Misogyny: The Hottest New Trend Sweeping the Internet

Elizabeth Walen ’28

Despite the decades women have spent fighting for equal rights, recent rises in misogynistic trends signal an escalating spiral backwards. For a moment, during the 2010’s Obama administration, feminism seemed to be secure. Recently, however, the security that women had was seen as a “threat.” As governments around the globe are restricting reproductive rights, education, and women’s own voices, women are once again being pushed towards a single role: a mother in a nuclear family. As this trend progresses, it is apparent that the internet is central to the emergence of a narrative popular among the younger generation of men, which suggests that all the progress women have made is the problem.

In the past few years, “red-pill” podcasts—far right, anti-feminist, white nationalist “manosphere” outlets—have been harping on the dangers of “modern-day” feminism. Their take on the “strong-woman” or “girl-boss” is to denigrate them as synonymous with a woman who mimics traditional male behavior to get ahead. The need to become “masculine” to be seen as competent is so deeply ingrained in our society that, according to a 2015 Duke University study, people with a deeper voice are perceived as more competent, which helps explain why working women who wanted to climb the ranks, even as far back as the 1980s, often dismissed their femininity to be taken more seriously. With this came a negative connotation that women want to “replace” men in the workforce, and that they were “naturally incompetent” compared to men.

This vindictive viewpoint has been pushed since youth. As young boys are taught to become “men,” the standard in the West is to encourage growing boys to suppress emotions and avoid weakness, partly because these characteristics are seen as “too feminine.” To “be a man” and thrive, it is necessary to adopt aggressive, even violent, “masculine” traits.

With rising discourse reflected in governments, women are being sold the concept that her future goals are scarcely decided by her, and are being pushed towards the submissive role of a nuclear caretaker. Recent state laws, such as the complete abortion bans in 13 states, cause for a woman to become intensely focused on whether her own rights are “acceptable” based on where she is, leading to the deaths of women or her entrapment. If a woman were to cross state or country boundaries, her personal rights could drastically change. This is not isolated to the United States; out of the 195 countries in the world, only 14 of them give women equal legal rights and protections to men. Meaning that only 7.18% of the countries in the world recognize women’s equality, making these rights increasingly conditional. With rights being provisional, there is always room for hatred for women to grow.

Even if the place you are in has equal rights for women, misogyny still runs rampant and exists within seemingly mundane parts of our lives, such as toothpaste. Most mainstream toothpastes were created for a male mouth, which harms a woman’s teeth, due to the difference in acidity levels. Often, toothpaste made for women is substantially more costly compared to average toothpaste, which is another example of the “pink tax,” in which products targeted towards women are more expensive.

Toothpaste, unfortunately, is a more trivial disregard for women.

On the internet, however, the tone towards women is much more violent. Misogynistic statements and remarks appear in a girl's life quite often. It’s common for a girl to be catcalled, and even more common for a woman to know what to do about it. Young girls are often the recipients of these misogynistic remarks, though now they exist on the phone as well as on the street. Today, if a girl were to post a video of herself, the comments are most often filled with men calling her a “slut” or saying that she is “washed up.” With the release of the fifth season of Stranger Things, the internet was filled with discussion over rising star Nell Fisher, who, at only 14 years old, was the recipient of numerous sexual remarks from men who were much older than her. On X, a generative AI bot called Grok was used to make over 1.8 million nude images of unconsenting young women, Nell Fisher being one of them.

In The New Age of Sexism, Laura Bates, an acclaimed British feminist activist and author, discusses how the rise of generative AI reveals a new way in which women are being treated. Now, deepfakes of women can be made without repercussions, stripping a woman of even the knowledge of what is being perpetrated against her. It can even be said that generative Artificial Intelligence can be seen as a “female companion,” one that cannot say no or disagree with the one ordering it, one that is available everywhere and at every moment, and one that is never upset or disagreeable. Generative A.I. bots can be viewed as the perfect assistant, one without contingencies.

As the internet continues to expand in unprecedented ways, misogyny has found new ways to evolve with this expansion. For younger generations, this constant exposure is leading to formative views that their bodies are “public property,” that their voices are “disposable,” or that their autonomy is something that must be negotiated. If these patterns of misogyny continue to expand, where does that leave the girls of the newer generations? What would their future look like as we push closer to a new decade?