https://theconversation.com/misogyny-has-become-a-political-strategy-heres-how-the-pandemic-helped-make-it-happen-256043 Link copied Share article
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more overt forms of gendered hate have jumped from obscure internet forums into the mainstream, shaping culture and policy.
Social media doesn’t just reflect sexist, anti-feminist views; it helps to organize, amplify and normalize them.
Backlash against women and LGBTQ+ communities has become more overt, co-ordinated and is gaining political traction. As the United States rolls back reproductive rights and passes anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is important to understand how digital culture fuels this regression.
While these shifts may seem distant, Canadian politics are not immune. Similar rhetoric has emerged in debates over education, gender identity, health care and so-called “parental rights.”
Our ongoing research maps how the pandemic accelerated the rise of online misogyny, especially through “manosphere” influencers and far-right rhetoric.
Drawing from more than 21,000 podcast episodes and digital artifacts, we are investigating how everyday online content works to erode women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. This rhetoric normalizes misogynistic, transphobic and homophobic views and repackages gender inequities as common sense.
How the pandemic fuelled digital misogyny
COVID-19 lockdowns set the stage for a surge in online radicalization. Isolated men and boys increasingly turned to social media for connection — spaces where manosphere personalities like English-American social media influencer Andrew Tate and American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro gained momentum.
These figures blend anti-feminist messaging with broader pandemic-era anxieties, turning gender roles into moral and political battlegrounds.
Conservative influencers who once focused on vaccine skepticism began pivoting to anti-gender content. Steve Bannon’s podcast, for example, moved from pedalling public health disinformation to pushing narratives that feminism and LGBTQ+ rights are threats to western civilization.
Before the internet, radicalization usually required personal contact. Now, people can self-radicalize online, engaging with algorithm-driven content and communities that reinforce extremist beliefs, often without ever interacting with a recruiter. This shift coincided with a marked rise in reported online hate speech and offline hate crimes.
Misogyny as a mobilizing force
Meanwhile, women’s experiences during the pandemic — over half of whom are caregivers in Canada — involved increased labour at home and in front-line jobs. This left little time or energy for the organizational work necessary to combat the rising tides of sexism and misogyny.
Instead, public discourse began to increasingly valourize “tradwife” ideals and homemaking. This ensured traditional gender roles were brought back into the mainstream, not just as personal preferences, but as broader cultural expectations.
Though this misogyny appears to be fringe, it echoes mainstream policies that threaten reproductive health care, restrict gender expression and paint feminism as a threat to national stability.
Project 2025, the well-known policy platform from U.S. conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, lays out an agenda to repeal reproductive rights, undermine LGBTQ+ protections and expand state control over gender and family life.
How misogynist narratives are normalized
These misogynist ideas are reinforced in popular culture. In May 2024, NFL player Harrison Butker used his commencement address at Benedictine College to tell women graduates that their true calling was to become wives and mothers.
Such rhetoric serves to re-establish patriarchal hierarchies by narrowing women’s roles to domestic life. But this isn’t about family values, it’s about power. Moves in the U.S. to restrict women’s reproductive autonomy and democratic access to vote make this abundantly clear.
While feminists pushed back, manosphere podcast influencers rushed to Butker’s defense. American white supremacist Nick Fuentes celebrated the speech as a manifesto, while Shapiro framed it as uncontroversial truth.
Our analysis of podcast episodes from Shapiro and Fuentes, among others, shows how misogynist and racist narratives are reinforced through repetition and emotional framing. In episodes focused on Butker’s commencement speech, there were significant concentrations of hate speech and misogyny in the episodes.
Both Shapiro and Fuentes positioned feminism as a threat and framed motherhood as women’s true vocation. Shapiro downplayed the backlash against Butker as liberal outrage through calculatedly mainstream language that used sanitized, “family values” language.
Fuentes promoted an extreme theocratic vision rooted in white Catholic nationalism. In Episode 1,330 of his America First podcast, he said, “I want women to be veiled. I don’t want them to be seen. I want them to be listening to their husbands.”
These talking points consistently align with Butker’s original sentiment and reflect broader political efforts to erode gender equity, as seen in political documents like Project 2025.
Other public figures like Texan megachurch pastor Joel Webbon went even further, advocating for the public execution of women who accuse men of sexual assault — a horrifying example that circulated in manosphere circles.
From the fringes to the mainstream
What’s happening online is not just cultural noise; it’s a co-ordinated effort by conservative political organizations, media outlets and right-wing influencers to shape gender norms, undermine equality and roll back decades of feminist progress.
When misogyny becomes a political strategy, it doesn’t stay confined to podcasts or memes. It seeps into everyday vernacular, court rulings and public policy, and it’s global in scope.
This isn’t new, either. In 2012, Australia’s then-prime minister, Julia Gillard, called out sexist language in parliament, including being labelled a “witch” and subjected to dismissive catcalls. Her speech highlighted the normalization of misogynistic vernacular in politics, but also triggered public backlash, including having anti-immigration remarks misattributed to her.
Similarly, in the lead-up to Germany’s 2021 federal election, Greens party candidate Annalena Baerbock faced co-ordinated disinformation and smear campaigns from foreign entities aimed at undermining her credibility and questioning her “maternal suitability” in the public eye. Digitally altered nude photos, fake protest images and disinformation graphics were circulated.
These campaigns reflect how misogyny is weaponized to influence elections, and how such campaigns can be a threat to national security.
A 2022 #MeToo litigation analysis showed how, despite increasing awareness around sexual assault and harassment, U.S. courts often use legal language that reinforces victim-blaming by placing victims in the grammatical subject position of sentences. For example, phrases like “the victim failed to resist” or “the victim did not report the incident immediately” shift focus onto the victim’s behaviour rather than the perpetrator’s actions.
These details continue to affect broader legal narratives and public acceptance.
Digital platforms are battlegrounds
Recognizing these connections is crucial. As far-right movements gain ground by repackaging ideas about gender as nostalgic “truth” or “tradition,” we need to recognize that digital platforms are not neutral, nostalgic spaces.
Rather, they are conversational battlegrounds where power is contested and jokes, tweets and speeches carry real political weight.
In the fight for gender equity, the internet is not just a mirror that reflects multiple realities. It’s a tool built by the tech industry that was never intended to democratize communication, labour or social roles. Right now, that tool is being weaponized to signal and reassert patriarchal control.