misogyny in the blogosphere

29 Apr, 2026

I struggle with how humiliating it feels to talk about and point out misogyny; how the general regression into conservative values makes addressing misogyny come across as a last resort card you can pull out to make yourself look like a victim or get brownie points, while vilifying someone else. Like a thing you only do if you have no better arguments and want to shut discussion down, as the only people coming to challenge you further are seen (or even are) misogynists who don’t believe you. It feels like it’s sucking all the air out of the room, and people begin to tiptoe.

So much about identifying and calling out covert misogyny is about prior experience and gut feelings and hypotheticals, which makes it so hard; because overt, obvious misogyny is rarely worth a discussion and is a lot less controversial to name.

It’s exactly those edge cases of

• this would have been fine for me to do or say if I was a man
• they wouldn’t have done this if I was a man
• this would have been more successful if I was a man
• this reaction comes from someone that has a harder time accepting successful/opinionated/... women

that are worth calling out, but are impossible to prove. You cannot snap your fingers and enter the alternate reality of being a man and seeing if it happened or not.

Even if you find a comparable action or writing from a man about the same topic where he was praised for what you were criticized for, it’s very easy to dismiss that. ”He’s just more charming. It’s not that comparable. You were just unlucky with who read it. Does it even matter?”

And there’s really nothing you can do about that; there’s always some plausible deniability.

The following are just my personal feelings and experiences; if you’ve made the opposite experiences or think these are cherry-picked, that’s okay.

In my experience online…

• Men get credited (“taken from (name)”, “made by (name)”), women often get nothing or “is inspired by” even when it’s an exact copy. That even happens with theme code on here (and happened to me before).¹

• Men calling each other out online is accepted, even if harsh; criticizing some guy online as a woman is seen as extra humiliating and it gets treated like you’re ruining his life or reputation on the platform. I’ve seen some harsh callouts and fights on the indie web, even downright discussing if someone is spewing Nazi rhetoric or not, and it didn’t seemingly devolve into whether any of them are a big meanie bullying people off of platforms. This only seems to happen when women call out some stuff.

• Seeing bullshit online from random guys is normal and we are desensitized (open any inflammatory comment section; most are men or are read as men), so a woman talking some shit gets extraordinarily more replies and attention. I feel like even on things like the Bearblog Discovery, people rather hide and silently report a man for despicable views, but are less inclined to move on silently for women bloggers who have awful takes. Don’t get me wrong: Call out stuff openly, I’m just focusing on who seemingly gets a pass and who doesn’t.

• People easily get sick of seeing the same woman in their feed than they do with men, and I’ve had the feeling that the most complaints about Trending posts come in when the same women are on there multiple times. You can see this even in pop culture: There was a time when everyone was sick of seeing Anne Hathaway, and during the Barbie press tour, I remember Margot Robbie saying she’s gonna lie low now so people don’t get sick of her, and since then, I have seen other successful women in such visible positions say the same. I have never seen anyone fault a male actor for showing up in a lot of media or him saying he needs to disappear for a while to give people a break. Usually it’s celebrated like “lmao there he is again”.

• People expect women online to be more neutral, more caring, motherly; sharing less opinion pieces and instead, more art and pictures. Women’s opinion pieces feel more like nagging to people, and are easily somehow read as “too aggressive”, especially when it’s guides. Makes you wonder if some select few men just can’t handle guides written by women because that’s a woman telling them what to do or how to behave. That’s why they take it upon themselves to just rewrite your post saying the original was too aggressive, and link other male authors on the same topic. Happened to me!

• When a man writes confidently like an expert about something, it matters less to people when he doesn’t have (or doesn’t immediately offer up) official credentials (like certificates, degrees, work, etc.) about it. As a woman, you are asked more for these and even have to offer up this information upfront to be believed. Even then, this is not enough for some people.

Closely related, I am reminded of the recent news when actress Milla Jovovich released MemPalace on GitHub. Almost unanimously, comments everywhere were agreeing that a) this is just someone using her name, or, after it was confirmed to be her, b) she lent her name to this project to give it more visibility, or c) just paid someone to do it for her. This was more than just an understandable, normal "Wow, an actress has this other interest? Did not expect that, cool." It was deeply driven by the fact that people cannot imagine a pretty woman to do anything technical. People even questioned her motivation to do so - man, why not? AI has been in the public spotlight for 5 years. Why could she not deeply immerse herself in that topic during that time because it interests her? Meanwhile, people accept and admire that James Cameron, who is a successful and well-known filmmaker, is also a deepsea expert who was able to give valuable insight into the OpenSea submersible failure.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Before I wrote about data protection law on this blog, I tried it on another blog that made no mention of my name or gender was was designed in a way that would be read as masculine, to avoid biases due to my gender. But I quickly got tired of missing out on having my actual name and official presence attached to my work and field, so I’d rather live with the bias, I guess.

Thanks to everyone who has always treated me with respect, gives credit where it's due, and properly acknowledges women's skills and expertise.

Feel free to let me know your own experiences and observations around misogyny, both in general and in the personal web. Even with a public reply, if you feel comfortable.

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Published 29 Apr, 2026

#2026