The rise of alternative men’s rights groups sees a shift in focus towards attempting to silence women who examine their behaviour.
Female academics and researchers who work in gender studies are being increasingly targeted by alternative right men’s movements online as a result of their focus on the hate speech delivered towards women on men’s rights forums.
The online realm of male supremacy, sometimes dubbed the ‘manosphere’, advocates for a society where men can reclaim rights they believe are threatened by the emergence of feminism. Some members of the manosphere refer to themselves as incels, men who are involuntarily celibate due to the apparent lack of opportunities for them to have sex.
Dr. Debbie Ging, Associate Professor of Media Studies at DCU and researcher of online misogyny, says that she and her colleagues are highly selective of their social media presences due to the risk of threatening behaviour from online men’s activists on account of their work.
“There’s the direct effect of being abused and trolled for your opinions, but there’s also the chilling effect whereby we self -censor,” says Ging. The use of doxing, the publication of personal information online, generally with malicious intent, is a tactic often used by members of the online male supremacy movement to humiliate individuals who are vocal critics of the manosphere.
The anonymous nature of online posts makes social media an ideal base for manosphere members to instigate threats to women’s personal safety. Almost all users of the mainstream men’s rights forums, such as A Voice for Men (AVFM) and the British website Angry Harry, operate under pseudonyms.
A 2020 study from Seattle University on hate speech across Facebook suggests that slurs reported against women are much less likely to be removed than offensive comments on sexual orientation or ethnicity. The report also suggests that the spread of sexist rhetoric on Facebook may discourage women from participating on the platform entirely.
Ging says that current social media sites do not adequately address the issue of online hate speech towards women. An effective strategy to challenge this may be the formation of online platforms that will effectively tackle vitriol towards users.
“Tech companies have ownership of the situation until alternative platforms can be designed that serve the same function. We need platforms that aren’t structured in the same horrendous hierarchal fashion and that don’t sell data on to third parties,” Ging says of the responsibility social media companies have in stopping the spread of harmful ideas online.
While Ging herself has not directly been subject to online abuse, she states that almost all her colleagues in the UK have been personally attacked for the nature of their work. Platforms such as Reddit and Twitter often have discussion threads compiled by members of the online subculture that target individual women. Additionally, the use of hashtags can inadvertently draw attention to individuals who speak at events and conferences, resulting in discussion on online forums used by the manosphere.
Teaching
One of Ging’s colleagues in the UK was targeted by the manosphere after she shared images of a teaching exercise completed with Master’s students on social media. The images showed the use of playdough to make models of male and female genitalia. She subsequently was doxed, resulting in her address being published online, and threatened by “extreme characters” in the British far right.
“This is really the sort of innate symbol the alternative right use. They have an issue with the fact that gender and cultural studies exist,” Ging said.
The above incident has had repercussions on Ging in terms of her own online professional engagement. She is reluctant to share the context of any class discussions on Twitter due to the potential repercussions she may face from incels.
In response to the threats directed at women from the manosphere, staff from the National Anti-Bullying Centre at DCU, alongside the DCU Future of Journalism (FuJo) Institute are preparing a joint submission for the government on the new Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill.
In addition to academia, female journalists and those involved in the gaming industry are also increasingly targeted by the manosphere. The 2014 incident of Gamergate, where video game developer Zoë Quinn was subject to intense online harassment in the aftermath of a blog post made by her ex-boyfriend, is often seen as the catalyst in exploring the extent of misogynistic abuse that men’s rights group perpetuate online.
While men’s rights movements precede the invention of the Internet, they have taken on a different context in the age of social media. While the early men’s right movement centred around activism on issues such as child custody, family law and male domestic violence, the current trend by certain groups seems to be a much more personalised approach that centres around a key concept: the humiliation and degradation of women.