Content warning: This Insight contains misogynistic, racist and transphobic slurs and mentions of suicide.
Introduction
Six weeks ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. While a second Trump presidency brings forth significant concerns for those who are directly targeted through his administration’s open endorsement of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and transphobia, it has also spurred a visible wave of open male supremacism in the online sphere. Using a sample of 53 threads posted between November 5th and 7th to a prominent misogynist incel forum, this Insight explores how Trump’s electoral win further legitimised displays of male supremacism in one of the manosphere’s most vocal online communities. I centre responses of celebratory male supremacism across posts, wherein genuine fear expressed by women, LGBTQ+ people, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups were discussed with glee and branded as “lifefuel” by misogynist incels. I also explore how male supremacist discourses intersect with subjectivities beyond gender, highlighting the blend of racist misogyny and transphobia that Trump’s campaign and subsequent election win brought to the fore. Finally, I end on a consideration of male supremacism’s ability to bind users across ideological views and political leanings, a significant area of concern for extremist researchers, targeted groups, and allies alike.
Celebratory Male Supremacism
Trump’s electoral win was heralded by community members as a restoration of male power over their perceived oppressors, namely women. Users revelled in watching those targeted by Trump’s rhetoric express genuine fear and sadness at the prospect of restrictive policies that would directly impact their rights and liberties, compiling screenshots of posts from popular feminist subreddits r/TwoXChromosomes and r/trans in threads titled “FOID TEARS MEGATHREAD” and “Trump Soy Chimpout Official Megathread.” Most often, users’ displays of celebratory male supremacism blended the gender essentialism of the blackpill with overt joy at the prospect of women’s suffering, creating a positive atmosphere within forums that hinged on their subjugation:
“Seeing so many foids be so emotionally devastated is so motivating and lifefuelling I didn’t even need my fix of caffeine this morning. Watching so many of these stupid bitches cry and complain is enough of a rush” (User 10).
Gender essentialist rhetoric was used to construct women as inherently biologically and intellectually inferior to men, with a new transfer of power signalling a restoration of ‘natural’ (male) leadership: “men ruled the world and always will. Cry and seethe more you fucking losers” (User 15). This same rhetoric was used to delegitimise valid concerns over restrictions to reproductive health and gender expression, with users arguing that women were “inherent attention seekers” (Users 18, 33) who were “just overreacting like it’s the end of the world, in their typical manner of spoiled brats” (User 26). While reproductive healthcare and access to safe abortions have been repeatedly targeted by the GOP on the basis of religious morality, users’ discussions departed from this view. Instead, conversations about access to safe abortions were inherently tied to users’ views of women as promiscuous and “lawfully degenerate”, who retain “the power to dispose their unborn babies … [under] the guise of muhh body muhh choice” (Users 17, 21). Despite Trump’s consistent waffling on abortion, users celebrated his election as a clear win against women’s freedoms, revelling in the prospect of increasing restrictions on reproductive health: “We are coming for Foids rights and not only make America great again, Make men Great again too” (User 35).
Weaponised Victimhood, ‘Just’ Retaliation and Calls for Violence
Moreover, users’ responses to the emotional reactions of cis, queer, and trans women online worked to further (re)affirm their own perceptions of victimhood. As members of misogynist incel forums specifically (as well as manosphere communities more generally) construct themselves as unjustly victimised at the hands of women and feminism, the prospect of a second Trump presidency laid bare the supposed “entitlement” of women, along with the numerous societal privileges they benefitted from at the expense of men (Users 18, 25, 26):
“They have so many more rights, and so much easier lives than men, that they cant even let men have one win” (User 16).
“Imagine being so privileged the biggest problem in your life is the wrong person winning an election” (User 14).
Across discussions, users’ perceptions of victimhood often intersected with calls for ‘just’ retribution against perceived oppressors, a call to action that was spurred by Trump’s direct targeting of reproductive rights and aggressively misogynist rhetoric. Statistics about male victimisation, often presented without sources or taken out of context, were used to ‘prove’ men’s inherent oppression within society, furthering discussions of retribution and retaliation against women for making men ‘suffer’ (User 37). While relying on evidence-based misogyny to justify claims of victimhood is a common discursive practice across the manosphere, Trump’s win adds legitimacy to these narratives. His success as an open misogynist and sexual abuser who endorses policies that restrict freedom for women, queer, and trans people signals a tangible power shift for misogynist incels, providing them with opportunities to subvert their subjugation through fantasies of retribution, justice, and punishment:
“Foids drove MANY incels to suicide, and now we get to return the favour with divine retribution! NO MERCY! TIME FOR JUSTICE!” (User 28).
Others took these conversations further, constructing Trump’s victory as directly legitimising corrective and retributive violence against women and their normie allies, with their posts encompassing tactics of restricting agency, autonomy, and rights (“we need to get rid of all freedoms foids have” [User 31], “Total Foid Enslavement!” [User 28]), alongside encouragements of physical, sexual, and mass violence.
Racist, Misogynoirist, and Transphobic Constructions of Harris and Her Supporters
While content posted to the forum often centred misogynist and gender essentialist speech, discussions also intersected with overt racism and transphobia, most commonly directed at Kamala Harris and her supporters. Harris was repeatedly sexualised and targeted with threats of sexual abuse within threads, with users sexualising her name, expressing desires to rape her, and insinuating that her successful political career was a direct result of promiscuity and sexual favours. Harris’ South Asian and Black heritage has also been a constant facet of Republican and far-right attacks online, with similar rhetoric (re)produced within misogynist incel forums. Users targeted Harris through a toxic blend of misogynoirist and racist rhetoric, using animalistic and derogatory slurs across threads.
In line with the clear anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and policies endorsed by the GOP, users framed Trump’s electoral victory as a tangible win against the perceived “degeneracy” and “mental illness” of trans people (Users 12, 13). Misogynist incels’ discussions in the aftermath of the election directly targeted trans women, aligning with my prior work exploring transmisogyny within the community and the disparaging of transfeminine identities more generally. Mirroring gender-critical rhetoric falsely constructing trans women as predatory and inauthentic, users relied on transphobic slurs, misgendering, depersonalisation, and transmisogyny to disparage and harm trans women within their posts:
“Playing into a t****y’s delusion is doing it more harm. The best thing is to tell the t****y he is a male and he will never be a foid” (User 12).
“You extend courtesy to a t****y who wants to be a they/them, even though he’s 6’4” and can clotheline a foid’s head off” (User 11).
Similarly, Trump’s win galvanised calls for direct violence against queer identities and a celebration of self-harm and violence experienced by LGTBQ+ people. Across two threads, users heralded Trump’s victory as ushering in an era of “Total T****y Death” (Users 5, 6), with several fantasizing about an increase in trans “suicide rate” (Users 7, 8). Others shared content from r/trans, r/MtF, and Pink News discussing a sharp rise in transgender and queer suicide rates, with one user posting a link to a supposed ‘live’ suicide counter where he and others gleefully presenting the increasing number of people, all of whom they assumed to be trans, taking their own lives as sources of happiness and “lifefuel” (Users 1, 3, 4).
Other endorsements of transphobic violence were more graphic: at times, anti-trans variations of the soyjak meme first popularised on 4chan’s /qa/ and /pol/ boards were shared within threads, stylised to depict trans women as ‘men in dresses’ through an emphasis on ‘masculine’ features of facial hair and body types. One of these anti-trans memes, referred to derogatorily as t****yjaks or t***njaks, was shared in a thread proclaiming that “T****S HAVE LOST” on the evening of Trump’s win, featuring a graphic illustration of a trans soyjack dead from hanging, meant to mock increasing rates of self-harm and violence within the trans community.
Open Misogynists in the Mainstream
While this Insight focuses on the flurry of content posted in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s win, users demonstrated a complex relationship with endorsing Trump and his politics directly. Some referred to him as a “puppet” (User 21), a “redpill narcissist” (User 18), and “cuck” (User 20), described his policies as “no different from Bill Clinton” (User 19), and assumed he would “do favours for his rich billionaire friends” over offering support to misogynist incels (User 18). Instead, their discussions centred on the male supremacist views that were directly validated through an openly misogynistic candidate claiming political power, along with his party’s aggressive fight against reproductive freedoms, women’s rights, trans rights, and platforming xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiments. While a handful of users did mention voting for Trump or endorsing his policies, the forum’s celebratory atmosphere was directly related to Trump’s perceived ability to harm cis and trans women, whether through making them fear for their safety, or through restricting rights and freedoms that users felt were directly related to their perceptions of oppression and victimhood:
“I don’t care about the election for reasons, but it makes my heart happy seeing soys and foids losing their minds over Trump winning” (User 22).
“I don’t even like Trump but it’s so satisfying to see them mad about him winning” (User 23).
“Trump made foids cry, that’s a good enough reason for me to like him” (User 24).
Trump’s electoral win galvanised users who tied his open misogyny and past convictions of sexual assault to potential future regressive actions against the women they held responsible for legitimising societal oppression of men. However, this sentiment is not unique to misogynist incels: celebrations of Trump’s win as a restoration of male supremacism echoed across mainstream social media platforms, with popular misogyny influencers and far-right podcasters constructing this as a win for men over “gays n chicks”. Most notably, far-right streamer and white supremacist Nick Fuentes’ male supremacist rally cry of “Your body, my choice. Forever.” spurred a wave of networked misogyny across X and TikTok. Despite stating that “the MAGA of 2024 no longer speaks for me” and making clear that he would not be voting for Trump on a Rumble stream the morning of November 5th, Fuentes capitalised on Trump’s win in the early hours of November 6th, taking to X/Twitter to celebrate the potential repeal of reproductive rights and equality protections for women and LGBTQ+ people across the US.
Trump’s reputation as an open and ardent misogynist has galvanised staunch displays of celebratory male supremacism – along with racism, anti-queer rhetoric, and transphobia – across various corners of the Internet, a sign of the increasing platforming and acceptance of harmful speech on mainstream social media sites. While countering the spread of male supremacism is a complex feat in an increasingly polarised digital environment, tech companies and individual platforms must be accountable for how shared male supremacist narratives are ‘mainstreamed’ through the content permitted on their platforms and the algorithms they employ. Content moderation efforts across social networks must also incorporate the ways in which male supremacism intersects with other areas of extreme speech and disinformation, including its collusions with white supremacy, misogynoir, queerphobia, and transphobia, among other areas of intersecting oppression.
Allysa Czerwinsky (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in Criminology at the University of Manchester. Her research interests centre on the intersections of technology, harm, and violence, with a specific focus on misogynist extremism, online harms, and ethical research into unsavoury populations.