“Childless cat lady.” “She slept her way to the top.” “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” These are just a few comments and attacks on Kamala Harris that have gone viral on social media since Joe Biden dropped out of the race for re-election.

Are we surprised? Not really. Does it infuriate us? Quite a bit.

The reality is that machismo and gender-based violence become disturbingly evident when a woman throws her hat into the political ring.

However, we didn’t know to what extent until we read the study led by Nina Jankowicz on gendered abuse against women political candidates.

Unfortunately, abuse and misinformation against women political candidates are the norm, especially now Kamala Harris is running for President

In their study published by the Wilson Center, Jankowicz, Jilian Hunchak, Alexandra Pavliuc, Celia Davies, Shannon Pierson, and Zoë Kaufmann found disturbing information.

Their study revealed the shocking extent of sexist and sexualized misinformation directed at women in public life. Worse, the researchers found that these attacks affect women’s participation in democracy and national security.

Researchers analyzed more than 336,000 insulting messages directed at 13 female politicians on six social media platforms. They found how widespread and coordinated these attacks are. The result? Nearly 200,000 users sharing insulting content. This includes mainstream media platforms.

The study published in 2021 found that Vice President Kamala Harris was the top target

Researchers found that 78% of the abusive content recorded two years ago was directed at Vice President Kamala Harris. This demonstrates the multiple layers of discrimination faced by women of color.

“It’s important to label these narratives and lies as what they are,” Jankowicz said in a thread on X. “[It is] an attempt to undermine a powerful woman’s public service because of her gender, background, and skin color.”

In the past few weeks alone, Harris has been the victim of a massive wave of attacks from the Trump campaign and his supporters. From questioning her ability to lead the country for not having been a mother to mocking the way she laughs to Trump asking if she is “black or Indian,” they demonstrate the rampant sexism in politics.

Jankowicz’s research team identified a particularly vile passage that appeared 31 times in reference to Kamala Harris. This passage is an example of a “copypasta,” a block of text copied and pasted across various websites. It begins with the phrase: “I see Kamala Harris as a challenge, more than anything…” and continues with explicit sexual content, describing different sexual acts and referring to Harris as a “thing” to be conquered.

This passage, circulating online since at least 2012, has been used to target several influential women and girls, including Amy Schumer, Chloe Moretz, Emma Gonzalez, Greta Thunberg, and Maisie Williams. The study found that this copypasta serves as a way for male or male-identifying users to assert their masculinity by fantasizing about violent sex as a means of domination. Kamala Harris was the only research subject targeted by this specific passage during the data collection period.

Back to the old ‘virgin-whore trope’?

Kamala Harris, like so many other women-especially women of color-is a victim of the old “virgin-whore” trope. It’s about the male social construct where we are forced to be chaste but always have an appetite and sexual availability for when they feel like it.

However, it is also about the paralyzing fear men feel when they are threatened by a woman who does not need them.

Unfortunately, many women amplify this construct. Just last week, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly accused Harris of “sleeping her way” into politics.

“The higher the political stakes, unfortunately, the lower people will sink in order to invalidate a candidate who is a woman,” Juliet A. Williams, professor of gender studies at UCLA, told USA Today.

“I challenge anyone who opposes Harris’s candidacy to engage in a substantive debate on the merits of her policies and track record, rather than calling her disgusting names not even fit for ‘locker room talk,'” Jankowicz said.

The Impact of Gender-Based Violence Against Women Political Candidates

As Jankowicz and her team explained, the relentless attacks against now-presidential candidate Kamala Harris are not just a symptom that sexism is still alive and rampant. It is also a pattern that affects the participation of new generations in political life.

The researchers make clear that misinformation is especially damaging, using false or misleading gender and sex narratives to dissuade women from participating in public life.

“Gendered disinformation and abuse-which happen on both sides of the political spectrum-undermine women’s participation in public life,” Jankowicz concluded. “We need to do better.”

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