Perusing Facebook the other day I came across a rather nefarious thread about family violence. Me being me I just had to delve in to talk about important things like statistics, the severe lack of safe refuges for anyone escaping family violence, the government’s lack of policy change on several issues and the woeful lip service Mr Turnbull pays to the likes of our incredible outgoing Australian of the Year Rosie Batty and our new honourable Australian of the Year David Morrison. I say lip service as that is all it appears to be; no law reviews on breaching AVOs, no policy changes on services and no extra funding for refuges, legal representation or counselling.
Anyway I digress. One poster took a dislike to many of our opinions on the post. Fine – everyone is allowed an opinion, right? But what they said caught my attention like nothing else. He said, and I quote, “why should I listen to anything you have to say after all, a woman’s word is worth only half that of a man’s.” Say what? I was aghast, but it reminded me we have a long fight ahead of us with regards to attitudes to women and the intrinsic connection to family violence.
His name was Bill. I was curious so I clicked on his profile. Wow, he looked so normal, I would age him around mid 60s, a granddad, gorgeous grandkiddies, a good steady job at a university. I wonder … would he have said that to my face if we were having dinner or a drink after work?
That’s the thing about social media and the knife-edge we are on; it gives us courage, not only to fight for causes we are passionate about but also to say whatever the hell we want as there are no consequences, right? Wrong! Wrong Bill, wrong wrong wrong! Don’t be like Bill.
Keyboard warriors, trolls, keyboard courage: There are a whole heap of names for people whose main objective in life seems to be to come up the nastiest vitriol imaginable and inflict it on whoever is in the proverbial firing line.
I wonder if Bill really honestly feels this way about women, and more importantly, does his wife know, his daughters or his granddaughters? Do they know that as far as he is concerned what they have to say is only half as important as what he has to say?
So what’s the connection between family violence and social media? Well again it comes back to the basics, how women are viewed in society, and from my experience in social media, they are viewed very poorly.
This last year has seen its fair share of keyboard warriors that have targeted women and many events were very high profile. Clementine Ford springs to mind. Clementine is a rare person, who has the courage to stick to her morals and calls out bad behaviour whenever she observes it, hears it or reads it. She doesn’t back down, even in the face of incredibly violent and misogynistic messages and emails she receives daily. I read her page daily and am constantly shocked at the violence directed towards her.
Talitha Stone is another who crosses my mind. She was on the receiving end of death threats from the fans of a US rapper in 2013 and again last year after she was involved in a petition to have his visa revoked for inciting violence against women.
Again, would these people threaten these things if they were sitting opposite Talitha or Clementine? Part of me hopes they wouldn’t but that’s irrelevant now. What this is really about is anonymity. Having anonymity gives people great courage to speak their mind. So whether they would say it out loud doesn’t matter – that view/opinion is there, it exists in their mind, tainting their family and friends and tainting others’ lives.
The most recent occurrence was the astonishing attack on Greens MP Jenny Leong on her social media pages. Abuse included calling her father “a swamp monkey”. What is more astonishing is this latest crop of trolling was instigated and supported by many, including some senior, members of the NSW police force. The police force? The people who are supposed to protect us? Yes, them. A sad state of affairs and one that I hope prompts serious lessons to be learned.
My rule on social media is always: “Would I say it to their faces?” If the answer is no then I don’t bother, if the answer is yes and I can defend my position I continue. This doesn’t stop me getting into many wars of words with faceless and sometimes nameless people but I take on board the words of David Morrison: “The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.” So I don’t walk past, and I don’t accept.
Women dead in April: 4
Women dead in 2016: 22
