Culture

Prominent Women Are Tweeting Out The Names Of Their Online Abusers To End Violence Against Women

"This is not okay. When you attack one of us, you attack us all."

by Alex McKinnon  4 December 2015

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Last week, writer Clementine Ford publicly outed the name and occupation of a man, Michael Nolan, who’d been posting abusive and threatening comments on her Facebook page. Nolan was an employee with Meriton Apartments, and after Ford reported his comments, in which he called her a “slut,” Nolan was quickly sacked by Meriton. Ford shared the news with her followers, saying: “Consequences for online behaviour are nothing new. Typically though, it’s girls and women who are expected to ‘know better’ when it comes to posting things online. Tables are turning, boys.”

Since then, Ford has met with an avalanche of abuse from hundreds of people (mainly men, but not exclusively) outraged at Nolan being fired for his comments. She has meticulously screenshotted and collected each one, and argued in Daily Life that “too many women are harassed into silence by men who flounce about the place doing and saying whatever they like”. Writing for the Guardian, Van Badham defended Ford by revealing the astonishing and frightening lengths to which men online have gone when they want her silent, including spying, mailing obscene pictures to her home address, and abusing her in the street.

The scale and violence of the response to Ford’s post and Nolan’s sacking horrified fellow writer Kerri Sackville, who decided to organise with other prominent online women to fight back against the rampant misogyny and hatred they routinely encounter online. A few days ago Sackville formed a small, closed Facebook group of female online writers, which quickly expanded to around 1,300 people.

This morning they released their first collaborative effort — #EndViolenceAgainstWomen, a campaign to widely and publicly out ten of the most serious repeat offenders.

“We do not wish to abuse or threaten or slander these men. We are simply naming them as being the authors of abusive tweets. Their messages stand for themselves,” Sackville wrote in a blog post this morning. “I wanted to stand up and say that this is not okay. That this kind of abuse will be noticed. That there are consequences. That we will stand together and support each other. That when you attack one of us, you attack us all.”

The campaign has already begun attracting widespread media attention, with the ABC, Women’s Weekly and HuffPo Australia all providing coverage. As can be expected, comments so far have been mixed. With tonight’s episode of 7.30 on the ABC devoting time to #EndViolenceAgainstWomen, and that Facebook group not going anywhere any time soon, this probably isn’t the last we’ve heard of this debate.