Sexist Language Surges Online as Harris Battles Trump

Searches for the derogatory word “bitch” on Google shot up over 1,000 percent in the United States alongside a surge in online queries about Vice President Kamala Harris after she took the Democratic nomination, and the use of sexist language in social media hashtags rose even more in an indication of the part played by the gender factor ahead of the presidential election.
The trend mirrored one seen in relation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before she went on to lose the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, who is now running neck and neck with Harris.
After President Joe Biden dropped out of the election race on July 21 to be replaced by Harris, searches for her name skyrocketed. So did searches for terms described as sexist.
Daily searches for “Kamala Harris” exploded after she announced her candidacy mere hours after Biden dropped out of the race in July. One of the top rising queries that rose concurrently from the same users from Aug. 2 throughout the month was for “bitch”. It rose 1,050% during that period.
The same trend has been spotted in hashtags used on social media. Brand24, a social media analyzer that reviews millions of posts to find trending topics, found that mentions of the term “bitch” increased over 2,000% on popular social media platforms including X, Instagram, and TikTok in August and September. Viewership of these posts went up by 3,000%.
“A 1,000% rise, it’s huge,” Kelly Dittmar, professor and director of research at Rutger University’s Center for American Women and Politics, told Newsweek. “When women run for office, they face harassment and negative treatment done in gendered or sexualized ways.” The quantity of attacks when compared to male and female candidates is not necessarily different, but the nature of those attacks is. “Women are going to be more likely to be called a ‘bitch’… to diminish their seriousness and mobilize those who agree,” Dittmar explained.
Experts said more analysis would be needed to place the data in context, but the increase appears meaningful even if it is not a predictor of who will win the election. Google data for related searches shows how users searching for one term also searched for the other.
Representatives for the Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump has in the past rejected accusations of misogyny, brushing off criticism of his own use of language and saying that he respects women — although a New York Times/Siena College poll in April said only 31 percent of women believed this compared to 54 percent of men. Some Republican analysts have argued that attacks about Harris’ gender are justified.
When conservative political commentator Matt Walsh received pushback for declaring that Harris had “made a career out of begging for hand outs from powerful men” in a recent post that garnered over 13 million views on X, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly told followers that the comments were both fair and helpful to voters.
“It’s relevant, and fair game,” Kelly wrote in a response viewed almost 5 million times.
“Bitch is interwoven with the history of feminism,” the linguist Karen Stollznow wrote in Bitch: The Journey of a Word, published this summer. The term has “changed along with the changing social roles of women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” she said, adding that usage has historically peaked alongside several key moments in the fight for women’s equality.
Feminists sought to reclaim the word in the 1970s, lending it a more positive meaning related to a woman’s assertiveness or dominance. Today, the term “bitch” can be used as slang in a friendly exchange or as a verb to complain, but, the negative connotations of the old insult have persisted.
“This is a form of backlash against women’s progress, and it’s particularly dangerous because it normalizes this behavior as part of the political landscape,” Saijai Liangpunsakul, founder of the anti-Gender Based Violence coalition, Stop Online Harm, told Newsweek. “This language is not just offensive; it’s a tactic of suppression that reflects society’s deep-rooted discomfort with women wielding authority.”
Just ask the first woman to top a major party’s presidential ballot. The same rise in the use of “bitch” was seen during Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Search data shows that the highest number of searches for the term “bitch” in the last twenty years occurred in the summer of 2015 – the same month that Clinton announced her campaign for the presidency. Interest in the insulting word steadily decreased throughout 2016 — spiking temporarily in Nov. 2016 before surging again this election season.
Clinton was subjected to several misogynistic labels and attacks during her presidential runs too. Supporters of her Republican competitor, former President Donald Trump, embraced offensive campaign slogans like “Trump that bitch” and “Life’s a bitch: Don’t vote for one” with tens of thousands of pieces of merchandise sold advertising the slurs.
And although several issues have been linked to the Democrats’ defeat in 2016, questions about how much of a role Clinton’s gender played in the outcome of the election are surfacing again as Harris follows in her footsteps.
Trump – the only candidate to run against the first two women to head a presidential ticket in US history – and his advocates have used similar misogynistic language to attack Harris in this year’s election. He reportedly called Harris a “bitch” in private on multiple occasions, according to a report by The New York Times – a day that saw a significant spike in searches for the term online.
Popular slogans promoted at some MAGA rallies this year carried the same tone. Shirts and flags with the phrase “Biden sucks, Kamala swallows,” can be purchased across the country, along with mugs and bumper stickers proclaiming, “F**k Joe and the Hoe”.
The increase in search for the term “bitch” alongside Harris’s campaign is indicative of the existing political divide in America that is being utilized by the right to gain votes, former Illinois Representative and 2020 Republican presidential candidate Joe Walsh said.
He told Newsweek that he has heard a lot of sexist attacks against Harris from within the Republican Party and that gender was being used as a distraction to voters.
“There are way too many people on the right who have sexist and racist fears that Trump and everybody took advantage of… The name of the game for Trump is to scare the s*** out of people – because he knows that will work.”
The gendered attacks are not necessarily a sign that Harris will lose the White House.
“Sexism did influence Donald Trump’s success and Clinton’s defeat, broadly speaking,” Dittmar said, quoting a post-election report compiled by her Center for American Women and Politics. “Not so much because she was a woman, but because Donald Trump was offering a politics that would push back on gender,” she said.
“Clinton didn’t lose because she was a woman and if Harris wins or loses, you won’t be able to say it was due to her gender.”
Joe Walsh described the divide another way: “Harris is running the campaign of hope and trying to appeal to our better angels. Donald Trump is appealing to our worst most primal fears. Jury is out as to what will win.”
That does not mean that the rise of sexist rhetoric will not impact the country’s future.
“When public figures like Kamala Harris are attacked using sexist slurs, it sends a message to all women and girls watching: that no matter how qualified or accomplished you are, stepping into the public arena means being subjected to gender-based attacks that are meant to humiliate and silence,” Liangpunsakul explained. “Such attacks discourage women from participating fully in public life and ultimately hinder progress towards gender equality.”
The effects can extend to future generations.
“Young girls seeing this kind of vitriol directed at women leaders may question if they want to put themselves in the same position, leading to fewer women considering careers in politics, leadership, or other male-dominated fields,” Liangpunsakul said. “It’s not just about one campaign or one election cycle—it’s about whether our society is creating an environment where women feel empowered to lead without fear of being demeaned for their gender.”