The Number of Women Who Troll Online Will SHOCK You

​Online trolling is sadly all too commonplace. Because with the arrival of the internet came keyboard warriors; those who take pleasure out of lashing out at people they've often never met in person.

The abuse can range from insults and petty name-calling, right through to terrifying threats of rape of murder. And so far, it's been pretty hard to prevent it. Because as soon as the likes of Twitter closes down one troll's account, up pops another.

When you think about the people behind these computer screens, it might be generalising, but you'd often imagine they're sad, lonely, women-hating men - because often the abuse is so misogynistic in its nature.

But surprising new research has revealed that, actually, half of all online trolls are ​women​. And in a world where we already start off on uneven-footing just because we were born with vaginas, shouldn't we all be doing a little bit more to support each other?

A study into the identity of trolls was conducted by UK think tank Demos. They analysed Twitter in the UK across three weeks, and discovered that 6,500 different users were targeted by 10,000 tweets, which all contained aggressive and sexist messages. Shockingly, 50% of the perpetrators were female. 

The words "slut" and "whore" were used particularly frequently; something you'd hope women wouldn't stoop so low as to call one another.

And, given that women have been proven to suffer more online abuse than men, it's awful to see that it's women shaming women. 

Whatever happened to 'the sisterhood'?

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