Behind the Headlines: Examining the Latest Attacks on Women’s Rights
In the midst of the whiplash-inducing governmental upheaval, it’s hard to focus on anything. Trump and his posse of right-wing, opportunistic misogynists are doing an excellent job of causing confusion. (Elon’s ears must be burning.) You really have to force yourself to take a moment—a pause with a nice deep breath—to wrap your head around what they are actually doing: creating and supporting policies that amount to a war on women.
This is how the patriarchy works. This is how abuse of power works. This is how the gaslighting of a society works. If you have been sitting at home feeling like something seems off deep down in your bones, but you can’t quite put a finger on why, you are not wrong. And, you are not alone.
The attacks are coming at us from all sides, but I want to focus on three main areas I’ve identified in recent news reports. These are the areas where policies are being leveraged against women in the United States right now:
- Social media platforms and content moderation
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives
- Women’s healthcare access and rights
For digestibility, I’ve broken this article into three parts, examining each area of attack. In each section, I’ll cover the policy changes, their implications, their harmful impact on women, and actionable steps for response.
Part 1: Social Media – The Digital Battleground
Social media platforms are undergoing significant changes in their content moderation approaches. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is lifting restrictions on content moderation. Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) has not only altered its platform restrictions but shifted its entire culture away from what its owner, Elon Musk, dismissively termed the “woke mind virus.” The result? Users now encounter increased levels of hate speech, misinformation, and problematic content.
While free speech is often cited—drawing from the First Amendment’s protections of speech, religion, press, peaceful protest, and government petition rights—corporations increasingly use this constitutional principle to justify providing toxic environments that enable harm against oppressed, marginalized, and vulnerable populations, including women and children.
The Impact on Women
The loosening of visual content restrictions has serious implications. It normalizes hypersexualized images and pornography, contributing to:
- The objectification of women
- A culture that diminishes women’s humanity
- Support of industries linked to sex trafficking
Personal experience illustrates these concerns. In the past year alone, while barely using Facebook, I encountered three instances of unsolicited sexual content. During a simple search for a Portland poet’s name, pornographic videos appeared in the results. When attempting to block similar content, the platform’s algorithm paradoxically increased its frequency. These experiences, once exceptions, risk becoming the norm under relaxed content policies. Because of this, several organizations who are trying to make the internet safer (including the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) now have a tougher job ahead of them.
The relaxation of hate speech restrictions creates virtual safe havens for misogynistic behavior. Men can now more freely use inflammatory language to incite violence and perpetuate abuse without real-world consequences. Recent examples include white supremacist Nick Fuentes’s declaration, “Your body, my choice,” and the alarming increase in online predation of teenage girls. According to HopeForJustice.org, “Research suggests the age range targeted most heavily by online predators is girls aged 12-14, due to perceived vulnerability and openness to suggestion from older males.”
The Addiction Factor
As Edward Tufte, author of Envisioning Information, pointedly observes, “Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers users.” Social media’s original promise of connection has devolved into an advertising landscape filled with harmful content. Research confirms its negative impact on mental health, causing anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues while leaving users vulnerable to predators.
Protective Measures for Women on Social Media
To safeguard yourself while using social media platforms:
- Establish clear boundaries to protect your time and energy
- Maintain strict privacy settings on all accounts
- Avoid sharing hypersexualized content of yourself or others
- Support and contribute to feminist and ecofeminist organizations
- Keep political views, especially progressive ones, within private circles
- Limit personal information when using platforms for business
- Block and avoid engaging with abusive users
- Use Mel Robbins’ “let them” theory
- Reduce usage of platforms where harassment occurs
- Report abusive content when possible (despite platform obstacles)
- Consider alternative community-building platforms you can control
Remember: while social media is designed to be addictive and its algorithms remain beyond your control, you retain power over your usage choices. Consider a social media detox—I’m currently in week two of mine, alongside my 21-year-old son, and neither of us misses it. A 2024 study revealed that female users average 2.5 hours daily on social media. Imagine what you could accomplish with that time redirected toward your goals.
If you choose to maintain a social media presence, consider ways to subvert the platform’s negative aspects. For inspiration, listen to my podcast episode, “Stories by Strangers: Creative Agency for Abuse Victims” featuring Nitya Mehrotra, who launched an animation project giving voice to abused women through social media.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Behind the Headlines” examining how changes to DEI initiatives are affecting women. Sign up for the Womanhouse newsletter below to be notified as soon as articles go live.