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Study: '50% of Misogynistic Tweets From Women' (bbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the surprise-findings dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A study performed by researchers behind the Internet campaign "Reclaim," suggests that half of all misogynistic tweets posted on Twitter come from women. The campaign is designed to show the public the impact of hate speech and abuse on social media. They have opened an online forum to discuss ways to make the internet less aggressive, sexist, racist and homophobic. For the study, thinktank Demos counted the number of uses of "slut" and "whore" were used on Twitter to indicate misogyny. They analyzed 1.5 million tweets sent by UK Twitter users over a three-week period and used its own Natural Language Processing tool to filter the tweets in order to determine whether they were used aggressively, conversationally, or for self-identification. Demos found 6,500 unique users being targeted by 10,000 explicitly aggressive and misogynistic tweets. Internationally, they recorded more than 200,000 aggressive tweets using the same terms that were sent to 80,000 people in the same three-week period. It claims it found 50 percent of the abusive tweets to have come from women. BBC also notes a study performed in 2014 from cosmetics firm Dove that found over five million negative tweets were posted about beauty and body image. Four out of five of those tweets were sent by women.

14 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Overuse of the word "misogyny" by Kludge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because someone says something sexist or funny does not make him a "misogynist". I know lots of people who say sexist stuff, some of which is true, but no one I know actually hates women.
    Thanks, Slashdot, for continuing to misuse the term.

    1. Re:Overuse of the word "misogyny" by DaHat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's *current year*, and disagreeing with a women on the internet is the definition of misogyny, duh!

      Why let facts or actual motivations get in the way of a good ole 2 minutes hate... which should have ended decades ago?

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
    2. Re:Overuse of the word "misogyny" by Latentius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Totally agreed. People these days keep throwing around the word "misogyny" when it doesn't really seem applicable. There's a difference between hating a woman simply for being a woman, and hating an individual for who they are or what they've done, and employing sexist language to insult them.

    3. Re:Overuse of the word "misogyny" by dwywit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are some people who can't fathom or won't face why they're being treated with disrespect, contempt, or even paternalism, and can't get their heads around the possibility that it's *them* - their own personality - so they shift the burden to a much more comfortable stance - "you're a misogynist". That way they don't have to deal with uncomfortable facts about themselves.

      Not saying that's the majority, but those types seem to be the most vocal about it.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  2. Strange definition... by mi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    thinktank Demos counted the number of uses of "slut" and "whore" were used on Twitter to indicate misogyny

    Could the terms not have been used — if only in some cases — to indicate unhealthy promiscuity or express some other disapproval (e.g. "He is such a ratings-whore!")?

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  3. Misandry by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So when do they study misandry and start to treat that as seriously as misogyny? You can't be gender inclusive when you officially ignore hate speech and discrimination against half the population.

    1. Re:Misandry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Jesus christ please no. I don't want fat neckbearded activists to use me as a shield while they openly display their batshit insanity and spout extreme bigotry on the internet and call it "progressivism". I don't want women at work to walk on eggshells around me because they're afraid I'll call them "misandrist" and they'll get fired. I don't want the retards to turn on me if I tell them to stop using me as a shield because "I'm in debt to them" and there's nothing a cult hates more than an apostate.

      I just want the madness to end, from both sides. Thank god people at least laugh at MRAs, even if they tolerate feminists.

    2. Re:Misandry by tsotha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't want women at work to walk on eggshells around me because they're afraid I'll call them "misandrist" and they'll get fired.

      I do. The only way this is going to "end, from both sides" is if women pay some kind of price for the monster they've created.

    3. Re:Misandry by sd4f · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ah, you see the (modern) feminists have already thought ahead of that. Because of patriarchy, males are the dominant gender, and therefore it is not possible to be sexist against them. Somehow, they managed to make females the minority, even though there's more females than males. This applies similarly to race and sexuality. So if you one the birth lottery by being born a white straight male, then they can criticise you for all those things and it's not racist or sexist, purely because the minorities are incapable of being so. By some strange (lack of) logic, they firmly believe that.

      In my mind, the "logic" is similar to dehumanising ideologies and practices such as lebensraum and untermensch, the bourgeoisie, eugenics, all in order to justify to their minds why they can hate other people purely for aspects that they were born with and couldn't control. In other words, they have other motives, but need some sort of justifiable "reasons" which appear to stand to some scrutiny.

    4. Re:Misandry by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No. You're just applying the usual double standard. Men are expected to be strong and women are expected to be weak and you are just feeding that whole bit of social indoctrination.

      You're doing more harm than good with the pity party.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. 50% eh? by whoozwah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If 50% of all misogynistic tweets come from women, then it can fairly easily be extrapolated that the whole of modern culture hates women equally. If that's the case, maybe it's the women that need to change?

  5. Re:This very study is problematic... by DaHat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Conservative women can be just as toxic as the cave-men

    Somehow, I don't imagine this woman is a conservative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    From what we know of TrigglyPuff, she's not either: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    and yes they're still caught up in their male dominated society that can fairly be called a patriarchy.

    In some places in the middle-east for example? Sure... yet that's not where we usually hear screams of patriarchy from/about.

    Some are even so damaged as to be Trump supporters.

    What then of the women supporting Sanders 'for the boys'?

    --
    Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  6. Re:This very study is problematic... by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The truth is that the VAST majority of women have no interest in the rules or roles that feminists want to impose upon them. It has nothing to do with "conservatism". Women freely choose to engage in objectifying themselves. It was one of the earliest forms of women's lib.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  7. Re:Does anyone else hate Discourse forums? by mrbester · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It isn't nicknamed dick sauce (or disco horse or other variants) for nothing.

    --
    "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"