This TikTok Trend Is Making Light of Violence Against Women

In an incredibly unsettling new trend, some TikTokers are using women’s deaths as the punchlines of jokes. In these videos, men describe taking a woman on a date that ends in killing her. One popular rendition of this trend featured the text: “Imagine I take you to the Grand Canyon for our first date and I push you off the cliff and you fxcking die.”

Really funny, right?

The comment sections are full of defenses of this content, with comments along the lines of “it's just a joke.” To them, killing a woman is a comedic twist in the traditional story of courtship — a surprise ending after the buildup of gaining a woman’s trust, flirting with her, and chasing her.

But for women, this scenario is genuinely something we fear. According to a U.N. study, about one in three women have been victims of physical or sexual violence, with most perpetrators being intimate partners. This figure doesn’t include instances of harassment, which, when taken into account, brings the number up to around 80% of women as stated by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). The attempts to silence our discomfort, therefore, are not funny at all.

Let’s give the TikTok users who create and positively react to this content the benefit of the doubt and say they truly don’t understand why it’s not funny. That they don’t is in and of itself an issue and is a product of men’s privilege. Whereas women are socialized to recognize the precarious nature of their safety and to remain hypervigilant of their decisions, men do not need to take these precautions. Patriarchal societies offer men a position of power that allows them to remain oblivious to inequality and oppression.

Research has demonstrated that men and women have internalized the beliefs that men are more valuable than women, as well as conventions of heteronormativity and strict gender roles. These internalized beliefs create the mainstream norm that the relationship between men and women is one of domination and subordination. Accepting the idea that men are aggressive and powerful and women meek and compliant justifies violence.

These gender stereotypes are reflected in structural differences that further exacerbate inequity. As explored in this study on domestic violence, men are perceived to be more independent and competent and are therefore often overrepresented in positions of power. Consequently, political and social institutions are influenced by the interests of men and commonly reproduce patriarchal dynamics and ideals.

Another review of domestic violence found that perpetrators of abuse face fewer legal repercussions than others who commit assault, and the media has often justified the abuse of women by shifting blame to the victims; we ask why they stayed, or how they could have prevented the abuse, rather than asking why someone would choose to act violently.

As illustrated in one study focusing on the challenges of measuring gender-based violence, social patterns of gender inequality facilitate the acceptance of violence against women as a social fact. Violence against women is not simply a matter of individual decision; it is structurally entrenched. When our communities are oriented to maintain the power of one group, it is easy to accept harmful practices as routine. We are taught to accept that masculinity is exhibited through aggression, so violent actions are not seen as breaking any norms.

We make allowances for men’s behavior at the expense of women’s safety all the time. We accept sexist jokes, catcalling, and the over-sexualization of women’s bodies in the media. These all serve as transgressions against women, which paves the way for more extreme demonstrations of cruelty.

Media platforms such as TikTok don’t just mirror these narratives; they reinforce them to an ever-younger audience. That TikTok allows these videos on their platform begs the question: What does this allowance say about the app itself?

Although research has demonstrated that online anonymity can increase sexist activity, users of TikTok are not usually anonymous. Many users post this content in their own names, showing their own faces, out of the belief that doing so would not only be accepted but applauded as comedic.

That these users felt comfortable doing so can be connected to feminist writers’ past criticism of TikTok for not removing hateful content, which suggests the app has fostered a toxic environment for misogynists to propagate.

It also seems connected to the deeper problem of the structure of TikTok, and many social media platforms, which inhibits dialogue and often produces arguments. When problematic trends occur, users leave hateful comments, and creators block users who disagree with them, creating echo chambers that further alienate people from dissenting opinions or criticism. In this way, the calls not to perpetuate violence against women are perceived as “cancel culture” and brushed aside.

Ultimately, this TikTok trend is about greater issues in our society. However, issues such as this one are a clear example of how social media can drive us further from feminism’s goal of supporting marginalized communities and detract from meaningful conversations about the issues they face, all while reinforcing dangerous ideologies.

For this reason, we must focus on changing social attitudes around liberation for gender-oppressed individuals in real life. Rather than succumb to regressive online discourse, we must foster productive and collective movements that fight oppressive structures.