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

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.

Comments

This very study is problematic...

[DaHat]

... and misogynistic, again proving the need for for to take gender studies degrees.

Clearly these women have deeply rooted cases of internalized misogyny thanks to the always present patriarchy.

Down with STEM!

Re:This very study is problematic...

[jedidiah]

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.

Overuse of the word "misogyny"

[Kludge]

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.

Re:Overuse of the word "misogyny"

[Latentius]

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.

Slut/Whore.

[HornWumpus]

Rerun the test with Bitch and Cunt. See if the demographics don't change.

I'm not saying men don't say 'slut' and 'whore'. But those terms are mostly used by catty bitches talking shit about each other. Truth: Most men kind of like sluts, less work. It's women that hate sluts, sluts drive down 'the market' for pussy.

men are still at fault, of course

[ooloorie]

If women engage in "misogynistic speech", it must be because men forced them to internalize misogyny! What other explanation could there be?