Women and trolling

[WhyTheCagedBirdTweets]

I find myself very upset this morning concerning reports of a so-called 'Twitter Troll' that has committed suicide after she was shamed on national
Tv.

I should make a confession here - I, like many people on the internet, get completely furious sometimes when I see obstinacy, arrogance etc etc. and sometimes go a bit OTT in my reaction. I like to think I stay within the bounds of decency and legality though! I guess not everyone understands where those boundaries lie, however. I think teenagers are probably most vulnerable on this point, but not exclusively as this morning's papers make clear.

What worries me most about this is how the media lumps people together. Not everyone is going to be as appalling as the types that were abusing Stella Creasey, but clearly 'Twitter Troll' is now a label that can be easily applied. The irony is that the trolls then become trolled themselves.... I just see the whole thing as yet another battleground where, ultimately, women will be the losers. Shaming doesn't seem gender-neutral.

Sorry this is a ramble. Can anyone make sense of this?

Her threats may not be about sexual violence but they are still threats.

And spending years flooding the McCanns with thousands of such messages is extremely disturbing IMO and I imagine the McCanns must have found it terrifying.

How is tweeting a lot stalking?

Is living in shame a serious threat, like death and rape?

Look I'm genuinely sorry your mommy didn't hug you enough or make you enough sandwiches and this is how you act out. But come on, you have to at least try if you want us to engage.

It's not a [sandwich] but here, . A feminist went and got you some virtual . Enjoy it.

The McCanns lost a child. Do they deserve this?

and a ?

Whenever the perp of a crime is female feminists all try their best to defend and make excuses for her even if she has guilty written on her forehead.

That isn't gender equality. That's just being biased in favour of females.

I can make my own cookies thank you.

then?

Although I do make excellent cookies. For a feminist.

I don't agree that it was a crime ribbos. These weren't messages to the McCanns, they were messages about them. Yes, ok / hardly a big difference, but they were themselves a story and this woman got obsessed about them in the same way as many others did. And why, out of all those others that there were - many of whom were far more vitriolic - did Sky pick this one? It's pure speculation, but I suspect that world came crashing down when Leyland had her online facade stripped away and she was paraded on national television and vilified in the press. Did anyone stop to consider that?

This isn't a case for having done no wrong; it's a suggestion that maybe what was done too her was wrong. Why does it have to be one or the other?

"Actually if a man and woman were to go naked in public, the woman would be cheered while the man would end up in a police van and on the sex offender registry." Vivacia was talking about an actual case in which the woman was shamed and the man applauded and no one was arrested. So the complete opposite of what you suggested then.

What I stated about the power disparity, was just a fact. Or are you denying that to be the case? Who has what power is pertinent to this case as WhentheCagedBirdTweets states much better in her post at 11:58.

And no-one has defended her obsession. We are discussing how she was treated.

They always post in the same way don't they. Enormous long posts with carefully highlighted select quotes and spluttery ripostes.

Sorry, and noted for the future.

I was listening to a report on this on R4 yesterday afternoon and I think it's quite interesting that she was called a twitter troll when it seems like she really was a conspiracy theorist.

To me, a troll is someone who is trying to intimidate or control someone by making attacks of a personal and threatening nature to them.

By contrast, this lady was trying to rally media, friends, the police etc to reinvestigate the McCann case because she thought there was a miscarriage of justice. She did not tweet at the McCanns once and didn't make a single threat towards them that would have warranted investigation by the police. That doesn't mean that what she said wouldn't have been offensive to the McCanns, but it does mean that the lack of threat in her actions means she'd be protected by freedom of speech laws.

I disagree with doorstepping full stop - it encourages vigilantism and is, in itself, very threatening, intimidating and bloody hypocritical

I think we could do better in terms of defining trolling. In my experience online trolling is general online asshattery.

I think what happens to a lot of women in online spaces is actually something much worse and more sinister.

Threats of rape and violence, revealing personal details etc are harassment and in my view acts of violence in and of themselves.

I think that Leyland was the former and not the latter and I don't think is comparable. That is not a defense as I think what she did was unpleasant.

I also struggle to see the media disparity. If anything the media brought mysogyny to my attention more and not less, and I didn't take away from the coverage that it was in any way acceptable to post rape/death threats to women.

I'm not denying a general media bias against women, just in this instance I don't see it. That said I remember the daily mail running an article naming and shaming the men who had posted abuse over the banknote campaign. I DO think in that instance that was in the public interest, as I was surprised and saddened by the breadth of backgrounds of the men who had done it. However it did serve to highlight the problem.

More could have been done in the reporting to analyse the causes rather than writing it off as a few bad eggs.

To some extent the papers appear to have closed ranks on this - as well they might, I suppose. A large proportion readers also seem happy to accept that she sent 'thousands of abusive messages to the McCanns' even though that's a flawed version of events.

This pushes us a bit further into there being a group of people that think trolls get all they deserve (with the definition of troll being VERY loose) and a group that, perversely, perhaps take this as evidence that freedom of speech is being eroded and will try harder than ever. And both groups will increase their callousness... And women will get hit the hardest. Same old same old.

Dervel I remain convinced that Brenda Lwyland was chosen because of who she was and not because of what she wrote.

WhyTheCagedBirdTweets Where do we best think a line could be drawn? Anything that involves threats and hate speech should be illegal of course, but aside from that can we not have freedom of speech? I mean perhaps in this case Leyland has the right to express her opinion, but so too did that reporter in uncovering and exposing what he thought to be an unpleasant, obsessed woman who was obsessed with a couple in a desperate situation and saw fit to sully their names with her comments, yet presumed her own identity was safe and she was free to say whatever she wished unchallenged?

The whole problem with trolls is the cowardice of sitting behind a screen typing away and being as nasty as possible on the presumption no one will find out.

You may be entirely right about her being targeted specifically and actually odds are you are right. However how much of that was just because she was a woman? I think it likely her class, education level played a part. In short I suspect she was targeted precisely because she was not the sort of person one expects to behave that way.

Surely it's not possible to form an accurate judgment here, without actually seeing the tweets in question? my understanding is that none has actually been published

i think they are available online somewhere but i haven't sought them out

Dervel, you make some very good points and I largely agree.

With regard to the reporter, yes maybe that's a 'right'... but as Scallops says, there's a power differential. Leyland was wrong to make her point obsessively to her audience. Brunt and Sky were wrong to make their point to their audience. Neither point was fairly made imo.

In terms if what we do, I'm not sure I know. It's a valid question to which I don't really have an answer. Grace Dent in the Indy said that the internet was a bit like the lawless Wild West and I think she's right.

However, I do think there should be more responsibility on powerful commentators. Carole Malone really went to town on this woman, for example. When you pluck someone from obscurity and present them
to the world as a monster, there are consequences. That should be at the forefront of the mind of the mass media. Also, as I said before, I think women are more vulnerable here; more likely to be chosen for acting outside their supposed characteristics and more adversely effected by public criticism.