You are at risk. We are all at risk. Because this is what I know: bad things are coming. We are in a code red emergency.
Because misogyny isn’t bad people saying bad things that may hurt your feelings. (Though it might.) And misogyny isn’t about silencing women. (Though it does.)
Misogyny is now one of the deadliest weapons on Earth. Misogyny is a dirty bomb in the heart of our information system. Misogyny is electoral interference. Misogyny is a national security threat so lethal we can’t even see it.
Because misogyny is invisible. It’s never about all women, it’s always just about one particular, disagreeable woman who just happens to not be very likeable. Or competent. Who is loud or “shrill” or annoying or who got the job because she slept with a man. Or because she was a diversity hire. A woman who can’t even run her own house let alone a country. A woman who is “nasty”. A woman who isn’t and cannot be the strong leader a nation needs.
It took years for us to learn some of the basic facts of what happened in 2016 and it’s still just a partial view. But we now know: Russia attacked Clinton in exactly the same way that Trumpworld attacked Clinton, in exactly the same way that they are attacking Kamala.
We now know how the Kremlin actually paid in roubles for Facebook to pump those messages out across US social media. We now know that Cambridge Analytica, on behalf of the Trump campaign, created an anonymous Crooked Hillary campaign that it fed into the “bloodstream of the internet”.
But neither invented misogyny. They just used it. These were narratives the bros of the broverse were already spreading, which the invisible hand of the social media algorithms were pumping into people’s feeds. The same zombie narratives that have risen again for Kamala and are already being stoked not just by YouTube edgelords and JD Vance fanboys but Russia and China too.
Soon, we won’t even notice. It’ll just be part of the air that we breathe. A choking toxic misogynistic stew that will silently pour over the culture war trenches like mustard gas. Darkness is coming. This is the world social media created. And we’re much further out than we thought.
Please dont assume this is the whole article. These are just a few paragraphs I picked out. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/27/misogyny-emergency-huge-outpouring-kamala-harris-us-electionction
(Bit surprised this is on the Guardian web site, but on checking I think this is an article for tomorrow's Observer.)
Sorry - wanted to add this!
... there are things that only veterans of the childless cat lady wars can know. They used to call us witches because we knew shit. We still do. That’s what makes us so powerful. And dangerous. That’s what JD Vance understands: our cat lady energy. We’ve lived through culture wars before they even had that name, before they invented memes and when they just burned us at the stake.
Added because even mainstream media is saying, she isn't necessarily everyone's first choice, but the more Trump and Vance are insulting about women, the more women are supporting KH.
So even if it is the only thing, if this is the start of men realising they cant denigrate women and not pay a price, that is a plus.