@misogyny_online : A Response

The other day I blogged about what I see as concerted attacks on the twitter account @misogyny_online. I blogged in anger and published without pausing to reread. My choice of words was harsh but I was angry and distressed watching a group of women who were trying to help other women get caught in the middle of a political discussion that they did not understand [or even know about].

@misogyny_online is not my twitter account but I do know several of the women involved and I can see how hurt and distressed they are. And, this hurts me. I don't like seeing women I love in pain. I don't like watching my sisters, who are only trying to help other women, have their efforts rubbished for walking into a long-standing political disagreement that they were not fully aware of. 

And, so, my words were unnecessarily harsh and many of the women who I labelled "attackers" had no intention of actually doing that [although I would like to point out how many trans*activists, none of whom are trans*, were clearly harassing in order to make trouble. I don't need to name since it's always the same group of women who identify as 'cis' who like to cause fights by co-opting the political struggles of other women as their own and then speak over the very people they claim to be helping]. However, when numerous people are tweeting the same thing at one person [or one person making multiple tweets about the same issue] it does feel like an attack. This may not be the intention of the person tweeting but it is how it feels.

We need to take more care, especially on social media, of how other women are feeling. We cannot work from the assumption that the woman we are talking to are not vulnerable. We cannot assume that the women on the other side of the computer have taken a specific stance because of malice or internalised misogyny. Sometimes women are struggling to keep their heads above water that they do react  in a way which is anti-women. Sometimes women are struggling with internalised misogyny and don't understand the effects their words will have on other women. And, sometimes women are just being malicious.

But, we cannot know, for certain, what position women are coming from, especially if we have never spoken or interacted with them before. 

When we react with anger or by using abusive words, we have no idea what type of response we are triggering in women. We cannot know if the words we use are similar to that of an abusive father or husband. We cannot know if the woman experienced extreme bullying as a child and is still trying to deal with that. We cannot replicate patterns of male violence with our language or our behaviour.

We have to be better than this.

It isn't fair and it will never be fair whilst we are living in a capitalist-patriarchy but we need to keep reminding ourselves that we have no idea who the women behind social media accounts really are. The only assumption we can make is that almost every woman we speak to has been a victim of male violence: whether that is street harassment, rape or domestic violence we cannot know. But, nearly every woman we speak to will be desperately trying to remain sane in a culture which hates women. 

We are all struggling and we all make mistakes. Our politics may be different but we need to focus on the common enemy: male violence. 

I apologise for the harm my harsh words caused the other day. I am not going to remove the blog because my point still stands. We need to acknowledge the good intentions of other women. We need to acknowledge that women are human and make mistakes and we need to acknowledge that most of us are victims of male violence desperately trying to fight for our sisters.

Women are not perfect and we need to stop expecting perfection from each other.