Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Internet Hate Machine. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Bridget Todd. I am enjoined with my lovely producer, Sophie. Hey, Sophie,
Speaker 1: what's up, Hey, Bridget. How's it going? It is going well,
Speaker 1: and I'm so, so so excited to be joined by Francesco.
Speaker 1: If you're in TV correspondent, funny Lady, host of the
Speaker 1: Situation Pod, the Twitteration Room on the Young Turk's News
Speaker 1: broke on a J Plus, and New Mama Francesco. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here. I'm so excited. Anytime,
Speaker 1: oh my god, talk to me about something else other
Speaker 1: than nursing and sleep habits, just get me out of
Speaker 1: that headspace. And I realized we might delve into something
Speaker 1: far worse, and I'll be rushing back to want to
Speaker 1: talk about nursing and all and spit up habits and
Speaker 1: all that crap, all the all the things that babies
Speaker 1: do exactly. We might be talking maybe about babies I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know, or big babies. Yeah there there are,
Speaker 1: so there are some grown man babies and the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what the show is about, right, just
Speaker 1: people being massive babies on the Internet and speaking of
Speaker 1: people being massive babies on the Internet. I have to
Speaker 1: call out this tweet that you had that had me rolling,
Speaker 1: uh elon must tweeted Twitter feels increasingly alive and you've
Speaker 1: replied increasingly alive now that death threats are back. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean the real joke, I think is that it's
Speaker 1: alive because we're all dunking on him just endlessly and
Speaker 1: he's just trying to tweet through his entire failure. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the actual truth of it, and
Speaker 1: this is something you speak to is that we're just
Speaker 1: it's alive. He's the equivalent of alive is because now
Speaker 1: no one is censored when they're trying to docks people
Speaker 1: or harass them. Yeah, now an open season for hate
Speaker 1: speech docs saying death threats, all the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want to see you when you log into Twitter dot com.
Speaker 1: That actually was something that I was surprised at. You know,
Speaker 1: I know we're not going to necessarily go into the
Speaker 1: whole old debacle, but that in order to get people
Speaker 1: to get on stay on your platform, you it has
Speaker 1: to be a place people want to be. And I
Speaker 1: was reading some analysis and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: as much as I think something like Instagram makes me
Speaker 1: obviously like it's a perpetual fomo and I feel terrible
Speaker 1: about myself in different ways. It is also still a
Speaker 1: place I want to be, And Ellen's got to make
Speaker 1: Twitter a place people want to be who aren't just
Speaker 1: white nationalists. Yeah, and I was reading about how only
Speaker 1: a small percentage of power users on the platform, like
Speaker 1: people who tweet regularly, like those are the folks who
Speaker 1: really drive engagement, and so it does seem kind of
Speaker 1: like Ellen is kind of his his first order of
Speaker 1: business is kind of attacking those people and making sure
Speaker 1: that they feel like Twitter is not a hospitable platform
Speaker 1: for them to show up and like it's not like
Speaker 1: any of us are getting paid to tweet. So after
Speaker 1: a while, it's like, why am I going to continue
Speaker 1: to show up here? Right? It's it's basically just too
Speaker 1: again make fun of now the new owner. But that's it.
Speaker 1: He needs to sweeten the pot for them and getting
Speaker 1: folks to pay eight dollars a month for that, Like
Speaker 1: that's not that's not it. It should be. Ah God,
Speaker 1: my friend of mine suggested something, and I just have
Speaker 1: to put this out there. But monetize Twitter by paying
Speaker 1: to d m women paying Elan would be he would
Speaker 1: be making so much money off Twitter overnight, right or
Speaker 1: or even like lower lower the bar, not even, but
Speaker 1: like to get so that you can see if they
Speaker 1: read it or not sure exactly these different tiers, I
Speaker 1: mean even replying to anybody, you know, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it's like, oh God, if you want to troll
Speaker 1: this person in their d M, you gotta pay fifty
Speaker 1: dollars if there's gonna be like, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna say something about the way they look, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars if you're gonna throw in like a
Speaker 1: toots or a nobody says toots anymore. You know how
Speaker 1: the Internet and trolls are all just like you know,
Speaker 1: men in their eighties. Yeah, I love you, I love
Speaker 1: the tweet. That's the voice that I that I read
Speaker 1: all m Andrew Dice, Clay voice, Hickory Dickory Duck. Yeah
Speaker 1: you look better without anyone under the age of thirty
Speaker 1: is like, what are they saying, Andrew Dice? Who I
Speaker 1: don't These are not current, These are not topical references.
Speaker 1: But you know your point about you know, paying to harass,
Speaker 1: paying to bother people actually does fit really clearly into
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about today, And so far
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we've talked about some examples of black
Speaker 1: women and women of color who have been the target
Speaker 1: of not so fun things on social media platforms. We've
Speaker 1: talked about dongle Gate with a fear Richards, the end
Speaker 1: Father's Day campaign on Twitter, and then coordinated attacks on
Speaker 1: SNL actor Leslie Jones, And as horrific as these things are,
Speaker 1: it's kind of easy to think of them as sort
Speaker 1: of isolated incidents or things just happening on Twitter with
Speaker 1: no real context playing out in the you know, the
Speaker 1: real the I r L world, like the real world,
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to spend a little bit of
Speaker 1: time kind of connecting those dots on why all this
Speaker 1: matters and why it matters beyond the folks who are
Speaker 1: being targeted. And since we just had mid term elections,
Speaker 1: I think taking a look at some of recent elections
Speaker 1: and the experiences of elected officials will provide a really
Speaker 1: good example for the real world consequences of having a
Speaker 1: social media landscape ready and willing to amplify racist, sexist
Speaker 1: attacks on black women and women of color. Is this
Speaker 1: something that you've experienced as like a visible person on Twitter. Yes,
Speaker 1: and no, I will say that. Um I what I
Speaker 1: think that the online hate has done for me is
Speaker 1: make me, um invisibilize myself deliberately, So say less, be
Speaker 1: very very careful. And again, I'm a comic, you know,
Speaker 1: and I and I am a pundit. I like to speak.
Speaker 1: I love doing podcasts, I love doing you know, my
Speaker 1: live show, the Bituation Room, all that. But it's when
Speaker 1: it comes to just the world of Twitter, I am
Speaker 1: much more on my p's and q's, and not in
Speaker 1: a good way. So it's so ironic. We are being
Speaker 1: trolled by you know, generally dudes and white dudes and
Speaker 1: whatever cis het you keep adding to it, who are
Speaker 1: constantly saying that they are being silenced, when in fact,
Speaker 1: what they the ecosystem they create, actually just silences women,
Speaker 1: people of color, marginalized folks, anyone who feels like they
Speaker 1: are already targeted by systemic oppression. That's just it's sort
Speaker 1: of a self imposed censorship. So and I hate that
Speaker 1: about so. So No, I have not been deliberately targeted.
Speaker 1: But also I don't stick at my neck out that much.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a that's not good, you know,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, I've been, you know, in multiple I
Speaker 1: think it's also because I'm not like I'm next and
Speaker 1: people are like, I don't know how to troll you.
Speaker 1: What epithode do I use? Are exactly? Are you Chinese?
Speaker 1: Are you Italian? Are you Latina? I don't know, damn it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna google it. Uh my Wikipedia pages all fucked
Speaker 1: up to It's like I don't know if we can swear,
Speaker 1: but I am my bad um. So it's just like
Speaker 1: they I think my Wikipedia page says that I'm like
Speaker 1: from Argentina, but I'm not. The point is it's funny
Speaker 1: when you're not discernibly something. So people don't know how
Speaker 1: to troll. I will say this to Year and I
Speaker 1: know you did a whole episode on Leslie Jones thing.
Speaker 1: I was at the r n C in t St. Milo, Napolis,
Speaker 1: was going live for Bright Bart and my producers. The
Speaker 1: people at a J Plus were like, yo, this is
Speaker 1: the day after that Leslie Leslie Jones was I think
Speaker 1: left Twitter was being trolled. Milow started it. They go, yo,
Speaker 1: you should like say something to him, do something. So
Speaker 1: on air we did our own little like rolling of him,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, does it does all
Speaker 1: this make you feel better that your mom never hugged
Speaker 1: you as a child, you know, just like being raised
Speaker 1: by the legends of Zelda like and I was something
Speaker 1: about like I said, I think the first thing I
Speaker 1: said to him was like, it's funny that you hate
Speaker 1: black people because your heart is black, is what I said.
Speaker 1: That's that's good. So yeah, so that was the man
Speaker 1: stunned to speak. No he called me. He turns around, goes,
Speaker 1: wouldn't mean nasty, you know, he goes, what a mean nasty,
Speaker 1: skinny lesbian you are? And I was like, me's guinea things?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So I was also at that same
Speaker 1: r n C. And I remember I was this is
Speaker 1: a whole long story, but I was there as part
Speaker 1: of a group who was meant to be getting like
Speaker 1: like writing a piece about Milo. And I remember him
Speaker 1: walking around like the press area and what a like
Speaker 1: you could just you ever see somebody who you can
Speaker 1: tell wants to have their presence be something that everybody
Speaker 1: is talking about. And everybody was working, so nobody was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's Milo. Everybody was like, oh, what
Speaker 1: is like this person just came in they clearly want
Speaker 1: a scene, and everybody just went back to their their
Speaker 1: laptops and it was kind of this, like I remember
Speaker 1: just feeling like this is pathetic, Like this this is
Speaker 1: like reminds me of when I was like when I
Speaker 1: first got my driver's license and I would like get
Speaker 1: in my car and drive by the school playing music
Speaker 1: loud with sunglasses on and be like, I hope they
Speaker 1: see me. I just felt I just felt very sad. Yeah, exactly. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely like plays. He has a little boom box
Speaker 1: next to him and like plays. You know, I have
Speaker 1: some kind of trumpet entrance, like has a little smoke
Speaker 1: machine he wants that's in his mind, Like it goes
Speaker 1: off when he walks in a room. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. My brain is on new Mom. I'm sorry, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, I know that he's a sad, sad
Speaker 1: man and uh, I think got what he deserved. But
Speaker 1: that's I know you went into that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he talking about him is actually a great segue into
Speaker 1: the idea that I think in so many of the
Speaker 1: incidents that we have discussed, particularly around like Milo and
Speaker 1: Leslie Jones, it's this idea that It really shows, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the way that a sort of disregard and
Speaker 1: distrust of women, particularly women of color and black women,
Speaker 1: it's kind of baked into our experience of being on
Speaker 1: social media platforms. And if you've ever seen a right
Speaker 1: wing figure attack of black woman who was basically just
Speaker 1: minding her business like Leslie Jones was, and thought what's
Speaker 1: going on? You know, when you see a right wing
Speaker 1: figure randomly attack Lizzo or how like Trump would randomly
Speaker 1: attack uh yeah, Signore April Ryan like right like women
Speaker 1: of color, always you'd be thinking, like, why are they
Speaker 1: doing this? Well, I would argue it's because it is
Speaker 1: a tried and true engagement strategy. And when you apply
Speaker 1: that to social media people who run platforms, they're not
Speaker 1: really interested in sort of de incentivizing that because it's
Speaker 1: a successful way to generate engagement, which means, you know,
Speaker 1: more profit for them. And so basically I think that
Speaker 1: attacking women of color is always going to be a
Speaker 1: way to get to like fire up your base and
Speaker 1: get engagement, and platforms are not interested in stopping this
Speaker 1: or de incentivizing it because they are in on the grift. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's sure. I mean it's amazing. Once again, this
Speaker 1: this is the right. It loves to accuse the Left
Speaker 1: of being triggered by something, and they the people you're naming,
Speaker 1: the reason they triggered. They are the ones triggering the
Speaker 1: right merely by their existence, the idea that black women
Speaker 1: are excelling in journalism, in music, in something that otherwise
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give a shit about. They don't know who
Speaker 1: Lizzo is. Ben Shapiro doesn't know Lizzo is. But then
Speaker 1: suddenly she's playing you know whoever the fox flute Jefferson?
Speaker 1: Was it Jefferson? It was Jefferson. Yeah, just like so
Speaker 1: Jefferson's flute um, which of course we all know she
Speaker 1: should have smashed into a million pieces. Uh, and that's what. No,
Speaker 1: she played it amazingly, And you're just like, this is
Speaker 1: what I mean by identity politics still matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is why I think a lot of us still
Speaker 1: say it, because they's like, literally by their identity, by fote,
Speaker 1: by black women just doing them. Suddenly this entire yeah,
Speaker 1: machinery of algorithms and grift and money making is actually
Speaker 1: just triggered and is set off, you know, and just
Speaker 1: keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning and victimizing, I
Speaker 1: would say, but honestly, like, these are also badass people
Speaker 1: who I think it takes a lot more to bring
Speaker 1: them down. But yeah, victimizing usually women of color and
Speaker 1: black women specifically. Absolutely. My favorite tweet that I saw
Speaker 1: about the Lizzo situation was when everybody was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she played that flute. Lizzo should dig up the bones
Speaker 1: of Jefferson and play his ribs like a xylophone. So
Speaker 1: you're you're exactly right, And I've seen the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Disinformation researcher and the author of the great new book
Speaker 1: Black Skinheads, and person who is a lot smarter than
Speaker 1: me on these issues, Brandy dex Raclar. She explained it
Speaker 1: very well in an interview with Janet Burns. She says,
Speaker 1: social media as a sphere, because of its theatrical nature,
Speaker 1: is where you will see the most profound attacks, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter some of the most vicious attacks that are
Speaker 1: being directed at black women, black leaders, and black activists.
Speaker 1: It ends up getting laughed about on the now defunctor
Speaker 1: Riley Factor and other shows. There's this freedom to attacked
Speaker 1: and repeated validation of it, and everywhere we go we
Speaker 1: see corporate or government gatekeepers who declined to intervene. So
Speaker 1: I completely agree with her point. We have a media
Speaker 1: landscape where attacking women of color and black women isn't
Speaker 1: just okay, it's incentivized, and I think this is key.
Speaker 1: When platforms allow racist, sexist attacks on black women and
Speaker 1: women of color and do nothing, it normalizes this behavior
Speaker 1: and it doesn't just say that it's okay, but it
Speaker 1: says like this is just the cost of being a
Speaker 1: visible black woman online. And even if it starts on
Speaker 1: platforms like Twitter, I think it creates the conditions that
Speaker 1: normalize the same kind of abuse to happen more broadly
Speaker 1: out into the world, and also create a pathway for escalation,
Speaker 1: Like if people don't do anything when you harass a
Speaker 1: black woman or a woman of color online, you know,
Speaker 1: bad actors will watch that response and be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I will reasonably conclude that I could take that behavior
Speaker 1: offline too, And that's kind of really sad, because you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about women and black women and women
Speaker 1: of color who don't always get the support that we should,
Speaker 1: people are not totally incorrect and assuming that they can
Speaker 1: harass these women and escalate that harassment from the Internet
Speaker 1: to the real world, and that people aren't going to
Speaker 1: do anything because they're kind of right, and a lot
Speaker 1: of instances, not a lot is done. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's seen as like I think black women specifically
Speaker 1: because of white supremacy, um, and the ways that like
Speaker 1: your your identities are immediately politicized not by your not
Speaker 1: by you, but by the by white supremacy and the
Speaker 1: function of it and how it works. And so it's
Speaker 1: like like I'm saying, folks mining their own business, women
Speaker 1: just doing themselves is suddenly seen as like how dare
Speaker 1: you attack me? And you're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: No one's attacking you. But it's and again this is
Speaker 1: like some folks can go through the world and their
Speaker 1: identities are not automatically politicized. They're not automatically seen as
Speaker 1: like oh, it's like, um, I can't remember her name,
Speaker 1: but there was this Asian American reporter who got a
Speaker 1: phone call after she like talked about you know, what
Speaker 1: she eats at Thanksgiving, right, and I think she's Korean,
Speaker 1: and she was like someone called her and was like
Speaker 1: your reporter was very Asian, you know, like I was
Speaker 1: offended by how Asian your reporter was even just because
Speaker 1: they mentioned that they don't eat turkey on things. Remember
Speaker 1: that it would just the existence of her specific cultural thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the mere existence your mirror. I am victimized by your
Speaker 1: mere existence. Like God, white fragility is so so brittle
Speaker 1: and exactly what it is, Michelle Lee. I believe, yes,
Speaker 1: now selling very Asian merch and I love it. Um
Speaker 1: but but so yeah, and and of course anything that
Speaker 1: makes folks money is gonna That's why, I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that your whole show just is going to end
Speaker 1: in we need to nationalize and break up big tech.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I think it's that's a whole yeah, yes, yes, um.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you're talking about sort of this
Speaker 1: idea of women and people of color and black folks
Speaker 1: just sort of being inherently politicized, this is something that
Speaker 1: I really want to pull out because I talk a
Speaker 1: lot about things like misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, all of that.
Speaker 1: It's like my day job is like researching that. And
Speaker 1: I think that what often gets lost are the ways
Speaker 1: that these kinds of things are so often identity based, right,
Speaker 1: and so ideas about you know, someone who is Chinese
Speaker 1: American being foreign or you know not, you know not
Speaker 1: doesn't belong here, or ideas about you know, black women
Speaker 1: being angry or incompetent. I think that we so often
Speaker 1: see identity based inaccurate information, and it's so much harder
Speaker 1: to pull out and talk about, as opposed to disinformation
Speaker 1: and misinformation around things like COVID or vaccines, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: most reasonable people are like, like, there's a baseline understanding
Speaker 1: of you know, oh, this is inaccurate information. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to identity, I think it's a little bit
Speaker 1: harder to actually pull out and identify and talk about
Speaker 1: because I don't know, talking about race and culture and
Speaker 1: identity can be so fraught and difficult for our society.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, And you don't want to be overly
Speaker 1: reductive in when you when you combat this, when you
Speaker 1: combat hate as well, it's the same thing, I think,
Speaker 1: and where we don't have to get into it all
Speaker 1: but around our conversations about Kanye's anti semitism and how
Speaker 1: to like properly and how to adequately combat it in
Speaker 1: order to shut it down, But how much do you engage?
Speaker 1: And that it's sticky because again, I think it's super
Speaker 1: reductive to be like all black people are this, all
Speaker 1: Jews are that, all Chinese Americans like just like it.
Speaker 1: You how do we push back against stereotypes while also
Speaker 1: understanding the like the heterogene when what's the word? Like
Speaker 1: just how um not homogeneous? Heterogeneous? I don't have words anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna a SMR every time I don't know
Speaker 1: my vote? Yeah, just how how like how much difference
Speaker 1: there is in all of these communities exactly? And I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the reasons why talking about it
Speaker 1: is so difficult, because it's like, how do you make
Speaker 1: room for the fact that no no group as a monolith.
Speaker 1: You know, we there are nuances and like like we're
Speaker 1: a gradient, like there's nuances in our communities, but we
Speaker 1: still need to I believe it's still like very important
Speaker 1: to have a clear united front against things like anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: And I mean this is like a tangent, but like
Speaker 1: with Kanye West, it troubles me that he can't see
Speaker 1: that like when someone is being and this is my opinion,
Speaker 1: when someone is being anti Semitic or you know, anti Asian, whatever,
Speaker 1: it is a hot skipping away from anti blackness. That
Speaker 1: ship is all linked and that train is never late.
Speaker 1: And so like, if you, as a black person, are
Speaker 1: engaging explicitly an anti semitism, do you not realize that
Speaker 1: you're creating the conditions for that ship to come back
Speaker 1: around on us. And like, all of our oppression is linked.
Speaker 1: I believe firmly that our liberation is linked. And you
Speaker 1: just got like when I see him doing that, I'm like,
Speaker 1: can you not see the way that you are setting
Speaker 1: yourself up to later be knocked down? People are gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh, we love that he's being anti Semitic. Good,
Speaker 1: good good, And you know that's just giving folks more
Speaker 1: thought or to slip in anti blackness. So like, what
Speaker 1: the funk are you doing? Yes, oh my god, go
Speaker 1: off and and like final, just like last thing on this,
Speaker 1: they're super linked. The whole Sorrows myth right Sorrows is
Speaker 1: a billionaire who is fill in the blank um helping
Speaker 1: BLM defund the police, creating thugs out of inner city
Speaker 1: black children. Like literally it's always linked. It's it's Jews
Speaker 1: run stuff. And the running stuff inherently means they're flooding
Speaker 1: our country with immigrants and they basically um help black
Speaker 1: people vote and or like flooding our like voters electoral
Speaker 1: system with like black votes, like Google straight up that
Speaker 1: they're the orchestrators of the people of color. So it's
Speaker 1: like so layered. Yeah, but it's again, I feel like
Speaker 1: we have this, particularly on social media, we have this
Speaker 1: climate that loves to flatten things out and strip things
Speaker 1: of nuance and context. And I don't think that we
Speaker 1: have I don't think that our platforms have the range
Speaker 1: to allow for discussing things in the way they actually
Speaker 1: need to be discussed, right Like social media platforms are
Speaker 1: incentivize to amplify the most insidiary inflammatory nuance, lacking bs,
Speaker 1: extremist stuff, and so I don't think our platforms are
Speaker 1: largest communication platforms are really equipped for the level of
Speaker 1: like conversation that we need to be having right now,
Speaker 1: and not at all. It is like, say something reductive,
Speaker 1: say it unapologetically and take out any kind of maybe
Speaker 1: could be leading to perhaps you know, and just end
Speaker 1: it with the period and you're done, and then you'll
Speaker 1: get a million retweets and that's yeah, that's what wins.
Speaker 1: People make money off of that, People get deals, and
Speaker 1: I don't care which side of the spectrum you're on.
Speaker 1: Just no room for nuanced, forgive no one, take no prisoners,
Speaker 1: cancel everybody, and or troll everybody, and you will win
Speaker 1: as social media. It's so funny that you put it
Speaker 1: this way. I miss, I might going off the rails here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. We can yeah, but you know we have
Speaker 1: to talk about women in elections, female candidates. Correct, But
Speaker 1: I just gonna say one thing like this is like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I find myself showing up
Speaker 1: less and less on social media platforms because I think
Speaker 1: that you're exactly right. It's not even definitely extremists. Right
Speaker 1: wing extremists are like the worst, are like the biggest
Speaker 1: bad actors, but it certainly they are not the only
Speaker 1: ones doing it. And I think even when it's not
Speaker 1: something that is like politically charged, like I don't know
Speaker 1: if you saw that woman who was tweeting about like,
Speaker 1: oh I sure love sitting in my garden and everybody
Speaker 1: was like boo, we hate who usedupid bitch? Like we
Speaker 1: are incentivized to be our worst selves, and our worst
Speaker 1: selves are what these algorithms amplify, and that has been
Speaker 1: determined by study after a study like, it's not your
Speaker 1: imagination when you bring hatefulness extremism. You know, two platforms,
Speaker 1: platforms a boost that when you show up with nuance
Speaker 1: or thoughtfulness, they do not. And so it's a real
Speaker 1: word tremity, like, hey, I really love my garden. Now
Speaker 1: funk your garden? Oh my god, how much do you
Speaker 1: want to it? How much water are you wasting in
Speaker 1: that beautiful garden of yours? You know that's it's always
Speaker 1: you cannot be positive, sable, it's insufferable. And if you
Speaker 1: are positive on like you know you do you take
Speaker 1: a cute selfie on Instagram, haters be on following you.
Speaker 1: Let me just be real, when you post out, you
Speaker 1: post something you look cute unfollowed. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: like I I think we're all just like really miserable
Speaker 1: and we're showing up with a lot of misery on
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And I've actually even heard people be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't bring your joy to social media. People will just
Speaker 1: find a way to shoot on it. Agreed to take
Speaker 1: that somewhere else, like your family. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit about what we've been seeing in terms
Speaker 1: of attacks on women of color and black women and
Speaker 1: when it comes to elections and hold collected office. So
Speaker 1: I want to get into a little bit of research first.
Speaker 1: I'll breathe through this, but there's actually quite a big
Speaker 1: body of work as of late around some of what
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about today. So in this the Internationals
Speaker 1: did a study that looked at abusive messages hurled at
Speaker 1: a multi racial group of members of parliament, and they
Speaker 1: found that Black Asian and minority ethnic women members of
Speaker 1: parliament are impacted far more than their white colleagues. The
Speaker 1: twenty black Asian and minority ethnic members of Parliament that
Speaker 1: they that they looked at received almost half of the
Speaker 1: abusive tweets, despite being almost eight times as many white
Speaker 1: members of parliament. In the study, uh they also examined
Speaker 1: abusive tweets targeted women journalists and politicians in both the
Speaker 1: United States and the United Kingdom and found that black
Speaker 1: women were eighty four percent more likely than white women
Speaker 1: to be mentioned in abusive tweets. Over in the United States,
Speaker 1: a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that
Speaker 1: women of color candidates are targeted by the right on
Speaker 1: social media at alarming rates. Abusive messages counted for more
Speaker 1: than fifteen percent of those directed at every female all
Speaker 1: maker analyze, compared to around five to ten of male candidates.
Speaker 1: Women of color are particularly likely to be targeted. Rep
Speaker 1: il Han Omar received the highest proportion of abusive messages
Speaker 1: of all candidates, and AOC received the highest ratio of
Speaker 1: abusive comments on Facebook. And this is like a specific
Speaker 1: thing to women when they looked at male UH elected
Speaker 1: officials who are people of colors, So like Corey Booker
Speaker 1: or Tim Scott, who are both black, they received similar
Speaker 1: levels of abuse to their white male candidates. However, the
Speaker 1: attacks against them were more likely to be about race.
Speaker 1: When you look at the way that men are targeted
Speaker 1: for you know, problematic or you know negative tweets and
Speaker 1: negative content, those tweets are much more likely to focus
Speaker 1: on policy, right, So, like, I don't like your position
Speaker 1: on this, I don't like your position on that. When
Speaker 1: it comes to women, it's much more exactly to be
Speaker 1: about their appearance or their general incompetence. Female Democrats received
Speaker 1: ten times more abusive comments and their male counterparts on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Republican women got more than twice as many abusive
Speaker 1: comments and Republican men and then lastly, the Center for
Speaker 1: Democracy and Technology looked at congressional candidates in the US
Speaker 1: and found that women of color candidates were the most
Speaker 1: ectly to be targeted with the posts that combined miss
Speaker 1: and disinformation and abuse. Women of color were at least
Speaker 1: five times more likely than other candidates to be targeted
Speaker 1: with tweets related to their identity and focus specifically on
Speaker 1: their gender and their race. UM, I have to ask you,
Speaker 1: does any of this surprise you? No, not at all,
Speaker 1: not not in the slightest. And this is why I
Speaker 1: always say I think it's important to harass Republican men
Speaker 1: based on their looks. I just you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't. I can't solve any of this.
Speaker 1: I can't solve sexism, patriarchy, white supremacy overnight. But I
Speaker 1: can troll Matt Gates for his five head or troll
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell for looking like an uncircumcised chode, you know,
Speaker 1: like I can. That's what I think we need to
Speaker 1: do more of, and that's how I want to level
Speaker 1: the playing field. I completely agree. The proudest moment I
Speaker 1: had in the last couple of months was that video
Speaker 1: of Ted Cruise at a Yankees game and then the
Speaker 1: crowd just screaming at him. Remember when Trump called your
Speaker 1: wife ugly fuck it? I was like, Oh, that's the
Speaker 1: America that I'm proud of, and she no, But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, Ted Cruise, I mean this is
Speaker 1: I used to get in trouble for when I had
Speaker 1: like a news comedy show on a J Plus. They
Speaker 1: were like, you should criticize Ted Cruise more on his look,
Speaker 1: I mean, sorry, more in his substance, And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he does look like he's holding a bunch of
Speaker 1: like little hatchlings of like baby salamanders in his mouth
Speaker 1: at all times, you know what I mean. He's just
Speaker 1: he looks like you know, and he himself looks like
Speaker 1: a bat. Like He's just I need to be able
Speaker 1: to say that in the same breath that I'm like yes,
Speaker 1: And he also demonizes immigrants and wants to you know,
Speaker 1: privatize medicare all those kinds of things. Two things can
Speaker 1: be true at once, But I always catch myself because
Speaker 1: of course I like to make fun of Marjorie Tayler Green,
Speaker 1: you know, um, but am I equally applying that critique
Speaker 1: to these other hateful bastards as well. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a great question. I feel like if the research has
Speaker 1: anything to be to be looked at like most people are.
Speaker 1: When they see a woman, it's like you're an ugly skank,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and when you see a man it's
Speaker 1: like it's I would like to see a world where,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that we're ever gonna get
Speaker 1: to a place where women are not insulted for their
Speaker 1: looks and things they can't control. Why why why can't
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz be take take one for his looks, you know,
Speaker 1: more than one preferably. And then I think there's always
Speaker 1: like Republican generally written large. If a woman is like
Speaker 1: made fun of, like Sarah how Colbe Sanders um at
Speaker 1: the White House Press Correspondence Dinner by Michelle Wolf, suddenly
Speaker 1: they're like, you mean, do that, but AOC is a
Speaker 1: Latino with a big gass, and we all know that
Speaker 1: she's having anchor babies, you know, like whatever in the
Speaker 1: same breath, and they'll be like, how dare you make
Speaker 1: fun of Sarah copy Sanders his eyeshadow. She's just a woman.
Speaker 1: But they do not apply that at all. Obviously the
Speaker 1: other side. I mean, come on, and this is why,
Speaker 1: like AOC when she openly speaks about how she gets
Speaker 1: these death threats that are very sexual in nature and
Speaker 1: also like really charged with that that disgusting like amalgamation
Speaker 1: of both being attracted to and then also hating hatefulness
Speaker 1: towards her, the vin Tucker Carlson will straight up a
Speaker 1: dedicated half an hour segment to be like, Oh, do
Speaker 1: you think people want to poke you? I mean, we
Speaker 1: do want to poke you, but we don't what we do.
Speaker 1: But whatever you're growsing you we girl that grows like
Speaker 1: he it's and you're like, you're proving our point, homie.
Speaker 1: Are you suggesting that these people are disingenuous? Yeah, Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: I mean I could do a whole episode on the
Speaker 1: way that he coordinates these attacks on women. And then
Speaker 1: when the women are like actually, like when they just
Speaker 1: are honest about them, he's like, oh, like, it's exactly
Speaker 1: what you said. And it's so clear that everyone knows
Speaker 1: what's going on. But the only reason that he's able
Speaker 1: to get away with minimizing what we can all see
Speaker 1: is these like super weird, sexually charged attacks is because
Speaker 1: he's not we're not we're not talking honestly about them
Speaker 1: as a society, Like like the women who are targeted
Speaker 1: aren't really able to speak about them openly, and when
Speaker 1: they do, their attacked, and so it's allows for this
Speaker 1: vibe or like it's happening, we all see it happening,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about it happening. People like Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: can be actively engaged in it happening and like do
Speaker 1: make it happen and then go on TV and be
Speaker 1: like what are you talking about? And you know exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus doesn't exist, but like make sure to put
Speaker 1: the cookies out every single Christmas. Like it's just like
Speaker 1: you're straight up talking, you're make You're willing it into existence.
Speaker 1: And AOC to her credit and Ilhano mar to a
Speaker 1: lesser extent, I think obviously being a Muslim American woman
Speaker 1: like she is targeted because of that as well wearing
Speaker 1: a job, but AOC is actually able to talk about
Speaker 1: it and be like, yo, there, it is sexual in
Speaker 1: nature and that doesn't mean that I'm thirsty for that
Speaker 1: attention at all. And then Republicans are like, oh, she's
Speaker 1: like no, and I think that's because we are definitely
Speaker 1: taught to like when there is a tinge of like,
Speaker 1: and especially if someone is attractive, he's attractive, you know,
Speaker 1: we're taught to like not um or as women online
Speaker 1: like m hmm. Don't don't discuss or bring up the
Speaker 1: fact that someone is targeting you in a sexual manner,
Speaker 1: because it will almost feel like you're bringing it on
Speaker 1: yourself because you're left, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And the are you wearing type of way? I know
Speaker 1: exactly what you mean, where it's this weird trap of
Speaker 1: like if you even acknowledge the fact that it's happening,
Speaker 1: the idea, the impression is that you're playing into it,
Speaker 1: or that maybe you want it, or it's a two
Speaker 1: way street, or like you're you're you're enticing it in
Speaker 1: some way, and so that it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why talking about harassment, especially when it's kind of sexually
Speaker 1: charged or sexually tinged, is so difficult because nobody wants
Speaker 1: this insinuation that you're that you're getting off on it
Speaker 1: or inviting it or wanting it. But I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to talk about, but I think it's especially
Speaker 1: true when you're talking about like young conventionally attractive women.
Speaker 1: I think that like men does don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: It's like they look like they get can they like
Speaker 1: they hate them, but they're aroused. It's like, I think
Speaker 1: something happens where they don't know how to handle it.
Speaker 1: It comes out as this like incredibly weird, sexually tinged harassment,
Speaker 1: And if she even acknowledges the reality of it, then
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, well, she must want it, she likes
Speaker 1: the attention. Like and I think it really goes back
Speaker 1: to this idea that I want to combat in this
Speaker 1: episode that like women who run for public office or
Speaker 1: women who choose to be visible. So even if you're
Speaker 1: not running for public office, if you are an activist,
Speaker 1: or if you are a pundit, or you're somebody who
Speaker 1: you know builds a platform on Twitter, because you are
Speaker 1: building up this profile, Like I feel like that comes
Speaker 1: along with a kind of suspicion that you are a
Speaker 1: woman who wants power. You're a woman who wants visibility.
Speaker 1: You're a woman who wants eyes on her. Therefore you
Speaker 1: deserve whatever you get. It comes with it comes with
Speaker 1: the territory of showing up in that way and if
Speaker 1: you did, if you didn't really want that kind of sexualized,
Speaker 1: charred harassment and attention, you would be in the shadows.
Speaker 1: You would not be a public figure, you would not
Speaker 1: be running for office, you would be completely offline. If
Speaker 1: it's no one, no one applies that. No one applies
Speaker 1: that to men. Although we all know Ted Cruz very
Speaker 1: much gets off on being trolled, so she actually is
Speaker 1: aroused and is inviting it and wants you to dunk
Speaker 1: on him. It gets him whoa things that I don't
Speaker 1: want to imagine. So everyone just know that every time
Speaker 1: you're gonna tweet, bagoted Cruise or make fun of him,
Speaker 1: that it only makes him stronger, you know where. So yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah. So one of the important things to
Speaker 1: remember is that the point of all of this, all
Speaker 1: of these like racist, sexist attacks on women and women
Speaker 1: of color in the public eye. It's it's particularly for
Speaker 1: who are running for office or holding an elected office.
Speaker 1: It's meant to take all of the oxygen out of
Speaker 1: the room and have the thing that takes up the
Speaker 1: most base, be the racism or the sexism or the
Speaker 1: sexualization or whatever. And a great example is Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Now I should say, I am no big fan of
Speaker 1: Harris when she was running for president. I had major
Speaker 1: issues with her record, you know. But when she was
Speaker 1: named as Biden's vice presidential pick, she based a way
Speaker 1: aave of like, racist, misogynistic, sexually charged attacks, including these
Speaker 1: like explicit and unplicit suggestions that she is untrustworthy, too emotional,
Speaker 1: or unqualified, according to The New York Times false. And
Speaker 1: then this leading information about Harris spiked online on on
Speaker 1: TV as soon as she was named as the vice
Speaker 1: presidential pick. The activity jumped from two dozen mentions per
Speaker 1: hour during the recent week to over three thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred per hour when she was named. This is according
Speaker 1: to a company called Signal And so there's something very
Speaker 1: specific about the attacks on her. I'm gonna put a
Speaker 1: link in the chat to an image or actually, Sophie's
Speaker 1: got it, super producer, So what tell me? Tell me
Speaker 1: what your reaction to this image here? It's pretty upsetting,
Speaker 1: h is those the legs? Those are those are white
Speaker 1: women legs. Oh, it's a very sloppy photo, I should
Speaker 1: probably describe it's a very spy photoshop job of Harris
Speaker 1: on her back with a pair of obviously like white
Speaker 1: women's legs in heels up. It says, get her done, Kamala,
Speaker 1: heals up Harris for the people. She's got a little
Speaker 1: speech bubble where she is saying to be VP. Sure
Speaker 1: I will. And so the insinuation is that she is
Speaker 1: having sex with someone in order to become the vice
Speaker 1: presidential pick. Yeah, it's a terrible photoshop job. It's clearly
Speaker 1: the legs of a white woman. It's like not she
Speaker 1: doesn't even wear shoes like that. Um, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but I think more than that. I mean, obviously those
Speaker 1: shoes look really painful number one to walk in. But
Speaker 1: more than that, it is very jarring to see someone,
Speaker 1: a public figure who is deserving of a minimal amount
Speaker 1: of respect, to be portrayed in this way. Um, so disgustingly.
Speaker 1: And um it's the same when like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was no big fan of Hillary Clinton, but watching seeing
Speaker 1: all those shirts that are like you know, Hillary swallows,
Speaker 1: like that shirt people are selling, Like what the fuck
Speaker 1: you know, like Hillary, why why are you selling this?
Speaker 1: Like I understand, like go back to lock her up?
Speaker 1: And this is it's that same thing, like no matter
Speaker 1: how far you get, we can always photos like we're
Speaker 1: always imagining you like fucking your way to the top,
Speaker 1: Like we're all be your only reduced to the fact
Speaker 1: that you are a woman. Exact criticize her record, this
Speaker 1: is like so juvenile and disgusting, right, and so like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's one of those things. So, so
Speaker 1: this is the common trope with Harris, Like if you
Speaker 1: google the phrase heels up Harris, that was like a
Speaker 1: common attack on her, is that this idea that she
Speaker 1: slept quote slipt her way to the top. And it's
Speaker 1: a bit like the attacks on Ghostbusters that we talked
Speaker 1: about last episode, where the whole conversation gets flattened out
Speaker 1: and becomes people taking sides and nobody is just like
Speaker 1: talking about the merit of the movie, right, And so
Speaker 1: when it comes to Harris, you know, people are lobbying
Speaker 1: these incredible, incredibly like set realized attacks on her because
Speaker 1: she is a woman of color, and then people watching
Speaker 1: they I kind of understandably feel like they have to
Speaker 1: support her. And so Harris has an incredibly like robust
Speaker 1: online network of supporters who will like pervently pushed back
Speaker 1: against any and all criticisms of her online. And so
Speaker 1: the ability to just have an honest, accurate conversation about
Speaker 1: her record, her merit, her acts, her actual actions gets
Speaker 1: totally lost in the noise intention. And then it's I
Speaker 1: think precisely the point nobody can talk about her actual record,
Speaker 1: whether or not she's fit for office whatever, when you
Speaker 1: introduce these kinds of like sexist, racist, gross attacks. And
Speaker 1: so I would say, like, even if you're somebody who
Speaker 1: you know doesn't like Harris, doesn't think that she is,
Speaker 1: you know, should have didn't think she made it a president,
Speaker 1: doesn't make she makes a good vice presidential candidate, I
Speaker 1: feel like you should be invested in making sure the
Speaker 1: conversation does not rely and traffic in these sexist smears
Speaker 1: and tropes, because you should want to be having space
Speaker 1: to talk about her actual record. But when these are
Speaker 1: introduced into the conversation, we don't really get that. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at how effectively it worked in twenty six seen
Speaker 1: against Hillary Clinton. As I was mentioning before, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is again absent of like put the record aside.
Speaker 1: We've seen the way women in public spaces have been
Speaker 1: completely torn down. And this is why I mean, I
Speaker 1: will say we can't have nice things, and by nice things,
Speaker 1: I mean a first female president a um, you know,
Speaker 1: vice president of color, like I mean, which we do have,
Speaker 1: but like by you know, it's a thin we're we're
Speaker 1: we're treading very lightly here. And if Kamala Harris does
Speaker 1: run for president one day again, this will only get
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse and focus on all side
Speaker 1: of the political spectrum. And I'm a huge Bernie bro
Speaker 1: Like I do not like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: for that matter, but my god, I understand how these
Speaker 1: things are weaponized against them to tear them down. And
Speaker 1: what's fucked is that it is conflated with their record
Speaker 1: rather than separated. It is automatically conflated so that people
Speaker 1: who whose politics I disagree with, you know, maybe someone
Speaker 1: from the k hive who's like, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we need more cops like kamally like like that
Speaker 1: that I will get accused of racism or sexism when
Speaker 1: I'm bringing up a substantive point um. And that is
Speaker 1: the way that I think identity politics can be weaponized
Speaker 1: in a cynical and way by liberals. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I find myself, it's I find myself having to defend women,
Speaker 1: particularly women of color whose politics I don't align with
Speaker 1: Time and time again where I'm like, how can we
Speaker 1: just talk about but they're so well, some of these people,
Speaker 1: there's so much to dislike, there's so much to pull apart.
Speaker 1: We really don't have to talk about the way she looks.
Speaker 1: We really don't have to rely on like sexist tropes
Speaker 1: about any of this. Like there's for a lot of
Speaker 1: these people, they're so much substance there to talk about.
Speaker 1: Why are you cheapening the conversation by introducing this stuff?
Speaker 1: And we it's like, if you if you're someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't like these figures, you should be investing and having
Speaker 1: a real conversation about their actual records so that like
Speaker 1: we can actually air it out when you introduce these
Speaker 1: kinds of like this garbage. People aren't doing that because
Speaker 1: that is like the point of these attacks. They just
Speaker 1: take up so much room and then you're defending it,
Speaker 1: and then and then people are defending them, and like
Speaker 1: you lose, you lose the thread of like well what
Speaker 1: do we act like what is this person's actual record?
Speaker 1: What is our actual merit? Completely so I obviously had
Speaker 1: a ton to say about this topic, so much that
Speaker 1: we actually needed to do an additional episode. So this
Speaker 1: is just part one of Francesca, Sophie and My exploration
Speaker 1: into the ways that online abuse and harassment can keep
Speaker 1: women out of elected office, create barriers to their success
Speaker 1: once they get there, and overall crtail speech and civic participation.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking more in depth about specific women of
Speaker 1: their political candidates and the campaigns of harassment that they
Speaker 1: had to endure once they got into public office. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, here's Baltimore States Attorney Marylyn Moseby talking about
Speaker 1: her experience as a black woman and left official. You know,
Speaker 1: it can be overwhelming, and I think my kids more recently,
Speaker 1: I would say, in the past year or so, I
Speaker 1: have seen me understress. And so for the first time,
Speaker 1: my baby said, Mommy, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: politician anymore. And I'm like, why, why don't you want
Speaker 1: to be a politician? Like what? What? Now? She's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want them to treat me the way he
Speaker 1: treat you. So that brought it tear to my eye.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I'm like, baby, they will only
Speaker 1: treat you like that when you stand for what's right,
Speaker 1: and that's what comes with trying to change systems and
Speaker 1: if mommy is gonna be fine. But this this comes
Speaker 1: with the territory. You have to have courage enough to
Speaker 1: know that you're doing the right thing. As long as
Speaker 1: you're doing the right thing, people are always going to
Speaker 1: come for you. Not only are these stories heartbreaking, but
Speaker 1: they also demonstrate how online harassment and abuse keeps us
Speaker 1: from having the healthy democracy that we deserve. There is
Speaker 1: so much to say about this, so please, please please
Speaker 1: tune in to part two of our exploration of black
Speaker 1: women political candidates, online harassment and abuse and why it's
Speaker 1: the problem for all of us. Internet Hate Machine is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. More podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.