Study says half of all misogynistic tweets are from women

[grimbletart]

BBC report

//www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36380247

If that research stacks up (if) how depressing is that? It says men needn't tax themselves being misogynistic as there are plenty of handmaidens to do it for them

[VestalVirgin]

His gf actually said she hoped another tweeter's child would be raped so she would understand what 'real rape' is

That's vile, but it's not a rape threat. The woman who wrote it does nothing to increase the amount of rape in the world.
Men who make rape threats declare intent to increase the number of rapes that are committed.

What I mean to say is; even with the most horrible of handmaidens around, if men didn't rape, there'd be almost no rape.

[AHellOfABird]

Agree with thatstewie - wonder what the rape threat results would look like?

[sashh]

There's only so much dirty work that can be outsourced to handmaidens. After all, those misogynist women still have to be convinced it is in their own best interest to do something.
Issuing rape threats to other women wouldn't benefit them in any way.

During the Ched Evans debacle on twitter his gf, mother and other women were just as vitriolic as male supporters. His gf actually said she hoped another tweeter's child would be raped so she would understand what 'real rape' is.

Maybe because I was brought up by a mother who believes men are better at technical things and women are nurturing I have had this shit from a woman most of my life.

It's not uncommon, the people cutting the clitoris off little girls is usually a woman and it is often mothers who take their daughters for the procedure.

[PalmerViolet]

Given some of the utter shite women are posting about other women presently in MN, I'm surprised it's not more than half.

I'm really very cross indeed about it.

[ThatStewie]

Clearly, that should be 'whore' not 'white'. Fecking predictive text.

[ThatStewie]

Using only two words massively skews the results. I get death and rape threats pretty much every day. Most of those don't use the word 'slut' or 'white' so they would've my count in this survey. I'm not exactly thrilled by a woman calling me a whore/slut or bitch but it's not even close to opening my blog or email or Twitter to discover yet another man threatening to rape me because he didn't like something I said.

Media reportage of this has been utterly disgraceful and so clearly designed to shit on women whilst completely erasing male violence. Yet again.

[PoundingTheStreets]

As we are all exposed to the same societal pressures I wonder what the difference is between, for example, those of us on this board who say "sod that for a game of soldiers" when it comes to misogyny and those who buy into the whole schtick.

I think self-belief and expectations have a lot to do with it. Growing up, for example (child in the 70s) I was subjected to a lot of forced femininity (e.g. my mother insisted on buying me dresses and giving me dolls and telling me that certain behaviours "are not ladylike."). However, I was also allowed access to traditionally male toys/activities and 100% encouraged to believe that I could do any job as good as any man. My education was considered of vital importance and it was expected of me that I would become self supporting.

While I hated the forced femininity, I think it did allow me to grow up feeling that 'female' was just as good as 'male', whereas much of society has fallen into the trap of considering traditionally female activities as somehow lesser or frivolous (e.g. ridiculing men who like knitting).

i did buy into some misogyny/victim-blaming ideals though, and it wasn't until I started to learn more about feminism that I made a conscious effort to see that for what it was and to avoid perpetuating it myself.

Personally, I think feminism should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum, taught as part of a wider focus on politics and sociology.

[Snowshimmer]

That's a lot, and that is sad. However it's Twitter...I wonder how many fake profiles were involved in that percentage. There are men on Twitter posting as women. I don't doubt that there are many misogynist women on there too though.

[Terrifiedandregretful]

I'm not surprised by this today. I don't know if anyone here has read the 'foetal gender stereotyping' thread on Aibu. The thread itself is interesting and good natured, but it was linked to on the Facebook page and the responses were just horrible. The op was a 'bitch' and a 'moron' for daring to be annoyed by gender stereotyping, and her annoyance was probably 'caused by her hormones'. The fact that this was all from women really shocked and bothered me.

[almondpudding]

Sorry, that should have said Twitter is not representative.

[VestalVirgin]

@grimbletart: We are not all exposed to the exact same pressures. There's the influence of parents, for example. It also seems to matter whether you grow up in a big city with an university or in a small countryside village.

It also depends on how selfish someone is. For a selfish woman, opposing feminism might be in her best interest, as the goals of feminism are unlikely to be achieved in one woman's lifetime.

[almondpudding]

According to Demos, 70% of racist tweets are from people of the same ethnic group as the slur refers to.

With all these Twitter stats, It is worth remembering that Twitter is representative of the Internet as a whole. Twitter functions well on a Smartphone, so it tends to have a greater skew towards poorer people. Tumblr, home of the social warrior, has poor functionality on phones and so is used more by people with access to a PC. Hence it has high numbers of social justice warriors, who tend to be young, white and wealthy.

[grimbletart]

As we are all exposed to the same societal pressures I wonder what the difference is between, for example, those of us on this board who say "sod that for a game of soldiers" when it comes to misogyny and those who buy into the whole schtick.

[RiverTam]

The fact that the Daily Mail and its sidebar of shame are predominantly read by women says it all, we are conditioned to slag each other off.

[GreenTomatoJam]

Demos used algorithms to distinguish between tweets being used in explicitly aggressive ways and those that were more conversational in tone.

It seems I spoke too soon, they did do that.

Wow.

[GreenTomatoJam]

Over a three-week period, think tank Demos counted the number of uses of two particular words as indicators of misogyny.


Hmmm.. that's a pretty blunt tool.. there's a fair bit of difference between someone calling someone something, and someone defending someone from being called something - yet they would both use the word.

I think I'd want to see some further analysis of the tweets for instance to see what the context was - denying/accusing etc.

[cadno]

I can just hear the cries of "but women do it too!" every time anyone tries to tackle online abuse of women by men now.

Depends on whether your hoping to reduce online abuse of women, or online abuse of women by men only - or shock, horror....online abuse.

[Felascloak]

This report makes me uncomfortable. I agree with branleuse "its based on use of the word whore or slut. I highly doubt that 50% of the vile threats such as rape threats
that women get online are by women*
I can just hear the cries of "but women do it too!" every time anyone tries to tackle online abuse of women by men now.

[VestalVirgin]

Maybe the take home from this is that the number of men hostile to woman is not as high as previously thought.

Depends on what you previously thought.

I never thought there were no misogynist women, and also, female misogynists are quite open about their sex, so ...

Also, not all misogynists are on twitter. Someone needs to do the actual work of passing woman-hating laws and stuff. They can't all hang out on twitter all day.

[cadno]

Oh dear, Dervel, dangerous talk. You feeling lucky today, punk !

[Dervel]

Maybe the take home from this is that the number of men hostile to woman is not as high as previously thought.

[GlitteryPomPoms]

EElisavetaOfBelsornia

VestalVirgin

Thanks that makes sense. It was my naive reading. I'm a bad feminist!

[VestalVirgin]

I highly doubt that 50% of the vile threats such as rape threats that women get online are by women

There's only so much dirty work that can be outsourced to handmaidens. After all, those misogynist women still have to be convinced it is in their own best interest to do something.
Issuing rape threats to other women wouldn't benefit them in any way.

[Branleuse]

its based on use of the word whore or slut. I highly doubt that 50% of the vile threats such as rape threats
that women get online are by women, even if a lot of women have dodgy internalised misogyny

[VestalVirgin]

Glittery, I read it as supporting women in getting access to things they need.
Like, if a former forced-birther needs an abortion, I'd help her.
I would not, however, support misogynist statements just because they are coming from a woman - saying misogynist things is not something a woman needs.

Also, a woman who says misogynist things will not be opposed by men, she'll be opposed by other women, so you can pick and choose which women to support.