Barrett Pall on Calling Out Predatory TikTok Accounts

"It all really started because I just started to get a lot of really misogynistic videos on my For You page," he tells Sonia Baghdady of Advocate Now. "And I was like, This is crazy. How was this so prevalent?"

While Pall is an advocate for women, he says that he "didn't want to take space from women."

"Women have fought for so long to have their voices heard," he says. "But the more that I got involved in the feminist space, the more that I heard 'we need you as an ally. We need people who are men to speak out against men and this predatory behavior.'"

Pall believes that misogyny and the culture of "toxic masculinity" harm both men and women alike, and that men are often hurt by the very systems they take part in upholding. Much of this stems from how children are treated differently while growing up solely based on gender.

"Toxic masculinity is essentially men hurting themselves," Pall explains. "And when you are not okay and loving yourself, we often then put that onto other people through projection, and that's where we end up harming others. But realistically, we're just hurting ourselves the most. ... What we've seen now is a giant mental health crisis for men. And it's largely to do with this exact thing: toxic masculinity."