Dismantling the Truth of Online Misogyny and Femicide An Article That Would Offend Some Men Because It’s Written By a Woman

What are we inculcating at our homes? Are we shutting our daughters to hide all the hate comments? Are we telling them to not speak up against harassment? Or are we teaching our sons to humiliate and kill any women that do not walk on the path of societal rules and regulations?

Written by

Maliha Fatema Zakir

Published on

July 3, 2025

What happens if one day you wake up to find your latest social media post has gone viral, not with admiration, but with hate? Thousands of comments, many from men, attacking you for simply existing as a woman in a public space. Words as sharp as daggers thrown at you in the form of threats, hate comments, mockery and others. Men dissecting your body, voice, clothing, and confidence with comments that reek of hatred?

And what if one day you walk into your kitchen and get stabbed, by a man who simply loathed you because you were a woman who said no?

This is not a scene from a dystopian novel. This is real.

On a quiet Monday evening in Islamabad, Sana Yousaf, a 17-year-old medical student and beloved TikTok creator from Chitral, was shot dead in her home, in front of her mother and aunt. Her crime? She existed. She had a voice. She had dreams. A man entered her sanctuary and ended it all.

What followed was more tragic i.e. an online celebration of her murder. Men rejoiced. They justified her death because she was “too visible.” They slut-shamed her. They called her an attention-seeker. One Facebook user said, “She deserved it.” A culture that hates women. This is a culture that celebrates misogyny, not as an extremist ideology, but as a daily, normalised behaviour.

“A child, full of dreams, silenced before life could even unfold,” another wrote.

“What kind of world are we creating – where innocence is stolen before it even has a chance to shine?”

Not All Men, But Always a Man

This article is not anti-men. But it is firmly against the fragile masculinity that turns violent when it is told ‘no’. When it is told that women are not possessions. That living out loud is not a provocation. This is not about men being strong – this is about men being weak enough to kill when they feel rejected.

We often say “not all men”, but it is always a man.

Online hate against women is not just a side effect of the digital age – it is a symptom of deeply rooted misogyny that technology has amplified. Cyberviolence isn’t new, but it’s evolved. From early instances of cyberstalking in chatrooms to the surge of abuse on social media, the internet has become a battleground. In the 2010s, image-based abuse – commonly known as “revenge porn” – highlighted how lasting and viral this harm can be. Today, women face a complex ecosystem of threats: doxing, deepfakes, hate speech, impersonation, online grooming, and more.

What’s worse, algorithms often amplify this abuse, while encrypted platforms shield perpetrators. According to the UN’s 2024 report, three rising dangers stand out: the backlash against women’s rights, the unchecked growth of misogynistic online spaces (the manosphere), and the misuse of AI to target women.

Whether it’s sharing someone’s private information or spreading manipulated videos, these acts aren’t just online – they spill into real life, with consequences that can be traumatic and permanent.

The New Weapons of Digital Misogyny

Think about the “Bulli Bai” and “Sulli Deals” incidents in India, where Muslim women’s photos were morphed and auctioned online. It wasn’t about sex – it was about humiliation. The message was loud: You’re not safe. Not on the streets. Not online. Not even in your silence. I spoke then and I speak now and I’d continue speaking because this fight is never-ending. A fight for misogyny and femicide.

Technology has become a double-edged sword – enabling empowerment while being weaponised to humiliate. With AI-powered deepfakes, women’s faces are being placed onto pornographic videos. With doxing, their phone numbers and addresses are leaked. With every share, the trauma gets real. The screen bleeds into real life. There is excessive increase of cases seen with regards to online hate, rape threats, harassment, stalking and eventually femicide. Moreover, the victims of online misogyny and femicide are mostly influential women.

“Digital violence affects all women who are dedicated to public affairs, both at work and in our personal relationships,” says Anaís Burgos, a Mexican politician.

“I can’t publish anything personal on social media… people will search for anything to attack me. Some of my colleagues have thought about leaving politics altogether, so they are no longer targets.”

Emerging Poison of Entertainment Industry

Turn on the television and what do you see? Dramas where women are either saints or seductresses. In recent years, the entertainment industry – particularly dramas – has had a deeply problematic influence on young minds. A disturbing pattern is emerging: male characters are portrayed as dominant, entitled, and obsessive, and these traits are not just normalised but romanticised. A woman says no, and the man persists – stalks her, controls her, harasses her – until she eventually “falls in love” with him, and they live happily ever after. This narrative is not just unrealistic; it’s dangerous. It sends the message that a man’s violence, possessiveness, or emotional manipulation is justified if he loves a woman – and worse, that her consent is negotiable. In real life, this mentality has tragic consequences.

In a recent case depicted in a film ADOLESCENCE, a boy murdered a girl simply because she rejected him – and later admitted he was influenced by social media and films that glorified such toxic behaviours. The line between fiction and reality is increasingly blurred, especially for young individuals. The industry has a responsibility to move beyond outdated tropes and reflect a world where love is based on equality, not control; where rejection is respected, not punished.

The Rise of Online Hate

Recently, in the case of Apoorva Makhija, we saw how a young woman faced a massive wave of online hate following a controversy. Whether or not the controversy was justified is not even the discussion here. What struck me was the disproportionate hate she received – hate that women online face every single day, no matter what they do. There are hundreds of influencers on the internet – both men and women – but the amount of targeted, vicious, and personal abuse that women get is on another level. If a woman wears makeup, she’s “fake” or “plastic.” If she doesn’t, she’s “ugly” or “trying too hard.” If she posts confidently, she’s “desperate.” If she’s quiet, she’s “boring.” No matter what, it’s never enough – or always too much. In Apoorva’s case, people went beyond disagreement. They attacked her body, her appearance, her mental health, and even issued threats. It wasn’t just men – even women joined in, as if tearing down another woman helps them survive in a system built to pit them against each other.

The rise in hate against women has been amplified by the accessibility and anonymity of the internet. Someone who wouldn’t dare speak with such cruelty in real life finds the courage to unleash their deepest insecurities online – because behind a screen, there are no eyes watching, no immediate judgment, no consequences. It’s just them, their phone, and an empty digital space that echoes their hate without holding them accountable. The internet becomes a dumping ground for unresolved anger and misogyny, disguised as free expression.

Meanwhile, the male voices on the internet are not stripped of dignity, not mocked with the same venom, not dehumanised. This just proves again that online spaces are not equal but often downright unsafe for women. And at the core of it all? A fragile male ego that cannot stand a woman being outspoken, visible, or simply unbothered. When a woman rises, speaks, or exists outside the boundaries of what’s “acceptable,” there’s always a price – and often, it’s paid in hate.

Data shows that 58% of the total female users suffer from online hate and harassment on social media. 1 out of 4 faces backlash and social media hence is considered more negative to women than men.

And no, men do not get the same level or scale of hate. Not even close.

It’s Not Just About Violence

It’s about control. Suppression. Silencing.

The UN Secretary-General’s 2024 report identifies three major threats to women’s rights:

  1. A growing backlash against women’s visibility,
  2. The rapid rise of unregulated artificial intelligence, and
  3. The mainstreaming of the “manosphere” – a toxic digital space where misogyny festers and spreads like wildfire.

In many Muslim communities – and I say this not theoretically, but from what I’ve witnessed – there exists a quiet but dangerous belief, often masked as religious propriety, that a woman who steps outside the confines of extreme interpretations of Islam becomes a threat. A woman who speaks her mind, who dares to show up as an equal, who is visible, vocal, and self-possessed, is instantly labelled a disruption. Why? Because such women carry the power to inspire others – to think, to rise, to reject silence. And this is where the truth reveals itself: it’s not strength that defines the men who attack these women, but insecurity. Weak men are threatened by strong women. They fear being irrelevant, so they suppress. They fear losing control, so they create fear. They fear women’s independence, so they invent submission. And in doing so, they craft a culture where fear becomes a tool to ensure that women stay dependent – not because of faith, but because of fragile ego.

What of Justice?

We live in a world that hands women mirrors laced with razors and tells them to smile through the blood. Every time a girl dares to post, to speak, to breathe too loudly, she risks being turned into a hashtag, a cautionary tale, a blurred photo on the evening news or a dead body in the living room.

Femicide is the final chapter in a story that starts with a joke, a hate comment, a threat, a rumour. It begins long before the knife, the bullet, the grave. It is not an isolated fire; it is the smouldering aftermath of centuries of unchecked matches, lit by fragile egos and fanned by silence. Today, those matches are keyboards. The smoke now rises through screens. Hate against women has evolved, but it has never disappeared. It has just changed costumes.

So, what are we inculcating at our homes? Are we shutting our daughters to hide all the hate comments? Are we telling them to not speak up against harassment? Or are we teaching our sons to humiliate and kill any women that do not walk on the path of societal rules and regulations? It all starts at home. It all depends on what we think and teach. It also depends on the strict legislation of social media platforms. There is an increasing need to build a safe space online by effective reporting and strict actions against hate comments, harassment, stalking, etc.

Online hate is not a glitch in the system. It is the system – coded in patriarchy, run on misogyny, and updated with every girl who dares to take up space, to say no, to say anything at all. This world has always been afraid of women who don’t bow.

And maybe that’s why it keeps trying to burn them. I don’t need to wonder how many men will read this and feel their skin crawl with defensiveness. I don’t need to calculate how many will roll their eyes or quietly curse my name. Because I know. I know some will call me a liar. Some will wish I had never written a word. And one or two might even wish me dead. That is the price of speaking as a woman, for women, to women. That is the weight of putting pain into words. This mere ink is enough to ignite their ego into violence.

Because the truth is: It’s not that these men are too strong. It’s that they are too weak to withstand a woman who refuses to shrink.

So, let the next girl who dares to exist online or off not be met with flames of hate, but with the light of justice.

Not for revenge. Not for applause. But to build a better world where everyone deserves to live.