When it comes to media coverage of violence against women, language matters. According to an analysis of 1.4 billion stories published between 2017 and 2025, articles which include terms relating to misogyny have been decreasing. Even reports on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal contain far more mentions of elites and corruption than of woman-hating. Summarising the findings, the Guardian notes that they reveal “a failure to address the structural nature of misogyny”.

Anyone who has spent the past decade pointing out that we need clear, precise language to describe what one sex does to another might find it vindicating to read this now. Turns out the Terfs were right all along! Sidelining an analysis of sex-based inequality and resorting to de-sexed discussions of power make it impossible to get to the heart of men’s abuse of women and girls.

But wait! Further along in the Guardian piece, we come to this: “To understand the level of misogyny-related coverage in online news, researchers selected 12 misogyny-related terms such as sexual violence, femicide and rape. While levels of coverage that mentioned any of the terms declined, references to ‘gender ideology’ — a contested term dating back to the 1990s and pushed by the global anti-gender equality movement — soared by a factor of 42 between 2020 and 2025.” Is it being suggested that gender-critical feminists, who might use the term “gender ideology” to refer to trans-activist beliefs, are to blame for this worrying trend?

If you are confused, then you’re meant to be. Recent years have indeed seen a widespread pushback against genderist beliefs such as “sex is a spectrum”, “a woman is anyone who identifies as one”, and “female-only spaces must include males”. Objections to this have come from both feminist and conservative quarters — and indeed from anyone unwilling to start claiming that two plus two equals five. This does not mean objectors are all in agreement on every other issue relating to sex and gender.

There are people who think that sex is binary and immutable, and that all female people must be feminine, all male people masculine, and that same-sex relationships are wrong. Then some believe that sex is binary and immutable, but that masculinity and femininity are regressive concepts, and that same-sex relationships deserve protection in law. One of the ways in which trans activists and their defenders in academia and the media have sought to silence members of the latter group is by pretending they are no different to the former. They are, we are supposed to think, all members of the “global anti-gender movement”. This conflation of two very different positions, promoted in books such as Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender?, allows supporters of gender ideology to avoid any engagement with feminist, pro-LGB arguments against it.

It is ironic to see “gender ideology” and “anti-gender movement” used in this thought-terminating manner, in an article purporting to be about the need for honest language. There is also no consideration of the extent to which trans activism has contributed to the move away from “key terms relating to misogyny”. Activists have suggested that references to “male violence” and “women’s safety” constitute dogwhistle transphobia. Yet the replacement of “male” with “gender-based” and “women” with “people” makes structural analyses of misogyny impossible.

As one of the many women smeared as a member of the “global anti-gender movement” for knowing that sex matters, I can’t help but be irritated by the complaint from the report’s author that “the gender-inequality lens is all but missing from coverage of the Epstein story.” Do such lenses, which are really sex-inequality lenses, matter now? Let’s take that thought and apply it a little further. Maybe the sex of who is doing what to whom matters in stories about changing rooms, refuges and prisons. Maybe it matters in all reporting on crime. Maybe every single time you hide these details, you’re doing something wrong.

If it’s important to speak and write about misogyny directly, then it’s time to stop vilifying those who are doing this already. If you really care about it, follow their example instead.

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Victoria Smith is a writer and creator of the Glosswitch newsletter.

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