At OOT, we understand misogynistic online harassment to be any verbal, visual or physical harassment and abuse rooted in misogyny that is threatened, carried out and/or amplified online.
Misogyny is more than the individual “hatred” of women. Misogyny is structural; it predominantly targets women and serves to enforce gendered social norms and expectations in a patriarchal, hetero- and cisnormative world.
Misogyny is also intersectional. That is, misogyny is experienced differently by people with different intersecting identities along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, disability, social class, ethnicity or nationality, religion and so on.
We use the term “online” to describe misogynistic harassment that is facilitated and/or amplified by online means. Abuse takes place on an offline-online continuum. Harassment on online platforms or by means of internet-based communication can be as damaging as harassment on the streets, the workplace or the home. The effects of misogynistic online harassment are psychological as well as physical and material. The ramifications of a rape threat online can be just as severe as their offline counterpart.
While OOT tackles text-based online harassment first and foremost, online misogyny comes in many forms. It includes tactics such as cyberstalking, doxing, the non-consensual sharing of images, identity theft, deep fakes, the use of spyware, among many others. For more information see also the Online Abuse 101 over at the WMC Speech Project.
Misogyny and sexism are closely related but not the same thing. In Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne defines sexism as the ideology that justifies and rationalises patriarchal social relations and structures.
Sexism wants us to believe those power relations are normal and make good sense. Misogyny, on the other hand, comes into play to enforce this system when it’s at threat: “misogyny should be understood primarily as the ‘law enforcement’ branch of a patriarchal order, which has the overall function of policing and enforcing its governing norms and expectations.”
Misogyny is thus always sexist, but sexism is not necessarily misogynistic. Read an interview where Kate Manne explains the distinction between sexism and misogyny in more detail here.
Our use of the term women here on our website as well as throughout our work acknowledges that misogynistic online harassment disproportionately affects women. When we say women, we include cis women, trans women, and anyone else who feels that label is right for them, regardless of gender assigned at birth. That said, we also acknowledge that women are not the only group affected by misogyny, as everyone is embedded in the same sexist power relations that misogyny serves to enforce.