It only took a few hours after news of Donald Trump’s re-election for a sad spectacle to unfold online and beyond. The far-right slogan “Your body, my choice”, tweeted by white nationalist pundit and organiser Nick Fuentes, spread online and off, sparking waves of abuse against women. “You no longer have rights” was one of many similar messages addressed to women by extreme misogynist Andrew Tate, who is facing trial for rape and human trafficking charges in Romania. (He denies these charges.) Meanwhile, calls for the creation of “rape squads” emerged in far-right groups.
This onslaught of violently misogynistic speech made even clearer what had already been plain to see: that too many men do not view women as people with equal dignity and rights but as inferior creatures to be coerced. And this in turn has sparked another reaction. Since Trump’s election, 4B, a South Korean-founded separatist movement of women who swear off relationships with men, has been trending on social media.
This viral moment highlights a feeling that has been brewing for much longer: women’s discontent with heterosexual relationships and their anger at men’s increasingly unchecked misogyny. In recent years, male supremacist ideology has become mainstream, promoted by manosphere entrepreneurs who are thriving in the attention economy by feeding young men’s resentment towards women.
As aggrieved young men have been sucked into social media bubbles, gender polarisation has followed. Boys who have grown up on a diet of misogynistic content are embracing authoritarian strongmen who court them with promises to take away women’s rights. Young women, on the other hand, increasingly favour liberal politics.
South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol won the 2022 election by articulating an anti-feminist discourse directed at the Idaenam, men in their 20s with few economic and romantic prospects who are resentful of the country’s growing #MeToo movement. In Poland, nearly 50% of men aged 18-21 back the far-right Konfederacja party, whose chief figure said he opposed women’s right to vote and has described women as “less intelligent” than men.
In Argentina, the ultra-libertarian, chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei, who said he would “not apologise for having a penis”, won last year’s election in no small part thanks to young unemployed men who voted for him, lured by his promises of rolling back women’s rights. Meanwhile, digital violence, from online harassment to non-consensual explicit deepfakes, is used to punish and silence women who hold powerful men to account and campaign for gender equality.
Communities of “Men going their own way” (MGTOW) who swear to eschew women (whipping up manufactured fears of false rape accusations in the process) have been growing in the past few years. Now they have a mirror image. Communities of “Women going their own way” have emerged too, and they are telling women how to live without men who don’t respect them (a group on Reddit has 14,000 members). Taking a virtual stroll around these groups offers a glimpse of the level of disenchantment women feel. Dating podcasts that emerged as a reaction to the manosphere are now purporting to coach women on how to spot misogynists on dating apps.
Women have witnessed first-hand the unfinished work of the sexual revolution. About one in four women experience sexual assault in their lifetime. Choking during sex has become normalised to the point that many men think it doesn’t require consent. Mainstream pornography, whose representation of women shows striking overlaps with extreme misogynistic communities’ violent speech towards women, is polarising gen Z women: after decades of sex-positive feminism, many young women are embracing anti-pornography views, from the “Cancel porn” movement on TikTok to pop stars’ public condemnation of porn.
There have been plenty of panicked headlines about the sex recession, which have even reached France, long the home of romantic exceptionalism. When the #MeToo movement emerged in the US, the backlash was swift, but in France both men and women often chose to side with men accused of abuse. No wonder French women are giving up on men. Former pornography performer and feminist author Ovidie has become a proponent of voluntary celibacy. “I have nothing against men. I don’t want to sleep with them any more,” she declared in media interviews.
In recent years, France has seen a revival of political lesbianism (women “choosing” to become lesbians for political reasons), with widely publicised essays from Louise Morel’s How to Become a Lesbian in Ten Steps to Juliet Drouar’s Getting Out of Heterosexuality. Virginie Despentes, a key proponent of the movement, has likened “becoming” a lesbian to losing 40 kilos. As the Gisèle Pelicot mass rape trial continues, France is having a reckoning with decades of abuse. The feeling that 1968 revolutionary slogans such as “It is forbidden to forbid” primarily served the interests of men and did not offer liberation for all is spreading in France.
Moving away from men might be a needed defence mechanism for women. It is powerful in the message that it sends: that women don’t have a duty to show compassion to men who deny them basic respect. For my forthcoming book, Ctrl Hate Delete: The New Anti-Feminist Backlash and How We Fight It, I have spoken to dozens of activists, social workers and psychologists who are fighting to pull men out of misogynistic rabbit holes. Many of them are male. These men are serious about addressing men’s grievances and suffering. They have also understood that it is men’s responsibility, not women’s duty, to do so.
Women who live surrounded by men steeped in misogynistic online content increasingly bear the brunt of men’s radicalisation. Fighting back is a feminist imperative.
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Cécile Simmons is an investigative researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) focusing on dis/misinformation, online subcultures, women’s rights and wellness
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