Express an opinion on social media, and don’t expect to be treated courteously. We all know that the internet brings out the most strident of voices, disinhibited by a keyboard and a place to publish thoughts, no matter how unsavoury. If you’re a woman with an opinion, or a woman who occupies a place in the public eye, the response can be shockingly obscene – ranging from the old misogynistic favourite: ‘get back in the kitchen’, all the way to rape and death threats. There are instances where threats have been followed with real life violence; one journalist had her pets poisoned and killed. She had dared to write about domestic violence. The mental health ramifications and subsequent effects on women’s online presence are less able to be quantified.
My own experience with these people came after speaking out against religious bigotry and featuring very briefly in the media. I was not saying anything particularly controversial, nor was I targeting men specifically. My inbox started to light up with messages which were threatening and obscene. Comments were made on my public social media pages. One man was intent on taking legal action against me and demanded multiple times that I retract my opinion. Another man used a pejorative word for a sexually promiscuous woman along with a number of other obscenities. Many of them wanted me to simply shut up, and foul language was a common theme, though one also requested impolitely that I kill myself. All bar one were from men.
For females who occupy a place in the public eye, the abuse can be unrelenting. Senator Mehreen Faruqi has spoken about the thousands of racist and sexist messages she has received via social media, as well as death threats towards members of her family. As a way of coping and responding to the men who write nasty missives, she has set up ‘Love Letters to Mehreen’, in which she quotes her abusers, and responds with humour. But the problem is massive in scale – 44% of women and 34% of men have experienced online harassment, and women are more likely to report receiving threats of sexual violence or death, or abuse described as ‘extremely or very upsetting’. Not everyone has the resilience or resources to shrug off these comments.
Things are almost guaranteed to get nasty when women take on MRA’s (men’s rights activists). My colleague, a tireless activist against violence towards women has been a recent victim. A twitter conversation with a mainstream media personality regarding his comments on men’s violence took a threatening turn when his many male supporters took to attacking her personally. Her qualifications, her work and of course her gender were demeaned. She had no choice but to block and retreat. That being exactly the response these men desire. To silence women, most particularly women with challenging opinions.
There has not been large scale research studies on online trolls, but initial research and anecdotally, it appears to be primarily men. A study in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour showed that men display higher levels of narcissism, and were more motivated to use social media ‘antisocially’. Networks of primarily young, white, male trolls have been described by journalist Ginger Gorman, who wrote a major investigation into predator trolling. The internet, as with the real world, is a more dangerous place for women because of men’s behaviour. Social media platforms have a responsibility to mitigate this danger, and tackling online behaviour is an important aspect of the wider issue of men’s violence towards women.