Think the trolls are vicious? Look what MPs say in public
THERE are some nasty pieces of work out there, and endless column inches have been taken up with condemning the scourge of social media trolls and the poison they spread around the cyber universe. But my temper’s wearing thin with all this moralising, when evidence of awful behaviour from public figures continues to mount. Racism is racism, whoever expresses it. Misogyny is damaging no matter whose mouth it comes out of. It’s a dereliction of responsibility to grant public figures a free pass for dangerous language and save the pitchforks for anonymous trolls. It’s also neglectful to pretend there isn’t a connection between the two. The recent behaviour of two MPs towards women underlines the longstanding problem of entrenched inequality between men and women. Labour MP Diane Abbott spoke out last week about the sustained racist and misogynistic abuse she has received. It came to the boil not because of a particularly vicious troll, but because of remarks made by fellow MP and Cabinet minister, Conservative David Davis, who made sexist slurs during a text message exchange about Abbott following the recent Commons Brexit vote. Writing in The Guardian, Abbott – the first black MP to be elected, in 1987 – wondered whether she would have gone into politics in the first place if she’d known what she would be facing 30 years later, and warned the problem may be putting women and minorities off politics altogether. She is one of several high-profile women who have faced abuse. One man received a prison sentence for sending rape threats to MP Stella Creasy in 2014. In the same year, two people were jailed for sending rape threats to feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, and MP Luciana Berger was targeted with anti-Semitic abuse, again resulting in imprisonment. Of course, Jo Cox MP was murdered in broad daylight in June 2016 days before the EU referendum after her vocal support for refugees in the UK.
More recently, MP Sir Nicholas Soames had to apologise to SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh – another public figure to receive numerous threats since her election – after he made “woof” noises at her in the House of Commons.
Davis and Soames, hang your heads in shame. For all the vitriol online bullies can expel, my feelings towards them are nothing like the rage that rises within me when male public figures vomit their ignorance into the public sphere. I wonder whether they have any care at all for the wider damage they are doing.
When I studied journalism years ago, part of the course was an ethics class. We examined newspaper articles and questioned whether they met good standards. It was made clear that journalism should never encourage discrimination against anyone based on race, gender, religion or sexuality.
But when I look around, I’m horrified by some of what I see in today’s media. Just two days after Abbott spoke out in The Guardian, the Daily Mail ran a news article describing actress Emma Watson as “self-pitying” after she spoke out about the difficulties of being a high-profile feminist.
When MPs are making “woof” noises at women – who are still outnumbered by men in politics – in the House of Commons, and Nigel Farage can keep a straight face when he says the Leave vote was won “without a bullet being fired” just days after a female MP was shot dead on the streets of Britain, or when a national newspaper can deride a young woman for raising issues of fairness and equality, why should we expect online trolls to reconsider their behaviour?
In 1987, Diane Abbott could not have foreseen the new cyber social world we now live in and how it would give rise to a fresh wave of racism and misogyny. But more heartbreaking is how little progress some of her fellow public figures have made in that time.
We can’t keep blaming the internet for this infuriating ignorance – we must demand better of those who are in positions to make a difference. When it comes to racism, misogyny, homophobia and all firms of discriminatory abuse, only two words really matter: zero tolerance.