More and more, we are seeing women forced from the public eye due to online verbal abuse, threats and general disrespect and intimidation- sanitised under the label ‘trolling’. I haven’t understood exactly what it would take to be forced to abandon your career, or even leave the country, until I found myself facing down trolling recently due to my advocacy over the genocide in Gaza.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, women are most often the target of this behaviour, particularly those from communities who are already marginalised, like women of colour. For women like me, the detrimental impact of trolling is often more pronounced because we have already been so extensively silenced and dehumanised in other ways.
Think Yassmin Abdel Magied, who had to leave the country and choose to forgo her right to a citizenship as a direct results of threats to her safety. Or Yumi Stynes was also directly threatened over calling out Kerri-Anne Kennerley ‘s racism on air. More recently, Antoinette Latouf faced an unfair dismissal from the ABC for posting a journalistic and factual article about Israel’s war on Gaza, her dismissal linked to doxing – another term we’ve coined to minimise misogynistic and racist violence online.
I grew up in war-torn Lebanon and experienced significant physical and verbal bullying when I arrived in Australia that was purely based on racism, ignorance about where I came from, and the evident xenophobia that Australia continues to suffer with.
So this is not my first rodeo. I am also a social worker with extensive training in psychology and therapeutic methods. I’m passionate about creating spaces for healthy, respectful and meaningful conversations, including those that have plagued the Middle East for decades.
Since 7 October 2023, I, like many others, have watched in bewilderment as a genocide unfolded against the people of Gaza and Palestine, leaving at least 40,000 people dead and the whole population living in fear and famine.
Alongside the genocide in Gaza, there have also been constant attacks on neighbouring Lebanon that have threatened my family and friends, although they rarely receive mainstream media attention.
My village, Bhamdoun, was annihilated by Israel in 1982, much like we see with the destruction of Gaza and the West Bank now. Entire families were wiped out – my grandfather was murdered as he tried to put out a fire outside the family home caused by an Israeli rocket. He was shot through the heart by Israeli armed forces and died immediately, merely for trying to save his family. He was unarmed. With our village turned to rubble, us who survived were displaced and fled to Beirut, and eventually overseas.
It has been heartening to see the world rise up to call out these war crimes. Many of us, took to the streets, to social media, to various public platforms to call for peace and justice. I became a regular speaker at many of these forums.
It was here that I came to the attention of the trolls. A few days after speaking on a conference panel about systems of injustice, violence and abuse and how these conflate with family violence at a community level, I became the target of a sustained LinkedIn attack.
It began with a post from a man I’d never met. Let’s call him Jo. I’ve never met Jo, I’ve never spoken with him.
Jo filled his post with misinformation and outright lies about me, my views and, most damagingly, my business. It did not take long for others to jump on this trend, heading to my business page to claim my therapeutic services were pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic.
I reported the post to LinkedIn, who proceeded to block me from seeing the post and informed me that the post did not breach their community safety policies, despite their policies clearly stating that harassing content goes against their code of conduct.
I was left with a dilemma – how do I address this issue in a way that is aligned with my values of peace and justice? In my experience, peace is almost impossible to attain without justice and accountability. I decided to choose the path of least resistance and went onto Jo’s page to kindly ask him to take down his defamatory post. There I saw that he had made another equally abusive post about one of my other fellow panellists.
All four panellists shared views on the devastation taking place in Gaza and the human rights violations. But only two of us were from non-European backgrounds. No guesses as to who were the targets of this trolling and who was not.
I initially hoped to just let it end there, but when I saw these same men take aim at another woman in the community, it gave me pause for reflection. The goal of these trolls is to silence us and so I instead wanted to ensure I used my voice – my writing – to share this experience and, hopefully, offer a moment of reflection for perpetrators of this bullying.
Because without cause for this reflection, they will not change, and their abuse and violence will continue. To create change, we must be brave and bold and stand up to bullies. We must name violent and aggressive behaviour when we see it in the world, in the street, online, and in our homes. Silence does not support those whose voices are ignored or downtrodden, it reinforces the patterns of domination.
Regardless of where you stand on the Palestine issue, on gender and race issues, and on other forms of equity and inclusion, if you like, comment, or share a trolling post, you are part of the problem. If you truly believe in a non-violent world, hold trolls and cyberbullies accountable, report and delete their posts.
If we want to live in a world where people can engage in peaceful, respectful and Joust discussions about any issue, then we have to create that world. If we want to live in a world where existential threats are never looming over any living being, then we must create that world. And we start by holding the abusers to account.
By reporting their posts, by demanding that social media channels take this form of violence more seriously and delete violence-condoning profiles. And we continue to wear garments and share images that demonstrate that we stand together, united in our sense of peace and justice. United to strengthen those whose voices are silenced.