Society has gone backwards in its treatment of women and the internet fuels new forms of misogyny. This is stated by linguist and Oxford University researcher Deborah Cameron in her latest book, Language, Sexism and Misogyny, published by Routledge, in which she explains how language is used today to undermine feminism. and harass women in public spaces online and also offline, based on various academic research.
“The return to clear and open misogyny is visible in both politics and popular culture,” says Cameron, who emphasizes that although 21st century misogyny is considered politically retrograde, its style and form of expression belong to the present.
In the book he reviews both clearly misogynistic figures such as Donald Trump or Andrew Tate (former boxer and YouTuber who has become a millionaire with speeches about male superiority and how to achieve female submission), as well as the rise of movements such as tradwife (which claims the return of the traditional woman, of the 1950s housewife) or the manosphere (network of websites, forums and blogs in which toxic masculinity and anti-feminist discourses are promoted), and also public figures who have faced sexism, such as Kamala Harris or Greta Thunberg.
And it exposes how the rise of TikTok and forums that facilitate the promotion of misogynistic ideas have led to an increase in verbal threats and online abuse against women, something that is conditioning the way in which women participate in politics and in society in general.
“For some women - for example those who have a high public profile in politics, activism or the media - it has become a problem, because the fear of being bombarded with death threats, insults or rape is leading to many to exclude themselves from public life” or to measure their interventions because “women's language is monitored,” says Cameron.
Begonya Enguix, social anthropologist and professor at the UOC, believes that the Internet and social networks do not create misogynistic dynamics (which already existed in society) but they do add virality and impunity to the transmission of these messages.
“Machismo and misogyny find a very privileged speaker on social networks because the messages circulate very quickly and spread to a level that is unfeasible in non-digital contexts, and also because people who would never offend or make a comment in their lives sexist behavior to a colleague in the office, they do feel empowered and unpunished to make those comments on the internet or 'like' a sexist video."
Elisa García Mingo, professor and researcher of sociology at the Complutense University (UCM) and co-author of the report Youth in the Manosphere of the Reina Sofía Center of FAD Juventud, agrees that anonymity and the feeling of less social control that exists on the Internet makes people say things that they know are not okay to say out loud. But he adds that if misogyny grows on the networks it is because there are content creators who feed it because they have seen that there is a market niche in male victimhood, in the ideas that feminism has ruined men's lives.
"In previous research with young people aged 18-30 we have seen that in WhatsApp groups where there are only men there are many more outbursts or sexist jokes, and this has to do with a generational malaise, with the fact that there is a generation of men who, for multiple crises will not fulfill the mandates of traditional masculinity: being a breadwinner, having a job, being a father of a family...; So there is a minority that is reproducing the most misogynistic principles that circulate in the manosphere and aligns itself with values contrary to equality,” says García Mingo.
Added to this, he says, is that online platforms not only do not put an end to these toxic contents and technocultures but, due to their algorithms and governance models, “they favor this digital bile”, contribute to it circulating more and at greater speed and making them profitable. Hateful and violent content is better than the rest.
“Social networks amplify something that exists: a social base of gender inequality and crises of global change at all levels - from personal to international relationships - which in certain contexts is read in terms of moral panic, disorder, of the end of the family, of population decline, of decline of civilization... and it affects men more as people who see their privileges threatened,” says Enguix.
And he emphasizes that misogyny on the internet is part of events that happen in many other areas, such as the vote for the extreme right being basically a male vote or demonstrations and meetings on masculinity that promote brotherhood between men. “Our lives are mixed environments that feed off each other, the online and offline spheres cannot be separated,” she emphasizes.
García Mingo believes that this feedback has a lot of significance, especially for young people, because a large part of their sociability occurs on the internet and they are normalizing that hatred and those toxic technocultures –Men's Rights Activists (ADH), Men who follow their own path (MGTOW), Incel (Involuntary Celibates), Seduction Gurus (PUA, in English)... - and that means that there are people who are denigrated, who abandon the networks and are expelled from the space public, a fact that has repercussions from the democratic point of view and the visibility of women in the digital public space.”
The data from the Government Delegation against Gender Violence that appears at the beginning of this report shows how hostile the digital landscape is for women. More than 25% of women between 16 and 25 years old have received inappropriate advances through social networks. And the barometer on youth and gender that the Reina Sofía Fad Juventud Center carried out in 2021 concluded that one in five men between 15 and 29 years old considers that gender violence does not exist and is an "ideological invention."
"Since the late 90s there was a consensus to work together all social bodies to protect, prevent and eradicate violence against women and that consensus and respect for the victims has been broken and now not only are things said that for 20 years No one dared to say it out loud, but they are proud to say it and it is part of a way of being in the world, of a certain masculinity,” comments the UCM sociologist.
