When women fight back

Opinion

As misogyny surges in the online space, here is how some women have tackled the tsunami of abuse to ensure their voices are heard.

The rise in unfettered misogyny on the internet over the last 10 years has been well-documented.

In response, social media platforms have introduced tools to enable accounts to be blocked and established channels for reporting abuse.

And yet, when women speak up for themselves, the threats and abuse from men continue to flow.

Women are using a number of approaches to stand up for themselves and keep their voices out there. However, they do try to fight back, sometimes it can enrage their abusers and unleash a further flood of angry abuse.

Police advice

The Metropolitan Police advises that if a person sends you threatening, abusive or offensive online messages, they could be committing an offence described as “harassment” or “malicious communications”.

Anyone who has seen Wicked Little Letters will know this is not a new crime, nor limited to social media. However, the widespread deployment of verbal violence directed at women as a tactic to shut their voices down is a phenomenon that belongs to the digital age. And it is possible because of social media.

Police advice is not to respond, as doing so might inflame the situation further. Instead, take a screenshot so there is a record, should it be deleted at a later stage when the perpetrator understands the potential consequences of their actions.

The police also encourages the reporting of such incidents both to the police for investigation as well as to the social network used so the company can remove the content or close the perpetrator’s account.

All well and good as far as these official channels are concerned. But for most women, these routes are slow, unreliable and failing to act as a deterrent to their (mostly male) perpetrators of abuse.

Calling for help

I have watched some women ask for support from others when a man is attacking them, particularly when it is being done in such a way that it is making them question their own perception of reality, commonly known as “gaslighting”.

Recently, I watched this play out on LinkedIn — this was in itself surprising, as it tends to be a more professional space with higher standards of conduct.

Zoe Scaman is the founder of a strategy consultancy. She was conducting a survey into the challenges facing mothers in adland and used LinkedIn to call for contributions. To her dismay, Zoe found herself under relentless attack by a man who accused the positioning of her work as “man-bashing”.

In a protracted and unpleasant exchange, he accused Zoe of editing her post following his comment (which was untrue) and questioned both her motivations and credibility. When Zoe posted about this experience and drew attention to his insulting behaviour, he was further enraged.

What followed over the course of a day was further posts from him (including the assertion that he was in fact the victim), deleted comments and finally a threat to sue her for defamation.

Who knew that a call for contributions to a piece of research could provoke so much anger? Or that asking mothers for their views without mentioning men was in some way “man-bashing”?

Having asked for an apology that was not forthcoming, Zoe has since taken down her original post and subsequent exchange. So, while arguably she made her point and received a huge volume support from both men and women, she was in the end silenced by his insults and threats.

Silencing women is not new

We saw the silencing of women in media play out 10 years ago when AA Gill used his column in The Sunday Times to observe that Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard was too old and ugly to be on TV. And what began in newspapers eventually travelled online, where she was relentlessly trolled.

In 2019, she published two of her subsequent lectures on the subject of female silence in Women & Power: A Manifesto.

It traces the roots of misogyny to Athens and Rome, and helps to explain the absence of women’s voices from public discourse.

Taming your detractors

Beard has used not only her academic scholarship to address the insults but also her charm.

In 2014, a male student, Oliver Rawlings, tweeted: “You filthy old slut. I bet your vagina is disgusting.” Beard responded by retweeting it to her 47,000 followers and, rather surprisingly, agreed to meet him so he could apologise personally.

Apparently, he found it quite difficult to get a job afterwards — every time his name was Googled, the whole sorry affair came up. She has been gracious enough to write him a job reference, so his whole life was not blighted by “one moment of idiocy”.

Setting out boundaries

Younger feminists are not afraid to insist on respectful behaviour as a right.

Recently, Chappell Roan used TikTok to object to what she described as the “creepy behaviour” from fans. Her debut album recently hit number one and with this success has come familiar problems of intrusive and even bullying behaviour from fans.

It is striking that she isn’t prepared to accept poor behaviour as part of the price of fame and is trying to establish boundaries by refusing to do selfies or give fans a hug: “Being a singer doesn’t mean I want it. It doesn’t mean I like it. I am allowed to say ‘no’ to creepy behaviour.”

In fact, psychologists would encourage setting healthy boundaries to help manage the expectations of fans and protect yourself from unwelcome attention.

Use of humour

Celia Richardson is the National Trust’s director of communications and finds herself acting as the voice of a brand that is under relentless attack from those who claim to be the “anti-woke” brigade. Her skillful use of humour to deflect the personal abuse she receives and the light-hearted tone of voice she has created for the organisation are an inspiration.

A case in point was her response earlier this year to the faux outrage that scones served in National Trust tearooms had “secretly gone woke” because the recipe was found to be dairy free: “The culture warriors have reached the gates of the citadel. Now our scones are ‘secretly woke’. If you come for our scones, you’d best not miss. (National Trust⁩ scones have been made without butter for many years and we publish all our recipes.)”

Or more recently: “Oh no, the scantily clad women who reply to all my tweets are back. I thought I’d managed to lose them. Ladies, I’m not your target market. Put a nice cardigan on and I’ll be interested.”

There is a lot to learn from Zoe Scaman, Mary Beard, Chappell Roan and Celia Richardson as they continue to speak up and use different tactics to navigate the tsunami of misogyny that social media can unleash.

My admiration for them knows no bounds.

Jan Gooding is one of the UK’s best-known brand marketers, having worked at Aviva, BT, British Gas, Diageo and Unilever. She is now an executive coach and is also chair of Pamco and Utopia. Gooding writes for The Media Leader each month