A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has found that digital hate and harassment against women rose rapidly after the U.S. presidential election. Sexist phrases like “repeal the 19th [Amendment]” and “get back to the kitchen” surged on platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and Reddit following President Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Many of the most frequent comments involve calls for a decrease in women’s rights, while others have explicitly threatened women with sexual assault and harassment. Mentions of the statement “Your body, my choice”—a direct response to the reproductive justice movement’s slogan, “my body, my choice”—grew by over 4600 percent on X. The phrase also appears to have grown in popularity offline, with parents and students reporting groups of boys chanting it to girls in schools. One parent commented online, “Today my daughter was told three separate times on campus ‘your body, MY choice.’ The third group of boys told her to ‘sleep with one eye open tonight.’”
How prevalent the use of the exact phrase ‘Your body, my choice’ is irrelevant when the intent behind it is so common in other espoused rhetoric. The fact is that too fucking many people are happy to tear up a woman’s right to self determination and force women into situations that put their lives at risk. I don’t think we can ignore any rhetoric that supports or gives cover to such attacks on a woman’s autonomy.
At this point I would not be surprised if we started seeing feminist groups becoming armed and violent. And as much as I have a disdain for political violence, I don’t think I could condemn them for doing so.