If you’ve got a young daughter in school there’s a one in four chance that she’s been called a degrading name online.
If you’ve got a young son, there’s a 57% chance he’s been guilty of calling a girl in his class a degrading name, due to the fear he’d be dubbed ‘boring’ if he didn’t join in with misogynistic banter.
But as we’ve seen through the lens of TV sensation Adolescence and Louis Theroux’s manosphere documentary, parents and adults are increasingly unable to decipher the ever-changing verbal currency used by youths to tear each other down.
It’s concerning, given a new Barnardo’s study of 4,000 girls and boys aged 13 to 20 uncovered online abuse and harassment is ‘constant, corrosive and deeply embedded’ in young people’s lives.
It’s once again raised the question of how we safeguard and improve the attitudes of school children in a climate where nearly one in five girls report receiving repeated messages after asking the sender to stop or ignoring them.
At the same time, boys feel afraid to challenge their peers with more than a fifth saying their friends wouldn’t back them if they called out sexist comments, and a whopping 59% feeling they need to ‘act tough and not show emotion’.
For 21-year-old Samai, a university student working with the children’s charity, she thinks the majority of parents are ‘clueless’ when it comes to the language their sons are using to insult women.
‘They’re not going to go home and call people bops or foids,’ Samai tells Metro. ‘Your mum won’t know what looks-maxxing is and won’t understand.’
It’s increasingly difficult to translate what your children are saying when the dialect is constantly shifting, and Amelia Barlow, programme manager of Barnardo’s Call It What It Is campaign, tells Metro this is a huge issue.
‘The difficulty that we have is it’s such a quickly evolving picture, so as soon as adults understand and recognise the terms that young people online are using, they evolve and change immediately,’ she says.
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‘This is a) to evade moderation from tech companies, but b) to remain culturally relevant, relatable and edgy to teenagers who are seeking that sense of identity and belonging they might not have in their everyday interactions.’
So, we’ve got a few of the latest misogynistic terms being used by young boys and what they mean, so you can try and stay ahead of the curve.
Terms to listen out for
Bop
Samai explains the most popular new term to belittle women is ‘bop’.
‘That’s the main one right now – it’s the go-to word if you want to call a woman a slag,’ she says. ‘What’s interesting with these words is that they usually start out as being like malicious, but then they just become like the commonplace word for women.
‘They’re not even used for shock factor anymore, that’s just genuinely young people’s vocabulary.’
I need to know!! #bop #whatisabop #mattessactress #humor
It’s intended to describe a woman who has had many sexual partners in a derogatory way. It’s also used colloquially by sex workers such as Lily Phillips who refers to herself as a bop, while famous OnlyFans creator Sophie Rain created a ‘bop house’ for sex worker creators.
In terms of what bop actually stands for, Urban Dictionary describes it as ‘blown out p**sy, a vagina so stretched out that the act of intercourse is anti-climatic’.
‘You can’t win because you’ll be called frigid for not getting with the boy at the party, but if you do get with that boy, you’re called a bop,’ Samai adds.
Huzz
Huzz is a ‘huge one’ according to Samai, and it’s one she hears a lot in her friendship group.
She says it is another form of hoe, originating as a stylised, rhyming alternative to it.
Additional piece of information that didn’t make the video: This is where huzz originates. A lot of kids are using it as a replacement for “boo” or “pookie”. The huzz being the person they’re with or trying to impress to be with. 😅 so it could be more innocent in its usage depending on the kid. What does #huzz mean and why are kids using it? Watch the video to find out! #genalpha #genalphaslang #huzz #bruzz #gruzz
‘The boys at my uni use it,’ she explains. ‘I’ve got some male friends who [say it] but then you have young boys who are like 10 or 11 also using these words against girls in their class.’
Samai puts it in a sentence, saying: ‘When you and your friend do a two-man with the huzz and one of the huzz is chopped.’
Chopped
Now chopped, simply put, is the latest word for ugly.
‘You don’t call somebody clapped anymore, they’re chopped,’ Samai explains. ‘Not sure if that comes from chopped liver or something.’
It’s widely used by younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha to insult someone’s appearance.
‘The sad thing is it’s young men creating this language and then young women also use it as well because it becomes the slang to use,’ the uni student explains. ‘I’ve caught myself using the word chopped.’
Foid
This is another one Samai hears often, and it’s a portmanteau of ‘female’ and ‘humanoid’ typically used by incels as a derogatory word for woman.
‘There’s so many buzzwords in a sentence now,’ she says. ‘They’ll say things like “when you try and talk to a foid, but she’s a bop, so you just brush her”.’
Soy boy
It’s a derogatory label for men seen as weak, effeminate or lacking traditional characteristics they deem masculine.
Samai had a male friend describe her friend’s ex-boyfriend as a ‘soy boy’ because he felt he was feminine and weak.
My forever response when dudes show up in my comments with this nonsense.
Sub5
This is an alternative to chopped or ugly and is extremely popular on TikTok within the looksmaxxing community (an internet subculture which went mainstream on social media, focused on maximising physical attractiveness).
The sub five refers to the looksmaxxing scale (known as the PSL scale) which uses a one to 10 rating system to rank facial and physical attractiveness.
For men and women, the scale starts with ‘subhuman’ then goes up to ‘low-, mid-, and high-tier normies’. Then for men they hit ‘Chadlite’ and finally ‘Chad’ if they’re very good-looking. The female hierarchy subs in ‘Stacy’ for ‘Chad’.
Some stretch subhuman as high as a four rating, while ‘Sub5’ (a rating under 5), effectively means ugly.
How to talk to your children about online culture
Amelia at Barnardo’s believes parents and carers are crucial to remedying this derogatory language.
‘We really encourage parents to start open and non-judgemental conversations about what children are seeing online, and to bring the conversation into households to help young people understand what respectful and healthy behaviour actually looks like,’ she explains.
Regardless of whether you think your child is already involved in these spaces, BACP-accredited therapist and parenting expert, Jenny Warwick, previously told Metro you should be asking questions like: ‘What do you think about how some people talk about gender online?’
This approach helps create a safe space where your child feels comfortable discussing anything they might have come across, even if it’s disturbing.
Jenny stresses that it’s essential to help children recognise manipulation techniques used by extremist groups online, such as the ‘us vs. them’ mentality, and to discuss healthy relationships, gender equality, and the echo chamber effect of social media.
‘Encourage critical thinking,’ she adds. ‘Teach them to question the sources of online content and why some groups hold certain beliefs.’
Barnardo’s is also urging the government to commit to upgrading Ofcom’s violence against women and girls guidance to a mandatory code of practice. This would ensure greater accountability and strengthen protections for children and young people.
‘It’s not going to fix everything, but it’s one part of the puzzle,’ Amelia says.
For a complete glossary of manosphere terms, click here.
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