Tracking "misogyny slop" and calling BS on decorum

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Making a ruckus is an act of love.

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As an oldster who still tries to solve most online problems by hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE, I have come to rely on the tech journalist

Taylor Lorenz

to explain the internet to me.

And last week, she produced a deep dive into the “misogyny slop ecosystem”: the coordinated, well-funded, right-wing controlled influencer campaign to smear women who speak out against sexist abuse and discrimination.

Lorenz worked with the feminist YouTuber Ophie Dokie to explain exactly how coordinated attacks on celebrities like Blake Lively and Amber Heard feed the wide-spread misogyny of the internet, and how corrosive those efforts are.

I am, unfortunately, too often guilty of dismissing celebrity news as being puff-pieces that don’t address real issues.

But as a journalist friend I admire often points out, pop culture is how most people understand politics and social issues.

And so that’s part of the problem: there is no serious effort on the part of progressive online influencers to counteract these narratives.

As the right-wing grows in power and attention, Lorenz writes, left-wing creators seem almost completely checked-out of cultural issues, revealing, she says, “liberals' total incapacity to engage and mobilize people around influential narratives."

And this is very serious business, because not only did the right-wing manosphere decisively shape the outcome of the 2024 election, these misogynist narratives are running through our kids’ social media feeds, and they are forcing our girls and queer children to be on the defense against their attacks.

As the misogyny slop spreads, it’s our children who will have to clean it up — or be drowned by it.

“I am most upset by the idea of my daughters dating boys who belittle them in ways big and small and, in the worst case scenario, abuse them,” wrote Jessica Grose in the New York Times.

”I loathe the idea that, if they are abused, an already dismissive justice system will be an even less reliable ally, especially as Trump will appoint more judges over the next four years.”

As Lane recently wrote here on MR, the right-wing narrative that being a feminist means being anti-family has driven our national resistance to good public policy.

“The U.S. remains the ONLY high-income country that still has no federal paid leave after birth. None--not one day. Get off the delivery table, and drag that womb back to work!

If you’ve ever heard about this, or seen a bill introduced on it, you can thank a feminist activist, because they have been leading the fight for paid family leave for 100 years. Literally!

And one thing we know for sure is that these influencers, and the conservative pols who benefit from them, are definitely not polite.

So instead of upholding decorum, let’s take a cue from the feminist writer Mona Eltahawy.

Let’s all say it together: Fuck Fascism. She writes:

I refuse to be civil or to play by decorum with someone who refuses to fully acknowledge my humanity.

Who determines what is “civil” and what is “rude”? Who benefits from upholding those social codes that insist on decorum? In a time of fascism, politeness is capitulation.