Online Tribal Warfare

Going viral because of the gender that you were socialised into from birth

Hello — I just made a podcast episode for Computer Says Maybe about networked online transphobia. I worked on this on and off for months and am honestly super grateful that I was even given the time to do it. You should listen if you want to hear me and Alix drown in our own catharsis around hateful online speech and being misgendered in public. And also because I interviewed four amazing guests: Jenni Olson, Shivani Dave, Alice Hunsberger, and Emily Cousens were all very generous with their time and insights.

Something that Emily said that didn’t make the cut has really stuck in my head: that trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), in their campaign to erase trans women and protect the ‘natural’ status womanhood, are doing pretty much the same thing that incels are doing.

Let’s explore this: TERFs and incels are two tragically online groups who intersect with other groups — e.g. right-wing extremism, men’s rights, child safety advocates, women’s rights, left wing politics, etc — but likely never intersect with each other. Both incels and TERFs retreat deeply into their holes of online hate, and make themselves unwell by inventing and reinforcing sickly narratives which poke through into mainstream discourse. That discourse becomes institutionalised, TERFs and incels basically become lobby groups, and suddenly it’s 2025 and queer people have never been more terrified.

Both incels and TERFS are propelled by one caustic driving force: to uphold the gender binary. Incels feel that women, kind of just by existing, are threatening the natural character of ‘man’; that their role in society is superior, as a protector, provider, and also destroyer — and women are continuously undermining that. And TERFs are protecting the natural order of gender by characterising trans women as men in disguise, or as a demonic sickness which will eradicate the ‘biological’ woman — apparently a feeble endangered species — and also some how endanger children too. Never forget that ‘think of the children’ is a key ingredient to any good moral panic.

These ideas burst onto our viewports like bile from a grisly pustule, spluttered all over the heteronormative side of Dating TikTok, where men will say that a celebrity crush is enough to ‘disqualify’ a woman from becoming his wife. Or, on TERF Twitter, where people casually compare the anatomy of trans women to cis women, as if that’s not completely deranged and pointless.

I think that social media has done a lot to intensify the separation of the gender binary, and I don’t mean exclusively via radical groups like TERFs and incels. Historically, virality was achieved by posting something that was relatable to a wide enough group that it could do the numbers. You know, really annoying yet irresistible Buzfeed articles like ‘things you will only understand if you grew up in Lewisham’. Or, even better, the avalanches of arguments over what colour The Dress is, or whether or not you should or shouldn’t wash your legs in the shower. It doesn’t matter what the right answer is — you simply MUST pick a side. And seeing as we’re choosing sides, here’s a very big one: gender. That is, if we have to assume that there are only two of them, and that they are solid states that can never change, and that they are not social constructs used to control how we live our lives…

Online tribal warfare has evolved beyond the carefree times of The Dress. We are in full Cosplay at Caring Mode, where everything is up for debate in the marketplace of horrendous takes. Allegra Rosenberg recently wrote about ‘Treatlerite’ — a trend that has internet users passing shame around like a hot potato and/or trying to win in the oppression Olympics. Basically, someone will post about something in their food delivery order being wrong, and then get completely macerated in the replies by those who wish to educate the OP on their repugnant moral bankruptcy. E.g. using food delivery services supports dehumanising gig-work, degrades local economies, demonstrates a lack of class consciousness, is racist, but wait: it’s also helpful for disabled people to get food. So whatever side you do pick, you will still be wrong. Allegra also made this very cool point about it even creating a cycle of “puritan self-denial”:

But behind the rise of the “Treatlerite” insult is a larger truth about a very American neurosis. A particular kind of puritan self-denial, reinforced by social media surveillance, and co-opted by rogue online leftists using it to score internet points. The world is bad, so nobody should have good or convenient things, they say, wokely. The CIA dreams of a psyop this effective!

But the biggest thing that stands out for me within the Treatlerite horror show is unapologetic gender essentialism. A woman once made the news by complaining that her Instacart order was being fulfilled by a man. Because men are rubbish at following a shopping list, I think is the argument? Oh isn’t it so funny, men are like this and women are like that! We have to list all the differences that define our gender otherwise nothing will make sense!

And, through my research for this piece I came across something that I literally had no idea about until now, because it absolutely does not concern me: how to get a High Value Man. I have scrolled too far down this Quora page to learn that the essence of a High Value Man is irrelevant, and it is up to women to improve themselves, embrace their femininity, smile more, text in an unselfish way (??), and be good at cooking, in order to attract a male who will take care of them until they die. It’s as though we’ve reached a morbid inflection point in humanity where the world’s problems are too large and abstract to deal with, so people have begun to focus inward, and take themselves on as the thing that needs to be solved. Become a High Value Woman to win a High Value Man. Strive for ultimate perfection within your sex class and fail at nearly every turn because that is impossible, actually.

As I mentioned last time, it’s incredibly dangerous to create meaningless categorisations for humankind and then panic when not everyone fits. In today’s podcast episode mentioned up top, both Emily and Jenni make clear that when hate is normalised through the media, government, and indeed the content policies of online platforms, it leads to genocide. Remember when the internet was meant to be for everyone? I’m happy that the protective layer of pseudonymity means that people can still get online, find their communities, and feel a little more human — this, and not the fucking gender binary, is what we need to protect.