Misogynists on social media are not just pseudo names. They are real-life people who use public transport, eat in cafes, walk city streets, drop the kids at childcare and do other seemingly innocuous things.
Usually, we don’t get to learn all that much about their regular lives — if they can manage such a thing in between setting up new Twitter accounts and coming up with even more violent ways to tell a woman who dares to speak out just how hard they’re going to rape her.
But this week, following Greens Senator Larissa Waters’ campaign urging us to rethink gender-based Christmas presents — which is apparently the most terrifying thing for some since Islamic State — one particular troll caught my attention.
This guy suggested Waters is not only a “fool” for her stance on childrens’ gifts, but that she also probably “swallows”. I know, seriously clever stuff. Too witty for the internet. The tweet has since been deleted.
What is different about this particular tweeter to others resorting to misogynist behaviour is that his profile offers a little insight into his regular life. It says he employs seven people (for once, I’m going to hope this team is 100% male), and runs a printing business in Western Sydney.
Just a hardworking, small business guy – but one who also happens to enjoy attacking women online.
It’s a sobering reminder that those making “bet she swallows” comments on Twitter are also the same people you encounter day to day. A colleague. A client. A small business person managing your printing needs. A random passerby on the street. It’s this fact that my colleague Georgie Dent finds particularly confronting when she receives often anonymous and vitriolic feedback online. You can block these trolls on Twitter, but they still exist and live among us.
So why do they do it?
As endmisogyny.org has found, misogynists online will offer a number of common defence statements to explain their behaviour. They’ll say they’re merely expressing their “freedom of speech!”; that they’re defending masculinity; attempting to take back the rights of fathers; protecting “fun”; and, a classic, that women can and should be attacked because they “don’t have to die in war”.
But I believe the answer is much simpler. It’s fear. A fear they may not be able to express in their “everyday lives”, so use the keyboard and guises of ‘freedom of speech’ to articulate it online instead.
This week, gaming journalist Alanah Pearce told Women’s Agenda just how she’s exposing the ‘real person’ element of those who’ve threated her with rape online. She’s tracking down the offenders’ parents on Facebook, and sending them screenshots of their son’s messages.
Pearce said she started doing this when she realised it was young boys and not grown men who were harassing her online. Her solution was to revert back to their “regular lives” – the people, especially their mothers, who would and should be horrified by such behaviour.
As she told Lucia Osborne-Crowley: “The problem with industries that exist largely online is that people feel like they can attack each other and not face any consequences. Without human interaction, people feel like they can say whatever they like and don’t understand the impacts their behaviour might have on others.”
But as we know, this is not just a problem with industries that exist online, this is the undercurrent of hatred that can exist anywhere.
It’s hatred that may never have been brought to the surface without the cloak of anonymity, or even just the ability to hide behind a computer screen.
And so there’s one teeny-tiny positive to come out of the rise of misogynist behaviour on social media. At least we know this level of hatred exists, and can do more to counter it back in our everyday lives.