Louise Donovan
Growing up, me and my school friends often dodged the obscenities men hurled at us from across the street. Much like homework or being thrown out of the pub for being underage, we just got used to it. As I got older, and maybe a little wiser, I changed my mind. At the time, around 2012, I’d been reading the thousands of entries posted on the Everyday Sexism Project’s website, where women detailed their sexist encounters. Set up by Laura Bates, a British writer and activist, it quickly went viral.
Bates was one of the first women in the U.K. to harness the power of social media to fight misogyny, and helped spark a new wave of feminism. One that demanded all forms of sexism, including those previously seen as “mild” like catcalling, were insidious and harmful – not just the more serious offences. That this was pre-#MeToo, and the term ‘everyday sexism’ was almost completely unused prior to Bates’ work, demonstrates her impact.
Since then, she’s published multiple books on everything from incels to male violence, shaping the conversation around gender and the internet in the U.K. for over a decade.
Which brings me to her latest, The New Age of Sexism, and why I was excited to interview her this week. This time, she delves into the world of artificial intelligence, examining how new technologies have misogyny baked into their design and are putting women in danger.
It’s a terrifying but vital read. Not least because AI, along with virtual reality, robotics and metaverses, are about to transform our world in ways we can barely imagine, says Bates. The Industrial Revolution took place over 80 years; these changes will happen “in the blink of an eye.”
Yet women are already being regularly assaulted in the metaverse, and men are using apps to design AI girlfriends (one company’s tagline reads: “She will do anything you want”) and spending thousands of dollars on self-warming and self-lubricating sex robots.
School boys are moving away from self-styled ‘misogynistic influencers’ like Andrew Tate, says Bates, and towards deep-fake pornography which they can make for free on their lunch breaks. The target? Their female peers and teachers.
“This is the next big epidemic of sexual violence in schools,” she explains. “It’s just that we’re not talking about it yet.”
Bates has a knack for spotting harmful gender issues and clamoring for us to pay attention. Her 2020 book, Men Who Hate Women, investigated the “manosphere” – the name given to parts of the internet that circulate misogynist content – years before Netflix’s Adolescence kickstarted a global conversation on similar issues.
The technology of the future might already be oozing harmful gender stereotypes, but we shouldn’t be scared of it, says Bates. Instead, she hopes the book will inspire people to shape how it’s built (women make up only 12% of AI researchers).
When you think about the power the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk hold, it feels like an impossible task. But, then again, public sexual harassment has been a crime in the U.K. since 2023 – including catcalling.
From visiting cyber brothels to the books she’s reading now, we get into much more in our conversation. You can listen in full here.
The New Age of Sexism is out now in the U.K. and available to pre-order in the U.S. here.
