Words by: Niamh Prendergast (she/her)
CW: Misogyny, Sexual Assault, Femicide, Gendered Violence
THURSDAYS IN BLACK: In March 2017, hundreds of high school students protested on Parliament grounds after misogynistic ‘jokes’ circulated in a Wellington College boys’ Facebook group. The protest was a show of solidarity against rape culture in high schools. A few months earlier, Trump had won the Presidency after a campaign filled to the brim with hostility toward women. Sexual violence and misogyny were on our minds, to say the least. Later that year, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their NYT investigation detailing years of sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, prompting celebrities to pick up the phrase #Me Too, originally coined by activist Tarana Burke. What followed was a global movement. Six years later, we are in what is sometimes considered the post-Me Too era. The world is a different place, and the Me Too movement helped change it. But what does it really mean to be ‘post-Me Too’? I argue we need to be thinking seriously about new proliferations of misogyny and violence.
It is no secret that despite positive trends in the likes of corporate feminism, women’s sport, and political leadership, we’ve also seen a global rise in gender-based violence, violent sexism, and misogyny. Women’s protests in Iran escalated in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, with over 400 people killed by security forces since. Across the US, extreme laws regarding reproductive health have coincided with the rise of conservative trad wife content (yes, it is harmful) and concerning popularity of influencers sharing harmful misogynistic opinions, like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.
In Australia, a recent stabbing left six people dead, five of them women (the other was a security guard who died trying to protect others). This violence prompted nationwide protests and the Australian Government announced new sexual and gender-based violence prevention plans. The plans recognise the link between online and physical gender-based violence, ranging from addressing harmful deepfake pornography, to funding better support for victims of domestic and sexual violence.
In Auckland, just last year, a man swerved on the road intentionally hitting two schoolgirls. He told police of his frustration at the injustice in not having a girlfriend. Experts have pointed out that this is the closest NZ may have come, so far, to an incel attack. The correlation between this explicit act of violence and online misogyny isn’t hard to unearth for anyone familiar with incel internet culture. The concerning thing is that this culture is easily accessible, and the proliferation of extreme misogyny is encouraged by algorithms that favour controversy.
While these instances of extremism and gender-based, domestic, and sexual violence are diverse and not influenced by any one factor, it is clear we are seeing global rises in harmful misogyny, and that Aotearoa is not exempt. Feminism has made strides, but we live in a post-Me-Too era where algorithms determine social and cultural attitudes more than we may like to believe, and where domestic and sexual violence remains a consistent threat to women.
It shouldn’t take a femicide like in Australia—or even a leaked Facebook joke—for us to stand up for Aotearoa’s women. Deepfake pornography is in our high schools. The threat of incel violence is not hypothetical. Men we know well are falling down Tate-ist rabbit holes at the hands of the never-forgiving algorithms. Our domestic violence rates remain the worst in the OECD. Feminist thinking is needed to address these entangled cultural and legal issues. We shouldn’t be waiting for an act of extremism to get us talking, and we certainly shouldn’t be assuming that our (sometimes) progressive country is immune to gender-based violence.
In a post-Me Too era, we still need to be talking about sexual violence, especially its new proliferations under our increasingly volatile online contexts. Talk to your mates; learn about these issues. Those steps toward cultural change will make us ready for the legal changes this country is starting to talk about, like (but not limited to) banning deepfake porn, criminalising stalking, removing the rough sex defense, and improving the justice system for victims of domestic and sexual violence.