Thigh-High Politics is an op-ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.
More than ever, our cultural conversation is taking place on Twitter and Facebook — and yet, women who are bullied online are told to leave those spaces or deal with it. Worse still, talking about this harassment is typically met with aggression: It's not uncommon for those who share their experiences to receive a new deluge of threats, often while they are accused of trying to get attention. I’m sick of talking about this horrifying reality like we’re litigating the dynamics of a middle school lunchroom. The public forum is increasingly being conducted online, and it’s about time we acknowledge that social media is a place where women are systematically silenced.
Unfortunately, this requires me to talk about Martin Shkreli. Last week, before being convicted of fraud, the so-called “Pharma Bro” released a Facebook video, announcing, “Trial’s over tomorrow, bitches. Then if I’m acquitted, I get to f*ck Lauren Duca.”
I responded with a single tweet, along with a screenshot of an email from a reporter asking for comment: “Here's my statement on Martin Shkreli: I would (still) rather eat my own organs. So much as touch me, and I'll gladly chop off one of yours.”
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Somehow even this irreverent rebuttal was painted as melodramatic by people who had decided Shkreli couldn't possibly be serious about the things he was saying. Mostly, they would have preferred that I kept my mouth shut.
Maybe “I get to f*ck Lauren Duca” is a threat. Maybe not. Either way, it’s a former CEO treating me like some kind of sexualized cat toy for him to bat around on a livestream with zero regard for the fact that his personal amusement amounts to my public humiliation.
There was also the corresponding onslaught from Shkreli’s followers, including intimidating messages that referenced my parents' names. I called to tell them to be careful, and my dad said he would make sure the alarm was on. That was really all we could do about it.
This sort of thing has been going on for over seven months now. When Shkreli was permanently banned from Twitter for harassing me back in January, death and rape threats were appearing in my inbox with more frequency than the phrase “nice to e-meet you.” My appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show weeks earlier resulted in a flood of harassment, which Shkreli clearly saw as an opportunity to elevate his performatively villainous profile. Things escalated when he DMed me an invite to Donald Trump’s “inaug,” to which I publicly responded that I would rather eat my own organs. Faced with definitive rejection, he doubled down, regularly tweeting about having a “small crush” on me. I opted to mute and ignore him, thinking it denied him the satisfaction of knowing that he had been blocked. That is, until he reworked his Twitter page, changing his banner photo to a collage of my face and replacing his profile picture with an image of his face cropped onto my husband’s body.
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It took me all of 45 seconds to click “report” and tweet “how is this allowed @jack,” but the trolls reacted as if I had launched an organized campaign to have Shkreli removed from the site. I received countless messages, ranging from unsettlingly earnest pleas that I reinstate his account to credible threats of doxxing. What does that mean, exactly? Well, within an hour, someone had access to my Social Security number and other sensitive biometric data. They were going to post my private information online if I didn’t let Martin come back — as if I could do that even if I wanted to, as if I were the goddamn queen of Twitter. Discussing these impracticalities reveals the frustrating impossibility of my situation but also potentially misses the point: The problem wasn’t my particular profile, or the amount of effort with which I responded. It was that I had spoken up at all. The volume and tone of the harassment I received as a result of responding to harassment totally dwarfed anything I’d experienced before, and I say that as someone who had been Photoshopped into a gas chamber on more than three separate occasions.
There is a much-discussed lack of options for preventing online harassment, but this issue extends far beyond practical obstacles like the limits of local jurisdiction, or censorship on social media. Most of the men who email me death and rape threats don’t really mean it, but it only takes the one. Online aggressors trade in psychological terrorism, eliminating women’s voices with the mere possibility that they might actually end up lurking outside your door at night (or, at least, they let you know that they know your home address).
I’m often praised for being so tough, and that might be what needles me most of all. I am tough, and scrappy, and angry, and loud, but what about the people who aren’t? Harassment is guaranteed for women online, and a career hazard for female writers. Here’s a thought that haunts me: What about all of the young women who won’t become writers because of a fraction of what I’ve seen in my inbox this morning? I’m proud of being absurdly resilient, but I shouldn’t have to be.
I also haven’t conquered this. Not entirely. It’s hard to measure the impact of such a large scope of toxic bullsh*t. Sometimes I feel it sting in new and unexpected ways, springing up almost out of nowhere, like emotional acid reflux.
When people responded to my tweet by saying I was capitalizing on Shkreli’s harassment, it occurred to me how little I had written about this topic. In an effort to heal and encourage other women to battle against this ugliness, it would help to talk about it. Except if I send even a single tweet regarding harassment, I’m hit with a fresh wave of vitriol and framed as a “skilled professional victim.” I suppose I’m not too strong to internalize some of that shame.
It’s incredible how quickly the obvious awfulness of this story is obscured with nonsense. Is this actually about me trying to get famous? Does Martin really mean it when he says on a public video feed that he "get[s] to f*ck Lauren Duca"? Am I the true aggressor because I tweeted about him being at Guy Fieri’s Flavor Town Bar & Grill in August 2016? Really just pounds of nuance to unpack here, but if we can set all of that aside, I’d love to zero in on the simple reality eternally holding this conversation back: Online harassment victims feel they are not allowed to share their stories.
These are the facts: A rich and powerful man spoke about me in an unwanted sexual way in a video viewed by thousands of people, and I was chastised for responding to it. The forces fueling harassment are only emboldened as we collectively find excuses for this shameful phenomenon, in which we all participate far more than we might like to admit. It would be hard to argue in favor of bullying, and yet there is far-reaching complicity when it comes to stomping out harassment victims’ stories.
As I type this, I know the kind of messages that will come streaming through my inbox in the coming days, but I also know that the most painful part of my experience has been feeling suffocated, like I have no right to speak about how this has affected me. I hereby refuse to swallow garbage and shut up about it, and anyone who thinks I shouldn’t be sharing my story would do well to remember this: Hatred is empowered by silence.
Things to Read:
Trump threatened “fire and fury” on North Korea if it continued threatening the United States, escalating already tense relations. Take a look at the New York Times’ breakdown of the basic things you need to know about the rogue state’s capabilities.
According to The Washington Post, the FBI conducted a predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s home back in July. Read the full report for a look at how this development fits into the Russia investigation.
Finally, save some time for Teen Vogue contributor Dawn Huckelbridge’s piece on how Congress would change if more women were elected to office.
Things to Do:
Actively support female writers, and any other writer you enjoy, but especially women. If you read a piece you like, send the author a quick tweet or email saying as much. It’s rough out there, and reader positivity definitely helps counteract the toxic sludge.
If you can, consider donating to an online harassment resource, like the Crash Override network.
The most surefire way to enact change is by running for office, and it’s more accessible than you might think. Here are some resources from Emily’s List to get you thinking about starting that process.
