It’s no surprise that a Trump victory would lead to an increase in online harassment and hate speech against women. Trump has attacked women’s reproductive rights and access to abortion (which was on the ballot in 10 states this election), and used anxiety around masculinity as a key voting issue, often uttering sexist, crude insults on the campaign trail. Not to mention, he was found liable of sexual abuse.
Now, it seems that for some, Trump’s reelection is a hall pass for bad behavior.
In both the days leading up to the election and after Trump’s victory, women in the United States are facing a marked increase of online hate, harassment, and even denigration, according to new research from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading global think tank dedicated to safeguarding human rights.
Online hate against women increased in the last presidential election in 2020, and again in the 2022 midterms. But now the manosphere, emboldened by a Trump win, is being louder than ever online with anti-women rhetoric that “could extend into the next presidential election and beyond,” says the ISD.
The manosphere exists across social media on X and TikTok, on right-wing and conservative blogs and podcasts, and forums on Reddit, just to name a few, and promotes masculinity, attacking women, and questioning feminism.
What’s changed in this election cycle? Male bloggers, podcasters, influencers, and public figures who used to identify as free-thinking pundits (or libertarians) bought into Trump’s hyper-masculine appeal, openly supporting him and making Trump seem likable (think Joe Rogan, Shawn Ryan, Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz, Lex Fridman). And young men listened to these bros, first voting for Trump, and now, post-election, no longer feeling the need to moderate themselves.
ISD researchers tracked comments across X, TikTok, forums, blogs, Reddit, and YouTube from October 1 to November 6 and found a spike in misogynist content in late October, just before the election, as well as an increase in posts calling to repeal the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920).
On the day after the election, phrases like “your body, my choice,” “get back to the kitchen,” and “repeal the 19th” exploded across platforms and have been growing ever since, according to the ISD.
When asked about the surge in the use of these phrases, TikTok confirmed to Fast Company that “the three phrases violate [our] Community Guidelines specifically under ‘hate speech‘ and content that includes those phrases are removed from the platform.”
Fast Company also reached out to X about the phrases.
The trend is showing no signs of slowing. On Election Day, far-right Gen Z political podcaster and white supremacist Nick Fuentes fueled the fire when he posted on X, “Your body, my choice. Forever.” The post has since received over 35 million views. The phrase has carried over to TikTok and Facebook, where it appeared on 52,000 posts in a 24-hour period, and even into schools, with some posts showing boys chanting the phrases at girls.
