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Lucy-Anne Holmes (left) protesting outside New Corp in Wapping, 2012.
Lucy-Anne Holmes (left) protesting outside New Corp in Wapping, 2012. Photograph: London News Pictures/Rex
Lucy-Anne Holmes (left) protesting outside New Corp in Wapping, 2012. Photograph: London News Pictures/Rex

If you want to write about feminism online, be ready to take on the haters

This article is more than 8 years old

My years of campaigning against the Sun’s Page 3 have given me a whole armoury of retorts to fire back at the delightful randoms who take time out of their busy days to call me a ‘minger’

Ah, the internet, simultaneously an exciting tool for creating feminist movements and affecting change, and an introduction agency to the not-so-nice. Yes, we have this terrific space where symbols and symptoms of sexism are brought to their knees by tweeters, bloggers and online petitions, yet anyone who has ever said anything feminist-y online will be aware that they can be left to drown in a murky pool of abuse. Chances are, a range of complete strangers will take time out of their busy days to offer you their viewpoints and suggestions. Here’s just a few I run into regularly ...

‘DIE! LOL! ACK!’

For a surprising number of people, someone they don’t know discussing the issue of female objectification or women’s representation in the media will upset them so much they want you to die. Sometimes they even offer to help you. Obviously you don’t have to respond at all. If the threat is violent, consider going to the police. But there are other ways of dealing with these armchair death squads. You could offer to help the person by explaining that their response was a bit extreme and that they may, possibly, want to talk to someone about it. Or maybe you could go for a Zen approach along the lines of: “We are all of us dying and being reborn in every moment.” Zing!

‘You’re just jealous’

Troll with it: the net is an introduction agency for the not-so nice.
Troll with it: the net is an introduction agency for the not-so nice. Photograph: Alamy

I heard this frequently over my years working on the No More Page 3 campaign and liked to combat it by suggesting an alternative reality. I asked people to imagine that, rather than it being breasts that have been on Page 3 for the past 45 years, News Corp had decided that young, big, hairless scrotums were what its readers wanted to see. Perhaps men would speak up, saying that they wanted them to drop these scrotum pictures. That they wanted their sons to feel they could do anything in the world, and yet when they walked down the street to buy a paper they were grabbed, ogled and shouted at by people who wanted to see a bit more scrotum. In this parallel universe, men had become so worried about the size of their balls that they were using surgery to make them bigger and were insisting that the reason why they were small was because it was cold or that they hadn’t finished growing yet. The response? Women and some other men would snort derisively that they were jealous and bitter. See?

‘You’re a flat-chested minger’

You’ll be told you’re unattractive in a variety of embarrassingly uncreative ways online. For instance, I had years of “You’ve got shit tits”, which isn’t entirely true. The irony is that I spent decades being ashamed of my rather fine breasts, which was, in large part, thanks to growing up with Page 3. When you’re 11 years old and the men around you talk about the breasts in their newspaper everyday, it shapes the way you see your own. It’s particularly damaging given that breasts in the media are of a staggeringly uniform shape and size. I debunked all of this harmful nonsense in my 30s and was finally able to say: “I love my boobs!” In fact, I started the campaign for partly that reason, only to be swiftly reminded by strangers that they were still shit. You could say something fairly direct and equally loathsome in response – slagging off their body, their face, their tiny penis etc – but there’s something inherently unsatisfying about that. Just say something gnomic, such as “We are all one”, or reach for the surreal by naming the first town you can think of. Like Swindon.

‘There are more important issues to worry about’

“What about the men” being frenziedly typed … again. Photograph: Richard Drury/Getty Images

Whatever it is you campaign about, you will at some point be told that there is another issue, vastly more important, that you should be focusing on. It could be the incipient sexism of women’s magazines, which demand perfection and then denounce it in the same breath, FGM or world peace. Most people campaign on a whole range of issues and recognise that concern about one doesn’t preclude you from caring about others. But, if you encounter this, you could simply say in passing: “Tonight is media sexism night, tomorrow is FGM, Saturday we’ll tackle the pixelated upskirt shots in the Star.” But a more effective method is to simply question the stranger’s own humanitarian work. Try asking them how they organise their own activism, or ask them what issues they focus on and how you can get involved. As a last resort, try observing that once we have empowered and liberated half the population of the world through feminism, imagine what we could achieve globally. Finish by adding a smiley.

‘What about the men?’

At some point you will hear a plaintive voice wail: “What about the men?” They might add that men experience domestic violence and are objectified too. A good question to ask here is: “Are you involved in any projects that work to help boys and men?” Feminism, as far as I have witnessed, is a lot of women (and men) trying to make life a bit better, safer and kinder for future generations of girls and women, with an additional perk that it also makes life easier for men as well. Yes, there are issues that affect men too, but a movement for men and boys would be more effective working alongside feminism, supporting and gaining strength from it, not setting itself up in opposition.


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