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Misogyny in the media
Pages 16-17 | Opinion
Misogyny in the media
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Social media platforms have become an unfiltered outlet Tate. To make their opinions known, they effectively spew
COMMENTARY BY GEORGIA RAU, FEATURES EDITOR
INFAMOUS for its “hot takes”and extremist viewpoints, social media, specifically podcasts, have become even more controversial with misogynistic content growing in popularity. Sensationalists gain traction by speaking of women in ways that seem to erase the gender equality progress of the last hundred years.
Unfortunately, such content gains the bulk of its engagement in young, impressionable teenage boys, indoctrinating the group into a mindset of extremist opinions.
Essentially, the demographic begins viewing mildly controversial videos and the content being suggested begins to get gradually more extreme, making its way to alt-right forums such as 4chan and QAnon. However, this content has become acceptable in today’s mainstream social media platforms.
“It’s horrifying to imagine that anyone could possibly be any more radical than Andrew Tate, but I do imagine that once people are exposed to him and accept his ideas, they’ll be open to more,” senior Maria Odio said.
According to a 2021 survey conducted by Common Sense Media, teenagers ages 13 to 18 spend an average of eight hours and 39 minutes a day on social media, and this continues to increase. During these hours of scrolling, they can come across a wide range of media, some of which is harmless, such as food content, dance trends and memes. However, the dangerous side of social media is just as prevalent.
Problematic and misogynistic content comes in many forms, often inconspicuous to its viewers. Commentary on women’s incompetence for anything other than domestic “duties” has become extremely normalized in the younger generation, promoting unwarranted bigotry.
A new form of such media has surfaced — in podcasts. Man-children between the approximate ages of 20 and 35 have found it necessary to speak ludicrously on a topic they know next to nothing about: women. They make outlandish claims, like how men are inherently smarter than women, describing women as property and utilizing violent, demeaning terms to describe them. Even more ironically, these shells of men do so all while claiming to be “alphas” and heroes to their gender.
Andrew Tate, the host of the podcast “Jet Talk with Andrew Tate” and founder of “Hustlers University,” a program advertised as self help, has recently received unexpected attention from all sides of the internet. Amassing close to four million followers on Instagram, Tate has made his presence known on various platforms, whether it be from his own account, where he posts about his “alpha male” qualities, such as his disregard for breakfast, or from the accounts of his adoring fans, who seem to pay more attention to Tate than the women they have so many opinions about.
In the past, Tate has been called out for insensitive, racist and homophobic tweets, according to The Sun. In addition, the British Broadcasting Company reports that Tate himself was allegedly kicked off the show “Big Brother” in 2016 for a video that surfaced of him hitting a woman with a belt, which he claims was a joke. Even if this is true, making light of domestic abuse is unacceptable in any form.
According to The Guardian, Tate’s previous romantic partners have alleged that he has been physically abusive towards them. Framing himself as a self-help guru, Tate also seems unqualified and lacks credentials to justify his platform. Needless to say, he should have nothing close to the audience he holds, especially not one of such an impressionable nature.
The fact of the matter is that social media has never been a safe place women. An Amnesty poll reports that 33% of women in the United States alone have experienced a form of harassment or abuse on social media platforms. Since people can remain anonymous online, they tend to feel more comfortable being hostile in nature. This anonymity also allows users to post content justifying violence towards women. The Gender Action Portal asserts that anonymity has been linked to higher levels of online aggression and incivility, which comes as no surprise.
The Atlantic reports that in 2012, an Icelandic woman, Thorlaug Agustsdottir, found a Facebook group called “Men are better than women” on which one post showed a young woman chained up, beaten and bloody. Enraged, Agustsdottir made her own post calling out the group. Within days, an image of Agustsdottir’s own face appeared on the group, edited to make her seem like she had been beaten. Comments under the post made remarks such as “women are like grass, they need to be beaten/cut regularly,” as well as other violent assertions.
While social media platforms may have gotten better at enforcing guidelines in the past ten years, people have also gotten better at keeping such behavior under the radar, but ultimately making the same points. Comments like those under the post of Agustsdottir’s face are still extremely common today.
The Center on Gender Equity and Health explains that many people use Twitter as an outlet for their biases, with hate speech targeting female politicians, journalists and feminists. Clearly, misogyny online has prevailed and continues to affect and influence social media users. Moreover, it affects people’s safety and presents an undeniable danger to women who use social media.
“As social media aids in the spread of knowledge, it also helps the spread of misinformation and ideologies like misogyny,” junior Sadie Arce said.
There are various ways this behavior online is considered dangerous. Primarily, posts and comments which are hostile themselves present a danger to women, especially if the post is directed at one woman in particular. Secondly, this content reaches a young audience, training the next generation of misogynistic men. Since teenagers are on social media so much, they are bound to come across such dangerous content, inevitably falling into a rabbit hole of sexist content. This introduces impressionable children to misogyny and has the power to convince them this new school of thought is completely acceptable. Furthermore, this content seems to be curated for the teen audience — short videos with eye-catching graphics and buzzwords to draw them in. The Washington Post warns that far-right extremist groups use social media to recruit new members, targeting children as young as 11 years old. Members of these groups will go as far as to communicate directly with them, but the process starts with the “dark humor” of the internet, deemed harmless memes which are supposedly all in good fun, although this is clearly not true.
“Misogyny is often being disguised behind other views, which allows it to be easier spread to younger people,” junior Griffin Byrd said.
There is a growing importance of stopping the spread of misinformation with regard to misogyny, as not doing so will only revert society back to an age of unfiltered prejudice. h
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