A while ago I was listening to an episode of the podcast What Am Politics called What Am Feminism, with special guest Leena Norms (justkissmyfrog), and there’s a part towards the end where she talks about how nearly every single day she gets some kind of rape threat, and I was thinking at the time, “yeah that sounds pretty standard”. When she said that, she kind of nervously giggled whilst the hosts of the podcast Steve and Richie both yelled expletives for a while. Genuinely, the reactions from the men actually kind of surprised me. They were both so shocked. They both had no idea this happened. I don’t think it’s on men to know when their friends/brothers/dads are harassing women online, as internet histories are easy to delete, and I imagine, the people who are harassing women online are doing it in secret. But still, their reactions shocked me; it’s strange how women only talk about online harassment when the subject of feminism is brought up, firstly, and it’s strange that men simply haven’t seen it happening, nor care to look for it (honestly, why would they – it’s a pretty hateful part of the internet).
But it got me thinking about the way women are treated online. It’s a shame that most women who get these kinds of messages or have had them, know that the way to deal with them is to laugh at them. Deep down we know no one will take us seriously, and we know that reporting them will do nothing. In my experience, at least, twitter do very, very little to stop online harassment. Women are expected to just not put anything “controversial” online, to not be too opinionated, to somehow have everyone who could ever possibly send you hate blocked from the get go. Basically, social media sites would rather women use the internet as docile, bland, vanilla figures, rather than use the internet the way men use it. When I was sent rape threats and at the same time told I was too ugly to rape, twitter said it didn’t violate any of their terms and conditions.
Obviously not all men *shudders* abuse women online. A lot don’t. But too many men do. We women see this all the time from men: a lack of the ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions. Men, or abusive men, want women to bare the consequences of their inability to respect women, and this extends to every area of our lives. Consciously and subconsciously, it is so damn difficult to escape the grip of the patriarchy.
Online misogyny is a global travesty and it is imperative that it ends. It’s interesting that most people continue to think that misogyny doesn’t exist; “Hate women? Nobody hates women!” Yet when it comes to actual hateful comments that exist in the mentions of any woman with more than 300 twitter followers, misogyny still doesn’t exist. I’ve got a feeling that whenever misogyny is mentioned, misogyny will be denied, no matter how blatant it is.
There needs to be tighter laws against online harassment. Of course, laws can be violated. But laws inform our culture of what is and isn’t acceptable, and while media oligarchs sit around with their hands up saying “it’s got nothing to do with me”, this will continue until laws are changed. Rape and sexual assault threats aren’t even taken seriously anyway, but the rate at which they happen online demands a shift, and a reconsideration as to what constitutes danger for minority groups online. The words uttered by harassers online may be of no imminent threat, but are real and can cause great distress. It’s actually been proven that our brain process online abuse in the same way as actual abuse. It triggers the limbic system, the cortisol starts to pump, and we go into fight or flight. Words mean things, it turns out. And I’m not just talking about disagreements and petty arguments, I’m talking about full scale sexual harassment and abuse. Ashley Judd did a TED talk about sexual abuse and harassment online, and in it she describes the online vetting she hires people to do, and how when she started telling people she did this, people accused her of living in an echo chamber. She goes on to say that when she gets sent pictures of herself with her mouth open, and an accompanying caption expressing the sender’s desires to ejaculate onto her face and into her mouth, she has every right to set up that boundary. And she’s right. Women and girls are under no obligation to listen to the torrents of violent comments sent their way by men. Why should they be?
We consistently act as if females are somehow deserving of the misogyny they receive, like there’s something inherent in femaleness that demands abuse. (It’s almost as if it’s profitable.) We always ask, “what was she wearing? Was she getting in his way? Why didn’t she just keep her mouth shut? Why didn’t she just say no?” The blame, time and time again, both online and off, falls on women. It’s a clever little thing calling misogyny a “women’s issue”, because it lifts the blame off men and leaves women sweeping up the messes that men have created.
Femaleness is a straight jacket sometimes, and it was not very long ago that I realised I wasn’t the one who put me in there. So I’ve slowly but surely begun to fight back, sometimes gracefully, sometimes a little like Bambi on ice, and I’ve learned that representation is probably feminism’s biggest concern right now. When we have representation, when we’re listening to – not just hearing – each other’s stories, we can act. We can change. But how do we do that? Well, when a woman tells you what it’s like to be her, believe her. Believe her.
