Women in the public eye have to price in the vitriol
You wake up in the morning and look at your phone. You think maybe you shouldn’t but you don’t want to miss something important. Then it starts. There on Twitter, are people with no names, often with cartoonish avatars telling you in detail what you deserve. To be dismembered. To be raped. To be burnt alive. Sometimes they indicate they know where you live. The worst thing is when they threaten your children.
Sometimes you have to get the police involved but mostly you don’t bother as nothing ever happens and who knows if these threats are real. On a good day you remind yourself of that – it’s just social media – and get on with your work. On a bad day you want to crawl back under your duvet and resolve never to write another thing. Some days you just want to put the actual frighteners on these morons. Everything I write I do so in my own name, these idiots who pose with guns and nooses hide behind anonymity. Why should I be subject to such abuse? For a variety of felonies apparently. I defend the rights of women and girls and think that biology is real. For that I should be decapitated as it is “evidence” of transphobia. Other things that I am accused of are single-handedly causing Corbyn not to be elected. Also, apparently I made Brexit happen because although I voted Remain, I also wrote a few columns in which I understood very well why people might vote Leave.
As Sharon Stone once said “if you have a vagina and an attitude in this town, then that’s a lethal combination”. Things have changed since then – being a woman apparently has nothing to do with having a vagina and social media has flattened all towns into one place.
Nimco Ali is a brilliant campaigner against FGM. She has had threats from both the Left and the Right and her own community. She is impossibly brave and told me: “I decided I am not going to live in the space of fear. I am not having womanhood co-opted.”
What gets to her most are not her enemies, “but the silence of friends. Those who say nothing.” As for the Labour Party? She laughs: “They actually think they occupy the moral high ground?”
To be a woman in the public eye these days is to be subject to daily threats. Jo Cox was, let’s not forget, murdered by a far Right fascist. Many women I know have been physically assaulted. This is the new normal. There have been assaults on “gender critical” feminists Julie Bindel and Maria Maclachlan by trans activists.
Many female academics have to walk around with security like Professor Selina Todd. Joanna Cherry QC and SNP MP has needed security to go about her daily business. JK Rowling was threatened with a pipe bomb. Many female MPS have panic buttons both in their homes and constituency offices.
We worry this abuse means that younger women won’t put themselves forward
My sympathy for Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury who cannot attend her own party conference because of fears for her safety, is not simply to do with the fact that I agree with her on some issues – there are some I probably don’t – but because I know a little of what it’s like to be monstered.
As a survivor of domestic abuse, as she is, I imagine hypervigilance kicks in, as it does when you have been traumatised. Yet recently chatting to her I was amazed at how upbeat she sounded: “I have been asking for a meeting with Starmer since June as I was struggling”.
His response: a text. That’s it. “It’s misogyny isn’t it? The more women are louder and visible, the more vitriol we get.”
In the flesh Rosie, 50, is tiny but was told by trans-rights activists not to attend Canterbury Pride as she would make them feel “unsafe”. She is way tougher than she looks.
“I am robust. I am a single parent. I have hidden behind doors from bailiffs. I am a survivor of domestic violence. I have lived on tax credits, so these people don’t scare me. The leadership is advised by 20 year-old guys who see everything through a male lens. The abuse is vile and sexualized. I thought things would change when Corbyn went, but no, men still seek to cancel us. The thing is though, I don’t need to ask men about women’s rights. I don’t need to be validated by them.”
The only thing she appeared to be upset about was when other members of the party tweet stuff that will cause her to be abused further. I can see why. It is disturbing that she had such a lack of support from her own party until the Leader of the House spoke up about it. Because it means not only is she subject to abuse, but she is also being disbelieved. When JK Rowling spoke of her experience of domestic violence, she was dismissed. Whatever happened to believing women?
Angela Eagle had bricks thrown through her window because she dared to stand against Corbyn. On Twitter I was told this was a lie, so I asked her about it. It happened. Having been an MP for 30 years her whole response to all this is to ignore social media: “Don’t read it.” Eagle’s strategy is to focus on the good she can achieve by concentrating on the real issues for women – universal credit and social care.
“All this hatred against us has to be overturned,” she says. “Women will not be shut up. It isn’t happening.” She is right that all of this has one simple goal – to silence women. If you were a young woman looking at going into public life, you would wonder, is it worth it? Much of the Labour party appear to be keeping their heads down, while the Corbyn faction want Duffield out anyway.
Guardian columnist Owen Jones has, as ever, made the issue about himself on his bonkers Twitter timeline. Obviously he is the real victim here. He was beaten up for being gay and Left-wing which was a terrible thing.
Yet, as Jess Phillips points out when I talk to her, “At least he could report that as a hate crime when, all the times I have been [physically] assaulted, I as a woman cannot do that.”
When it comes to this issue, Jess is her irrepressible self. She doesn’t have to agree with someone to support them: “But if anyone asks me ‘Is Rosie a transphobe? I say of course she isn’t.” Unlike her colleagues, she doesn’t keep her head down.
“I am so used to people shouting at me I just have to focus on the outcome not the journey.” But even she admits that often the threats “just fell you. To be a woman in the public eye means pricing in the vitriol”.
Both of us worry that younger women will not put themselves forward as they cannot handle the abuse. “What we will see in five years’ time is that we don’t have these political women coming down the pipeline.”
She has texted and spoken to Rosie to see if she is OK and says, “I know some think it’s not politically expedient to talk about this. But Rosie stands defiant.”
That was my impression, too, and right now we need women to be able to speak freely and to be safe. If not in the Labour Party then where?