#MeToo, page 19
Until five years in, and I’m staring up at the coach, a blond, curly-haired giant with a gentle smile and sparkling eyes, who tells me he tried to convince them I should play. And even though I don’t understand what’s happening, a hot bubble of hope swells inside me. For several long seconds my whole body seems to float, and then he frowns and says, ‘But they’ve said it’s not safe for girls.’ I choke down the bubble, wait for the rest. ‘Maybe we should cut your hair. Pretend you’re a boy.’ And while I consider this option, uncomfortable but hopeful, he adds, with a flash of blue-white teeth, that it would never work. ‘You’re too pretty for a boy.’ For consolation he says I can take the team’s stats. I make my way to the boundary, carrying a clipboard and my fractured heart.
My place.
I hurry past the rusted chain-link fence towards the stony car park, autograph book under my arm, schoolbag slung over my shoulder. I’m a fourteen-year-old jumble of adolescent angst. Face ruined by pimples and a cheap haircut, I clutch awkwardness to my chest like a friend. I join the cluster of misfits and miscreants, pens at the ready, cameras poised to snap, while Fords and Holdens, an occasional Honda, drive up and disgorge exhausted young men, who unfold their coltish limbs from cars too small to contain them. Torn between recognising their privilege and resenting the imposition, they greet us with tired smiles, or none at all. Each responds differently, still cloaked in the day job’s stink – the musk of the plumber, the earth of the landscaper, the stockbroker’s cologne. Ready to shed this other skin in search of their status as heroes.
We clap as they fly through the bleak winter sky, dancers on ice, heroes in battle, steam rising from their sweaty bodies like thoroughbreds at dawn. The shrill of the whistle, their cries to kick it here fill the frozen night, punctuated only by a passing train blasting its horn in appreciation. The repetition of long-practised drills, kilometres eaten up in wide circles of the oval, round and round, week after week. Each time we find something new to love in this controlled spectacle, until the session is over, the lights go out, and I wait for permission to enter the warmth of the male-only stadium, braced for the quiet refusal, depending on who’s guarding the door.
My place.
I am sixteen years old, and it feels like I’ve been here my whole life. These men I see on the TV know my name now, and use it freely. I glow in the light of their approval, delight when there are witnesses. Sometimes they ask my thoughts on their game – what about that goal in the second quarter? You reckon it should’ve been a free? Who will cause us the most trouble on Saturday? And, although my heart is frantic in my throat, my voice breathy with disbelief, I am earnest and thoughtful, measuring each word against the weight of their admiration.
I walk a little taller each time, ignore the stifled laughter, the knowing grins in my wake.
My place.
The chorus rises to an earsplitting crescendo, voices uplifted in rapture. Beer runs freely alongside big-noting mouths, and we’re giddy with the unlikeliness of what ‘we’ have done. The one who knows my name best and uses it warmly is smiling into his foamy beer, and we are sharing the moment after weeks – months, years – of hoping. The impossible made possible. The improbable now immutable. I swill my Island Cooler, already warm and flat from inattention and my fear of passing for eighteen more than once in this crowded bar. He leans in close to thank me – for never giving up, for always believing – and while my face grows hot at his proximity, the lift in my heart is as true as our win. ‘We did it,’ I say, shameless in my need to be included, bolstered by the warm wine mix. We clink our glasses and he is close again, so close I feel his breath against my cheek. For an intoxicating second I stay there, knowing his want, catching a glimpse of what power feels like. But it’s only a glimpse and it’s not really mine. I am seventeen years old and already I know this. He presses closer, and I lean back, my smile a little stiff, my heart a little cold. He tells me then how long he’s waited for me to grow up, and I think about his kindness when I was twelve years old, as he stooped to sign my autograph book, his encouraging laughter at footy clinics when I was fourteen . . . The taste of hot bile fills my mouth. He tells me that he was married too young, that his wife was pregnant, and he ‘did the right thing’. He says more, of course, there’s always more, but my eyes have glazed over and my mind has gone blank, and his face seems to stretch and shift before me as I search for a way out. I tell him that I’m sorry, I can’t. And he nods, of course. But his face is pink, his brow heavy. I say, but we’re okay? We’re still friends? And he offers that same nod, of course, before he tells me he’ll be back in a minute. Wanders off stiffly, still sore from the game.
He walks past me twice that night, staring right through me. And although I see him several times after, he never speaks to me again.
My place.
There are other errant hands, lingering looks belonging to young and not-so-young men who are as confused by this complicated intersection of fan and hero as I am. I have grown accustomed to it, know how quickly to quell that fire. But when the next season comes around, where once I would have counted the days, deposited myself at that chain-link fence in readiness for Round 1, this time weeks pass before I set foot on the stony car park. It’s midway through the year before I attend another game. Instead I watch on TV at the university bar with boys I count as friends, who don’t laugh when I offer an opinion, don’t smirk when I walk away.
My place.
I am too old for this. It’s a one-off invitation to join the athletes whose bodies I admire, whose skills steal my breath. A break from my role as observer and fan. For one night, I’m on the ground with them, part of something much bigger, something achingly real. I can feel it in my tender bones as I jog down the race, remembering how my once strong calves would spring into action, propel me down the track, faster than most, more agile too. But tonight, they are tight and lethargic. My whole body so unused to moving this way that I separate from it, watch it from afar, disappointment etched into my brow. I am a stranger to my flesh, despite our nearly fifty years together. I miss how it used to turn this way and that, how it was my gift, my power, where tonight it’s my anchor. On this icy, starlit night, I heft this carcass towards the centre of the ground. And then I stop, turn full circle and take in what I’m about to do. This gift I have been given. This thing I had never been allowed – suddenly, belatedly, here I am doing it. I am playing football, with friends and with strangers. I shake off the frustration at my body’s bulk, its stiffness, its limits, let the moment seep into my thin bones, until I am giggly and loose, full of the absurdity of what’s about to happen. Awed by the privilege of what it all means.
I am sharing this moment with five colleagues whose story is a version of mine, women who have also come from the outer, never allowed inside. A story we’ve turned into something else, something we can share with microphones and a studio, and a platform big enough for all. A sanctum in the outer. But on this night, we are wearing those same colours – striking and ugly – but prouder than ever, because now there are players who look like us, like we once did, and there’s no going back.
These same players who will later hold aloft a shiny, silver cup. Who will lift me – literally lift me – in their arms, as though I too am one part. But on this freezing night, I don’t yet know what they can do. Instead, I grin as these women – athletes and heroes – pass me the ball, shepherd and tackle and mark by my side, cheering as I line up for goal. It’s a farce, a set-up, designed entirely to make us, the fans, feel welcome, but I don’t care one bit, because I am eight years old despite this ageing body, and I have found my place.
And I’m not leaving.
Ginger Gorman is an award-winning social justice journalist and cyberhate expert. Some of the themes and ideas in this essay are explored further in her book, Troll Hunting, which was published in February 2019 by Hardie Grant.
Danger: Trolls Ahead
Like so many others, I watched with horror and awe as the story of American film producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse of dozens of women, over many decades, came to light. The multiple allegations triggered the long-overdue, global movement we now know as #MeToo. A side effect of the public airing of these stories was that all those memories of sexual harassment we’d tried to suppress were dredged up. I remembered how, as a young producer, a male presenter I barely knew crept up behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders and started massaging my neck. He said, ‘I tell you what would look good on you. Me.’ When I tried to bring this harassment to my manager’s attention, it was laughed off. He behaves like this with all the girls.
The domino effect of Weinstein’s outing has seen lecherous men called to account in numerous countries. Women, in their cold fury, are finally being taken seriously when they report unwanted physical or verbal attention from men in the workplace. There is one exception. What if your workplace is the internet?
The internet is crucial for most of us – both in our daily lives and in our jobs. We shop, socialise, work and play online. But we are not safe online. According to the nationally representative survey of 1557 people that I commissioned from the Australia Institute, 44 per cent of Australian women and 43 per cent of Australian men have experienced one or more forms of online harassment. This is equivalent to 8.8 million Australians – so it’s certainly not rare!18 The high aggregate cost of this online harassment to the Australian public is $3.7 billion.
Back up. What are we actually talking about here?
One of the issues in discussing trolling is that there’s no agreement on the language. All kinds of terms get thrown around: cyberbullying; online abuse; cyber harassment; digital violence. Even the word ‘troll’ is used so broadly that its meaning ceases to be clear. ‘Troll’ has been used more loosely to refer to any incident where one person publicly winds another person up. People label US President Donald Trump a troll. If I tease my husband about something, he’ll say, ‘You’re trolling me.’
Therefore, in a situation where the trolling involves credible threats of violence and stalking – predator trolling – and a woman turns up at the local police station and uses the word ‘troll’, she will likely be dismissed and told to ‘stay off the internet, love’. (Side note: this is also because police are not adequately trained or resourced to deal with the issue.)
The fact is, the word ‘troll’ doesn’t actually convey the meaning we need it to – so we have a kind of crisis of language. I use the terms ‘predator trolling’ and ‘cyberhate’ to refer to repeated, sustained threats or attacks on an individual through the use of electronic devices, which result in real-life harm to the target. These harms may be physical or psychological. The attacks may be perpetrated by one or more individuals.
In the investigative work that I do, I’ve learned that trolls are ruining lives. They cause people – especially women – to harm themselves and lose their jobs. They are the cause of lost career opportunities and income. Trolling can cause people to become socially isolated. The stalking and harassment might become so bad that the target has to move house. The victim may end up fighting the perpetrator in court. The harms go on and on.
Cyberhate expert Dr Emma Jane describes this as a type of ‘economic vandalism’ of women and an ‘insidious new type of workplace harassment’.19
While the Australia Institute statistics suggest that men and women experience similar levels of online harassment, the devil – as is often the case – is in the detail. For example, the research also showed that men experience more abusive language about religion and ethnicity and political beliefs than women. In stark contrast, women experienced more abuse in all other categories we surveyed. Twenty-four per cent of women were sent unwanted sexual messages or nude pictures – more than double the 11 per cent of men who’d experienced this. According to our polling, women were also more likely than men to experience abusive language directed at them, threats of violence or death, threats of being followed or stalked, publication of their personal details without permission in order to intimidate them (known as ‘doxing’) and threats of sexual assault or rape.
It’s no wonder that three years ago, the UN Broadband Commission released a report about online violence against women and girls, which called for ‘a worldwide wake-up call’.20
The cold fear of being a cyberhate target
Back in 2013, I never dreamed about becoming a cyberhate expert. I wasn’t even that interested in technology or the internet. Distressingly, cyberhate chooses you. My path changed when an army of self-righteous, right-wing predator trolls came after me and my family. I had been working for the ABC for more than a decade. The witch-hunt was triggered by something I’d broadcast on air and published online.
The reasons those trolls grabbed their pitchforks and pointed them in my direction are complex and convoluted, and a story for another day. What I want to tell you about is something else: fear.
It was a boiling hot summer and I was on maternity leave with my second, tiny daughter. Amid that sea of online hatred, two moments are etched in my mind. The first was a tweet that seemed to be a death threat: Your life is over. Unable to sleep, my husband and I were lying in bed late one night and read this particular message. I’ve never been that tech savvy; it was Don who realised that my tweets were geolocated. This meant that below my tweets was a map of where they’d been sent from – and in many cases, there was a little pin locating our house on Google Maps. My two little daughters were fast asleep in the next room. Quietly breathing. For the first time in my life, I wondered whether my work as a journalist had put my family at risk.
The second moment occurred not long afterwards. Don found a photo of our family on a fascist website. This seemed all the more threatening because my mother’s parents were Jews who’d fled the Holocaust. And, in fact, some of her family had been murdered at Auschwitz.
In 2013 no one knew what to do, including my bosses at the ABC. One manager – who frankly should have known better – suggested I call the employee assistance program. In other words, a psychologist. I remember thinking (but not saying): No, you dimwit! I don’t need mental health assistance. I want to know if someone is going to kill my kids. No one seemed to be able to answer the questions I really wanted the answers to: what was the level of the threat? What was the actual danger?
After a couple of years, the fear subsided, and professional curiosity took its place. After all, I’m a journalist. I started asking questions: who are these trolls? What do they want? Are there other victims going through what I went through – or even worse? I went to meet and interview trolls and their victims and began to write about them.
That was the start of a journey that I’m still on to this day. Yes, I have strange and enduring relationships with a number of trolls. I talk to them all the time and know more about their idiosyncrasies and poisonous communities than I ever cared to.
For now, though, I want to focus on the female victims. To date, the extreme impacts of cyberhate on targets have been largely ignored and dismissed. More than one person has pointed out that this is much the same way that victims of domestic violence were treated in Australia for decades. It is frequently (and erroneously) viewed as a private matter over which law enforcement has no jurisdiction. The prevailing attitude is that if the victim just behaved better and wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, ‘asking for it’, she’d be safe. Sound familiar?
The fact is, if you complain to authorities about trolling, victim-blaming frequently ensues. Instead of calling perpetrators to account, the police might well tell victims to ‘avoid the internet’. But the internet isn’t an optional extra. We need it to function in modern life. This isn’t just my opinion. In May 2011, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, released a report stating that access to the internet is a human right that enables ‘individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression’ and also gives them access to information.21
When TV personality and former model Charlotte Dawson died in 2014, it became apparent that predator trolling could have been a substantial contributing factor to her suicide. (I know from my research that there are numerous other cases that the media never reports.) Like me, and so many other women working in the media, Charlotte was online as part of her work. Therefore she was being harassed at work. For years now, I’ve been calling on all workplaces that require their staff to be online – such as people working in the media, elite athletes or even online moderators – to view this as an occupational health and safety issue and to offer them social media self-defence training.
Roger Blow, a lawyer specialising in social media and commercial litigation, has told me that, in the future, where employees have suffered trauma through predator trolling, claims may be brought against employers for not providing a safe workplace. Given the damage online harassment can cause, he suggested those claims could well succeed.
Women in the media are in the firing line
‘Look at the beak on it.’
‘You look like an actual hook-nosed goblin.’
‘Why do you promote the anal rape of little boys like me, Ginger?’
These are all examples of the abuse I’ve received on social media. The last one was posted alongside a profile picture of a little boy. This abuse occurs every time I appear on TV – most recently on Stan Grant’s program Matter of Fact, where I discussed free speech absolutism. But it happens at other times, too, such as when I write and publish opinion pieces on issues affecting women.
I wish this was an anomaly but, unfortunately, no. Julia Baird – who hosts The Drum on the ABC – told me not so long ago she’s well aware ‘some women are “so badly trolled when they come on television that they are reluctant to appear at all on shows like The Drum and Q&A”’.
