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Gender disinformation is one of the forms of violence that women and LGTBIQ+ individuals face in the digital environment through the intentional spread of false or distorted information, a phenomenon that grows alongside movements for equality.

Gender disinformation is a form of violence faced by women and LGTBIQ+ individuals in digital environments through the intentional spread of false or distorted information. Although the presence of ideological groups opposing movements advocating for social equality and the rights of marginalized communities is not new—nor are propaganda and defamation strategies—there is now a new wave of reactionary violence driven by social media. This phenomenon grows in parallel with feminist movements and efforts to advocate for diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.

“The patriarchal system has also migrated to digital spaces. The forms of violence that once occurred in analog settings are now transitioning to the digital realm and taking on new forms, such as identity theft, public shaming, reputation attacks, digital harassment, the disclosure of personal information, or disinformation,” explains Eva Cruells, a psychologist specializing in digital machista violence and founder of DonesTech.

“Social media has been key; it has been an incredibly important space for feminism because it has provided visibility,” says Maria Iranzo, a Journalism professor at the University of Valencia and an expert in gender disinformation. She emphasizes the role of these platforms in spreading movements like Me Too between 2017 and 2018. “But at the same time, there is a parallel ideological trend—a current of thought that Miguel Lorente defines as neomachismo, or neosexism in English—which seeks to emphasize that men are the victims of feminism and aims to undermine the credibility of feminist claims,” Iranzo adds.

According to the expert, this narrative has been appropriated by emerging far-right parties, which began to gain ideological traction in society around 2018. “Let’s remember that in 2019, Vox entered the Andalusian Parliament. This, combined with technologies that allow anyone to produce content, is considered the breeding ground for gender disinformation,” she concludes.

“While social media companies did not invent sexism or authoritarianism, they have provided illiberal actors with new and exceptionally powerful tools to attack citizens, undermine human rights and democracy, and further marginalize the voices they deem threatening,” states the report Monetization of Misogyny: Gender Disinformation and the Undermining of Women’s Rights and Democracy Globally, published by the organization #ShePersisted in February 2023. The report highlights the existence of a well-funded transnational movement that, for the past 20 years, has worked to roll back women’s rights and weaken democracy worldwide.

“Since women are on the front lines of the fight to protect the most essential rights and liberal values in many countries, their voices pose a threat to authoritarians and illiberal actors everywhere. Therefore, weaponizing social media to silence them is one of the most effective ways to undermine those efforts and erode democratic institutions,” the report states.

This has occurred with little effort from tech platforms to prevent it, given that polarization and confrontation drive the profits of so-called Big Tech. “Their goal is to generate business by keeping us in front of screens for as long as possible and driving clicks,” Cruells notes. “All these anti-feminist, racist discourses are amplified by these platforms, which are not designed to be safe spaces for debate but rather to foster confrontation and monetize these clashes,” she explains.

Gender disinformation can take on different forms, but there are three especially recurrent narratives. Firstly, there are contents that promote or spread stereotypes and prejudices. In the case of women, particularly feminists, they are caricatured as hysterical or exaggerated characters. False rumors about trans individuals often reinforce the stereotype that they are problematic people. Regarding the LGTBIQ+ community in general, the term “lobby” is often used to create the prejudice that they act as a shadow pressure group to push public decisions that only favor their interests. Another type of content distorts data, especially related to gender-based violence or cases of minors being murdered by their parents. These contents do not deny gender violence but try to downplay it by inflating, for example, false reports (0.001% of the 199,282 complaints filed in 2023, according to the State Attorney General). A third type of gender disinformation is digital harassment that occurs on social media against public figures such as politicians, journalists, academics, athletes, etc., with the intention of discrediting their professional activity and damaging their reputation.

These rumors often circulate more frequently around significant dates for these movements or are linked to current issues, especially when laws recognizing rights for these communities are passed. For example, from May to July 2019, false information against women surged coinciding with the feminicide of Laura Luelmo and the rape of a young woman by the so-called “Manresa gang”. The same occurred in February 2023 when Spain passed the controversial Trans Law, as noted by Nereida Carrillo, a Ph.D. in Communication and director of Learn to Check, and Maria Iranzo in the chapter ‘Gender Disinformation: Main Narratives and Actions for Resilience’ of the book ‘Intersectional Analysis of Gender Disinformation for a Response from Educational Institutions’, published by the Institute of Women.

It is also important to highlight that these contents often falsely link immigrants—especially Unaccompanied Foreign Minors (MENA)—with gender-based violence attacks. Regular promoters of this type of discourse include accounts directly and indirectly linked to the far-right political party Vox.

“This amalgamation of social media accounts, blogs, websites, and media outlets that criticize feminism, advocate for a traditional concept of masculinity, and promote far-right ideals is known as the manosphere,” Carrillo and Iranzo state. These digital communities hold women, feminism, and the term “gender ideology”—a concept originating from the Catholic Church in the early 2000s and later used by conservative circles pejoratively to refer to movements advocating for sexual, reproductive, and gender freedoms—responsible for their “injured masculinity” and criminalize them through disinformation campaigns and hate speech. Although the manosphere has existed since the early 2000s, “its activities may have been influenced and amplified by the perceived need to counter the growth of feminist discourse online,” Carrillo and Iranzo add.

This network of virtual communities predominantly formed by heterosexual and white men is diverse in its ideas and approaches, although it shares certain recurring themes, such as the perception of a “crisis of masculinity” and the alleged loss of power among men in a society dominated, in their view, by feminism and the “LGTBIQ+ lobby”. These are some of the main ideological currents within the manosphere in Spain, according to the study Young Men in the Manosphere: The Influence of Digital Misogyny on Men’s Perception of Sexual Violence, published by the Reina Sofia Institute in 2022.

The ultimate goal and consequence of these intimidation strategies through disinformation and harassment is to drive women and LGTBIQ+ individuals out of public online spaces. Through organized attacks against significant profiles, the manosphere sends a clear message: if you speak out, we will go after you. And there is data that shows they are succeeding. “According to Amnesty International, 37% of women who have received attacks have stopped using their public profiles or reduced their participation,” Cruells warns.

“When you enter Twitter, Instagram, TikTok… and all you see is violent, misogynistic, racist, anti-LGTBIQ+ content, you might think twice about posting a feminist message, joining the conversation, or trying to debunk these rumors. What often happens is that many times the goal of these misogynistic disinformation campaigns is not only to spread their ideas but also to occupy public space,” explains sociologist and co-author of the report Men in the Manosphere, Sílvia Díaz Fernández.

Another consequence is the internalization and normalization of misogynistic discourse. “More than half of white women in the United States voted for Trump. What is happening? This is a person who has met with incel influencers, and one of them came out on TikTok after the elections saying ‘your body, our decision,’ the same person who said you should ‘grab women by the pussy’… How do we understand that these women voted for this person? It’s because of the internalization of misogynistic discourse,” Díaz asserts.

A report published in September 2024 by Save the Children on the consumption of disinformation among children and adolescents highlighted that boys are increasingly vulnerable to misogynistic, homophobic, and racist content, and that among girls, cases of online harassment and attacks are on the rise. Díaz relates this trend to structural problems linked to an aggressive capitalist system that limits their ability to imagine “a stable future.” “The uncertainty, precarity, and difficult access to housing… is generating a social context of great unease. It seems like you will never be able to have a house, a car, children… All these pillars of what is supposedly a normal life. On the other hand, traditional ideas of masculinity are still being instilled in young people (the man is the provider, if you don’t earn X amount of money, you are a loser, if you don’t have a woman who dedicates herself to the home and children, you’re not in a real relationship…) and they find themselves in a context where this is not possible. This is where manosphere and far-right discourses like those of Vox come in, which, instead of pointing to the structures limiting this ability to imagine and create a dignified future, blame feminism as the origin of all social ills,” Díaz states.

“When you receive attacks, you need to respond at a digital security level by protecting your accounts and communications, but also on a personal level,” recommends Cruells. “Mutual support networks are crucial and can help when an attack occurs, allowing you to step away from the public space for a few days. This way, someone less emotionally and personally involved can manage the situation, document evidence, block, mute, report messages to platforms… Collective response is also vital to raise awareness of how these violences are generated and what legal, institutional, and political instruments we can create to face them,” she adds.

On her part, Díaz also advocates for finding “a room of one’s own,” a space where marginalized groups can come together to develop strategies and discourses away from the noise of the aggressors. “But at the same time, if we completely disappear from the mainstream, we will disappear from the public agenda,” she recognizes. “I think the only answer is to try to be in both places. Not to completely withdraw but to participate in a way that doesn’t hurt us, because many are left behind because it’s very hard. Let’s try to put our care at the center to not abandon, to not give them the space, but also start to create something parallel for ourselves,” the sociologist advises.

Creating counter-narratives aimed at those not yet aware and not directly confronting the instigators of disinformation could be another effective strategy, Carrillo and Iranzo suggest. “However, carrying out these counter-narratives also involves risks. Therefore, it is recommended to interact in groups to avoid becoming a target of a new attack; not to single out a person directly but to support —by liking or sharing— the counter-discourses of others, which amplifies the discourse and limits personal exposure,” the researchers recommend.