Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Last week, Representative Paul Gosar tweeted an anime video depiction
Speaker 1: of him killing his colleague, Representative Alexandria Acasio Cortes. Now,
Speaker 1: this is pretty clearly unacceptable. It's against Twitter's terms of service.
Speaker 1: And if I tweeted a video of myself murdering a coworker,
Speaker 1: not only would I be fired, I'd probably beginning a
Speaker 1: visit from law enforcement. Twitter removed the tweet, but did
Speaker 1: not kick Gosar off the platform, and after he was
Speaker 1: censured and stripped of his two committee assignments by a
Speaker 1: vote of two to two of seven for tweeting the video,
Speaker 1: he retweeted it because he doesn't care women of color
Speaker 1: like AOC, they disproportionate levels of harassment, disinformation, and threats online,
Speaker 1: and this kind of abuse impacts us all because we're
Speaker 1: not able to have a healthy functioning toocracy unless everyone
Speaker 1: is able to fully participate. Let's revisit this episode that
Speaker 1: originally aired in February after AOC faced attacks online because
Speaker 1: she shared her experience of the insurrection to really hear
Speaker 1: the toll that harassment takes on women of color in
Speaker 1: the public eye. If you were online at all last week,
Speaker 1: you probably saw a Representative Alexandria Acazio Cortes used Instagram
Speaker 1: Live to get the harrowing account of what she experienced
Speaker 1: from inside the Capitol complex during the insurrection on the Capitol.
Speaker 1: In this account, she also shared that, like so many
Speaker 1: of us, she is a survivor of sexual violence. Now
Speaker 1: this triggered a real time tsunami of disinformation. Right wing
Speaker 1: figures like Representative Nancy Mace and Jack Possabik and others
Speaker 1: falsely accused AOC of not really being at the Capitol
Speaker 1: at all or exaggerating her claims. So it's true. While
Speaker 1: she was not in the main domed Capitol building, that
Speaker 1: building that you think of when you picture the capital
Speaker 1: on your head when rioters breached it, she also never
Speaker 1: claim to be She accurately said that she was in
Speaker 1: the Cannon House office building, which is part of the
Speaker 1: Capital complex and is connected to the main building by tunnels.
Speaker 1: Here's what she said on Instagram. I hide back in
Speaker 1: um in the bathroom behind the door, and then I
Speaker 1: just start to hear these yells of where is she?
Speaker 1: Where is she? And I just thought to myself, they
Speaker 1: got inside. It felt like my brain was able to
Speaker 1: have so many thoughts in that moment. So AOC never
Speaker 1: said that rioters were in her hallway. That's a claim
Speaker 1: she never made, But that didn't stop Nancy Mas from tweeting,
Speaker 1: I'm two doors down from AOC and no insurrection has
Speaker 1: stormed our hallway, even though ANOC never said they did. Now,
Speaker 1: in AOC's Instagram live, she recounted hearing somebody bang on
Speaker 1: her office door, coming to her office and say where
Speaker 1: is she. At the time, she was afraid that rioters
Speaker 1: had found her, but she later realized this person was
Speaker 1: a Capitol Police officer who was there to help her. Now,
Speaker 1: after this, we saw really ugly trends on Twitter like
Speaker 1: hashtag AOC lied and hashtag Alexandria Occasio Smalett comparing her
Speaker 1: to Jusie Smalllett to suggest that she was making up
Speaker 1: her account, despite it being corroborated by multiple people like
Speaker 1: Representative Katie Porter and Bernie Sanders, aid Ari Rabin, So
Speaker 1: this is actually a really good example of how disinformation
Speaker 1: works in real time. This complete distortion of what AOC
Speaker 1: said has become part of the public dialogue despite it
Speaker 1: being based on lies. After this, AOC tweeted, the sad
Speaker 1: thing about disinformation is that once the truth comes out,
Speaker 1: the damage has already been done. People have already been misled,
Speaker 1: radicalized and believe lies to the point where their hatred
Speaker 1: is brewed to violence. That's what led to the six
Speaker 1: and that's what's happening now. And you know what she's right.
Speaker 1: After she bravely shared her story of what happened at
Speaker 1: the Capitol and connected it to being us her viber
Speaker 1: of sexual assault, she faced a coordinated public disinformation campaign
Speaker 1: and sadly, this is not an isolated thing for women
Speaker 1: of color in the public political eye. Leslie mac is
Speaker 1: a prominent digital activists, an organizer who I work with
Speaker 1: a ultraviolet where we create resources to curb sexist, racist disinformation,
Speaker 1: like our media guy that you can find on the
Speaker 1: show description. And sadly, Leslie really knows what it's like
Speaker 1: to face these kinds of attacks online. You're a long
Speaker 1: time digital organizer, activists, someone who spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time making the world a better place via the Internet.
Speaker 1: How did you get into this work. Tell me about
Speaker 1: your role in this work. Yeah, my roles work started
Speaker 1: in the digital space. UM in twenty uh fourteen, I
Speaker 1: started organizing faith spaces online after I joined Twitter. I
Speaker 1: had been in Twitter for like two thousand eight or something,
Speaker 1: which seems like ages ago. UM, and I had started
Speaker 1: doing some legislative organizing that way. We were working in
Speaker 1: New Jersey to ban the box, UM and also some
Speaker 1: bail reform UM initiatives and so a lot of that.
Speaker 1: My my initial digital organizing work was around legislative work,
Speaker 1: which was really interesting and UM at the time a
Speaker 1: little cutting edge. Not a lot of folks were doing it,
Speaker 1: but we kind of dipped our toes in and started
Speaker 1: organizing folks online. And then UM, after Mike Brown was murdered,
Speaker 1: UM feminist Jones had UM kind of put this call
Speaker 1: out on from Twitter to say, hey, what would you
Speaker 1: be interested in hosting a vigil in your city this week?
Speaker 1: And I was like, sure, I could do one in Philly.
Speaker 1: And I I call that the you know, the moment
Speaker 1: that the full digital organizer that is Leslie Mac was born.
Speaker 1: So that that's where I started out, was organizing that
Speaker 1: first vigil in Philadelphia UM the national moment of silence,
Speaker 1: and I guess I liked it because I just kept ongoing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're kind of a prolific digital organizer. You're someone who
Speaker 1: I feel is one. It was one of the sort
Speaker 1: of when I think about some of the foundational black
Speaker 1: feminists who were showing up online, I definitely think about you,
Speaker 1: and you know, full disclosure, you and I worked together
Speaker 1: UM at Ultra Violet. And so yesterday was kind of
Speaker 1: a a long wild day for folks who are online
Speaker 1: and in feminist spaces online because we saw AOC really
Speaker 1: being at the center of this coordinated right wing disinformation
Speaker 1: campaign against her after she really bravely shared her story
Speaker 1: about what happened in the insurrection on January six and
Speaker 1: her own personal story as a survivor of sexual violence.
Speaker 1: And so my first question for you is how do
Speaker 1: you see disinformation and abuse being linked? Well, they're linked,
Speaker 1: you know, on two on two levels. And I was
Speaker 1: talking about this with you yesterday, which is one is
Speaker 1: UM at the personal level, which is that abusers in
Speaker 1: our real lives are personal lives, use disinformation against us,
Speaker 1: right so they tell us lies about ourselves about the
Speaker 1: world that nobody will love us and that that's a
Speaker 1: tool that they utilize at the personal level. And what
Speaker 1: we're watching is UM public abusers, right, people that are
Speaker 1: abusing the system, people that are abusing UM, people within it,
Speaker 1: UM using disinformation for that same purpose, which is to
Speaker 1: um degrade, denigrade, and deny the experiences, real life experiences
Speaker 1: of marginalized people. So watching that play out with AOC,
Speaker 1: you know, she bravely UM not only shared her story,
Speaker 1: but she went personally one to one to the people,
Speaker 1: which I think this is such a digital story in
Speaker 1: and of itself, UM that she took to I G
Speaker 1: live to UM have this hour long conversation, and the
Speaker 1: way I saw it play out, I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: know she was live until I saw on Twitter people
Speaker 1: were tweeting about it and they were like, Wow, AOC
Speaker 1: is doing x y Z And I said, oh, let me,
Speaker 1: let me go over to UM I G and watch her.
Speaker 1: So I was watching her UM, and while that was happening,
Speaker 1: somebody was starting a chat clubhouse room to talk about it,
Speaker 1: to debriefit. UM shout out to Tracy Cord and then
Speaker 1: as I was watching it, it said, O, Katie Porter's
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about this I G Live on MSNBC shortly.
Speaker 1: So it was this moment of like, whoa, all of
Speaker 1: this digital stuff was happening. It was pinging and and
Speaker 1: and UM creating waves all over the place. And and
Speaker 1: then subsequently what that's what we watched was the abusers
Speaker 1: that UM AOC was naming in her I G Live namely,
Speaker 1: UH folks like Marjorie Taylor Green and really all the
Speaker 1: insurrectionists that and seditionists, UM electives that UM supported UM
Speaker 1: the coup on on January six, and they've subsequently now
Speaker 1: tried to discount her personal experience in this harrowing moment.
Speaker 1: And it's been wild to watch people just blatantly lie.
Speaker 1: You know. One of her fellow congress uh uh congress
Speaker 1: people said, oh, I'm I'm, I was too. I'm two
Speaker 1: dolls two doors down from her, and there were knows
Speaker 1: nobody in the hallway. And then we find out that
Speaker 1: the person evacuated before anything happened. There's the level of
Speaker 1: disinformation is really disturbing to watch in real time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is completely like a coordinated at the text you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Nancy Maates from South Carolina, So she tweeted
Speaker 1: yesterday I'm two doors down from an oblec and no
Speaker 1: insurrection has stormed our hallway. But that day, she herself
Speaker 1: tweeted on January six, that she was being evacuated because
Speaker 1: of this threat. You know, she she described it as
Speaker 1: quote a nearby threat. Um. She later did an interview,
Speaker 1: I think, on Good Morning America where she said that
Speaker 1: she was so frightened by what happened that she her
Speaker 1: she stayed overnight in her office, she was working, you know,
Speaker 1: her motherly instincts kicked in, and that she was so
Speaker 1: afraid for her life that she was thinking about bringing
Speaker 1: a gun with her to Capitol Hill from now on
Speaker 1: because she was so afraid. And so that's how she
Speaker 1: talked about it right after it happened. And so it's
Speaker 1: very telling that now weeks later, after aoc A, Saenti
Speaker 1: really says the same thing that I was afraid for
Speaker 1: my life. Um, somebody knocked on the door, and I
Speaker 1: was afraid for my life. She's saying that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really interesting how you see the
Speaker 1: way that this is coordinated. You know, we saw some
Speaker 1: another big account on the right tweeting a map with
Speaker 1: arrows trying to indicate that AOC was not, you know,
Speaker 1: not in the capital when folk storm and a see
Speaker 1: yourself replied and said, your arrows are wrong. And AOC
Speaker 1: had a really good tweet where she talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that disinformation. One of the ways that it plays
Speaker 1: out is that once it's out there in the public narrative,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if it's not based in reality or
Speaker 1: if it's an outright fabrication. That becomes part of the
Speaker 1: narrative for so many people in a way that you
Speaker 1: can almost never kind of correct. Yeah, you never can
Speaker 1: pull it back once once the cats out of the
Speaker 1: bag with disinformation, and it also gets spread in such
Speaker 1: innocuous ways. Um, it just becomes fact, and it happens
Speaker 1: so quickly it's really an impossible thing to to corral
Speaker 1: back in. One other thing I'd mentioned is that even
Speaker 1: you know, AOC herself never said insurrection is stormed there
Speaker 1: that hallway. What she said was somebody was walking down
Speaker 1: there and she was afraid of who it was. So
Speaker 1: even in the um disinformation, they were already twisting the
Speaker 1: things that AOC said and saying things that she she
Speaker 1: never said at all. And so the levels of lies right,
Speaker 1: um start to compound themselves. They've misinterpreted what AOC said
Speaker 1: at the start. Then they're calling her a liar erroneously,
Speaker 1: and now we have, you know, these ridiculous hashtags UM
Speaker 1: that are you know, attempting to discredit Alexandria and and
Speaker 1: you know the real obvious pain that she she was in.
Speaker 1: And and it's interesting because nobody's discounting Katie Porter's UM account.
Speaker 1: So she also gave a very similar account, talked about
Speaker 1: when Alexandra was in her office and what happened in there.
Speaker 1: She was opening up door and and I was like,
Speaker 1: can I help you? Like, what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: And she said, I'm looking for where I'm going to hide.
Speaker 1: And the thing that will always stay with me was
Speaker 1: when she said, I just hope I get to be
Speaker 1: a mom. I hope I don't die today. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: to watch that two people can talk about an incident,
Speaker 1: that their stories match up exactly the same, but only
Speaker 1: one is targeted for for disinformation. That That's what tells
Speaker 1: me it's coordinated, it's deliberate, and it's um um and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be specific to individuals. It's not happenstance. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean that drives with everything that we know from
Speaker 1: the research. We know disinformation is worse for women of
Speaker 1: color in politics. A report from the Institute for Strategic
Speaker 1: Diet a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue reveals
Speaker 1: that women of color candidates and political and political officials
Speaker 1: are targeted on the right but on social media at
Speaker 1: alarming rate. So this this report found that women of
Speaker 1: color were particularly likely to be targeted. Um elon Omar
Speaker 1: received the highest proportion three percent of abusive messages of
Speaker 1: all the candidates and their studies, and AOC received the
Speaker 1: highest ratio of abusive comments on Facebook. So you know,
Speaker 1: we know, you know, it's completely jives with this research
Speaker 1: that Katie Porter, her testimony, her her sharing her story
Speaker 1: would not be picked apart and sort of targeted for
Speaker 1: this kind of coordinated disinformation campaign in the same way
Speaker 1: that someone like AOC would be. So one question I
Speaker 1: have for you is why do you think that women
Speaker 1: of color are such bigger targets for this kind of
Speaker 1: disinformation online? Yeah, I mean I think we're bigger targets
Speaker 1: in general, UM and especially for our elected UM women
Speaker 1: of color because we get shipped done, and we really
Speaker 1: are there to stand in the gap for UM. Those
Speaker 1: that are marginalized right in ways that are white counterparts
Speaker 1: are not UM. So off the bat, we're all already
Speaker 1: facing UM some some pushback to the work that we
Speaker 1: want to do in the world, and whether that's in
Speaker 1: political spaces or wherever. UM. The other side of that
Speaker 1: is that we're we're easy targets, which is which means
Speaker 1: that somebody attacking Katie Porter is going to be seen
Speaker 1: as mean. UM, They're going to be seen is not nice.
Speaker 1: But somebody attacking a woman of color, it becomes something
Speaker 1: so it's so okay, And then the pylonic occurs and
Speaker 1: people are waiting, are just waiting for opportunities to attack
Speaker 1: woman of color. And and this is something that you know,
Speaker 1: you and I've been dealing with in digital spaces for
Speaker 1: you know, a decade plus now, so it's not UM news.
Speaker 1: But I think those two things or why we become
Speaker 1: such lightning rods. I mean, the goal is to silence us.
Speaker 1: The goal is to get us out of positions of power.
Speaker 1: The goal is to make UM the kinds of changes
Speaker 1: that we are collectively and individually pushed for, not reality.
Speaker 1: And so starting with attacking woman of color, that's like
Speaker 1: the that's the front line of that of that a pushback.
Speaker 1: What you just said completely jives with what you know
Speaker 1: about disinformation, right, Like one of the points of disinformation
Speaker 1: is to silence people, Right, So I think at disinformers,
Speaker 1: they don't want women of color to be putting their
Speaker 1: ideas out into the world, to be creating the kind
Speaker 1: of changes that they want to be responsible for in
Speaker 1: the world. And so these kinds of really scary, coordinated
Speaker 1: disinformation attacks are meant to have a chilling effect on
Speaker 1: their targets. And so they're meant to make AOC and
Speaker 1: women who aspire to be like her, other women of
Speaker 1: color who might want to be activists, might want to
Speaker 1: be involved in politics, or might just want to put
Speaker 1: their ideas about these things into the world via Twitter
Speaker 1: or social media. It's meant to make these people feel
Speaker 1: so afraid and be so fearful that this kind of
Speaker 1: thing is going to happen to them that they just stop.
Speaker 1: They don't put their opinions out into the world, they
Speaker 1: don't try to shape the world. They don't they stop
Speaker 1: with their activism online. And I think, you know, when
Speaker 1: we have conversations about disinformation, they often turn into conversations
Speaker 1: about free speech, and we need to be talking about
Speaker 1: the ways that this is shut It an attempt to
Speaker 1: shut down free speech and to make it so that
Speaker 1: people don't feel comfortable engaging in public discourse. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: it's so you know, the thing that has been hitting
Speaker 1: me so much is how normalized, you know, these types
Speaker 1: of attacks against women of color elected officials have become. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I was listening to Rashida to leave from
Speaker 1: the floor last night UM and the hearing around stripping
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green's UM committee assignments, and she said, I
Speaker 1: wanted to go last because I knew it was gonna
Speaker 1: be hard for me to talk about it. And she
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that her first day on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: she hadn't even been sworn in yet, and they there
Speaker 1: was already a death threat against her, serious enough that
Speaker 1: the FBI had to come and pull her aside. It
Speaker 1: was her first one, not even sworn in yet, first
Speaker 1: day in DC, and she said she was paralyzed, and
Speaker 1: everyone after that paralyzed. One mentioned her son. You know,
Speaker 1: she really talked about the trauma of it. And her
Speaker 1: team had to decide to kind of shield her from
Speaker 1: it moving forward because they recognized how it paralyzed her.
Speaker 1: And she said, when she saw what was happening on
Speaker 1: January six, the things she thought was thank God, thank allah,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not there, um, because she knew that
Speaker 1: she would be a direct target as well. And So
Speaker 1: when we think about, you know, so many, so much
Speaker 1: work that's been going into getting more women of color
Speaker 1: to run for office, getting more when women of color elected,
Speaker 1: the flip side of that is we do not have
Speaker 1: systems set up to actually hold the space that women
Speaker 1: of color UM, that that serve UM in that way,
Speaker 1: to hold them in the trauma that is sure to follow.
Speaker 1: And and the other thing I want to bring to
Speaker 1: attention is that are our decades of ignoring this kind
Speaker 1: of violence and digital spaces is why we're seeing it
Speaker 1: accepted UM in real world spaces. There's a direct correlation
Speaker 1: between all of the work that we have been doing
Speaker 1: UM in digital spaces to to throwing up these red
Speaker 1: flags for so so long. I know you had sharene
Speaker 1: on the on the podcast a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, just she's she's amazing and her
Speaker 1: groundbreaking work to just point out that Nope, this is
Speaker 1: not just uh general harassment, it's very specific, it's very targeted,
Speaker 1: and it's meant to silence women of color. All of
Speaker 1: that is now in the in in in the real world,
Speaker 1: and it it became normalized in digital spaces. And that's
Speaker 1: the danger. When things become normalized in digital spaces, it
Speaker 1: means they're going to be acceptable outside of digital spaces.
Speaker 1: There's no barrier between the two. We are living beyond
Speaker 1: the digital age. There's a complete melding of digital life
Speaker 1: and quote unquote real life. That means that anything we
Speaker 1: we find acceptable or or treat as acceptable online become
Speaker 1: the same in real world. A very short time, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break enter back. One thing that I
Speaker 1: wish that people understood is that what happens digitally and
Speaker 1: what happens in the real world, those two things are
Speaker 1: not distinct. And I think for so long, and I
Speaker 1: think we're starting to see that. You know, the insurrection
Speaker 1: was one way that I think that folks who were
Speaker 1: unwilling to see this maybe are like, oh, I think
Speaker 1: that perhaps what happens online does have real world impact.
Speaker 1: But for so long when it was a lot of
Speaker 1: women and women of color and black women online who
Speaker 1: were saying, hey, we're being harassed, Hey, this is happening
Speaker 1: to us, and no one was listening. I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why that was minimized is because it
Speaker 1: was happening quote unquote just online, and the perception that
Speaker 1: you could just step away from your computer or turn
Speaker 1: off your computer or get off social media and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be happening anymore, completely completely divorced from the reality
Speaker 1: that if it's out there in the ether happening online,
Speaker 1: it's out there in the real world. Right, these words,
Speaker 1: these worlds are not so distinct and so separate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you think of you, I know, I think
Speaker 1: if you think of this, info at some point is
Speaker 1: an unsharpened pencil, right, just the thing UM can't do
Speaker 1: very much, but it is. It is a tool. I
Speaker 1: would say that that what happened was it was sharpened
Speaker 1: against women of color, It was sharpened against I just
Speaker 1: think back to some of the early um moments of
Speaker 1: dis info that I remember, like gamer Gate is a
Speaker 1: that that entire thing started with disinfo, and so the
Speaker 1: tool of disinformation was sharpened on all of our pain
Speaker 1: and all of the attacks that came against us. It
Speaker 1: was sharpened, it was sharpened, and it was perfected. UM.
Speaker 1: And so now that it's being used to great effect
Speaker 1: across the board, not just directed at us, but directed
Speaker 1: at government generally speaking, directed at you know, misinformation and elections,
Speaker 1: miss disinformation in so many sectors, um, even around COVID nineteen. Um,
Speaker 1: it's wild because you know we are. I wrote an
Speaker 1: article a couple of for b y P One Dred
Speaker 1: like two years ago, and I think I called it
Speaker 1: something like black women, um, always playing, always cast in
Speaker 1: the role of Cassandra, and and the piece was really
Speaker 1: just like, we're really tired of not being able to
Speaker 1: see the future telling you what's going to happen, and
Speaker 1: nobody listening to us. Uh. It gets exhausting, right. I
Speaker 1: do feel like we have this this like narrative of
Speaker 1: like trust black women, listen to black women. And obviously
Speaker 1: I have a shirt that says that, Obviously I agree
Speaker 1: with that, but we also have to have a very
Speaker 1: real conversation about what happens when you're expected to be
Speaker 1: the person who can see in the crystal ball and
Speaker 1: warn everybody time and time and time again. And I
Speaker 1: think you know, you and I had a good conversation
Speaker 1: about this moment regarding AOC but also disinformation kind of
Speaker 1: writ large. And I do think like this is a
Speaker 1: moment where we can have a reckoning or a hard
Speaker 1: reset and say no, we're not going to do this again,
Speaker 1: where we, after the facts, say oh, we should have
Speaker 1: listened to black women. This is an opportunity to really
Speaker 1: get it right. And that's what I would love to see.
Speaker 1: I would love to not just see this be another
Speaker 1: time where you know, in six months, we all say, oh,
Speaker 1: we should have listened to these these you know, black
Speaker 1: women activists, black women social media users, or black women
Speaker 1: researchers who saw this coming. But we actually say, oh,
Speaker 1: people warned us and we did something, we took meaningful action. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And even in the like after acknowledgements, it never goes
Speaker 1: as far as what you just said. It's always an
Speaker 1: acknowledgement like, oh, we should have known this, right, we
Speaker 1: should have known this, or we should have known from
Speaker 1: this more recent thing. And what I'd like, folks, the
Speaker 1: the acknowledgement needs to go away further back. It needs
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the fact that the entire ecosystem collectively decided
Speaker 1: not to listen to women of color and especially black
Speaker 1: women in digital spaces as we were shouting from the
Speaker 1: rooftops about how abuse was being weaponized, how it was
Speaker 1: being coordinated, you know, in small ways and large ways,
Speaker 1: and how every single platform has ways in which we
Speaker 1: can be targeted for harassment that that they refused to
Speaker 1: close the loop on. I'll use an example. Twitter lists
Speaker 1: great lists. It's a great function. You can make a
Speaker 1: list of people that like to talk about a specific thing.
Speaker 1: But there's no setting that allows me to stop anyone
Speaker 1: from putting me on a list. So once a month
Speaker 1: I go through the list that I'm on, and invariably
Speaker 1: I find four or five that are horrible, that say
Speaker 1: things that are terrible and have put me on a
Speaker 1: list with you know, a bunch of you know, great people.
Speaker 1: But the name of the list is something you know,
Speaker 1: really egregious and um clearly meant for people to target
Speaker 1: me and anybody else on the list as well, And
Speaker 1: so I have to remove myself by blocking the person.
Speaker 1: They don't even let you remove yourself from a list.
Speaker 1: By the way, these are small functional things within a system,
Speaker 1: right within within a platform. That enable abuse that are
Speaker 1: very easy to correct and yet doesn't happen. Articles have
Speaker 1: been written about this, people have pointed it out. Every
Speaker 1: month I go live and I just like screenshot the
Speaker 1: list that I'm on, and it's like horrible, And I
Speaker 1: can tell. I can tell when I start getting attacks.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh shit, I'm on a list somewhere, like
Speaker 1: I can I just know it, I can feel it,
Speaker 1: Like why this tweet is an is? Why are so
Speaker 1: many trolls jumping on it? Okay? You know, and it's
Speaker 1: it's um. I think that you're right that that it
Speaker 1: needs to be a much more proactive approach now that
Speaker 1: all of this data exists, Like you can't say you
Speaker 1: don't know. You can't say you don't have we don't
Speaker 1: have the data to back it up. You can't say
Speaker 1: that we're not seeing the very real, dangerous implications and
Speaker 1: repercussions from unchecked digital harassment. And that that's the part
Speaker 1: that I think we need to get to. You're someone
Speaker 1: who is a prominent visible black woman activist on on
Speaker 1: digital in digital spaces, right, and so that sounds phenomenal.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a blue check mark. I see
Speaker 1: people who are like oh, that must mean you're rich
Speaker 1: or very powerful. But with that visibility calm, it's like
Speaker 1: a double edged sword where you also deal with this oversized,
Speaker 1: you know, oversized abusive reaction online like people, people, I
Speaker 1: see people pile on you the time. You'll say something
Speaker 1: innocuous and people it's like people were waiting in the
Speaker 1: rafters to attack you. And I think that we really
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge the toll that can take. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people out there who are probably like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you have a zillion followers on Twitter and a
Speaker 1: blue check mark, you must be having the best time
Speaker 1: on social media. I wish I had that. But with
Speaker 1: that kind of visibility and that with that kind of
Speaker 1: platform comes a lot of this abuse and that all
Speaker 1: of this nonsense that makes your experiences online when you're
Speaker 1: just trying to put your opinions out there difficult, and
Speaker 1: we have these platforms really doing nothing about it and
Speaker 1: enabling it. Absolutely. It definitely is one of those weird
Speaker 1: things of um realizing that you have become not a
Speaker 1: real person in digital spaces to a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: and it takes it takes them. For me, it took
Speaker 1: some getting used to just like, oh, like, let I'll
Speaker 1: put and put an air quotes up. Y'all can't see me.
Speaker 1: But by mac, it's not actually a person to to people, Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's this you know, it's an entity or it's
Speaker 1: it's a thing. And I'm like, I'm I'm just a
Speaker 1: forty five year old black woman and I'm a real person.
Speaker 1: I have feelings, I have a family, I have, uh,
Speaker 1: I have you know, mental health struggles I have. I'm
Speaker 1: just a regular person. And yeah, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the mechanisms UM in digital spaces actually dehumanize us.
Speaker 1: Some of these things that are meant to like, you know,
Speaker 1: amplify us or elevate us, um, like a blue check
Speaker 1: or like a lot of followers. UM. For me, it's
Speaker 1: like Greeks, I'm able to do more work and deeper
Speaker 1: work and have my my work reach wider, but the
Speaker 1: price that you have to pay for that is so large. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I've left Twitter multiple times because of those
Speaker 1: pylon moments. And You're right, it does feel like folks
Speaker 1: were just like sitting with a bag of ship to
Speaker 1: throw at me and waiting for whatever moment when it
Speaker 1: was deemed okay to do that, right, because it's it's clear.
Speaker 1: You can't do it anytime. You can't just do it
Speaker 1: out of the blue. It has to be when there's
Speaker 1: a mass of it happening. And I think that that
Speaker 1: speaks to the connection again between abuse and disinformation, because
Speaker 1: we're watching bullies coordinate themselves to attack, and this is
Speaker 1: exactly how abusers um act and disinformation works the same way.
Speaker 1: The same people with the same mindset pick up on
Speaker 1: disinformation and they decide that's what they're going to push
Speaker 1: out as the truth. And and you know, as AOC said,
Speaker 1: once it's out there, it's impossible to refute it. Anything
Speaker 1: you say will be just dismissed. Oh you're just saying
Speaker 1: that because X Y Z UM and and there isn't
Speaker 1: a I don't know what the solution is, but I
Speaker 1: do know we've got to make some strides because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, every week I talked to more and more
Speaker 1: you know, black women in particular and digital spaces that
Speaker 1: are just like, I'm just ready to leave. I'm just
Speaker 1: ready to stop, because, um, it's interfering with the The
Speaker 1: pros of the reach are not weighing out with the
Speaker 1: cons of how this is affecting me and um, you know,
Speaker 1: we are so disposable as black women that, um, there's
Speaker 1: no consequences and also no empathy when we are feeling
Speaker 1: and dealing with these moments, um, besides from each other,
Speaker 1: and and it just really has to stop. It really
Speaker 1: makes me reflect on my own use of social media,
Speaker 1: which is actually quite guarded. A C was so vulnerable,
Speaker 1: she really showed up as her full self in this
Speaker 1: way that I really often don't. I almost never talk
Speaker 1: about my personal life or my romantic life because I
Speaker 1: see the way that people will use it to target
Speaker 1: women of color online who do. Yeah, it's definitely true.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I share a lot of my
Speaker 1: personal life because that's how I build my following and
Speaker 1: my you know, my platform. So I still I still share,
Speaker 1: you know, especially about my dogs, and I share about,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever other things I'm doing or working on.
Speaker 1: But I the thing that has stopped my interactions more
Speaker 1: like I have way less um interactions with strangers than
Speaker 1: I used to. Um, I definitely used to like I
Speaker 1: didn't need to know what you're you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: need I would rarely even go look at someone's platform
Speaker 1: before engaging with them. Around just innocuous topics, and now
Speaker 1: if I don't know you, like I'm not talking to
Speaker 1: you anymore because I don't have I don't know you,
Speaker 1: you could be suspicious. And the time and effort it
Speaker 1: takes to you know, vet you it is not it
Speaker 1: is not some time that I'm willing to spend. And
Speaker 1: so it's definitely changed the way that I can interact
Speaker 1: with people. And it's sad to me because I met
Speaker 1: a lot of amazing people in those earlier days where
Speaker 1: I was able to interact with strangers and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person seems cool, Like what other stuff are you doing,
Speaker 1: and getting to know them more and meeting them and
Speaker 1: talking with them and having them on my own podcast
Speaker 1: when I had one end UM, A lot of that
Speaker 1: has just stopped, and I've just become yeah, a little
Speaker 1: bit walled off in the context of I'll share what
Speaker 1: I want, but I'm really not interested in as much
Speaker 1: interaction UM or One of the the tactics that I
Speaker 1: m employees that I have specific posts that are meant
Speaker 1: to be interactive or conversational UM and I usually do
Speaker 1: one or two a week just to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with with folks. But I've had to systemize it because
Speaker 1: it can't be organic for me anymore. Um, the risk
Speaker 1: is too great and it is sad it's made. UM.
Speaker 1: I would say my interactions with strangers a little less
Speaker 1: authentic and that I'm trying to craft a moment to
Speaker 1: talk with them versus organic conversations happening. And you know,
Speaker 1: some of that is just the way that digital spaces
Speaker 1: have evolved, but a lot of it is just me
Speaker 1: having to make different choices because of the harassment. More
Speaker 1: after a quick brain to get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be something if you didn't have to spend
Speaker 1: your time and your energy and your capacity and your
Speaker 1: brain space systematizing these things because of these abusive platforms.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be great at these platforms, you know, especially
Speaker 1: simple things like the Twitter list, you know, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be great at these platforms listen to their users and said,
Speaker 1: these are the things that you are that you are,
Speaker 1: these are the things that you are doing to enable abuse.
Speaker 1: If you if you it will be very easy to
Speaker 1: fix to stop it. It. Wouldn't it be great if
Speaker 1: you did not have to individually dedicate brain space to
Speaker 1: managing how you were going to deal with this just
Speaker 1: to show up and like, do do your job, live
Speaker 1: your life the way that you want to live it online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be amazing. I mean I have
Speaker 1: the they we have protocols in our house when things,
Speaker 1: you know, when when the attacks really get bad, my
Speaker 1: phone gets taken away from me. Uh, everybody knows to
Speaker 1: text my husband if they need me because I won't
Speaker 1: have it on me anymore. I mean, these are you know,
Speaker 1: coping mechanisms just to protect my own mental health when
Speaker 1: these one of these things, um happen. And I know,
Speaker 1: I mean so much. The reason why I have those
Speaker 1: protocols because I've learned them from other black women who
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, here's how you can deal with it,
Speaker 1: or here's you know when I step away, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the insidiousness of white supremacy, right, is
Speaker 1: that the onus is on those of us that are
Speaker 1: under its boot too create situations or to create systems
Speaker 1: just to help us survive, and our white counterparts just
Speaker 1: don't have to deal with that. They do not have
Speaker 1: to reckon with the possibility of simply speaking your truth,
Speaker 1: meaning you're going to have to deal with a whole
Speaker 1: list of stuff that have nothing to do with your
Speaker 1: initial um, you know, purpose for interacting online, and you know,
Speaker 1: we do a lot of our work in digital spaces,
Speaker 1: so it's not a place that I can step away from.
Speaker 1: I also, you know, center a lot of my work
Speaker 1: around direct giving, and I move a lot of money directly,
Speaker 1: especially to black women and fems um through social media.
Speaker 1: So from it's it's not a place that I'm really
Speaker 1: willing to leave because the resources are there and um
Speaker 1: and it works. So I don't have a position of
Speaker 1: like I'm going to step away. I just have had
Speaker 1: to take a position of protecting myself as best I can,
Speaker 1: sharing that knowledge with other people, and then pushing with
Speaker 1: folks like you to to create actual, real change in
Speaker 1: digital spaces. I'm so we we need people like you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've you've been individually responsible for funding so many black
Speaker 1: women and fems, you know, direct direct aid to them
Speaker 1: into their pockets. You are so important in this work,
Speaker 1: and so I am glad that you have steps in
Speaker 1: place where you can stay in this work because God
Speaker 1: knows we need you. But it's hard, like we need
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that you know, you're not a superwoman, You're
Speaker 1: a person or a real person and that you know,
Speaker 1: it sucks. Sometimes it's just really it sucks. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: really does. Uh. You know. I started doing these TikTok
Speaker 1: threads on Sunday on my Twitter, and I did the
Speaker 1: first one because I really was just like, I need
Speaker 1: to put something up that's fun. I need to put
Speaker 1: something up that is not going to be a lightning
Speaker 1: rod for anything, where I can just interact with people
Speaker 1: in a fun way and bring some joy. It has
Speaker 1: changed my entire countenance because now people look forward to
Speaker 1: the threat every Sunday and um, it's injected in a
Speaker 1: strange way, just a buffer around me. And I know
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of time and digital space
Speaker 1: every Sunday that's joyful and peaceful and fun um. And
Speaker 1: I had lost that. I really had lost that feeling
Speaker 1: of enjoying interacting with strangers um online, which you know
Speaker 1: is such a big part of digital organizing. And I
Speaker 1: needed to figure out a way to bring that back
Speaker 1: into my platform and into the ways that I interact naturally.
Speaker 1: And this ended up working. I had tried some other
Speaker 1: things before that wereness successful, and this this seems to
Speaker 1: be working quite well for that purpose. And it kind
Speaker 1: of it. This sounds strange, but it's sort of like
Speaker 1: if the temperature has been rising on the stove around
Speaker 1: you know, negative reactions to me all week, Um that
Speaker 1: Sunday thread it like it's like a throwing water on
Speaker 1: a fire. It just puts it out completely. So I
Speaker 1: sort of have a reset every week now because now
Speaker 1: it looks silly that you're like arguing and someone's mentions
Speaker 1: when people are like talking about dogs or like you
Speaker 1: seem weird. So um yeah, I mean those are just
Speaker 1: like little tricks that I've started to pick up just
Speaker 1: to kind of be like, Okay, how can I continue
Speaker 1: to exist in this space and not have it, um
Speaker 1: be so toxic to me that I have to like
Speaker 1: build all of these different systems And that this trick
Speaker 1: has seemed to work so far. I'm hoping it will
Speaker 1: continue because it's been really nice to be able to
Speaker 1: bring that that part of digital interaction back in a
Speaker 1: safe way. That's a great tip, I hope people out
Speaker 1: there if I'm going to use it, that's a great tip. Um.
Speaker 1: And again, it sucks that you have to do these things,
Speaker 1: but I'm happy that you have systems in place that
Speaker 1: just protect your health protect your wellness and continue to
Speaker 1: give you that outlet to to do that community building
Speaker 1: and engaging that I know that you're so good at
Speaker 1: and that you love so much. So I'm thankful for that, Leslie.
Speaker 1: Where can folks keep up with you? Online? You're doing
Speaker 1: amazing stuff all over the Internet. Where can folks keep
Speaker 1: up with you? You can just find me Leslie Mac
Speaker 1: m a C. You can search that. That's my handle
Speaker 1: on Twitter. If you just search it in Google, you'll
Speaker 1: see my all the things Facebook and UM my website
Speaker 1: Leslie mac dot com. You can find me there as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I want to I just want to thank you
Speaker 1: to Bridget for for UM calling this UH extra episode,
Speaker 1: and and thank you for all of your podcast but
Speaker 1: especially for this UM series you've been doing around disinformation,
Speaker 1: because I think it's really UM allowed a lot of
Speaker 1: folks to put into context the long UM you know,
Speaker 1: trail of this work against disinformation. You know, we've wanted
Speaker 1: it in this election cycle in a way that I
Speaker 1: think has woken people up to the realities and dangers
Speaker 1: of it. But it's really important to put it into
Speaker 1: the context that we've been screaming about this for almost
Speaker 1: a decade, more than a decade. And so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: y'all could have just listened to women from the first place,
Speaker 1: and you can start doing that now, and we can
Speaker 1: avoid things like forty and Marjorie Taylor Green and all
Speaker 1: the other you know, horrible things that have stemmed from
Speaker 1: digital spaces because frankly, somebody like MTG, the only way
Speaker 1: that they've built a platform is through digital space. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: I was just talking about this. How the problem really
Speaker 1: is is that we have for people like her, we
Speaker 1: have made it politically advantageous to do things like this online.
Speaker 1: It's it's not you know, it's not like, oh she
Speaker 1: sounds wild, like get her out of here. It's oh
Speaker 1: she sounds wild, Amplify her, amplify her. Yes, um and
Speaker 1: you know, uh, as Bridget is closed, we both work
Speaker 1: a ultra violet. But you know, one of the great
Speaker 1: things about the Media Guide is that it really has
Speaker 1: specific um ways for people to not share disinformation. And
Speaker 1: one of the biggest culprits in the media they share
Speaker 1: disinformation inadvertently and deliberately UM in covering it. And it's
Speaker 1: it's wild that they have not seen UM the light
Speaker 1: and understood their role in in spreading it, because if
Speaker 1: you're considered fake news quote unquote by by a portion
Speaker 1: of the population, and then you write, you report on
Speaker 1: disinformation and in a specific way, you legitimize it, really
Speaker 1: specifically with a specific audience. And I I don't know
Speaker 1: what the answer is, but I'll say this, when I
Speaker 1: was in journalism school, clearly I did not become a
Speaker 1: journalist because I actually saw when when I was in
Speaker 1: j school, I saw this as the future of journalism
Speaker 1: and it really scared me. Um. I went to Northwest
Speaker 1: University and this isn't the you know, the mids late nineties,
Speaker 1: and I really I remember saying to my mom, I
Speaker 1: can't be in this industry. This, this the track that
Speaker 1: this is on is leading in a really dangerous and
Speaker 1: scary place. And I don't think it's something that I
Speaker 1: could do for my my career. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: something I could do. She was not thrilled. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of money anyways, Um, but yeah, I just remember,
Speaker 1: and it's it's silly now. I talked about this all
Speaker 1: the time and certainly age myself. But you know, you
Speaker 1: go to the computer lab to write your you know,
Speaker 1: your stories and stuff for the paper, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: people would bring magnets into the computer lab to like
Speaker 1: swipe people's um floppy disks so that their stories couldn't
Speaker 1: get it on time, so that they could get the
Speaker 1: byline the next day. And like I remember just being
Speaker 1: like this is these are these will be my colleagues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I this is not It's not gonna be for me.
Speaker 1: And UM, it's been while sitting back outside of journalism
Speaker 1: and watching you know, everything that I felt as a
Speaker 1: nineteen year old um come to pass, every every single thing,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is going really itself. Um, the
Speaker 1: idea of ethics were so loosey goosey and not at
Speaker 1: all um ethical, and I just was like, this is
Speaker 1: this is the one of the best jealous of schools
Speaker 1: in the country, and these are the people they've matriculated,
Speaker 1: and this is the attitude that they have towards women,
Speaker 1: towards black people, towards marginalized spokes, towards poor people. I just, yeah,
Speaker 1: the reckoning has been long coming, and I think that
Speaker 1: the digital space has only added to um to that absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think we see it in the way that
Speaker 1: folks are reporting about the AOC situation. I was really
Speaker 1: disgusted to see it sort of framed as almost like
Speaker 1: a cat fight or a spat between two female members
Speaker 1: of Congress as opposed to a wider coordinated disinformation campaign
Speaker 1: that AOC is at the heart of. Like this is
Speaker 1: not two women beef and over a man or something, right,
Speaker 1: like this is someone So this is people making up cordon,
Speaker 1: making up lies about someone in a corn needed way
Speaker 1: to smear them for for sharing their story. I was
Speaker 1: really dismade to see it kind of framed as like
Speaker 1: a she said, she said kind of thing, as opposed
Speaker 1: to disinformation. But that becomes a question, right, why did
Speaker 1: anybody feel the need to discount AOC's account of what
Speaker 1: happened to her personally? That's the ultimate question, is why
Speaker 1: was that something you felt you needed to do. And
Speaker 1: at the heart of that is that is that we
Speaker 1: go back to silence saying of women of color and
Speaker 1: especially progressive, radical women of color, And that's the ultimate goal,
Speaker 1: and people will pay any price to do that. So true,
Speaker 1: and I think, like, what do you think it tell
Speaker 1: like people who are survivors of abuse sexual violence when
Speaker 1: they see the way that the wagon circled to smear
Speaker 1: AOC for sharing her story. What do you think that
Speaker 1: the responses, you know, like someone who would would speak
Speaker 1: up but sees what happened to AOC, What do you
Speaker 1: think that? What do you think that's going to do
Speaker 1: to them? You know, it's going to further tell them
Speaker 1: that they shouldn't speak out. It's going to let them
Speaker 1: know that there will be negative consequences to them speaking out.
Speaker 1: And Um, I think it's it's why it's so important
Speaker 1: for us to show support for AOC and for all survivors,
Speaker 1: because there's a survivor listening right now that's contemplating and
Speaker 1: she's at a crossroads of speaking her truth or burying
Speaker 1: it and having to deal with it in ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years. And the more that we can show support
Speaker 1: for survivors and for moments like this where AOC is
Speaker 1: so transparent, not only in um speaking about her experience
Speaker 1: as a sexual assault survivor, but also linking the trauma
Speaker 1: of that moment to January six, where she was also
Speaker 1: feeling under attack. And you know, Um, I'm just put
Speaker 1: in my you know, Katie Porter, it was interesting listening
Speaker 1: to AOC's account and then Katie talking about it on
Speaker 1: on Laurence O'donald Show because Katie mentioned some details that
Speaker 1: that Alexandria didn't share, and she said, you know, uh
Speaker 1: she she said to AOC, you know, I'm a mom.
Speaker 1: I've got everything you know covered here. Don't worry. I'm calm.
Speaker 1: And AOC looked at her and said, I hope I
Speaker 1: get to be a mom. And I just I want
Speaker 1: people to hear that this is a young woman who
Speaker 1: has a huge platform. She takes it very seriously. She
Speaker 1: does diligent and amazing work, but she's still a young
Speaker 1: woman who shouldn't be made to feel like this just
Speaker 1: for doing her job. And I I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what it's going to take. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what's really been scaring me the most in this last
Speaker 1: you know, a few years, is that I have a
Speaker 1: a sinking suspicion that it's going to take something so
Speaker 1: violent that um yeah, I just I'm just really actually
Speaker 1: afraid for the physical safety of so many of these
Speaker 1: UM elected officials right now. Um, And I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with that fear. I can only imagine
Speaker 1: how they are all feeling. Um. This has been just
Speaker 1: like like I'm reaching out to you know my son
Speaker 1: Louis Crew Like, what, who's watching Corey? Like, I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: about it. Literally, I I find myself just constantly being concerned. UM.
Speaker 1: Some of them I don't worry about because like Ianna,
Speaker 1: I know she's she's she's got a very strong, uh
Speaker 1: you know, protective system around her. But I just worry.
Speaker 1: I just worry UM. As we're watching UM, continuing to
Speaker 1: watch UM, these conspiracy theorists and UM and white supremacists
Speaker 1: continued to take up space, continue to not be challenged.
Speaker 1: H It was really disturbing to watch the hearing yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was so triggered to hear UM the gop UM representatives,
Speaker 1: one after the other get up and make a quip
Speaker 1: occasion for UM mark MTGS behavior and these false equivalences
Speaker 1: that they kept throwing up. But I was really bullied
Speaker 1: by the Democrats that got up and and really were
Speaker 1: specific about the harms that were done, about who these
Speaker 1: were targeted against, and why we can't stand for it
Speaker 1: any longer. I have not heard the Democrats speak in
Speaker 1: such large collective voice about this yet, and and it's
Speaker 1: sad that it took someone UM like Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: to get them to do it, because had they been
Speaker 1: doing this all along, perhaps there wouldn't be a Marjorie
Speaker 1: Tailor Green in Congress right now. I'm hopeful that in
Speaker 1: this moment people can see this is this is real stuff,
Speaker 1: really serious and has variable consequences. Absolutely, and and um,
Speaker 1: it needs to be said that these moments always come
Speaker 1: at the expense of women of color. And I think that, um,
Speaker 1: it plays into our disposability and in this notion that
Speaker 1: what we can just take it, and this notion that um,
Speaker 1: we're really just here to serve as an example for
Speaker 1: other people to to learn from. Um. And that's a
Speaker 1: hard reality that we that we actually live with every
Speaker 1: single day, that our lives themselves are an example. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: we really just want to live. I say this all
Speaker 1: the time, like I don't know an organizer that would
Speaker 1: not be rather, that would not rather be doing something else.
Speaker 1: We are organizers because we are called and because we
Speaker 1: have to be. Um. I'd love to just go to
Speaker 1: you know, Paris, and and go to pastry school and
Speaker 1: and uh bake all day if I had a choice. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's not the world that I live in, and
Speaker 1: it demands more of me because I want my nieces
Speaker 1: to have a better world. And I want, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: my nephews to not be ray in a world that
Speaker 1: would have them become misogynists. And I feel called to
Speaker 1: support people that are in need. Um, and so the
Speaker 1: ways in which we are dehumanized in digital spaces that
Speaker 1: we become you know, these two dimensional um you know,
Speaker 1: flattened out personalities in ways that our white counterparts are
Speaker 1: always seen as three dimensional. It's always about the nuance
Speaker 1: of their experience, and for us everything is black and white.
Speaker 1: And I it's it's a while to um watch um.
Speaker 1: Your sisters just become a lesson for people to learn
Speaker 1: their pain, be a lesson for people to learn from.
Speaker 1: And I want that to stop as well. I want
Speaker 1: better for us all but I almost have tears in
Speaker 1: my head. I want better for us. I want you
Speaker 1: to be able to go to pastry school and not
Speaker 1: not feel like you have to be in this like
Speaker 1: in this fight that latins us so cruelly. I want.
Speaker 1: I want better for all of us. Names got a
Speaker 1: story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want
Speaker 1: to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at
Speaker 1: tang Godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for
Speaker 1: today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.