While the headlines have been dominated by conversations about young men being radicalised online or falling down incel pipelines, a network of disinformation aimed at misleading young women has been bubbling away under the surface – the so-called ‘womanosphere’.
Like the better-known ‘manosphere’, the womansphere consists of a network of right-wing influencers, podcasts, YouTube channels and private forums, speaking directly to young women. “While the women behind [the womansphere] all have different styles and tactics, they are mostly aligned in their desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview: women as submissive homemakers, men as strong providers,” writes Anna Silman, who is generally credited with coining the term.
“Women report boys blocking doorways and even barking at female staff, as well as watching increasingly violent pornographic material in class.”
You’ve probably seen womanosphere content on your timelines: from tradwives, to Skinnytok, and more recently, anti-immigrant rhetoric claiming that women need to be protected from people coming to the UK to seek asylum. However, as this content continues to rise, some content creators are taking to social media to fight fire with fire.
“I think I just got quite tired of being in my own echo chamber,” says Julia Westrup (@haveyouseenmybaguette on TikTok), a 20-year-old actor and student. When she first created her account, it wasn’t political at all. Mostly, she’d share trending sounds and memes. But in the last few months, the tone of her content has shifted.
Now, she focuses on pushing back against womanosphere talking points. “I think it can be exhausting having the same conversations with people who completely disagree with you. It's weirdly frustrating because it's like, well, where do we go from here?” Having been raised in a progressive family in London, Julia wanted to find a way to challenge some of the views she was hearing more and more since moving out of the city to study.
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“It started with a feeling of frustration. I hope to be someone who can articulate what many people in my generation are feeling,” she says, adding, “I think the world my generation is set to inherit feels almost unlivable at the rate things seem to be going environmentally and geopolitically. It feels really, really uncertain, and it feels very hard [for us] to get a word in, especially in very populist [political] environments.” TikTok has given her a way to try to feel heard as a young person who feels ignored or spoken over.
“The Reform Party only has four seats in the chamber; they're just really, really loud. And I think we should just be louder.”
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Louisa Toxvaerd Munch (@louisamuch on TikTok) has a similar goal. Frustrated by both the unequal access to academia she experienced as a student from a working-class background, and the amount of anti-intellectual “I’m just a girl” content being aimed at women online, Louisa began to share insights and even reading syllabi from her Critical Theory PhD.
“I’m such a massive fan of Julia Fox and EmRata. These women, who have been portrayed in the media as – and who have also benefited from patriarchal objectification – they have now moved into this space of saying ‘we want to discuss these political issues, want to discuss cultural issues, give us space to do that.’ So, there is this real hunger that people want to hear from female voices, and they do want to have more academic and intellectual conversations.”
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Having grown up in Rochdale, Louisa wanted to challenge the current narrative around working-class communities, which she sees as being weaponised in the current anti-immigrant conversations. She says she has been ‘overwhelmed’ by the positive reaction she’s gotten, and it has inspired her to continue taking action against inequality. “If you feel like you're doing something about it, then you don't feel as depressed. In that way, it's kind of cured my situational depression. It’s made me realise there are people out there with a shared goal.”
For Shanice Smith (@TheShaniceShow on TikTok), who also grew up in a working-class environment, challenging the current anti-migrant rhetoric feels personal: as a woman of colour who was sexually abused by a white man, she believes the myth of rapist migrants hurts survivors as well as migrants. “I originally started TikTok to get my own story out there,” she says, explaining that after feeling failed by the police after reporting her abuse, she began to ‘get more political.’
“That's when I realised that less than 1% of rape cases go to court. I am very against misinformation; we've seen how dangerous it can be. It can literally cost people their lives.”
When Sophie Corbett (@Cornonthecorb on Instagram) trained as a dietitian, she assumed she’d spend her days researching food science – not fighting disinformation. However, having started posting recipes on social media eight years ago, she now dedicates about a quarter of her digital output to countering nutritional disinformation targeted at women, which she views as rampant. Now, she’s encouraging other qualified dietitians to do the same.
“It's really important to get out there and create content, because it's almost like we're in this online battle. Mis- and disinformation have a huge impact on people's real-life behaviour.”
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This counter messaging comes amid a wider pushback against far-right talking points about women. Several high-profile women, including Charlotte Church, Paloma Faith, and Zarah Sultana, published an open letter rejecting the far-rights weaponisation of women’s safety.
Given how vitriolic some online discussions have become, some content creators opposing the womanosphere say they worry about their online and offline safety, including the possibility that they could be doxxed or deepfaked. “I do know people who have been stalked, and so I'm really conscious about my safety online,” says Sophie.
Louisa adds: “I worry about my [offline] safety. It's such a risk, but it's a risk that I think somebody has to take. It’s just a part of being an activist these days.”
But how effective is this type of content against the womanosphere? All the content creators spoken to for this piece acknowledge that their videos tend to stay in their ‘echo chamber’ of an audience that generally agrees with their views.
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“Just as there has been a rise in popularity of womanosphere influencers, we have seen counter-influencers gain visibility for debunking and challenging their claims,” says Eviane Liedig, author of The Women of the Far Right. In her book, Leidig refers to this kind of counter-narrative as a ‘soft approach’ to tackling online radicalisation and suggests that it could be considered part of “attitudinal inoculation” - think of it as getting regular small top-up vaccines that help to inoculate people against radicalising content like that of the Women's Sphere. Although Leidig notes that the effectiveness of this method is understudied.
Speaking to Glamour UK, she explained: “While this type of content has the potential to push back against the claims of womanosphere influencers, I suspect that it may not be reaching target audiences who are most susceptible to conservative and far-right narratives.” This is most likely due to algorithms and content recommendation systems feeding users the type of content they already agree with (think about when was the last time your FYP showed you a take you fundamentally disagreed with?), according to Leidig. But, she says, this content might help left-wing and liberal users better understand and spot the signs of online radicalisation.
But for Julia, Louisa, Shanice, and Sophie, the point is not about changing the world. “If I can change one mind, then I've done my job,” says Julia.
“I knew that I was going to make a change; I just didn't know how.”
