How online abuse of women has spiraled out of control

[This talk contains graphic language
and descriptions of sexual violence

View discretion is advised]

"Ashley Judd,

stupid fucking slut."

"You can't sue someone
for calling them a cunt.

If you can't handle the Intenet,

fuck off, whore."

"I wish Ashley Judd would
die a horrible death.

She is the absolute worst."

"Ashley Judd, you're the reason
women shouldn't vote."

"'Twisted' is such a bad movie,

I don't even want to rape it."

"Whatever you do,

don't tell Ashley Judd she'll
die alone with a dried out vagina."

"If I had to fuck an older women,

oh my God,

I would fuck the shit out of Ashley Judd,

that bitch is hot AF.

The unforgivable shit I would do to her."

Online misogyny is a global
gender rights tragedy,

and it is imperative that it ends.

(Applause)

Girls' and women's voices,

and our allies' voices
are constrained in ways

that are personally, economically,

professionally and politically [damaging],

and when we curb abuse,

we will expand freedom.

I am a Kentucky basketball fan,

so on a fine March day last year,

I was doing one of the things I do best:

I was cheering for my Wildcats.

The daffodils were blooming,

but the referees were not blowing
the whistle when I was telling them to.

(Laughter)

Funny,

they're very friendly to me
before the opening [tip],

but they really ignore me during the game.

(Laughter)

Three of my players were bleeding,

so I did the next-best thing ...

I tweeted.

[@ArkRazorback dirty play can kiss
my team's free throw making a --

@KySportsRadio @marchmadness
@espn Bloodied 3 players so far.]

It is routine for me to be treated
in the ways I've already described to you.

It happens to me every single day

on social media platforms
such as Twitter and Facebook.

Since I joined Twitter in 2011,

misogyny and misogynists
have amply demonstrated

they will dog my every step.

My spirituality,

my faith --

being a hillbilly, I can say that,

you can't --

all of it is fair game.

And I have responded to this
with various strategies.

I've tried engaging people.

This one guy was sending me
hyper sexual, nasty stuff,

and there was a girl in his avatar,

and I wrote him back and said,

"Is that your daughter?

I feel a lot of fear that you
may think about

and talk to women this way."

And he surprised me by saying,

"You know what?

You're right.

I apologize."

Sometimes people want
to be held accountable.

This one guy was musing
to I don't know who

that maybe I was the definition of a cunt.

I was married to a Scot for 14 years,

so I said, "Cunt means many
different things in different countries."

(Laughter)

"But I'm pretty sure you epitomize
the global standard of a dick."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I've tried to rise above it,

I've tried to get in the trenches,

but mostly I would scroll through
these social media platforms

with one eye partially closed,

trying not to see it,

but you can't make
a cucumber out of a pickle.

What is seen goes in.

It's traumatic.

And I was always secretly hoping
in some part of me

that what was being said to me
and about me wasn't true.

Because even I,

an avowed, self-declared feminist,

who worships at the altar of Gloria --

(Laughter)

internalize the patriarchy.

This is really critical.

Patriarchy is not boys and men.

It is a system in which
we all participate,

including me.

On that particular day,

for some reason that particular tweet
after the basketball game

triggered something called a cyber mob.

This vitriolic, global outpouring
of the most heinous hate speech:

death threats, rape threats,

and don't you know,

when I was sitting at home
alone in my nightgown,

I got a phone call,

and it was my beloved former husband,

and he said on a voicemail,

"Loved one,

what is happening to you is not OK."

And there was something about him
taking a stand for me that night

that allowed me
to take a stand for myself.

And I started to write.

I started to write about sharing
the fact that I'm a survivor

of all forms of sexual abuse,

including three rapes.

And the hate speech
I get in response to that --

these are just some of the comments
posted to news outlets.

Being told I'm a "snitch" is really fun.

[Jay: She enjoyed every second of it!!!!!]

(Audience) Jesus.

AJ: Thank you, Jesus

(Laughter)

May your grace and mercy shine.

So I wrote this feminist op-ed,

it is entitled, "Forget Your Team:

It is Your Online Gender Violence
Toward Girls and Women

that Can Kiss My Righteous Ass."

(Laugther)

(Applause)

And I did that alone,

and I published it alone,

because my chief advisor
said, "Please don't,

the rain of retaliatory garbage
that is inevitable,

I fear for you."

But I trust girls,

and I trust women,

and I trust our aliies.

It was pulished,

it went viral,

it proves that every single day

online misogyny is a phenomenon
endured by us all,

all over the world,

and when it is intersectional,

it is worse.

Sexual orientation,

gender identity,

race, ethnicity, religion --

you name it,

it amplifies the violence
endured by girls and women,

and for our younger girls,

it is worse.

It's clearly traumatizing.

Our mental health,

our emotional well-being,

are so gravely effected,

because the threat of violence

is experienced
neurobiologically as violence.

The cortisol shoots up,

the limbic system gets fired,

we lose productivity at work.

And let's talk about work.

Our ability to work is constrained.

Online searches of women applying for jobs
reveal nude pictures of them,

false allegations --

they have STDs --

their addresses indicating
that they are available for sex

with real examples of people
showing up at the his house

for said sex.

Our ability to go to school is impaired.

96 percent of all postings
of sexual images [in] our young people:

girls.

Our girls.

Our boys are two-to-three
times more likely --

non-consensually --

to share images.

And I want to say a word
about revenge porn.

Part of what came out of this tweet

was my getting connected with allies
and other activists

who are fighting for a safe
and free Internet.

We started something
called the Speech Project:

curbing abuse,

expanding freedom.

And that website provides
a critical forum,

because there is no global, legal thing
to help us figure this out.

But we do provide on that website
a standardized list of definitions,

because it's hard to attack
a behavior in the right way

if we're not all sharing a definition
of what that behavior is.

And I learned that revenge porn
is often dangerously misapplied.

It is the non-consensual
sharing of an image

used tacticly to shame
and humiliate a girl or woman

that attempts to pornogrpiphy us.

Our natural sexuality is --

I don't know about yours --

pretty gorgeous and wonderful.

And my expressing it does not
pornography make.

(Applause)

So I have all these resources,

that I'm keenly aware --

so many people in the world do not.

I was able to start
the Speech Project with colleagues.

I can often get a social media
company's attention,

I have a wonderful visit
to Facebook HQ coming up.

Hasn't helped the idiotic
reporting standards yet ...

I actually pay someone to scrub
my social media feeds,

attempting to spare my brain

the daily iterations
of the trauma of hate speech.

And guess what?

I get hate speech for that.

"Oh, you live in an echo chamber."

Well, guess what?

Having someone post a photograph
of me with my mouth open

saying they can't wait to cum on my face,

I have a right to set that boundary.

(Applause)

This distinction between virtual
and real is specious

because guess what --

that actually happened to me once
when I was a child,

and so that tweet brought up that trauma,

and I had to do work on that.

But you know what we do?

We take all of this hate speech,

and we disaggragate it,

and we code it,

and we give that data,

so that we understand
the intersectionality of it.

When I get porn,

when it's about political affiliation,

when it's about age,

when it's about all of it.

We're going to win this fight.

There are a lot of solutions --

thank goodness.

I'm going to offer just a few,

and of course I challenge you
to create and contribute your own.

Number one:

we have to start
with digital media literacy,

and clearly it must have a gendered lens.

Kids, schools, caregivers, parents:

it's essential.

Two:

should we talk about our friends in tech?

Said with dignity and respect,

the sexism in your workplaces must end.

(Applause)

(Cheers)

EDGE,

the global standard for gender equality,

is the minimum standard.

And guess what, Silicon Valley,

if L'Oreal in India

and the Phillipines,

and Brazil,

and in Russia and can do it,

you can, too.

Enough excuses.

Only when women have critical mass
in every department in your companies,

including building platforms
from the ground up,

will the conversations about priorities
and solutions change.

And more love for my friends in tech:

profiteering off misogyny
in video games must end.

I'm so tired of hearing you talk
to me at cocktail parties --

like you did a couple
weeks ago in Aspen --

about how deplorable #gamergate was

when you're still making billions
of dollars off games

that maim and dump women for sport.

Basta,

as the Italians would say.

Enough.

(Applause)

Our friends in law enforcement
have much to do,

because we've seen

that online violence is an extension
of in person violence.

In our country,

more girls and women have been
murdered by their intimate partners

than died on 9/11

and have died since in Afghanistan
and Iraq combined.

And it's not "cool" to say that,

but it is true.

We care so much geopolitically
about what men are doing over there

to women over there ...

In 2015,

72,828 women used intimate
partner violence services in this country.

That is not counting the girls
and women and boys who needed them.

Law enforcement must be empowered

with up-to-date Internet technology,

the devices,

and an understanding
of these platforms --

how they work.

The police wanted to be helpful
when Amanda Hesse called

about the death threat
she was getting on Twitter,

but they couldn't really when they said,

"What's Twitter?"

Our legislators must write and pass
astute legislation

that reflects today's technology

and our notions of free and hate speech.

In New York recently,

the law could not be applied
to a perpetrator

because the crimes must
have been committed --

even if it was anonymous --

they must have been committed
by telephone, in mail,

by telegraph --

(Laughter)

The language must be
technologically neutral.

So apparently,

I've got a pretty bold voice.

So let's talk about your friends ...

white men.

You have a role to play
and a choice to make.

You can do something,

or you can do nothing.

We're cool in this room,

but when this goes out
everyone will say,

"Oh my god,

she's a reverse racist."

That quote was said by a white man,

Robert Morris,

chairperson Price Waterhouse Cooper,

he asked me to include it in my talk.

We need to grow support lines
and help groups,

so victims can help each other

when their lives and finances
have been derailed.

We must as individuals disrupt
gender violence as it is happening.

92 percent of young people,

29 and under,

witness it.

72 percent of us have witnessed it.

We must have the courage and urgency

to practice stopping it
as it is unfolding.

And lastly,

believe her.

Believe her.

(Applause)

This is fundamentally a problem
of human interaction.

I believe that human interaction
is at the core of our healing.

Trauma not transformed
will be trauma transferred.

Edith Horton said,

"The end is latent in the beginning,"

so we are going to end this talk
replacing hate speech with love speech.

Because I get lonely in this,

but I know that we are allies.

I recently learned

about how gratitude and affirmations
offset negative interactions.

It takes five of those to offset
one negative interaction,

and gratitude in particular --

free, available globally
any time, anywhere,

to anyone in any dialect.

It fires the pregenual anterior cingulate,

a watershed part of the brain,

that floods it with great, good stuff.

So I'm going to say awesome
stuff about myself.

I would like for you
to reflect it back to me.

It might sound something like this --

(Laughter)

I am a powerful and strong woman,

and you would say, "Yes you are."

(Audience) Yes your are.

My mama loves me.

(Audience) Yes she does.

I did a great job with my talk.

(Audience) Yes you did.

I have a right to be here.

(Audience) Yes you do.

I'm really cute.

(Laughter)

(Audience) Yes you are.

God does good work.

(Audience) Yes he does.

And I love you.

Thank you so much

for letting me be of service.

(Applause)