More and more of our lives are being spent on digital platforms. And, as we spend more time online, we are more vulnerable to a wide range of risks. This fact is particularly true for women and girls.
A 2024 global survey by Microsoft found that women are more likely than men to experience any type of risk online. And 25 per cent of teen girls reported experiencing sexual risks in their online lives, compared to 19 per cent of teen boys.
When online violence or abuse occurs to people because of their gender or gender presentation, it falls under the umbrella term gender-based online violence and abuse, also known as tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Unfortunately, incidents of this type of online violence seem to be increasing.
Appropriate responses need to be created within this dire landscape.
Some governments are creating policies to address gender-based online violence and abuse. For example, Australia has passed legislation mandating dating apps to update and enforce codes of conduct that address instances of sexual abuse.
The Canadian government tabled the Online Harms Act in February 2024, which, if passed, would introduce a regulatory framework that demands social media platforms moderate violent content. These legislative acts aim to hold digital platforms accountable for creating methods for reporting and deleting violent content by requiring them to assume full responsibility.
Governments must hold digital platforms accountable for the violence that happens on them, but are such approaches enough?
Our recent research suggests that some men might not even recognize if and how they are complicit in gender-based online violence. Cultural ideas, like rape myths, may influence their spheres of understanding. And, in these cases, they may not be compelled to follow a code of conduct set up by government or platform policy.
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Rape myths
Rape myths are prejudicial and false beliefs that shape societal attitudes towards gendered violence. Examples of such myths are seen, for instance, when blame is put on the victim, the rapist is excused, and the rape is minimized and even sometimes justified.
In our study, we took a validated psychological scale for measuring the presence of rape myths and adapted it to understand how myths about gender-based online violence might influence behaviours that cause it, or at least prevent people from intervening.
The rape myths acceptance scale shows the degrees to which people accept certain myths that normalize sexual violence (such as, “she was asking for it” or “he didn’t mean to”). This scale is used to show how taken-for-granted assumptions contribute to cultures where victims of sexual violence are blamed or subject to disbelief when they come forward.
We adapted the rape myth acceptance scale because responses to it can reveal the cultural narratives that normalize many forms of gendered violence.
Indeed, research on rape myth acceptance points to the fact that we cannot fully address the acts of gender-based violence without first addressing these narratives. And gender-based online violence and abuse is not an exception.
What we found
Once we had adapted the rape myths acceptance scale to account for gender-based online violence and abuse, we used it in a survey of 1,297 Canadian men between 18 and 30 years old.
We used a likert scale to determine the degree to which young men agreed with statements like “claims of online gender-based violence are often weaponized against men” or “people who post about gender are sexuality are looking to start arguments.” We found that certain toxic myths and cultural narratives are prevalent among some respondents.
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In particular, we found four myths that were more strongly endorsed: 1. It wasn’t really gender-based online abuse; 2. he didn’t mean to; 3. gender-based online abuse is a deviant event, and 4. she lied. These myths trivialize the impact of the violence, minimize the blame of those enacting the harm and discredit the voices of targets.
We noticed that as many as 30 per cent of our survey respondents agreed with many of these myths — a significant number of young Canadian men taking these regressive attitudes towards gender-based online violence.
As we looked to other research to explain the prevalence of these ideas, we also found that similar ideas are found in manosphere-related influencers — people like Andrew Tate, who are a growing source of hateful ideas about women and gender-nonconforming people.
Thinking ahead
We cannot address gender-based online violence and abuse by simply reporting and deleting offensive content. It also won’t stop by simply mandating that platforms have codes of conduct in place. In order to tackle the problem, we must addressing the cultural narratives that sustain it.
Everyone — from academics to policymakers to the public — needs to think about how we can address toxic beliefs to create long-lasting change and foster safer online communities. We can aim for such change in multiple ways.
We can create educational initiatives that promote inclusive and accessible narratives about the nature and importance of gendered violence. We can encourage citizens to engage in bystander intervention when they encounter these narratives. And finally, we need to understand why some young men take comfort in ideas that promote toxic expressions of masculinity.
Practitioners and researchers must keep exploring the nature and prevalence of myths surrounding gender-based online violence and abuse. We need to spend time with young men and ask them questions about what they think it is to be a man, and we need to provide positive examples of masculinity in order to make manosphere-style ideas less attractive.
