Misogyny today no longer needs to claim that women are inferior: it simply needs to convince everyone that they are privileged. This cultural transformation is also made possible by a mechanism well known to cognitive psychology: what we hear over and over again ends up seeming true, even without proof. This mechanism has been studied by cognitive psychology: L'illusory truth effect, the illusory truth effect. In 1977, psychologists Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino demonstrated that The more a sentence is repeated, the more it tends to seem true to us, even in the absence of evidence.. Thus, ideas born in the manosphere have emerged from their niches and have become, for many, simple common sense.
It's interesting to observe how misogynistic language has changed: until a few years ago, it openly argued that women were inferior and needed men for protection and guidance. Today, it argues the opposite: women are privileged, have courts on their side, laws designed to protect them, gender quotas, and complaints are automatically believed.
The structure, however, does not change: what is being questioned is not the behavior of some men, but the credibility of women as a social group. Women are no longer described as weak, but as manipulators; no longer as victims, but as privileged.. It is a more subtle form of misogyny and, for this very reason, more difficult to recognize.
Social media didn't invent this phenomenon, but they have made it more visible, persistent, and lucrative in terms of attention. All this, however, has been possible because it has found fertile ground: women have been the primary target of online hate for years, especially when they intervene in public spaces. According to the analysis of violence and the Intolerance Map (via Heraldo), women receive approximately 37-50% of hate messages recorded online. 73% of young people have seen misogynistic content, and 55% of young women are directly affected by it, as highlighted by the report. Toxic Tech Amnesty International found that influencers and women who speak publicly about rights or violence also receive a 50% higher rate of hate than men, and a third of the attacks are explicitly sexist (Istat).
If women were truly the privileged group portrayed by online propaganda, we should find them in a position of advantage in society. The data, however, tells a different story: only 22.41% of women hold positions of power globally (UN) and 35% in Italy (OnData and Info.nodes).
Women still carry out the majority of unpaid domestic and care work (71%, according to the International Labour Office, 2025); they are still the ones who most often interrupt their career after the birth of their children (only 57.8% of women between 25 and 54 with two or more children work, compared to 91.6% of men); single mothers are still the ones who are most exposed to the risk of poverty (41.3% compared to 27.6% of single fathers, according to the International Labour Office, 2025). Save the Children).
The alleged privilege, in short, seems to exist above all in the comments on social media.
This context also includes one of the most controversial aspects of Law No. 54 of 2006 on shared custody. The reform was born with a commendable goal: to guarantee children a meaningful relationship with both parents. In practice, however, its implementation has shown problems in cases of domestic violence and coercive control. GREVIO, the Council of Europe body that oversees the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, has expressed concern that in some proceedings, violence is attributed to a generic "couple conflict" and mothers' complaints are interpreted as attempts to hinder the father-child relationship, including through the improper use of so-called parental alienation. The consequences can be serious: a violent man does not need sole custody to continue to exercise control over his ex-partner; he can use civil litigation as a tool of pressure, multiplying proceedings, counter-complaints, contested decisions regarding children, or delays in payments.
It does not affect all separated fathers, but it is a phenomenon recognized by gender violence professionals and international literature as a form of post-separation abuse. Reducing everything to the story of men persecuted by a system favorable to women means ignoring an essential part of reality: for some women, violence does not end with separation, but changes location and moves from the home to the courtroom..
The question, then, isn't whether online misogyny exists: data has been proving it for years. The real question is how we got used to hearing it. How did we get to the point where an anecdote is worth more than a statistic, a joke about ATM men is worth more than a court ruling, a comment under a post is worth more than a scientific study? This is the true power of vox populi: not to convince, but to normalize. To make familiar what should seem absurd, transforming a prejudice into a cliché and a cliché into a presumed truth.
The challenge today is not just to verify information, but to recognize the mechanisms that transform certain narratives into collective truths. Every time we read an "everyone knows it" statement, we should ask ourselves: who says it? What evidence is it based on? And above all, who benefits from its continued repetition?
Perhaps One of the most dangerous effects of this narrative is to convince many women that the victims are always "others": those who made mistakes, those who made different choices, those who didn't understand, but above all those who deserved it, because deep down they were just ruthless manipulators. It's a human mechanism for exorcising fear: if I think it happened to her because that woman was different from me and wrong, I can fool myself into thinking it will never happen to me. But a society that accustoms itself to looking for blame in those who suffer inevitably ends up leaving all those who need protection alone. Because the day she's no longer "another" but instead us, who will we have left willing to believe it?
Magdalene Comotto
This article is produced through voluntary work.
Much of the news you read here you won't find in any other media.
If you think our work is useful, thank you if you can support us.
Even the smallest contribution is precious!