This Demos study of Twitter users in the UK analyzed hundreds of thousands of tweets over a three-week period, in an attempt to figure out if Twitter users displayed any misogynistic patterns. The study catalogued the use of the words “slut” and “whore,” and also created algorithms to disregard the tweets that used these terms in a conversational or casual way as opposed to an aggressive way.
According to the research, the usage of these terms in an insulting context was divided evenly among women and men. This probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise to anybody who has experienced how misogyny works, however; women get shamed by everyone around them for not behaving in the “right” way, and that definitely includes their sexuality and anything related to it. Sexism still exists because both men and women participate in upholding it, and the stigma against sex work and women’s sexual desires in general is also a pervasive problem.
However, I do wish there were a bit more data available when it comes to the methodology for this study. For one thing, Twitter doesn’t actually include gender as a box that you can check. So how did the study determine the gender of the people sending these tweets? Did they base this on photos or names? Because neither of those would guarantee accuracy. Furthermore, a significant percentage of Twitter is populated by bots. Were those bots excluded properly? Without knowing more, it’s hard to tell whether this data represents a good picture of what’s really going on.
I think studies done on the basis of aggregate word-finding can be helpful for the sake of basic numbers, but they obviously don’t tell the whole story when it comes to misogyny online. For one, this study still doesn’t really get at the implications and inherent differences between a woman using a misogynistic term versus a man. For another, given the study’s context, it’s important to resurface the issue of internalized misogyny and stigma against sex work. Mostly, it just seems like people need to stop using these terms as a derogative, full stop, and also to change their attitudes about women’s sexuality in general. That’s clearly something that everybody can work on.
(via The Daily Dot)
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