Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Trolls and the women they target
Trolling is global: How it affects women around the world
Targeted minorities
Sexism on dating apps and social media
Revenge porn
The real life abuse of women that is fuelled online
How women are using the internet to fight back
Women will be seen and heard
What the tech companies – and you – can do about it
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
About the Author
Copyright
This book is dedicated to all the badass women around the world who do great things.
See you on the internet.
In April 2015, I received two very different messages online.
At 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, I checked my work email. I saw that I’d received a message from a woman who’d read an article I’d written about a wife who alerted the authorities to her abusive husband’s behaviour by dialling 911 while pretending that she was placing an order for pizza. The author of the email, finding herself threatened with similar violence, remembered my article and took the same action. She thanked me, and told me that she owed her life to what I had written.
While at work the following day, a message arrived in the inbox of my public Facebook page. There was a photo in the preview section, and when I opened the message an image appeared of a man staring at the camera with a grimace on his face. His trousers were pulled down and he was standing by his bed with an erect penis. In his hand, he held a very large knife. Below the photo, he’d added the caption: ‘I’ve got a knife and a cock, one of them is going in you.’
The first message exemplifies what I love about the internet: its ability to instantly connect people across the world in a considerate way. The second message represents the polar opposite: the invasive, hateful side of the internet that serves no purpose other than to cause distress.
As a writer, I’m used to receiving good and bad messages from readers. Like many people, sometimes I am targeted with abuse, and other times the feedback is more positive. While I don’t expect I’ll receive many messages quite like the one sent by the woman, I do expect that I’ll probably receive another like the one sent by the man. That’s because people like him – intent on finding ways they can cause harm to others – dominate a large part of the internet.
In fairy tales, a ‘troll’ is a supernatural being that lives in the wilderness or lurks under a bridge and is rarely helpful to human beings. Internet trolls are pretty much the same thing, but lacking the whole supernatural-folklore element. Rather than contribute an interesting point to an online conversation, trolls sit in their wilderness (aka in the glare of a computer screen) and post abusive and inflammatory comments with the intention of upsetting their victims.
In this book, I look at the ways in which online abuse is being committed – but specifically, what that abuse looks like when it’s directed at women.
Before I begin, let’s be clear: both men and women fall victim to troll attacks, whether in the form of name-calling, threats of violence, humiliation or public shaming. In fact a recent study carried out by the Pew Research Center found that men are more likely to be subjected to name-calling or embarrassment online, while both sexes receive roughly the same amount of physical threats. But when it comes to the most ‘severe’ types of harassment, women – especially those in the 18–24 age group – are the primary target; they are three times more likely to be stalked, and around twice as likely to be victims of sexual harassment.
Harassment of this nature can wreak havoc with women’s lives, cause emotional damage, and in some cases it can lead to real-life abuse, too. Stalkers and perpetrators of domestic violence, for example, use technology and social media as weapons against women. The charity Women’s Aid report that online abuse and harassment increases the risk of physical and emotional harm offline, and that many women who leave an abusive relationship experience harassment or abuse online from their ex-partner.
Online abuse of women is not confined to sexual harassment and stalking. How many times have you read a sexist comment under a YouTube video, heard about a woman being sent a rape threat on social media, or seen a case of ‘revenge porn’ in the news? This type of abuse has become so woven into the fabric of the internet that it’s hard to imagine the internet without it.
The abuse that targets girls and women online exists because, just as in the real world, gender inequality exists. What’s worse: it’s often tolerated.
Whereas, in the real world, if a woman is threatened it’s treated as a crime, incidents of online abuse are rarely taken seriously. If a woman is threatened online, she’s liable to brush it off her shoulders and accept it’s part of what to expect on the internet.
The internet offers a convenient way for people to be abusive. Victims are often told to turn off the computer and walk away – an unrealistic option in our modern world where so much of what we do in our professional and private lives is so intrinsically linked to being online.
‘It’s just the internet, ignore it.’
‘Don’t log on if you don’t want to deal with it.’
‘Don’t use Twitter and feed the trolls.’
‘You probably shouldn’t have written that if you didn’t want a reaction.’
As I often report on internet culture and issues that concern women, I’m well aware of the troubles women can face online. Within this book, I shed light on some of those troubles, and examine the varying kinds of harassment and abuse. I also examine how tech companies are addressing the sexism and harassment that exists across internet platforms, and what can be done to make women safer.
Through studies, stories, and interviews with women in countries such as Pakistan, Brazil, and the US, I explore the damage online abuse and trolling can do, the impact it has on victims’ lives. I identify those most likely to be targeted – and why. I also look at the ways people are fighting back, taking a stand against sexism on social media and encouraging girls and women to make their voices heard.
Some of you may be familiar with online harassment, others much less so. Either way, I hope that while reading this you’ll gain insight into how and why it happens, and measures that can be taken to make it stop.
In the summer of 2012, an American comedian called Daniel Tosh performed a set at a comedy club in Hollywood. Tosh, who’s known for his ‘edgy’ humour, launched into a series of jokes about rape. He was interrupted by a female audience member who yelled out, ‘Rape jokes are never funny!’
Tosh paused for a moment, then retorted: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her.’