PBS News Hour

AMNA NAWAZ: After last month's election, researchers documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks.

Laura Barron-Lopez is here now with a conversation about what's behind that surge and how experts are combating it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, "Your body, my choice" and "Get back in the kitchen" on the social media platform X.

One post by far right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times.

But the misogyny is not just online.

For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I'm joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL.

Cynthia, thanks for being back on the "News Hour."

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS, American University: Thanks for having me.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: First, help us unpack this increase.

What exactly did we see in this rise in misogynistic attacks online right after the election?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Well, first, we have been seeing that increasing trend for probably something like 18 months to two years over the last period of time on many social media platforms.

And what we saw right around the election, leading up to the election with a candidate who was a woman, a woman of color, and then the reproductive rights that were also sort of at the heart of the election in many ways was a celebration in many ways by some young men who were viewed -- whose posts were viewed many, many millions of times of this reclaiming of power over women and power over women's bodies.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And, as I mentioned, at least some of that same rhetoric and activity has since moved offline.

How and where has that manifested?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Well, we have seen a lot of reports and heard a lot of reports, including in our lab, from schools and universities, even from an elementary school, whose - - a parent who reached out to me and said her 10-year-old daughter had heard a boy chant at her, "Your body, my choice."

I mean, it's unclear if he even knows what he's saying, but he knows that it's a sort of slur and an insult to say that.

We had a man walking around a college campus in Texas holding up a sign that said "Women Are Property," and we have had other kinds of chants of "Go back to the kitchen" and sort of threats to women in their bodies on college campuses across the country.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Can you put this into the broader context of what we have been seeing around misogyny and sexism in recent years, and what is driving this trend?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Yes.

Well, we have had -- just like we have had normalization of other types of hateful rhetoric, anti-immigrant rhetoric, racist rhetoric, white supremacist rhetoric over the last five or six years, in particular, surges of that online, of conspiracy theories, we have had anti-feminist rhetoric, and rhetoric blaming women often for a very real and legitimate crisis being experienced by boys and men.

And so it's one thing to say, yes, boys and men are more isolated and lonely.

They're also the victims of bullying and violence at the hands of other men, a culture that valorizes dominance and aggression as sort of hallmarks of masculinity.

But to take that crisis of men and masculinity and make it a crisis of misogyny, you really need the online world incubating the kind of hateful rhetoric that we're seeing.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Does posting misogynistic content, is that a predictor of future actions?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: It's not a direct predictor.

You can't sort of draw a one-to-one correspondence.

But we know that the biggest predictor of support for political violence right now or of willingness to engage in it, or among the top three predictors, depending on the survey, is misogyny or hostile sexism.

So beliefs in a hierarchy of superiority, beliefs in the inferiority of women drive support for political violence.

And we also know that other types of hateful rhetoric produce surges in offline violence.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Does it drive actions such as domestic violence at all?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: It does.

It does drive actions like domestic and intimate partner violence and also other forms of stalking, harassment, rape threats, sexual assault.

And those things are also predictors and underpinners of mass violence.

So when we see almost every terrorist actor in the U.S. and a lot of school shooters had prior histories of harassment, stalking, rape threats, sexual assault, and worse, so you have those types of problems that are red flags and warning signs and are often ignored.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Today, PERIL, your organization, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide: "Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry."

It's meant to help communities deal with the issues that we're talking about.

What is the purpose of this guide and who do you hope it reaches?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Well, over the last two years, we have gotten increasing requests from parents, from teachers, from mental health counselors, faith leaders, and others for help with misogyny and other forms of hate that are happening among boys, in particular, middle and high school boys.

And we just got another request from a school this week trying to -- what can we do?

And so we will go in and offer training.

But we finally realized we need a guide.

And so the guide is -- lays out some of the definitions.

What are boys seeing online?

What are some of the red flags and warning signs?

How are girls exposed to some of this content also through what's called tradwife content and ideas about what it is to be a man or a woman in society?

And how are they being manipulated, often by bad actors online who are trying to get them to pay for subscriptions to things and manipulate them for their own profit?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: What are the top recommendations that you're making in this guide to parents, but also teachers and others who interact with people who are susceptible to this content?

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Yes.

I think the first recommendation is take it seriously.

And that's why we called the guide "Not Just a Joke," because so often it's dismissed as locker room talk or as just a joke, really, and it couldn't mean anything, it's not serious.

And one of the things we really emphasize is that taking it seriously, attending to the harms that come from things like, "Go make me a sandwich" or "Get back in the kitchen," or just jokey comments that actually sort of express a sense of entitlement to girls and women's labor, servitude, the entitlement to their bodies, those are harmful.

They're harmful to everyone in the community.

And so taking it seriously and not reacting with shame, because that can drive young people further online, but with curiosity about why they find these kinds of statements attractive is a really important step.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Cynthia Miller-Idriss, thank you for your time.

CYNTHIA MILLER-IDRISS: Thank you for having me.