The Associated Press reports:

In the days after the presidential election, Sadie Perez began carrying pepper spray with her around campus. Her mom also ordered her and her sister a self-defense kit that included keychain spikes, a hidden knife key and a personal alarm.

It’s a response to an emboldened fringe of right-wing “manosphere” influencers who have seized on Republican Donald Trump’s presidential win to justify and amplify misogynistic derision and threats online. Many have appropriated a 1960s abortion rights rallying cry, declaring “Your body, my choice” at women online and on college campuses.

For many women, the words represent a worrying harbinger of what might lie ahead as some men perceive the election results as a rebuke of reproductive rights and women’s rights.

“The fact that I feel like I have to carry around pepper spray like this is sad,” said Perez, a 19-year-old political science student in Wisconsin. “Women want and deserve to feel safe.”

Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focusing on polarization and extremism, said she had seen a “very large uptick in a number of types of misogynistic rhetoric immediately after the election,” including some “extremely violent misogyny.” [Continue reading…]