Ranjona Banerji: Women at the receiving end on social media

By Ranjona Banerji

The abuse that journalists receive on social media is constantly documented. And there is enough evidence that women receive more abuse, more vicious abuse and more threatening abuse than men.

One part of you says “suck it up and move on”. But two Chicago-based sports journalists hit upon a better idea. Sarah Spain and Julia diCaro together with Just Not Sports put together a video of men reading out the tweets they had received just for doing their jobs. The men were not those who had sent out the tweets. They were just friends of the producers.

This Powerful Video Shows Just How Violent Online Harassment Is for Women in Sports

You can see that the men start by thinking this was a funny sort of endeavour but as the tweets start threatening rape, murder and so on, the men get very affected. They are reluctant to read these out, they find it hard to make eye contact with the woman sitting in front of them at whom the tweets are directed, they apologise for something they have not said, they look appalled at what is directed at these women. The women, after all, have seen these tweets and many more that they get in the course of a day. To the men, it’s a reality check on the horror in store for any woman on Twitter, not just journalists. Not surprisingly, it has gone viral on the internet, with the hashtag #MoreThanMean.

The video ends by saying do not type what you would not say.

But is it as easy as that? Powerful as this video is and difficult as it is to watch, we have created this wonderful online world where people are constantly emboldened by their anonymity. Sometimes you can call them on it, sometimes you can shame them but most times you just block them. It is not just about sports journalism though that is a male bastion that many men cannot countenance women entering and hence the extra viciousness.

In India, perhaps, the abuse is more to do with your political moorings.

When journalist Priya Ramani wrote this piece for Mint on why everyone loves to hate TV journalist Barkha Dutt, she received more than her usual share of abuse. So by the way did every female who shared it or retweeted it or commented on it. Because obviously if you are a woman with an opinion, you are fair game. Also, you are personally to blame for every transgression that Dutt may have made in her life. This apparently justifies all the attacks.

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/C3zY1Y1ycBJYDNRmNPCmHK/Why-everybody-loves-to-hate-Barkha-Dutt.html

Sometimes the abuse is deliberate, an attempt to degraded and diminish women. Sometimes it shows a real lack of any logical ability to distinguish between an opinion and the human who voices it. And most of all, it proves once more – like the #MoreThanMean video, that the anonymity of the internet has given birth to a new kind of violence.

Sadly, in India at least, other journalists and some politicians encourage this sort of abuse. When journalists call others “presstitutes”, mimicking prime ministers and Union ministers, it is only natural that others will follow suit. There are certain websites and internet celebrities who also specialise in these insults, claiming victimhood if called out about it. To make this gender neutral I must emphasise that some of these abusers are women but it is clear from their ideology that they subscribe to patriarchy in some form or the other.

More than mean, would you say such behaviour is despicable and unacceptable? I would.