On Sunday, when President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, I already knew what vitriol would be unleashed against her online.
Four years ago, I led a study investigating gendered abuse and disinformation against female political candidates. Over two months, we found 336,000 pieces of abuse or disinformation targeting just 13 candidates across six social media platforms. Whether Democrat or Republican, young or old, urban or rural, these women were subjected to sex-based falsehoods and hate that their male counterparts weren’t.
Whether Democrat or Republican, young or old, urban or rural, these women were subjected to sex-based falsehoods and hate that their male counterparts weren’t.
Of all the abuse and disinformation that we identified, 78 percent targeted Harris, then a U.S. senator from California seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Why? In part, because she was a high-profile woman running for the highest office in the land. But Harris is not only a woman; she is a Black, South Asian woman. Across our dataset and other research in the space, it is clear that women of color and other intersectional identities receive more abuse, and more vitriolic abuse, than their white counterparts.
In 2020, we observed three groups of abusive or false content targeting Harris. In the minutes after President Joe Biden’s endorsement, and the days since, such content has again flourished across social media.
The most prevalent were sexualized narratives falsely claiming that Harris had “slept her way to the top” because she had a relationship with California politician Willie Brown in the 1990s. The relationship, which was not a secret and occurred long after Brown had separated from his wife, ended eight years before Harris sought elected office. This narrative includes the use of graphic, misogynistic keywords and nicknames. It also includes image-based abuse, “cheap faking” Harris into lingerie and suggestive positions. The most prominent deep fake pornography website also hosts more than 10 pages of videos that insert the vice president into pornography. The intent of this content is clear: to humiliate Harris and undermine her credibility and fitness for office. In our 2020 study, we found that users engaging with this disinformation and abuse were more likely to engage with other abuse and disinformation about Harris.
And there is plenty. Harris’ detractors promote transphobic disinformation, which is frequently employed against women in positions of power. In 2020, users claimed Harris couldn’t possibly have risen to prominence without having secretly been a man. They edited photos of her to make her appear more masculine, and QAnon conspiracy theorists even created an elaborate backstory about her past life. Those narratives have surfaced again this week, along with racist allegations, claiming Harris is not eligible for the presidency because her parents were immigrants. Now, as in 2020, users frequently claim Harris isn’t Black enough or Indian enough to claim those identities.
Our foreign adversaries are watching and happily exploiting American misogyny and racism to their own advantage. The same false, gendered and sexualized narratives that Americans engaged with in 2020 were reflected in Russian propaganda outlets as well. One Russian state media outlet, Zvezda, wrote in 2020: “Kamala claims to be the descendant of oppressed African Americans, but how many slaves did her great-grandfather have? How did having an affair at work help her advance her career?”
Other Russian outlets also made a mockery of the Biden administration’s attempt to create a diverse administration, describing these attempts as “the smirk of political correctness” and “quotas for women and colored people.” As diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts have become a lightning rod for the American right wing, Republicans are echoing that narrative and claiming that Harris is a “DEI” candidate, ignoring her track record as a district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator and vice president.
It’s important to label these lies for what they are: an attempt to undermine a powerful woman’s decades of public service because of her gender, her ethnic background and her skin color.
It’s important to label these lies for what they are: an attempt to undermine a powerful woman’s decades of public service because of her gender, her ethnic background and her skin color. Sadly, Harris’ experience is not unique: By virtue of simply being women in public life, female politicians across the political spectrum are subjected to vile gender-based hate, lies and even violent threats.
This isn’t “just part of the job” because the job looks entirely different if you happen to be a man. Let’s be frank: The Republican Party, which appears to be scandalized by a consensual relationship that Harris had over 30 years ago, seems not to care one iota about its nominee’s multiple affairs, credible allegations of sexual misconduct assault, or a jury finding him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.
Harris’ candidacy and the abuse that targets her offer women of all political stripes a warning. Gendered disinformation and abuse — which happen on both sides of the political spectrum — undermine women’s participation in public life. They dissuade generations of young women, who may not want to face such hate, from seeking public office.
But her candidacy also offers us hope. If Democratic and Republican women both condemn the gendered and sexualized attacks against Harris, then we would send a powerful message that there is no place for misogyny in American politics and chart a course toward equal representation. A Harris administration won’t end the online abuse of women overnight, but it will deflate its perceived power. Online misogynists are loud and ugly, but they are outnumbered, and they can’t stop progress.
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