Half of Misogynistic Tweets Come From Women, Says New Analysis

A new analysis conducted by the London-based think tank Demos confirms what many people already know to be true: Social media is rampant with misogynistic language. In a three-week period, researchers saw more than 80,000 people worldwide receive more than 200,000 abusive tweets using the terms “slut” and “whore.”

But while that might not be so surprising, one aspect of the findings, which haven’t yet been published, certainly is: Associate Researcher Josh Smith told Motto that nearly half of the abusive tweets came from women.

“For me, the key takeaway from the result about gender is there is no single demographic which is responsible for this abuse,” he said. “The problem can’t be confined to clammy-handed middle aged men or, indeed, to teenaged One Direction fans. If we’re going to address this problem, we need to talk to the whole spectrum the online society, rather than a small collection of trolls.”

As the blog Echidne of Snacks points out, one major limitation of this research is that it only looks at two misogynistic terms—and including more could lead to different results.

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There is one bright spot in the findings, though: Many of the tweets containing “slut” and “whore” were to spark dialogue about the words themselves—”criticizing people for ‘slut-shaming’ the Kardashians, for example, or talking about the slut walk movement,” said Smith. “There is certainly a positive discussion around this, as well as a negative one.”