online misogyny - Guardian article

[onlytherain]

This is very sad and concerning and something I see reflected in my daughters' lives.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/23/15-year-old-girl-misogyny-social-media-online-abuse

I read that this morning and it was so sad, and also so unsurprising. It makes me furious how normalised it is.

That's incredibly worrying. What can be done about it? What hope is there for male/female relationships going forward?

I wonder at the state of mind of the blokes who do the algorithms. I'm signed in to my husband's Gmail account, so when I go on something like YouTube the suggested content is aimed at the male of the species.
There's always half dressed women with captions about how they're just about to fall over and it'll be the funniest "fail" you'll see. When I watch DIY videos there are always some there with overly developed young women, probably AI altered images. Needless to say I don't look at them.
Someone thinks this is what lads like, and maybe some of the time they do, and it isn't an excuse for these comments. There's so much more that tech companies could do.

Are any of your teenage daughters or sons talking to you about this kind of thing? What are they saying / how are they reacting?

It makes bleak reading, doesn't it? It seems like the genie is out of the bottle now, though.

I think the genie being out is just going to normalise it though.

It'll be one more instance of "but you know what men are like, don't put yourself in their sights" and women's space to participate in society and culture gets smaller again.

Can't disagree, Flirts.

The most disheartening thing when this stuff comes up in convos with teenage girls & young women is that in general they seem to think men & boys are "like that", abuse is to be expected & even gooners are unremarkable.

Edited for missing words

I came on to see if anyone had linked to this article. What a world we are living in 🥺

Interesting, I use my son’s account (he’s 20), it’s all diy/woodworking stuff or cars & bikes, but no sign of half-dressed or ‘over-developed’ young women. I think the algorithm feeds you more of what you engage with….

Algorithms react to a mix of keywords, hashtags, captions and images. So if you're gender critical and the word 'trans' or 'sex' appear frequently in your posts or the posts you read, you'll soon be suggested lots of stuff that'll likely make you very cross indeed.

I'm quite regularly horrified by what an algorithm has decided I might like to click on. It's very wrong, so I don't click, but it remains ever hopeful.

I wish there were a robust option for not interested in porn/pervy-TEMU-ads/misogyny on social media in general. But, sadly, there isn't yet.

Thankyou for this - and yes def agree there should be a ‘dont show me this again’ button

Heh! my algorithm is full of Tasmanian feminists! Although just lately I have noticed a few of these really hateful 'men's rights' sites. Most of then are so silly that you wonder whether they are satire or not. Main one is called "Stop Segregation of Men".

Until social media sites censor misogyny like they do other 'isms, you can't blame them.

The message they are getting is "racism is unacceptable, homophobia is unacceptable, transphobia is unacceptable, sexism - meh, not so bad, just part of life innit?"

I suspect the Australian social media ban will become more commonplace, and there will come a time when social media will be seen in the same light as alcohol: use with care and not for kids.

I'm not on much SM, just mumsnet and facebook, but I always report misogyny and hate. Sad to say, I've not had a single one upheld on FB.

My algorithm has changed since I started researching toilets. I can’t wait for this all to be over.

I'm the same, but I can't say I've ever reported a site. I probably shoould start doing it, even if it doesn't get much of a response.

SM isn't pushing those messages either, maybe if one believes in "AMAB lesbians" but that's about it, & Big Tech positively sprinted away from Ibram X Kendi & allied trades when Trump won.

Not in our case, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it. We don't have the viewing or history settings on YouTube, so it thinks I'm a random bloke each time I go on.

I read this article. I want to get my 15 year old son to read it to get hs views and to try and understand what he is absorbing passively on social media (although i think 99% of the time he's on Roblox)

I feel like half the female friends of my teenagers are 'asexual' now, or 'nonbinary', and honestly I can see why they're trying (fruitlessly) to escape both womanhood, and sex - it's just an endless hellscape.

Even at school they're surrounded by teenage boys who, from the age of about 12, make rape jokes, bark at them like dogs, mock them, ask for their snapchat to get nudes, and generally endlessly sexually harass them. They're exposed to porn by other children, all of sex now is just violent kink... It's fucking awful.

I think men and boys have always been like this, social media has amplified it. I remember overhearing some disgusting conversations as a teenager, but I didn't understand the extent of it until much later. And unfortunately I do think pretty much all men are like that - the conversations were between boys in my friendship group who have gone on to be 'nice men' and would call themselves feminists - a couple of lawyers, a vicar, all family men. And my dad commonly uses terms like 'silly tart' etc. I've pretty much given up on men in general, I think they see us as less than human and I've had enough.

We had the first incident in Y3, when a boy asked my daughter to bring in dirty underwear and said other inappropriate things. It turned out that his older brother exposed him to online porn. In Y8, a boy send an image of his penis to a girl, who then posted it in the year group chat. The police got involved. At age 13, someone pressured my daughter to send nudes on Instagram. Like us, the police thought it was a paedophile grooming my daughter. It turned out to be a teenage boy from her year group. The police spoke to him and his parents.

At least 20% of the girls in my daughter's primary class have been raped by now (aged 18) - and those are only the ones I know about.

I think a lot of parents underestimate the extend of the problem.