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[gonzo21]

There is a study out today that has found that 50% of misogynistic tweets are being posted by women. Which I thought was quite interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36380247

Over a three-week period, think tank Demos counted the number of uses of two

Comments

[robby]

That is unexpected, but perhaps simply counting the incidence of two words is deceptive. For instance, what about teenaged girls wanting to seem "edgy"? Is that truly misogynistic?
Edit: a closer read explains they used an algorithm to measure the aggression of the tweet, and filtered out the conversational uses of the two words.

[gonzo21]

The story doesn't go deeply enough into their methodology does it.

If one of the words they scanned for was 'rape' then yes, you're right, a lot of teenaged girls use that word quite casually to express their dis-satisfaction with somebody.

So if we eliminate the women, they're talking about 3250 guys posting 5000 misogynistic comments over 3 weeks, so 1666 comments a week. Out of the... I assume millions of tweets that are posted in an average week.

Which makes this feel like a much smaller problem than it is commonly perceived to be?

Depending of course, on that methodology.

[diello]

Well, I was going to say something about misogynous behaviour in women being ingrained in our fibers, and/or something about assimilation (if you can't beat 'em, etc), but now I see the article isn't about light-hearted shitty jokes at a woman's expense, and that it's actually about abusive tweeting. I honestly have no idea what to say about that. It makes me mad to see this, but it's futile to think it'll ever go away unless said breeders get reprimanded hard for it. But there are no good laws to protect against cyber bullying and the like.

[gonzo21]

It would be interesting to know if abusive tweets had reduced following a few recent high profile cases in the courts of people who tweeted rape threats being arrested and jailed for it.

I'd like to hope people realised you could get banged up for it, and reduced their awfulness. But, people are stupid.

[matrixmann]

I hear it often be said if women act against women they can be far worse than men.
I'd say part of it is true because - a woman knows how to hurt another woman in the right spot. She knows some things that dudes don't know and fail to ever understand.

[gonzo21]

Certainly from my memories of high school, it was the girls who were particularly viscious to other girls. The boys were too dumb to be really hurtful, but those girls knew how to twist the knife.

[matrixmann]

I think a day ago or so somebody told me the thing about Ms. Goebbels, about how it is portrayed in the movie "Der Untergang" (English title: "Downfall") how she kills her kids and this is supposed to be really a true story how they showed that.
First she gave them some kind of sleeping pill, then she adminstered them capsules filled with potassium cyanide breaking them open manually by compressing the jaws. After that, she sat down with her husband playing a party of skat for two - the loser (or winner?) was obligated to shoot the other.
6 children killed by your hand and then they were her own ones...
It allegedly even made Joseph gulp.

I don't know why this can be so, I only know it can. Maybe it's because dudes follow other purposes - it's enough if someone lies on the ground and your honor is reestablished. Whereas women don't have that much of a focus on honor - they rather aim at destruction.

[ivonava]

There's a researcher in Melbourne suggesting that the results might be skewed by males posting on sock accounts. Which might be true, or might be clutching at straws, who knows.

[gonzo21]

I suppose that's possible, but I'm not sure how many guys would feel the need to pose as a woman in order to post misogynistic nonsense? If they feel they wanna say something awful, ti's because they don't think there's anything wrong in the awful thing they're saying.

I feel the kicker will be in the methodology. But still, the numbers strike me as very small either way.

[ms_hecubus]

Time reports women are called slut or whore on Twitter 10,000 a day, filtering out joking use.

https://t.co/YVMLQ9KaCr

[gonzo21]

That must be the worldwide figures though? Or maybe the US only figures. But it's unclear.

Interestingly one of the links in your report there also finds that women are equally likely to use misogynistic language as men on twitter.

[ms_hecubus]

I'd think word wide. Or at least amongst English speakers?

[gonzo21]

I wonder if the habit of using Twitter as a means of delivering abuse and threats and insults to women is something more or less prevalent in the English speaking world than compared to other regions.