have been interested in online masculinist dynamics for several years. The boundary between resentful discourse and a violent plan remains difficult to draw, which complicates the early detection of these profiles.
The case of the secondary school student arrested near Saint-Étienne illustrates this difficulty: at 18 years old, with no known previous convictions, he had apparently radicalised his beliefs through contact with content circulated on the internet before planning to carry out his attack.
Judicial investigation is ongoing. The terrorism charge, should it be upheld at the conclusion of the inquiry, could pave the way for prosecution before the national counter-terrorism prosecutor's office.
Source: franceinfo - Justice