This story is adapted from How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back, by Nina Jankowicz.
One of the most surprising phenomena I’ve encountered since I began making television appearances in 2017 is the sudden proliferation of men in my Twitter mentions, my email inbox, my Instagram and Facebook followers, and my direct messages. The most innocuous (but still unsettling and creepy) ones simply follow you in droves on their social media platform of choice after an appearance. I get off the air, and within minutes, my Facebook or Instagram account is flooded with notifications of man after man after man staring at me from behind their avatars after quietly clicking the follow button. On Twitter, the platform most aligned with my work, where I have tens of thousands of anonymous followers, I would think nothing of it. But the idea that these men have sought out the personal platforms where I often share images of myself, and done so immediately after seeing me on television, makes my skin crawl. I can think of a single time when a young woman followed me on Instagram after a TV appearance; she sent me a message to tell me how inspiring she found my commentary. The men, on the other hand, mostly just lurk, sometimes liking long strings of my selfies in binges of scrolling and double-tapping.
Unfortunately there are many denizens of the internet who are much more vocal than the lurkers. It is helpful to be acquainted with their various incarnations before you encounter them so you do not mistake their initial approach as anything other than bad-faith. They burst violently into your mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable. “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” they bellow. “MY OPINION MATTERS!”
The trolls may write differently, or lash out differently, or become grotesquely fixated on different parts of your appearance or background, but ultimately, what motivates them is engagement with you. This, they hope, will encourage you to finally shut up and make room for their infinitely more worthy thoughts. Then they will get the blue check, the TV appearances, the bylines. They will curse and block and post hot takes with alacrity and abandon. And in their mind, the internet will praise them for it. Their motivations are undoubtedly repulsive, but I find that humor is a good antidote to troll-induced repulsion. Let’s explore the categories of creatures you might encounter in your online adventures.
First, we have a man I’ll call @ProfessorActuallyEsq, otherwise known as the reply guy. Every woman with a public presence online has at least one reply guy. Most women have several. If you are especially unlucky, or especially prominent, you might have tens or hundreds. (Groan!) @ProfessorActuallyEsq embodies them. He is a man who responds to what feels like every single earthly thing you post, be it a picture of your breakfast or your latest publication, always unearthing the most tenuous connection to make your content, your life, about him. “Actually, next time leave the toast in a little longer,” he lectures you about your bacon, egg, and cheese. “It should be golden brown.” You may have liked a reply of his, once, eons ago, encouraging his engagement boner. He is often a mansplainer, making sure to assert his pseudo-superiority by explaining the topics in which you have expertise. Sometimes he repeats your own points back to you, or better still, links you to the very articles you wrote in arguments with you. Sometimes these men are credentialed, and like @ProfessorActuallyEsq, they are not afraid to remind you of that. Professors of philosophy, law, and engineering; former high-ranking diplomats; and current businessmen all engage in behavior that we can only hope does not show up in their classrooms or offices. (Except it definitely does.)
Next up is @TrojanHorace, or the bait and switch guy. As a writer and commentator, I get a lot of engagement, leads, and opportunities through my direct messages on social media. Leaving my DMs open is a necessity for my work, though it does expose me to dick pics, romantic propositions, and other unwanted attention and abuse. Sometimes I receive positive messages expressing solidarity with me when I post about online harassment, thanking me for my work, or congratulating me on a recent publication. I thought these messages were a lovely antidote to the vitriol and sexism on the rest of the internet, until I encountered @TrojanHorace. His initial approach is one of allyship or admiration. When you reply with an off-the-cuff, “Thanks, I appreciate it!” @TrojanHorace understands this to mean that you are now equals or friends. Engagement boner activated. One thing he knows for sure: You are interested in having a longer conversation with him. Here, his tactics shift. He may err toward the behavior of his pal, @ProfessorActuallyEsq, offering to educate you. He may ask you unsettling questions about what you’re wearing or what you had for dinner. He may send you voice memos that you are too afraid to open because of what unspeakable sounds they might contain. If you attempt to gracefully bow out of the conversation after it takes this upsetting turn, @TrojanHorace becomes hostile, employing the same misogyny at which he was so recently aghast. Because of @TrojanHorace, I no longer answer kind messages from strangers. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Then there’s @LazyLogan, or the man who can’t seem to use Google. There are a lot of lazy people—mostly men—who seem to think women’s purpose on the internet is not to inform others about their expertise, analyze the news, or amplify their work, but to answer inane questions about basic concepts about which they could easily educate themselves. Instead, they seem to prefer to ask you to do it. While researching and writing this book and tweeting my related thoughts and updates, I’ve received questions like: What is SWATing? What is an anti-doxing service? These easily googled queries are a double whammy of subversion; if you answer, @LazyLogan’s engagement boner is rewarded, and you prove yourself to be a compliant and dutiful human encyclopedia. If only the men like @LazyLogan were aware how needy, infantile, and incapable they made themselves look in the process.
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Of course, I would be remiss not to mention DwightDooley1936@hotmail.com, or THE OLD MAN WHO EMAILS YOU IN ALL CAPS. HE IS NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA SO HE TOOK THE TIME TO LOOK UP YOUR ELECTRONIC MAIL ADDRESS AFTER SEEING YOU ON THE TV. HE DISAGREES WITH WHAT YOU SAY, THOUGH HE DOESN’T SEEM SURE IF HE DISAGREES WITH THE SUBSTANCE OR THE FACT THAT IT IS COMING OUT OF YOUR FEMININE PIE HOLE PAINTED WITH TARTY RED LIPSTICK!!!! ONE THING IS CLEAR: YOU, MISSY, ARE TOO BIG FOR YOUR BRITCHES—OR I SUPPOSE WE SHOULD SAY “MINISKIRT!” HA HA HA! IF YOU MAKE THE MISTAKE OF RESPONDING TO DWIGHT WITH A PROFESSIONAL COLD SHOULDER (“Thank you for reaching out, but my research indicates otherwise …), HOPING THIS WILL MAKE HIM GO AWAY, HE WILL DOUBLE DOWN AND CALL YOU UPPITY. ALL OF HIS EMAILS ARE NO FEWER THAN FIVE PARAGRAPHS LONG AND INCLUDE HIS LOCATION, AS IF IN SUBMISSION TO THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF YOUR BRAIN.
And lastly, we have @AntiFeministFrank, or the men’s rights activists, incels, neo-Nazis, and proto-fascists. I have a folder full of abuse I’ve received from the scum of the internet: the man who shouts about the scourge of feminism and believes that women who work, think, and speak up are upsetting the natural balance of the universe. Our main occupation, he asserts, should be to birth babies, care for them, and get dinner on the table for our manly husbands every day from nine months after our first menstrual cycle to the beginning of menopause. @AntiFeministFrank (who, by the way, loves to share images of “traditional” women in the post-Second World War era in A-line dresses, crinoline petticoats, and kitten heels and wants to return to a world of cheery Sally Homemakers who quietly abused alcohol and tranquilizers) cannot let an opportunity to ridicule a woman’s appearance or sexuality pass. He will point out a woman’s wrinkles (“I bet you were pretty when you were younger”), send her pictures of empty egg cartons (a reminder of her decreasing fertility), or make more explicitly sexual comments (“No wonder you’re a single mom. Did your ex-husband have to wear a blindfold when he impregnated you?”). He may be a member of the involuntary celibate (“incel”) community, believes feminism is the scourge of the century, and will often subscribe to far-right-leaning political beliefs, including fascist ideologies. Sadly, these tendencies do show themselves across the political spectrum, particularly when men feel themselves challenged by younger, more capable women who would never spare a thought for engaging with them, intellectually or romantically.
The prevailing advice that every woman in the throes of online abuse has received is “just ignore it.” “Don’t feed the trolls,” we are told, while the alleged asymmetry of our faces is publicly discussed, our every wrinkle and pimple amplified, our breast size or weight ridiculed, and the most beautiful, self-affirming images of ourselves on the internet contorted and edited to hideous caricatures meant to demonstrate how unfit we are for human interaction, let alone influence. This is the type of behavior in which men are granted free license to engage, while we are supposed to sit idly by and endure it, smiling. Better yet, we are told to “be the bigger person” and find empathy for our trolls, who must have difficult lives if they are acting out in this way. Responding in anger will only make things worse, we are reminded.
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Women are expected to stoically endure astronomical levels of abuse to simply participate in conversations while navigating a set of social mores and boundaries that simply don’t exist for men. When men encounter behavior they don’t like online, they curse. They block. They willingly and openly dogpile and troll. And the world thinks them more manly for it. Women, in calling out much worse behavior, are told we are “emotional,” “weak,” “exaggerating,” or “hysterical.”
Perhaps you will choose to simply ignore the next troll that appears in your replies. But there are moments when calling out bad behavior is not only necessary, it can be healthy to make your voice heard, both for you and your fellow women online. Though time-consuming and emotionally weighty, blocking, muting, and reporting send important signals to social media platforms that these accounts are engaging in behavior that may violate their terms of service. (Not to mention that your profile is not a democracy—those tools exist to keep you safe and sane. Use them.) My own favorite tactic is to take a screenshot of the offending tweet, comment, post, or email and erase all evidence of the sender’s existence. Their profile picture of a woman in a bikini or a racist Pepe the Frog? Gone. Idiotic display name including their height and IQ? Obliterated. Handle inevitably containing an offensive slur? Redacted. All that’s left are their sad, insecure, needy words, which I then pick apart and share. My followers often demand I unmask these trolls; I refuse. If they like, they can locate the offending content with a little effort, but most people choose not to expend it. In one fell swoop, I’ve denied my abusers the influence and notoriety they crave. I have pointed out how unacceptable their behavior is, and I have stopped the cycle of counter-vitriol that often explodes online.
Ultimately, it is important to realize that women do not need to simply acquiesce to the way things are. Personally, I refuse to be silenced about our collective experience of harassment, abuse, and inequity, online or off. I will not surrender my voice and “ignore the trolls,” not only because I wholeheartedly decline to give @ProfessorActuallyEsq, @TrojanHorace, @LazyLogan, and all their friends the satisfaction of victory, but because each of us has an important role to play in increasing awareness of physical and online security, helping our peers endure adversity, working to change policy, and building community. We have a collective tenacity that, if activated, can challenge the norms that so many have written off as an unfortunate but immutable characteristic of women’s online engagement.
Excerpted from: How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back. (Bloomsbury Academic, April 21, 2022.)
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