What Twitter’s Downfall Taught Me About Misogyny
Hate does not make for a good social media platform.
UfaBizPhoto | Shutterstock Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Twitter (erm, X) is not doing too well right now. The site is losing users at a breakneck pace and almost everyone has a complaint about it.
Whether it’s one of the many paywalls people have experienced to do things like 2FA or messaging, or Musk’s "free speech" policy that seems to welcome hate speech, people aren’t happy with him.
It’s little surprise to hear that Twitter, once one of the liveliest social media platforms on Earth, is losing so many subscribers. But, they’re not losing subscribers evenly across the board. More specifically, the subscribers they are losing tend to be left-leaning, feminist, and LGBTQIA+ — especially the "T."
This is not news. We all have seen it happen. However, I started to notice some interesting patterns in the users that are left. It may take some people by surprise what I managed to uncover.
The biggest target on Twitter has become trans people, but more specifically, trans women.
Go on Twitter, and I guarantee at, some point, you’ll see at least one "trending" topic involving how trans people are bad or "why trans women aren’t women."
Its become a fairly notorious problem with Twitter — to the point that LGBTQIA+ groups have started to speak out about it.
What most people don’t seem to notice is that the trans hate seems to be very deeply skewed. The posters don’t seem to care if a woman decides to be a man and use a man’s bathroom. However, when a man decides to transition, they quickly label her a "groomer" and accuse the trans woman of predatory behavior.
Well, I have a theory on this: I think it’s because a lot of misogynists can’t imagine wanting to be a woman.
The idea of not wanting to be a he-man woman-hater is deeply offensive. I also think trans women get more heat than trans men because misogyny has skyrocketed throughout Twitter.
My Takeaway: You don’t have to be a ciswoman to experience misogyny on Twitter, and sometimes, being a trans woman will open you up to attacks others wouldn’t dare do to a ciswoman.
The other major trend I saw was openly misogynistic men telling women to submit, or that women can’t live without them.
If you want to see how ugly Twitter can get, start following feminist influencers on the site and then read the comments under their posts. It gets vicious.
You’ll see men calling them whores, saying that they are bs-ing, trying to derail the conversation, and also gaslighting women.
The other day, I literally had one of these guys tell me, flat-out, that "men are the superior gender" and that women should be nice because men will always win in a fight.
Yep, that sounds great. Be nice or men will beat you. What a way to show you hate losing control over women.
The biggest triggers I’ve seen so far are posting things about women not wanting to date men and stories about women being traumatized by men. This behavior has skyrocketed since Musk took power, but so far, most reports of harassment and hate speech have been ignored.
My takeaway: Misogynists hate women talking about their experiences with men, but they hate women who walk away even more.
The most common misogynistic threat I’ve noticed is the threat of "dying alone" and being unwanted.
I hear this a lot when misogynists on Twitter discuss the feminists that still remain on the site. It’s a lot of men saying that no men would want them, and at times, they basically use a veiled threat of dying alone.
The thing is, most women who are posting things about walking away from dating don’t want to date anymore because they realized solitude is better. This is not the threat they think it is, nor is it something their targets care about.
I mean, some women had such awful experiences that the threat of being single for life is about as threatening as free puppies and cake. Why do they think this will work? I surmise it has to do with their own fears.
My takeaway: Misogynists are absolutely terrified of being left unwanted and alone. That’s why they use that threat as their "big bad."
When I’d get into arguments with misogynists, misogynists often "fight back" by posting my face after I called them out for being emotional and irrational.
Is that supposed to be a dig? I’m a plus-size model.
This goes back to what I said earlier. Misogynists hate losing control. When they get called out on their crap, the only thing they have left is to attack their opposition.
My Takeaway: Body-shaming is a misogynist’s way of trying to assert power when nothing else works.
Don’t think for a second that I didn’t notice that Twitter’s pornosphere remained untouched.
Despite all the hate toward women, there is one section of Twitter that remained untouched by the many different bans we’ve seen. That sphere is the pornosphere. That’s actually the main reason I didn’t quit the Bird app yet.
Twitter has famously been one of the only mainstream social media platforms to continue to embrace adult film stars and sex worker profiles.
The porn industry is often silenced and shunned as a result of misogyny and puritanical, anti-sex garbage.
So, why is the pornosphere untouched here?
I have my theories. First, porn stars and OnlyFans models remain incredibly popular as influencers. They make or break most social media platforms. So, part of it is going to be profitability. No porn means no more users who were there for the porn. (Remember Tumblr?)
Most people don’t have as intimate a knowledge of porn as I do — both from the industry and personal experience. I interviewed porn stars and sex workers for ages. The one thing that I noticed across the board was how many porn stars made a mention of violent, hateful, and downright terrifying messages they receive from "fans."
A large part of me thinks that the reason why porn remained untouched is because sex workers are an easy target for misogynists. In fact, they’re basically the perfect target for abuse.
Police and admins do not take sex worker complaints seriously in most cases. They also have to remain approachable to make money.
In other words, porn stars have a hard time trying to fight back and they don’t have much of a choice when it comes to the social media platforms they advertise with. With the rise of Twitter misogyny, it makes sense that they would want a bunch of captive targets. Otherwise, they would just end up dealing with women blocking them en masse.
My takeaway: Nothing would make misogynists more unhappy than not having access to women.
So, what’s the moral here?
Twitter has been dying since Musk has taken control of it, and the answer is clear. Hate does not make for a good social media platform — and condoning it by ignoring it is what kills great communities.
The biggest threat for a misogynist is removing his access to women and being dismissed.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.