“Your body, my choice”: Misogynists explain MAGA attacks

Donald Trump is heading back to the White House, so it’s no surprise that Americans are once again debating one. Increase in hate speech.

At this point, one of the lines of attack is “Your body, my choice” White supremacist Nick Fuentes has been attributed by some to an election night post on X that read “Your body, my choice. Forever,” a phrase that has long been a feminist and abortion rights slogan “My body, my choice” for women’s autonomy. Converts to assaults, and at worst, threats of rape.

In the days following the election, TikTok creators reported cropping up the phrase in comments on their videos, according to A report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a global exchange think tank that researches disinformation and extremism. a creator said She had to delete a video because commenters were “saying they can’t wait until I get raped or ‘I like your body’.”

According to family members, girls and young women with one mother are also hearing the line at school Post on Facebook That her daughter heard it three times on campus and the boys told her to “sleep with one eye open tonight.”

Instances of the phrase X increased by 4,600 percent between last Thursday and Friday. According to reports. Fuentes has already posted the original post Reposted over 35,000 times.

The rise of sexist hatred is a reflection of the dominant narrative of the election: it was essentially a victory of men over women. Trump built much of his campaign on disaffected American men — especially young men, many of whom feel discriminated against and who resent feminist movements like Me Too. For many of these men, the election seems justified, and for some it is more than that: an opportunity to put women back in their place.

For anyone on the receiving end of misogynist insults in the past few days, meanwhile, the phrase seems like a scary harbinger of things to come. At the same time, experts told Vox that Americans have experienced this type of hate speech before, especially after Trump’s first election in 2016 — and that history can hold lessons for navigating the present.

The phrase is part of a larger pattern of misogyny

The feminist phrase “My Body, My Choice” was regularly used in rally slogans by the 1970s, though it’s unclear who originally coined it, Laura Prieto said. Our bodies are themselves todayA digital platform that is an iteration of the iconic reproductive health book Our bodies, ourselves. In previous years Roe v. WadeIt was a call for abortion rights, but it was also “a statement demanding women’s rights as equal human beings to have the power to make decisions about what happens to them,” Prieto said.

The post is done Less popular on the left In recent years, especially after it happened Anti-vaccine activists accepted. Now “My Body, My Choice” has been co-opted by Fuentes and others, who have turned it into a tool to harass and intimidate women.

Others are not using the phrase, but there are The idea resonates That with the election of Trump, women must submit to the will of men. On social media, the posts ranged from “more coded misogyny” to “very direct threats of rape,” Isabel Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and one of the report’s authors, told Vox.

Many of the sexist posts came from “manosphere” influencers like Andrew Tate and their followers, according to the report — Tate, for example, posted on X on Nov. 7, “I saw a woman crossing the street today but I just put my foot down right. way? You have no more rights.”

“Mansphere” creators are part of a larger online ecosystem geared toward men that has hit hard on the right in recent years and helped propel Trump to victory, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings reports. Fifty-five percent of male voters cast their ballots for Trump this year, compared to just 45 percent of female voters Exit polling by The Washington Post. (Although we should note that exit polling is preliminary, and therefore unreliable, data.)

Online, that gender divide emerged before the election. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports spotting Increase inconsistent posts (including calls to Repeal the 19th Amendment(in response to Harris’s campaign focus on women suffrage and reproductive rights) began in October. The proliferation of posts “demonstrates the influence of an increasingly vindictive set of online actors, who appear to be using the election results as a permission framework to more clearly and aggressively support a narrative about curtailing women’s rights,” Francis-Wright and co-author Mostafa Ayyad wrote in their Wrote in the report.

A similar pattern emerged after Trump’s first election in 2016, when civil rights groups and law enforcement agencies watched A ghazal on hate speech and attacks on women and people perceived to be Muslim or immigrants — all groups Trump explicitly or implicitly condemned in his first campaign. Harassment even enters the classroom; A BuzzFeed analysis It found more than 50 instances of a student invoking Trump’s name or message to attack a classmate during the 2016-’17 school year.

The fact that attacks aren’t new doesn’t make them any less frightening for those on the receiving end. “It’s very painful, especially when you’re young,” Frances-Wright said. The implied threat of rape can feel doubly scary in a country where Trump just won despite multiple allegations of sexual assault.

How to combat post-election hatred

Because the harassment people are facing today is part of a long-standing pattern, however, there is an existing playbook to combat it. Some organizations including school And book storeIn recent days has issued statements that they will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.

It’s also time to remember the long history of “My Body, My Choice” and everything it stands for Trouble for women With the lack of many basic rights, such as the ability to open credit cards in their names or serve on juries, that sometimes seemed impossible to overcome.

“A lot of things we take for granted, just because they seem really powerful right now, doesn’t mean they always will be,” Prieto said. “One thing you can count on is that things are going to change.”

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