Women have reported an increase in online harassment and abuse since Donald Trump was elected Tuesday. This has included repeated offenses of young men crowing, “Your body, my choice” — a phrase that has its roots in a deeply misogynistic online culture, and more directly means men control what women do and do not do with their own bodies.
Influencers and chronically online men from the so-called “Manosphere” and related online communities have been inspired by white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who tweeted, “Your body, my choice. Forever” on Nov. 5. He later added, “I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank men for saving this country from stupid b–ches who wanted to destroy the world to keep abortion.”
Fuentes is a 26-year-old podcaster who is known for his antisemitic and sexist rhetoric. Though he didn’t endorse Trump this year, he has appeared to endorse many of the President-elect’s inflammatory positions, as well as those of the far-right.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has tracked abusive comments across social media platforms in the days that followed the election. The ISD reported that “the volume of ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back to the kitchen’ mentions exploded on the day after the 2024 elections.”
On Nov. 8, the ISD also reported:
- A 4600% increase in the use of both phrases on X
- Fuentes’ initial comment, seen as the epicenter of the current abuse, had been seen by at least 35 million people
- An uptick in boys telling girls “your body, my choice” in classrooms across the United States
- The phrase was trending on Facebook with at least 52,000 posts using it in 24 hours
- At least five posts on X that called for “rape squads”
Donald Trump has been no stranger to his own allegations of misogyny. Trump’s third campaign for the presidency survived his indictment and conviction on charges of sexual abuse and defamation after author E. Jean Carroll won her case against him. Trump was ordered to pay $3 million for the claim of defamation, and another $2 million for the sex abuse conviction despite his claims that he’d never met Carroll and she wasn’t his “type.”
Trump has also boasted about having appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and throughout his campaign against Kamala Harris, repeatedly questioned her racial and ethnic background and openly called her a “low IQ individual.”
The messages have also inspired a lot of women in the United States to look to South Korea’s 4B movement. 4b, which began in 2015 in response to sexism in the country, but took off during the #MeToo movement. 4B is short for four Korean words: bihon (not married), bichulsan (not having kids), biyeonae (not dating) and bisekseu (not having sex). Though it is too early to know if the movement will truly grab hold in the U.S., conversations online indicate some women are interested — and that interest has inspired its own backlash, mostly from politically conservative women.
Exit polls revealed that while the majority of women who voted in the United States supported Kamala Harris, her lead with women was not higher than Biden’s or Hillary Clinton’s. The same polls also revealed the majority of male voters supported Donald Trump.
