He stirs up trouble on the internet
News organizations keep asking women to go on debate shows with Milo Yiannopoulos. Last March Kate Smurthwaite wrote about what a terrible idea that is.
In the last week I’ve received over 1,700 nasty Twitter messages. Many of these messages have been retweeted and ‘favourited’ hundreds of times. I was going to print all the abuse out and hold it up for a photo to accompany this article. The document came out at 165 pages. To print my week’s abuse I’m going to have to buy a new printer cartridge.
You might assume that to provoke such a response I had said something deeply racist, incited rape or sexual violence or called for the death of a much-loved TV star. No, my ‘crime’ was to ask a man not to call a woman he didn’t know ‘darling’ during a live TV debate on gender equality.
I remember that. I saw it. It was The Big Question, and Yiannopoulos did call her that, very contemptuously. It was infuriating, and I was very glad when Kate snapped at him not to do that.
It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Milo Yiannopoulos has direct links to the #GamerGate scandal which saw massive-scale abuse targeted at Anita Sarkeesian. The hashtag crops up repeatedly. He stirs up trouble on the internet knowing perfectly well that once he has identified a target, that individual will be bombarded with hateful messages. Bombarded is an understatement.
Retweets, favourites, replies loaded with more misogyny, and also the tactic of copying in others who will likely add to the abuse. Creating a sort of harassment chain letter
Yiannopoulos is a kind of professional Twitter-bully. It’s what he does, and for some reason tv stations think that makes him a good person to invite onto debate shows with women.
Among the messages are of course a fair few that wish me dead or raped. Some have photoshopped images with slogans or waded through video footage to find the ugliest image of me they can. They call me ‘bitch’ and ‘retarded’ and ‘harpy’ and ‘asshole’.
A big theme is victim-blaming. I’m told that if I didn’t want this I shouldn’t have gone on TV. I’m told that I deserve punishment for things that other feminists have said. I’m told that if I complain I’m letting down feminism.
It’s what the internet is for – telling women all the things that generations of men have wanted to but didn’t have the tools.
Quite understandably in the 21st century, the first thing a comedy promoter does when recommended an act is bang their name into Google. There’s no way of distinguishing between a punter who has seen my show and not enjoyed it and a troll scrambling for new ways to ruin my afternoon. So my career is undoubtedly being detrimentally affected. Nasty comments have also appeared under basically every video of me online.
That makes it all the more infuriating when well-meaning individuals, from friends to the police themselves, say ‘ignore it’, ‘leave Twitter’, ‘block them’ or ‘report it’. I’m a human being; people use Twitter to communicate with me, as a 21st-century comedian I’m expected to use it to promote my work. When what I have to wade through is page after page of hate, it does affect me.
But you’re supposed to have a “thick skin”! Like an armadillo, or a container ship.
I’ve reported a fair few rape and death threats to the police over the last few years. They ask me to describe the abuse – which means read it out a number of times, making sure it’s fully embedded in my head; I can recite it without notes, better than some of my own material. Then they wait a couple of months and tell me they’re not going to do anything about it. My hope that they might do something about harassment that doesn’t even describe ripping my head off and fucking my bleeding neck has long since faded.
The trouble is we seem to hold the internet to a different standard to real life. We now live significant parts of our lives online and we should have the same rights there as we do anywhere else. If Milo and 500 of his friends stood in the street and shouted these things at me we would all agree there was a serious problem that needed to be addressed. This is no different.
If any technology or legal experts can help me access justice, your help would be much appreciated. You can contact me through my website. katesmurthwaite.co.uk
And don’t ever do a tv show with Milo Yiannopoulos, ever, for any reason.
Yiannopoulos really is a nasty piece of work, on par with Roosh.
Damn, I seem to have misunderstood the point all these years. Where do I go to sign up for the slymepit? Do they have introductory classes for old farts like me who haven’t got it yet?
That question about joining the slymepit was a joke, of course. I had no idea that they have a bulletin board running at their very own domain! Someone sent me the link by email. I won’t pollute these pages with it …
“The trouble is we seem to hold the internet to a different standard to real life. […] If Milo and 500 of his friends stood in the street and shouted these things at me we would all agree there was a serious problem that needed to be addressed. This is no different.”
Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Of course we hold it to a different standard. If 500 people took the time and effort to show up at your front door asking for your head on a pike, you (and the police) would take that a lot more seriously than 1,000 neckbeards who send you a 100 character insult on Twitter in between bouts of FIFA and masturbation.
I don’t get why this is so hard for some people to understand…
Considering some of the hateful and bigoted comments that Smurthwaite has made — comments designed to hurt other people e.g. blaming sex workers who disagreed with her of causing rape — I struggle to have a lot of sympathy when she complains about trolls.
She may be at the other end of the spectrum from Nero politically, but in a lot of ways her actions make them look like two peas in a pod.
I wouldn’t blame anyone for refusing to share a platform with an unpleasant right-wing troll like Nero, but equally I’d support anyone who’d reject Smurthwaite because of her views and behavior.
Well that’s one of the most glaring false equivalencies I’ve seen in awhile.
Kate Smurthwaite doesn’t harass people, she doesn’t photoshop them, she doesn’t deliberately incite thousands of Twitter bullies to threaten and insult people she dislikes.
I think we can all agree that “the tactic of copying in others who will likely add to the abuse” is highly problematic.
Let’s all police that one, shall we? “Dot ats” must go.
“Kate Smurthwaite doesn’t harass people”
That depends on what you consider harassment. For example, I’ve seen dancers at strip clubs picketed by Smurthwaite (and other feminists campaigning for their closure), argue that being chanted at as they go to and from work is a form of harassment against them.
Some feminists certainly felt that her insulting sex workers and blaming them for rape crossed a line, especially considering that some are rape victims themselves. Is that less unpleasant trolling than a nasty Photoshop of someone?
DKendall
That’s very interesting, particularly when Smurthwaite and her associates are reportedly harassing the dancers (easy targets) do they also picket the customers or the management?
Perhaps it’s a case of the bully being bullied.
What do you mean “reportedly”? Says who? Besides DKendall that is.
I suggest people watch the segment for themselves and make up their own minds about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax2iroxWQBA
The topic begins at 8 minutes and 21 seconds.
It is clear Yiannopoulos is bringing up information that most people are not aware of, like the fact that more women graduate and that more women start university studies. He’s interrupted multiple times with claims that these things are not true, but it does not require much research to discover that this is in fact true.
Unfortunately people are shouting him down for being sexist for the usage of the word ‘darling’ instead of having the important conversations we should be having about the substance and young boys affected by these issues.
The worst thing about this debate in my opinion, is where at 10:51 Smurthwaite says that “nobody said that!”(refferring to “it’s an essential characteristic of men that they are violent”)
If you go back to 8:22 you hear it said plainly: “We need gender equality so that boys won’t be violent” .. “Specifically to reduce violence from men to women”.
Although to be fair, her point is that supposedly we are teaching boys to be violent. But I think here lies one of the dangerous ideas presented: that the only difference between boys and girls is culture and how they’re raised and scientific research in biology simply does not support this position.