From men’s camps to UK respect programs to online abuse networks — three paths in today’s gender struggle.

The German phrase Mein Kampf translates literally as “my struggle.” Its historical association is, and should remain, inseparable from Adolf Hitler’s manifesto and the ideology it helped fuel. That history isn’t the subject of this piece—but the literal phrase is a useful hook for a different question: what does it look like, today, when men and boys are taught how to relate to women? Three very different answers are playing out right now, in three very different arenas: a commercial self-improvement industry in the United States, a public education initiative in the United Kingdom, and a criminal subculture exposed by investigative journalism. They aren’t points on a single continuum so much as three separate stories about influence, accountability, and harm.

America’s Men’s Camps: Confidence for Sale

A growing industry of “men’s camps” and dating boot camps has sprung up across the United States. Marketed as self-improvement retreats, they promise to teach men how to approach women, build confidence, and overcome social anxiety. Participants pay thousands of dollars for weekend workshops that drill them on body language, conversation openers, and “natural attraction” techniques.

Supporters argue these camps fill a real gap: lonely men in a world where dating apps and digital isolation have eroded ordinary social skills. Critics counter that many programs reduce women to targets of strategy rather than people to connect with—the focus on tactics (“what line to use,” “how to hold eye contact”) risks reinforcing transactional thinking about intimacy rather than dismantling it. This is a commercial market responding to (and arguably profiting from) male insecurity, with results that vary enormously by provider and largely escape outside scrutiny.

The UK’s School Programs: A Different Kind of Intervention

It’s worth being clear that the UK’s approach isn’t a more virtuous version of the same thing—it’s a categorically different undertaking. While the American camps are private markets serving adult customers, UK initiatives are public, institutional, and aimed at children.

The Steps Project in Greater Manchester runs six-week sessions with boys aged 11 to 14, challenging harmful gender norms and online influences before they harden into adult attitudes. Early results are encouraging: over 70% of participants reported being more respectful toward girls and women, and nearly 80% said they’d become better friends. London schools have introduced similar toolkits for children as young as 9, using drama and workshops to build equality into early development. In 2025, the UK government backed this work with a £20 million national strategy on violence against women and girls, funding teacher training and classroom interventions.

This is a safeguarding and education policy, not a self-help product—and that distinction matters for how it’s funded, evaluated, and held accountable.

The Investigation Into Online Abuse Networks

The most serious story here is also the one that least belongs in a metaphorical frame. A CNN investigation reported on hidden Telegram groups and niche pornography sites where men exchanged tips on drugging partners and shared videos of unconscious or non-consenting women. One such group, reportedly with around 1,000 members, traded advice on sedatives and normalized filmed abuse under the language of “sleep content.” The investigation also linked some of this material to a porn site that drew over 62 million visits in a single month.

This is not a parallel “struggle” alongside dating bootcamps or school programs — it’s alleged criminal conduct, and treating it as another data point on a masculinity spectrum risks understating its severity. The more useful comparison is to other platform-accountability failures: how slowly enforcement catches up to harm, and how normalization spreads inside closed online spaces before outside scrutiny arrives.

What These Three Stories Actually Have in Common

Not a shared ideology and not a shared “struggle”—but a shared question: who is responsible for shaping how men and boys learn to treat women, and who is checking that influence?

• The commercial market (men’s camps) currently polices itself. Outcomes depend entirely on which program someone chooses.
• The public system (UK schools) is accountable to funders, evaluators, and published outcome data, which is part of why its early results are measurable at all.
• The unregulated underground (the Telegram groups and the sites hosting this material) has the least oversight and the worst outcomes, by a wide margin.

The pattern worth drawing from this isn’t a metaphor about struggle—it’s a much more concrete observation: accountability structures correlate with outcomes. The space with public oversight produced measured, positive results. The space with none produced documented harm.

Conclusion

The literal meaning of Mein Kampf is incidental here, and it’s worth resisting the temptation to stretch it into a unifying theme—doing so flattens three stories that need to be understood on their own terms. What connects America’s dating camps, the UK’s classroom programs, and a criminal network exposed by investigative journalists isn’t a shared “struggle,” but a shared stake in the same underlying question: when boys and men are taught how to relate to women, who’s setting the curriculum, and who’s checking the results?