Misogyny on the Internet becomes a profitable business
- Rafaela Campos da Silva
- 2 days ago
- 1 min read
DW Brasil - April 28, 2025
When she created the blog Escreva Lola Escreva in 2008, the professor at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and feminist blogger Lola Aronovich had no idea that giving visibility to cases of sexism and misogyny would put her at the center of a systematic online hate campaign. Much less that, years later, this same violent discourse would become highly profitable.
"Since the first week of the blog, I had misogynistic comments, but not necessarily threats," says Lola, who created her blog to have editorial freedom to talk about feminism, cinema, literature, politics, among other topics. "In 2010, I received a link to masculinist websites and communities on Orkut. I started going to see what they were talking about and saw that they were already talking about me while I didn't even know they existed."
With the advancement of the internet, these masculinist groups expanded their hate speech against women, diversified and gained legions of followers. Today, they are able to monetize videos and transform misogyny into a profitable business, generating thousands of reais with content that advocates control over women, delegitimizes feminism and reinforces gender stereotypes.
In Brazil, there are currently 137 YouTube channels with explicitly misogynistic content, totaling more than 105 thousand videos and around 152 thousand subscribers, according to a survey conducted by NetLab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) for the Ministry of Women, released in December of last year.
