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USA Today
24-02-2025
- USA Today
Women are abused online every day. One turned her nightmare into a book.
Women are abused online every day. One turned her nightmare into a book. Show Caption Hide Caption E-reader tips and tricks for Kindle, Apple Books These E-reader tips and tricks are handy for your Kindle or Apple Books. ProblemSolved, USA TODAY Alia Dastagir was sitting at home, rocking her baby in a velvet chair when she read the message: "I am sorry to those who have confused you to be a person, because you are not a person.' Dastagir had published a story as part of an investigation into child sexual abuse in 2022, and became the target of an online mob. Her Facebook and email had been flooded with vulgar, inflammatory responses. When we spoke on the phone earlier this month, the memory alone made her nauseous. In her debut book out Tuesday, "To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person" (Penguin Random House) the award-winning journalist and former USA TODAY reporter weaves her experience of online violence with the stories of 13 other women, including a comedian who disrupts her harassment with feminist humor and an OBGYN who channels her anger into social media debates. She examines how a better understanding of the internet is vital in mitigating violence against women, and argues that online misogyny is interwoven with white supremacy and systems designed to silence women. Dastagir analyzed her interviews with psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, technologists and philosophers to unveil the societal structures that nourish online misogyny, and how women can cope and make meaning from violence. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Question: When you entered journalism, did anyone warn you that you were opening yourself up to being susceptible to online violence? Answer: No, there was no preparation. I remember the first couple of times that I got a really profane and sort of disgusting and really malicious message (from a reader), and I just remember feeling so shocked, and then later on, feeling so silly that I was shocked. I remember sitting there so long and just being like, what is happening? It's a little humiliating to describe now because it's not shocking anymore, but I think it goes to show that these experiences are so affecting and can feel so physical and confusing, especially when it first starts happening to you. The genesis of the book for me (was) that when you start talking about it, people are very matter of fact. They're just like, 'Ugh, the internet,' or, 'This is what it's like for women on the internet.' So then you get the message that not only were you not prepared for it, but there's nothing that you can do about it, there's nothing you should do about it, and you just kind of got to roll with it. For the first few years, that was kind of what I did. I was just like, 'OK, I have to suppress this.' I have to do the thing that so many people suggest that you have to do to survive in these spaces, which is to make yourself so emotionally tough and unaffected that you can continue to do this work. But then 2019 rolled around, and honestly, I think having kids cracked something open. I just remember having a moment where I was like, 'I don't accept this. I don't think anybody should accept this.' Were you fearful at all while writing and publishing this book that you would open the door for more abuse? I am so scared all the time, and it's hard to kind of admit that, but I feel like I want to admit that because some women can't, because it's risky to name that kind of vulnerability. When I wrote those sections of the book, particularly the section in the last chapter where I really go into detail about what happened (to me), it was hard for me to write it. It was hard for me to read it and reread it. I don't want to overstate it, but even as I'm talking to you right now, I feel nauseous. It was such a difficult experience, psychologically and physically, that talking about it, remembering it, writing it, absolutely brings up all of those feelings for me, and I'm terrified. People ask me about the book and how I'm feeling. Am I proud, or am I excited? It's really hard to explain that the dominant feeling is anxiety, and that I feel an obligation to push through that anxiety because I feel like the message of the book is so important. What to read this Black History Month: 10 new books by Black authors, from thrillers to rom-coms You write in your book that when confronted with online violence, stopping that psychological and physical impact isn't as simple as just looking away from your screen. Can you turn away from this online violence as a form of self-protection, or do you feel there's a moral imperative to face it? It's impossible to make any kind of categorical statements or rules about what anybody should be doing in any of these spaces, because we all have different risk profiles, and there's so much variability in what we experience and how we react to that. This didn't make it into the book, but I remember interviewing a woman who said that when her children were young, she felt that there were things that she could not engage with online, things she couldn't say because that just felt too risky to her as a young mother. But now her children are grown, they're out of the house. And she said to me, 'I feel that my risk profile has changed in such a way that I probably can be, and will be more, more vocal on certain things.' Something you really dove into in the book was misogynoir, a specific combination of misogyny and racism that Black women face. How did intersectionality become so central to your reporting for this book? When I first started (to pursue this project in 2019), I had a really myopic idea about what was happening. For me, a lot of what I was experiencing was just gender-based violence and harassment. My assumption was that a lot of it was just the 'manosphere.' Like, it was just guys from that space getting really agitated by some of my coverage of feminism and gender. And so, I had this idea about what forces were at play, and it was so narrow and so narcissistic because it was just based on my own experience. So once I opened the project up to interviewing other women who had had very diverse experiences, I realized that what was not getting enough attention, and what I hadn't given enough attention to, is the fact that this isn't just about misogyny. This is about white supremacy, and all of the systems that intertwine with that. And I think that it's important to recognize that women, particularly women of color and Black women, were calling out abuses on these platforms for years. But Black women's experiences of pain are rarely deemed worthy of attention. So, it was really important when I began to write this book to say so early on, like, we can't have a conversation about anything related to online abuse unless we understand that this is about white supremacy, not just misogyny. Looking for your next read? USA TODAY's Best-selling Booklist Right now, many women don't feel safe for a myriad of reasons. Partly due to the platforms we are engaging with, but also, femicide rates are rising internationally, American women are faced with growing restrictions on reproductive rights. How are these things a factor in online abuse? It's all connected, right? We talk about it as if it is an online problem. It's a cultural problem. Like, this is a problem of the culture. It's a political problem, it's an economic problem, it's a human rights problem. It shows up online, it shows up offline. One of the reasons that I felt like it was really important to write a chapter where I followed a woman who was experiencing relentless misogyny in the workplace and online – (a welder and now plumber named Brooke Nicholas) – her story really underscores the inescapability of this. Like there isn't a place that feels safe online or offline for women and marginalized folks, people of color and queer and trans folks. This book was rooted in your own experiences, but the story is strung together with other women's stories. In speaking to these other women, were you able to see yourself in everyone's stories? There's so many different ways that we experience violence and respond to violence. But I think that what was so evident to me, no matter who I interviewed and even reflecting on my own experiences, was that nobody was 'ignoring it.' Everybody was dealing differently. Everybody was making meaning in different ways. It was sort of the most fundamental animating question of the whole project, which I guess was my initial idea. Like, 'Why can't I ignore it?' But I think that the reporting sort of bears out that ignoring is just not the right word. I think sometimes people say the word ignore and they mean 'don't react,' or sometimes people say the word ignore and they mean 'don't feel.' And I don't think that most people aren't feeling. Once the language comes through or the threat comes through, we can make a decision. And we can make a decision to suppress whatever the feeling is or to compartmentalize it, to make a joke about it or externalize it or to report it, but we're still always doing something with it. And so when I reflect on my own experiences and I think back to all of these interviews, there is a ton of variability in how we experience violence, how we make meaning out of violence, and how we react to violence. But nobody was ignoring violence.
Washington Post
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
A victim of harassment chronicles the effects of online abuse
When Alia Dastagir became the target of an online mob, a thought gripped her: What if the harassment never stopped? Could she survive it? It was early 2022, and Dastagir, a USA Today reporter at the time, had just published a deeply reported piece profiling a victim of childhood sexual trauma. The story was a point of pride for Dastagir. But within a day of publishing, her reporting had been taken out of context and shared widely on social media. Trolls, QAnon followers and even Donald Trump Jr. accused her of defending pedophilia. Threats flooded her inbox. Her editors told her she needed to call the police. The toll on her body, she said, was unbearable. 'People who haven't experienced that level of abuse don't really — can't really — appreciate how physical the experience is,' said Dastagir, in an interview last month. 'Like, your body doesn't always know the difference between a mob at your actual door, and a mob in your mentions. Your body is just very aware that … people are claiming they want to kill you. People are saying they want to kill your kids.' The physical experience of online abuse is at the heart of Dastagir's new book, 'To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person.' In the book, Dastagir profiles women who have endured similar abuse: an OB/GYN advocating for reproductive rights, a comedian, a transgender state legislator. She creates a meticulous accounting of the effects of online harassment, the way it can upend women's careers, their health and their minds. And she argues it's a problem that must be taken more seriously. 'It's not about rape threats and death threats and slurs,' Dastagir said. 'It is about an erosion and slow annihilation of society and self. And if we don't attend to that … the consequences are going to be dire.' I spoke with Dastagir in January. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You started the book relaying this moment with your daughter, when you just happened to pull out your phone. Can you describe a little bit of that experience? I had an experience where I was breastfeeding my newborn baby, and I was doing the thing that so many mothers do — I'd pulled out my phone, I'm futzing and scrolling. And I saw that I had a message on Facebook from a reader who was very upset about, ironically, a story that I had written on online abuse of women journalists. And he said to me: 'To those who have confused you to be a person, you are not a person.' It wasn't profane. There was no cursing. It was just so chilling. And I remember feeling so confused about how he had gotten into that room with me and my baby. It felt like I was in this space that was so pure and unadulterated and peaceful, and somehow, he had gotten in there with us. And the dissonance of that was overwhelming. You describe that moment as chilling, but in the range of experiences that you describe in this book, it's actually on the tame side. In your reporting, you explore moments where people — particularly women — receive online threats, descriptions of horrific acts of violence, comments that are totally demeaning. What do you think people misunderstand about this kind of harassment online? There is this idea that you can just ignore it, or that you should. And I think that some people who say that are really well intentioned. There are people who want you to keep doing what you are doing in these spaces, whether it's trying to agitate or publicly think or publicly write. There are people who see your value in the world, and they make these statements about, 'Just ignore it,' or — Or, 'Don't give it any brain space.' 'Keep doing what you're doing,' exactly. But I think the reaction is problematic, even if it's expressed in a well-intentioned way. Because I think sometimes when we say, 'Ignore it,' we mean, 'Don't react.' But I think a lot of times we're saying, 'Don't feel.' And that is where I feel you have a problem. There is no way to ignore language. Language is information that comes into your body. You have to evaluate whether whatever is coming in is a threat to you and your survival. You have gone through a cognitive and physiological response. This whole book is my attempt to give us a deeper vocabulary to talk about these experiences in very human terms. To suggest that we ignore those experiences is to deny ourselves our humanity. What would help address this problem? What do you think needs to change? We're so disillusioned and we're despairing and we're cynical. But we have to believe that this is unacceptable. We built the internet, okay? We built it. We decide what values it carries. So we can think differently about what the internet does. We can think differently about the boundaries around language. But we have to get to a place where we decide that this is an unacceptable way to live. To what extent do you believe that tech companies are responsible for this problem? I mean, they're totally responsible. They're complicit. The harassment, in many cases, serves them. Like, this is engagement, right? The changes that [Meta chief executive] Mark Zuckerberg announced are so distressing. We are moving in the wrong direction — loosening the rules around how this company addresses hateful speech and abuse. [Meta is scaling back fact-checking and lifting some restrictions on what users can post, including attacks on LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups.] It just feels like these companies have almost an antagonistic relationship with their users. Whatever safeguards were in place, it feels like they're just going to continue to be chipped away. They're now being further disincentivized from doing anything about abuse, about disinformation. And we have every right to leave these platforms, and in many cases we should. And it's not an easy calculation to make. I find myself struggling with it, too. In the book, you write about an Indigenous artist and activist named Marissa Indoe, who ultimately decides to step away from TikTok because of the abuse she faces on the platform. You write, 'Sometimes retreating is its own form of courage. Marissa's withdrawal from the app is a loss for her followers and for her activism, but it is also a refusal to participate in spaces that do not align with her values. These platforms may connect us, but they also profit off us, isolate us, sever us from the natural world. Marissa is on a break from her platform … and for now has something she values more. … Peace.' And I couldn't help but think, maybe that's the answer — that this vitriol isn't a bug in the system. That social media is this vitriol. And maybe we just shouldn't be in these spaces. Yeah, I think that the challenge obviously becomes that so many people feel dependent on these spaces — for their livelihood, for human connection. It's a conundrum, right? And I can say that even for myself, over the past couple of years, I have not been writing publicly or posting very much at all. And then, in the fall, I received an abusive email. And I remember being like, 'Why am I so upset about this email? I've had so many egregious experiences in these spaces. Why am I ruminating about this?' And what I believe had happened is that I had taken such a big, beautiful break from social platforms, that when I experienced an abusive message again, it felt almost intolerable. And so I think that says a lot about what it might mean to leave these platforms altogether, to the extent that you can. But also what it means to even take a meaningful break. It can totally recalibrate what you find to be acceptable. This book was clearly written before Trump was reelected as president. What do you think Trump being back in office will mean for the experiences of people, and particularly women, online? Even if he wasn't reelected, Trump has left a legacy — in terms of how we speak to one another and about one another, in terms of decency and civility. So to have him reelected is terrifying, in particular because so many of these leaders in Big Tech seem to be cozying up to him and very aligned with him and feel that they have permission now to allow abuse, harassment and violence to really proliferate on their platforms because they feel like nobody is going to check them. And they might be right. So, for the foreseeable future, I hope that this book could be a resource for people who, especially over the next few years, are going to have to take really good care of themselves if they're going to be in online spaces. Martine Powers is an audio journalist and the senior host of 'Post Reports,' The Washington Post's flagship daily news podcast. Words as Violence and Stories of Women's Resistance Online By Alia Dastagir Crown. 304 pp. $29
