CT women speak out about online harassment
For women in public positions or those who have a presence on social media, it can be a familiar story: opening a Twitter feed or an email, and finding extremely graphic or violent imagery, laced with profanity and insults.
Female celebrities, state or local government officials and journalists have been targeted by online gendered harassment for years, though it is typically pushed to the margins of the national discourse as just another fact of life, or brushed off as a “joke.”
But the issue made national headlines earlier this month when Taylor Lorenz, a journalist and social media guru with 229,000 Twitter followers, was the subject of an internet pile-on after she called for support and attention to International Women’s Day.
A New York Times reporter who writes about internet culture, Lorenz was the target of numerous ugly tweets, many of them taking exception to what was characterized as objections to her work as a journalist. But others messages targeted her gender and her southern Connecticut roots, and in very personalized, inflammatory fashion.
“I spoke about online harassment on international women’s day b/c I believe all women (especially WOC) deserve support in dealing with this type of abuse. It does destroy lives, it has taken so much from me. But I will never stop speaking out about how wrong this is,” Lorenz Tweeted.
“No one should have to go through this. The scope of attack has been unimaginable. It has taken everything from me,” she wrote.
Lorenz, an Old Greenwich native who attended Greenwich High School, highlighted one message — saying she should be doused in gasoline and set on fire — sent to her last week on Twitter. “I hope you live all of your days in fear,” stated the Twitter message, which also called her an insulting term for women and repeatedly told her to “kill yourself.” It was sent from an anonymous Twitter user.
Another poster wrote, “‘Tech’ reporter or Vomit inducing putrid Garbage?”
The California-based journalist said the social media attacks were “really horrible and overwhelming and difficult to deal with” while declining further comment, citing a request from New York Times management.
Becoming a big story
The online Twitter controversy around Lorenz and her work covering Silicon Valley, which often did not draw a distinction between criticism of Lorenz’s work as a journalist and misogynist attacks against her as a woman, turned into a national story.
Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host, devoted two segments to the Lorenz issue, saying she was an example of “the most privileged in our society pretending to be oppressed.”
On the other side, Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote of the incident, “Digital harassment is pervasive, and it is destructive to the lives and careers of female journalists . ... It’s simply an unhinged rage that women dare to have a voice . ... It’s hard to comprehend how deeply destabilizing it is.”
It’s a familiar feeling for many women who have put themselves in the public eye.
Valerie Horsley, a member of the Hamden Legislative Council who is active on Twitter, said she knows what it’s like to be the target of online harassment.
“It’s definitely happened to me,” she recalled. “And it went on for a really long time.”
Horsley recalled an episode in which a male associate made a joke about her work, as a Yale University scientist and researcher, on Twitter. “Everyone said: it’s a joke,” she recalled, but she did not find the disparaging comment funny. The “only-a-joke” attitude, she continued, was an excuse to ignore sexism and racism.
As a town official and one who uses social media for advocacy, Horsley said, “People troll me regularly. ... I think there’s a reason why there’s more men on Twitter than women.”
Michelle Parente, who is active in Connecticut politics and is an alderwoman in Milford, said many of the women she has worked with have been targeted for harassment.
“I’m certainly aware of it, among women peers in politics. The consensus among woman is, they know it can always happen. There may always be a bit of fear factor, that you know it can go there,” she said.
Ongoing problem for women
The pattern has been ongoing for women, especially those in public roles. The Committee to Protect Journalists found that a majority of female journalists in the U.S. and Canada had been subject to harassing behavior in person or online, with one respondent stating “just being a woman on the internet makes you a target.” And overall, a recent Pew Research poll found, 33 percent of women under age 35 said they have been sexually harassed online.
Women are often hesitant to bring attention to the issue. In one notable case in 2015, singer, actress and women’s advocate Ashley Judd went public about the vile and grotesquely sexualized threats she received after she posted a comment as she watched a basketball game.
The internet has made it far easier to unleash ugly and hateful comments at a woman across the country, but it’s an old story, said Jennifer Sacco, a professor of political science and women’s studies at Quinnipiac University.
“It’s a very old tradition, that women aren’t supposed to speak publicly and certainly not to challenge things men say,” Sacco said. “There’s less inhibition in what people will reveal about themselves on the internet — no one knows who they are. Thirty years ago, it took some more effort to write someone a letter. It’s effortless now, and so you can express whatever nasty thing you want to.”
While men can be subjected to online insults and abusive language, Sacco said, the sexualized threats directed at women are in a category of their own.
“The question is, do people threaten to rape Joe Biden or Mitt Romney? That’s the degree of difference. Anthony Fauci has gotten death threats, but I doubt anyone has threatened to rape him,” she said.
The abusive content can prevent women of all backgrounds from using social media, the professor said: “It chills speech. I personally refrain from using things like Twitter for this reason. It’s just not worth it. And I don’t think you have to be opinionated or outspoken to know the internet is a dangerous place for women, because it is.”
Former President Donald Trump is often cited for coarsening the public dialogue for his bullying use of Twitter, though Sacco sees larger forces in the culture as the motivation.
“This is a problem that precedes Trump,” she said. “I think it rose to a more extreme level with him, but he’s more a symptom than he a is a singular cause. Whether Trump existed, we would have these problems.”
The issue, the professor concluded, has more to do with male behavior than women’s weaknesses or perceived lack of a thick skin: “It’s not about women’s pain, it’s not about women’s weakness; it’s mostly about uncontrolled, unconstrained, mostly male behavior. Really terrible behavior on the part of men.”
Journalist and author Andrew Marantz, who was raised in Greenwich and Stamford, spent a year researching online extremists and new media “disrupters” who use Twitter and other social-media platforms to write a book about the dark side of the internet.
“They hate women,” he observed. “A lot of women with internalized misogyny issues, too.”
State Rep. Caroline Simmons, who is running for the mayor’s office in Stamford, said a woman’s right to work without harassment in any form is a longterm fight. She spoke of a debt of gratitude she owed to the women who achieved the full right to vote just over a century ago, and to the women office-holders who ventured into a male domain for the the first time in the past century.
The pushback against online harassment of women in public roles — “definitely I’ve heard stories,” she added — was part of a larger struggle for women to work to their fullest potential, Simmons said.
“Every year we make progress,” she said. “But there’s still much more work to do.”
Female celebrities, state or local government officials and journalists have been targeted by online gendered harassment for years, though it is typically pushed to the margins of the national discourse as just another fact of life, or brushed off as a “joke.”