Last night I arrived home after an entrepreneurs event. It was 9 pm, I was feeling good about discussions with Emma Sayle from Killing Kittens about women owning their experience with her company which is so centered around consent and how that could be replicated in other parts of the digital sphere.
When I got into the lift in my building, which has a video entry system and is pretty protected, my initials were surrounded by a heart on the mirror. It was on a dusty mirror and not in any way permanent, but my mind immediately went to fear.
Did one of the men that threaten me online find out where I live? If so, this was a hell of a creepy way to scare me. Would I need to move? I love my home. I don’t want to be chased from it. Can I afford that? What should I do? Was I overreacting? It was probably nothing, right, right? I messaged the picture to a number of friends and neighbours. My neighbour Millie checked and there is a Jack K in our building, I messaged him but he quickly let me know that it wasn’t about him.
Other friends, some in the public eye agreed that there could be a threat. How do you evaluate that risk? If it was someone off of the internet, how would the CCTV help me, other than for the police who may or may not take it seriously.
As there is an open case involving a fake FanCentro account, Instagram account and fake porn of me that was sent to my Dad— seriously; I am on guard. But am I gaslighting myself? Is it someone writing ‘Joking’ in a heart? Am I just paranoid? Is it narcissistic to think it is about me?
But what happens if I don’t do anything and then it escalates. This is what I was going through in my head all night. My ex offered to stay on the couch. A neighbour offered to walk McNulty. Is this really the price of my publicly saying women deserve to stay alive and not experience violence at the hands of men?
I was scared to share the experience last night, in case whoever did it would enjoy the fact that it worked and freaked me out. Luckily upon writing the residents in the building someone email today and said it was innocuous and not about me at all. Am really relieved and glad I no longer have to sit through hours of CCTV on Monday. But it was a very long 18 hours.
I took part in a Center for Countering Digital Hate study where they took over all of my DMs from strangers and 10-15% were dick pics, sexual requests or threats. I tend to just not open or look at them but I am always aware that they are there. Publicly people calling me a cunt or telling me to go back to America is standard and barely phases me. But what if someone does want to hurt me.
I joked that this is not the week to fuck with me. I’ve got a dying dog and I am likely to so out crazy anyone that they would be the ones alarmed. They do not want to see this Philly woman flip out on someone right now. And for what crime? For the fact that I campaign for women’s safety. How insane is that? That people want to silence me for saying women should be allowed to exist safely.
It is the tax I pay for being in the public eye and being on television. I am reading Seyi Akiwowo’s book How to Stay Safe online- and completely relating to people telling me to lock my accounts and live more privately. But why should I have to?
Last week Jonathan Weinberg texted me to alert me to the fact that my phone number was publicly able to be seen on McNulty’s dog collar. I really really appreciated the heads up and usually much more aware; but had spent three days worrying about her dying and was not thinking about anything but that.
I resent wanting my ex to sleep here, or needing a man’s protection or having to go to a hotel in case someone is trying to hurt me. People say when the volume gets turned up on threats and anger then I am doing something right; but how broken is that? That my wanting women to be safe automatically puts me in harms way. And it is worth saying that the abuse I get barely scratches the surface of what Black women face or Jewish women or Queer women or Trans women. The volume and the violence and the cruelty of what they face is astounding.
The tax of being a mouthy woman online. Usually I can handle it. But right now, I’m feeling pretty vulnerable and it is worth saying that it is painful and damaging. And we are all human. And we deserve better.
I am very glad to see you acknowledging the even greater danger to people who are multiply oppressed, e.g, Black, Jewish and Queer people who are not cis-male. I applaud you for that, and would like to ask you to also consider POC who are not Black (Indigenous women, especially, are at incredibly high risk of gender related predatory crimes). I would also urge you to inlcude in your awareness disabled and Deaf/HOH people: women defined as disabled are more than twice as likely as non-disabled women to be victims of sexual violence; (unfortunately, virtually all of the statistics available refer to "women", so I don't know how those figures change for trans women and nonbinary people who are disabled). The most vulnerable among this targeted group are those with developmental disabilities and/or mental "illness," who are at even higher risk than those with disabilities that do not impact cognitive/emotional state.
I would also like to request that you re-consider using words like "crazy" and "insane" as a descriptor for undesirable or detrimental actions, beliefs or attitudes. These words, used in this way, perpetuate the dominant cultural assumption that people who are, by cultural standards, assumed to be "crazy" or "insane" are, at best, inherently annoying and unreasonable, and at worst, either violent and predatory, or ineffectual and useless. If you would like some ideas about other words that you might want to consider using, the Autistic Hoya website has a really great list: https://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html. Thank you for your words, and I appreciate any consideration you are willing to give this request!
My heart goes out to you and McNulty! No, you were definitely not over-reacting, even knowing, in retrospect, that it wasn't about you. Because based on the context, and all the other crap you've had thrown at you, it was reasonable and practical to consider the possibility that it might have been about you, and might have been a threat. That's a big part of the problem that we don't talk about much: that even when the incident at hand turns out to not be what we were worried it might be, the larger context is such that it is entirely reasonable to be afraid, and that, in itself, is a kind of violence.