Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up. This episode talks about sexual violence.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. When I
Speaker 1: was first coming of age online, we talked about the
Speaker 1: Internet and the real world as two totally different spheres.
Speaker 1: The internet was where you want to escape from the
Speaker 1: real world. They were not connected. But by now it's
Speaker 1: easy to see that that is no longer the case.
Speaker 1: What happens online is what happens in the real world,
Speaker 1: and this is especially true for younger folks. So what
Speaker 1: happens if this generation is immersed in an Internet that's
Speaker 1: serving them up increasingly extremest content. In twelve, feminist activist
Speaker 1: Laura Bates created the Everyday Sexism Project, a database catalog
Speaker 1: and women's experiences with sexism from around the world. After
Speaker 1: she was targeted by misogynists online, she went undercover to
Speaker 1: investigate the unseen, organized movement of thousands of men wishing
Speaker 1: violence and worse on women, the terrorism that we're not
Speaker 1: really talking about. She found that these men are taking
Speaker 1: advantage of social media algorithms to recruit and radicalize boys
Speaker 1: into a world of racism and misogyny. In online spaces
Speaker 1: that are sometimes called the meno sphere. Her book Men
Speaker 1: Who Hate Women chronicles what she learned about how it
Speaker 1: operates and why we should all be paying attention. Well,
Speaker 1: I think, as a woman who writes and speaks about feminism,
Speaker 1: especially online, I was already aware of these communities. I
Speaker 1: think that for most women in particularly feminists, more so
Speaker 1: for trans women, for women of color online, these men
Speaker 1: come to you, they make themselves known to you in
Speaker 1: online abuse. So I've been aware of them for a
Speaker 1: long time, these men and members of communities who have
Speaker 1: been sending me perhaps two hundred rape and death threats
Speaker 1: a day from the best part of the last ten years.
Speaker 1: But for a very long time, there was an argument
Speaker 1: in feminist communities that we shouldn't give them the oxygen
Speaker 1: of publicity, and that was an argument I was I
Speaker 1: was sympathetic to, I largely agreed with. But something changed
Speaker 1: for me. I do a lot of work in schools
Speaker 1: with young people, talking and working with young people around
Speaker 1: sexual consent, healthy relationships, gender stereotypes, and suddenly, after visiting
Speaker 1: perhaps two schools a week on average for about nine years,
Speaker 1: in the last two years, there was a really marked
Speaker 1: shift in the responses I was seeing from boys at schools.
Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, those conversations have always been awkward,
Speaker 1: sometimes stilted, sometimes challenging, but they had also generally been
Speaker 1: very rewarding conversations. And suddenly what I was finding was
Speaker 1: that boys were showing up with a very determined resistance
Speaker 1: to engaging at all. They were showing up already with
Speaker 1: very extreme views about women and about feminism, that I
Speaker 1: was a feminati bitch coming in to tell them why
Speaker 1: I hated men, and they were showing up with misconceptions,
Speaker 1: so really believing very deeply that there is a huge
Speaker 1: feminist conspiracy at the heart of our government undermining white
Speaker 1: men who are the real victims of today's society, quoting
Speaker 1: the same full statistics about false rape allegations being rife,
Speaker 1: about men being the majority of victims of domestic abuse,
Speaker 1: And at that point I suddenly joined the dots and
Speaker 1: realized that these boys were being radicalized by exposure to
Speaker 1: the extremist online communities that I've been aware of as
Speaker 1: a feminist for a long time. At that point, I thought,
Speaker 1: if these groups are managing to reach teenage boys in
Speaker 1: a quite scary and pervasive way with their online propaganda,
Speaker 1: then actually perhaps not giving them the oxygen of publicity
Speaker 1: isn't working. Perhaps it's actually allowing them to operate under
Speaker 1: the radar and to have a quite major and worrying
Speaker 1: impact without parents or educators or wider society having much
Speaker 1: idea that these communities exist at all. And that was
Speaker 1: what really pushed me into wanting to write the book,
Speaker 1: because I felt that suddenly these communities were posing a
Speaker 1: very real offline threat in terms of that grooming radicalization,
Speaker 1: which of course we'd never use those terms to describe
Speaker 1: when it's white men doing it, but also in terms
Speaker 1: of, of of course their attacks, the fact that these men
Speaker 1: were increasingly carrying out violent attacks in real life, and
Speaker 1: yet many people didn't know that this was a form
Speaker 1: of extremism that even existed. Yeah, I mean, you're that
Speaker 1: is so true. It's actually one of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of prompted me to start this podcast was, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there had been a mass shooting in the
Speaker 1: United States, and I thought, you know, just like in
Speaker 1: many of the cases of mass violence, this person who
Speaker 1: was the perpetrator had a history of domestic violence, allegations,
Speaker 1: had a history of women speaking up and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is someone who's been harassing me. But of course
Speaker 1: we know those kinds of uh warning signs are often
Speaker 1: ignored because it's women speaking up. And I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: if only we kind of took seriously the experiences folks
Speaker 1: were having online and uh really thought about that seriously,
Speaker 1: some of these mass incidents of violence could be prevented.
Speaker 1: And so I'm happy to see you sort of digging
Speaker 1: into that work. I'm wondering, could you tell me a
Speaker 1: bit more about some of the ways that you've seen
Speaker 1: young men be targeted, radicalized and sort sucked into these
Speaker 1: online spaces that teach them some pretty tax it stuff. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's very sophisticated. They have extremely well honed radicalization techniques
Speaker 1: and they're very open about it. So these men will
Speaker 1: share their recruitment strategies with each other quite openly in
Speaker 1: their online communities. They talk specifically about using memes, using
Speaker 1: the cultural delivery methods cultural touch points funny Instagram means
Speaker 1: viral YouTube videos, taking advantages of algorithms on platforms like
Speaker 1: YouTube that will automatically direct young people to increasingly extreme content,
Speaker 1: and they describe these delivery systems as in their own words,
Speaker 1: adding cherry flavor to children's medicine. They deliberately target boys
Speaker 1: as young as eleven, and they don't wait for boys
Speaker 1: to come to them in their communities, that's quite a
Speaker 1: common misconception. They find boys where boys are, so they
Speaker 1: are in online gaming there in gaming strategy chat rooms.
Speaker 1: They're showing up a lot on bodybuilding forums, which is
Speaker 1: a very clever space for them to operate in because,
Speaker 1: of course there they have a ready made group of
Speaker 1: young men already um sort of self selecting as having
Speaker 1: preoccupations with traditionally masculine ways of showing up in the
Speaker 1: world and portraying themselves. So they are very clever about
Speaker 1: finding these spaces where boys might be isolated and vulnerable
Speaker 1: online and quite mainstream spaces, and then they groom them
Speaker 1: very carefully and very gradually. So at first it's just
Speaker 1: a fu misogynistic jokes here and there, and then if
Speaker 1: a boy seems to respond to that, then maybe it's
Speaker 1: a link to a pick up artist website or to
Speaker 1: a YouTube video, and maybe from there it kind of
Speaker 1: gets very gradually further down the rabbit hole, and they
Speaker 1: very explicitly see recruiting boys into anti feminism and misogyny
Speaker 1: as a gateway to white supremacy and near Nazism. So
Speaker 1: they are seeing it as a kind of pathway for radicalization.
Speaker 1: And some really interesting studies have been done that really
Speaker 1: back that up. That many men who end up playing
Speaker 1: pivotal roles in the white supremacist movement, for example, and
Speaker 1: men who have made their name and kind of created
Speaker 1: a following and cultivated particular skills of online abuse in
Speaker 1: anti feminist movements like and Father's Day or Gaming Gates.
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised here when you say this at all.
Speaker 1: I know, after the insurrection at the Capitol in January,
Speaker 1: so many of the men who were there and involved
Speaker 1: were really well known to people. You know, they were
Speaker 1: they had these big online personas, oftentimes like live streaming
Speaker 1: what they did, and um a lot of them had
Speaker 1: prior domestic violence and harassment of women allegations against them.
Speaker 1: And so I do think it's difficult but but important
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the ways that white supremacy and misogyny are
Speaker 1: sort of what it's like that then diagram as a circle,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's one and the same, and they're
Speaker 1: kind of very much linked. Absolutely, this came out so
Speaker 1: clearly in researching the book. There's this public perception that
Speaker 1: we're talking about these two separate groups, these two separate problems,
Speaker 1: But in every way when you research this, you realize
Speaker 1: that that's not right, that this is this is of
Speaker 1: the same whole. So you're seeing, for example, the lexicon,
Speaker 1: the kind of unique language of the manisphere, and male
Speaker 1: supremacist communities showing up very much as part of the
Speaker 1: language of white supremacy, the right, far right communities. You
Speaker 1: can see it there in the language, but you can
Speaker 1: see it also in the kind of fundamental roots of
Speaker 1: their ideology in cells and not just furious that women
Speaker 1: aren't sleeping with them, they're furious if women are sleeping
Speaker 1: with non white men instead of them. That's what they
Speaker 1: see to be something that absolutely outrages and that's a
Speaker 1: repeated focus that they come back to. And white supremacists,
Speaker 1: of course, are also focused obsessed with misogynistic issues. You know,
Speaker 1: they're obsessed with the idea of birthrates, with the idea
Speaker 1: of so called replacement theory. They obsess over keeping white
Speaker 1: women in sexual slavery to breed a so called master race.
Speaker 1: They're obsessed with the forced sterilization of women of color.
Speaker 1: They talk about, for example, the idea that they see
Speaker 1: white women as a kind of dehumanized, fragile commodity that
Speaker 1: they see as being plundered by kind of invading immigrant men.
Speaker 1: So very clearly, if you can look at that not
Speaker 1: see misogyny, then you're only seeing half of the picture.
Speaker 1: In the same way, if you couldn't look at what's
Speaker 1: going on with in cells and the manisphere and not
Speaker 1: recognized the racism inherent in that, then it really holds
Speaker 1: us back, I think, from meaningfully tackling the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to talk a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier that you look at platforms like YouTube,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're serving up these ads, you know, through their
Speaker 1: algorithm or through their recommended videos, I know through you know,
Speaker 1: the research I've done for this show that Facebook's own
Speaker 1: um own reports show internally that most times I think
Speaker 1: it was eighty six percent of the time when somebody
Speaker 1: joined the extremist group, it's because Facebook's algorithm has recommended
Speaker 1: it for them. Um. I guess my question to you
Speaker 1: is what do you think the responsibility of social media
Speaker 1: platforms and platforms like YouTube? What role should they be
Speaker 1: playing in curbing this kind of radicalization and men, well,
Speaker 1: I think first of all, they and we have to
Speaker 1: recognize their influence because I think for adults, they think
Speaker 1: of YouTube in particular as the kind of benign home
Speaker 1: to movie trailers and grumpy cap videos, and there's a
Speaker 1: real lack of awareness that they have this pivotal role
Speaker 1: that of US teams use YouTube, that they say explicitly
Speaker 1: that it's where they're getting their news from as well,
Speaker 1: and that YouTube has this this massive kind of stranglehold,
Speaker 1: if you like. There are one point five billion YouTube
Speaker 1: uses in the world, so that's more than the number
Speaker 1: of households that own televisions, and YouTube accounts for thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent of mobile internet traffic internationally, and of the
Speaker 1: YouTube videos that are watched are recommended to users by
Speaker 1: the algorithm. So if you put those two statistics together,
Speaker 1: you realize that a quarter of all international mobile traffic
Speaker 1: is accounted for by this one algorithm designed by a
Speaker 1: workforce that's sixty percent male and five percent black being
Speaker 1: being telling people what to watch. And so suddenly that
Speaker 1: becomes a power that should be interrogated, that should be
Speaker 1: held to account, that should be accountable for the impact
Speaker 1: it's having, and what I find really frustrating is that
Speaker 1: there tends to be this tendency from so social media
Speaker 1: companies to go, hey, this is so difficult. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a huge thing. There's not much we can do.
Speaker 1: The algorithm wasn't built to do this, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's true, but I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: coincidence either that it was built by a community of
Speaker 1: people that is not particularly diverse and that didn't foresee
Speaker 1: these issues happening. The argument that we can't hold them
Speaker 1: accountable and that there's simply nothing they can do because
Speaker 1: it's too difficult, it's absolute nonsense. When you're talking about
Speaker 1: companies that have an income that's bigger than the income
Speaker 1: of some small countries. Of course they have the money
Speaker 1: to tackle this, right if they really cared, if it
Speaker 1: was a priority, they could hire twenty thousand human moderators
Speaker 1: and upscale them and train them in coordination with specific
Speaker 1: community groups who are affected by these issues. There's a
Speaker 1: lack of will there. We have to acknowledge that that
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. Yeah, something that you brought up
Speaker 1: that I really harp on a lot, and I think
Speaker 1: it's complicated, but I think it's really important to understand.
Speaker 1: I talk a lot on this show about the importance
Speaker 1: of having inclusive teams in tech spaces and why underrepresented folks,
Speaker 1: so women, transpolkes, queer folks, people of color, black folks,
Speaker 1: all need to feel like it's our do like tech
Speaker 1: is our domain, Like we need to be able to
Speaker 1: take up space in those in those areas, not just
Speaker 1: because it's the right thing to do or because it's
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm a black woman and I want
Speaker 1: to be in these spaces, but because of exactly what
Speaker 1: you just described. When you don't have inclusive teams building
Speaker 1: the the tools that really do run our world and
Speaker 1: really do control how and what we we you know,
Speaker 1: come across in terms of the media landscape, that is
Speaker 1: when things get missed, right, And so if you have
Speaker 1: a team that is building an algorithm that is going
Speaker 1: to control so much of what we consume, and that
Speaker 1: team is mostly white and mostly male, it's not surprising
Speaker 1: to me that these things go on to create unforeseen
Speaker 1: harms that this team that was mostly homogeneous did not
Speaker 1: account for. And so, you know, I think it's critical
Speaker 1: the way that the way that underrepresent and voices and
Speaker 1: people and identities are seen in these spaces. It's critical to,
Speaker 1: I think, get into a place where tech is not
Speaker 1: causing so much harm because it's right now, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a bit out of control, and I think
Speaker 1: that sometimes that can be kind of a complicated chain
Speaker 1: of things to to sell someone on. Absolutely, and I
Speaker 1: really think that that lack of representation is deliberately and
Speaker 1: actively exacerbated by the lack of transparency and the lack
Speaker 1: of accountability that these platforms have on dealing with harassment.
Speaker 1: Because if you have a company, and this is absolutely
Speaker 1: the m O of most of the major social media platforms,
Speaker 1: instead of having a clear strategy on harassment and on
Speaker 1: these issues that works for everybody, what they do is
Speaker 1: they judge each case separately. And what that means is
Speaker 1: that when a case hits the media and hits the headlines,
Speaker 1: they take action because they want to clear up, they
Speaker 1: want to protect their reputation. So that means that the
Speaker 1: cases that get acted on are dependent on media attention.
Speaker 1: And we know that media attention is likely to be
Speaker 1: bestowed on a young, privileged, white, attractive, non disabled, CIS
Speaker 1: gender woman who has a problem so you get someone
Speaker 1: like Taylor Swift, she's being abused online. Suddenly Instagram is
Speaker 1: taking action. It's announcing new policies, it's announcing tools all
Speaker 1: over the place to protect her and to deal with it.
Speaker 1: But if you have a woman whose profile is less
Speaker 1: likely to be picked up via our racist and misogynistic media,
Speaker 1: that means that Facebook or whoever it is, they're not
Speaker 1: going to get a call from a journalist saying what
Speaker 1: are you doing about the harassment of this particular woman.
Speaker 1: And that means that those voices that we most desperately
Speaker 1: needed in those spaces are the ones being driven offline
Speaker 1: and being driven out of those spaces. So it's such
Speaker 1: a vicious circle, and it really is kind of self perpetuating.
Speaker 1: I think let's take a quick break. Basically, the only
Speaker 1: way to get social media panies to take it seriously
Speaker 1: when you're being harassed online is to be famous enough
Speaker 1: for it to generate negative media attention. It's clear to
Speaker 1: me that tech companies are not optimizing their platforms to
Speaker 1: be safer from the jump. Instead, they only take action
Speaker 1: when they're reacting to bad press. I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: because they are optimizing their platforms for harasses if they
Speaker 1: are optimizing their platforms because it works in their favor,
Speaker 1: that actually, these vast networks of men who are spending
Speaker 1: a huge amount of their time online as staying on
Speaker 1: those platforms. I do wonder if there is a deliberate
Speaker 1: decision going on here about which groups of users they're
Speaker 1: protecting and at what cost to other groups. Have you
Speaker 1: ever felt like negative, inflammatory, or polarizing content gets more
Speaker 1: attention on your social media feed? It might not just
Speaker 1: be in your head. According to Angry by Design Toxic
Speaker 1: Communication and Technical Architectures in the Journal of Humanities and
Speaker 1: Social Science, communication platforms like YouTube and Facebook privilege in
Speaker 1: thediary content setting up a stimulus response loop that promotes
Speaker 1: outrage expression. So rather than seeing positive content, algorithms keep
Speaker 1: us angry and on edge by surfacing up a steady
Speaker 1: diet of outrage. These algorithms are optimizing for content that
Speaker 1: gets a lot of cliques and attention, and that that
Speaker 1: content happens to be very negative, And so part of
Speaker 1: me always wonders, you know, is that why like the
Speaker 1: fact that I see the tweets that are that are
Speaker 1: inflammatory or super negative or super you know, um partisan
Speaker 1: or whatever. The is the reason I see those more
Speaker 1: is because they just get more attention. Therefore, these algorithms
Speaker 1: are always going to privilege that kind of content, And
Speaker 1: you know, part of me feels like, well, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just but maybe it's just the platforms showing us what
Speaker 1: we what we as like, you know, messy humans just
Speaker 1: want to see, right, Like, oh, I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: the positive content. I want to see the negative content.
Speaker 1: But even still, it's like, is that is is that
Speaker 1: an online space where I want to be, where folks
Speaker 1: want to be, a base where the content that it
Speaker 1: often serves you with content that is really negative and
Speaker 1: that content that makes you feel good. It just really
Speaker 1: I don't know, it makes me wonder how personally for me,
Speaker 1: like why I spend time on spaces that make me
Speaker 1: feel so miserable? Sometimes? Yeah, absolutely, And that was the
Speaker 1: experience of so many of the women I interviewed for
Speaker 1: the book, and in many cases, the choice eventually for
Speaker 1: their own mental health was that they removed themselves from
Speaker 1: those spaces. And I think it's really interesting that the
Speaker 1: average white man's experience of social media is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a net negative in the same way, um there have
Speaker 1: been so many examples where white men versus their female
Speaker 1: colleagues or their colleagues of color have created similar accounts
Speaker 1: and have released similar kinds of information or opinions, and
Speaker 1: the results in terms of the responses that they've received
Speaker 1: have been so dramatically different. Um. And I think that
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to think as well about whole all
Speaker 1: of this intersects with a kind of capitalist urge for
Speaker 1: social media to be selling us things, because we know
Speaker 1: absolutely from kind of former engineers that YouTube givem Schaslow
Speaker 1: is a good example of this, who I quote in
Speaker 1: the book. He's a guy who comes forward and says, look,
Speaker 1: the YouTube algorithm is not about optimizing for you to
Speaker 1: see the most high quality content or the most relevant content.
Speaker 1: It's about whatever we'll keep you watching for the longest,
Speaker 1: because that's all that matters to the algorithm is getting
Speaker 1: you to see as many adverts as possible, essentially, and
Speaker 1: we know that the things that keep people watching for
Speaker 1: the longest are increasingly extreme content. And as many researchers
Speaker 1: pointed out, that's not such a big deal if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a video about you know, um cooking, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly you're being taken to ourn or you can
Speaker 1: eat contest video. But it does become serious if you're
Speaker 1: looking at something about women and suddenly you're being told
Speaker 1: that the gender pay gap is a myth, and from
Speaker 1: there that actually women are lying bitches who make up
Speaker 1: rape allegations, and from there that maybe it will be
Speaker 1: better off if women were forced into sexual slavery. There
Speaker 1: suddenly it becomes pretty important that that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned some of the experiences the women
Speaker 1: that you interviewed for your book shared with you, or
Speaker 1: that eventually they're just they leave these spaces, they leave
Speaker 1: social media. You know, we talk so much about things
Speaker 1: like d platforming and people being kicked off you know,
Speaker 1: social media or you know, quote cancel culture, and we
Speaker 1: never sort of talk about the issues of the women
Speaker 1: and the voices who are just kept from speaking, just
Speaker 1: kept from putting their opinions out there, who are pushed
Speaker 1: off of these spaces because they are no longer safe.
Speaker 1: I feel that that often gets missed in the conversation
Speaker 1: that like, isn't that a form of d platforming. Isn't
Speaker 1: that a speech issue that these women are functionally unable
Speaker 1: to to, you know, express themselves. It's ironic that the
Speaker 1: freedom of speech debate is usually dominated by people who
Speaker 1: are claiming to have been silenced, often in media, major
Speaker 1: media platforms, writing speaking out about their silencing, usually white
Speaker 1: men speaking out about how white men can't say anything anymore,
Speaker 1: leaving them saying it, and it's like on every on
Speaker 1: every every paper, also being picked up by those same algorithms.
Speaker 1: But we don't tend to think about kind of freedom
Speaker 1: of speech in the in the negative, like freedom of
Speaker 1: speech from people who don't get to speak to tell
Speaker 1: us that they've lost their voices in the first place.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a risk for our political discourse
Speaker 1: as well, that we have a generation of young people
Speaker 1: who are honing their political skills online. They're often described
Speaker 1: as a politically disengaged or apathetic generation, but actually I
Speaker 1: think it's a generation who are just politically active in
Speaker 1: very new and different ways, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: involved technology. So these are young people who are debating
Speaker 1: on Twitter, who are cutting their teeth in political debate online.
Speaker 1: And if those online platforms are unsafe for women and girls,
Speaker 1: for various minoritized communities, then we are kind of weeding
Speaker 1: them out from the public discourse Before they ever get
Speaker 1: the point where they might reach those public spaces later
Speaker 1: on where suddenly will really feel the loss of them.
Speaker 1: And it might be that we don't realize that that's
Speaker 1: happening until it's too late. That's such a good point.
Speaker 1: I hadn't even hadn't even really thought about that that.
Speaker 1: You know, what does a landscape looks look like when
Speaker 1: a big section of that generation is just quiet and
Speaker 1: and go silent. You know, that's a real that's a
Speaker 1: real problem. More after a quick break, let's get right
Speaker 1: back into it. I got my first computer when I
Speaker 1: was in junior high. But most younger folks have lived
Speaker 1: their entire lives online and ways that I could never
Speaker 1: imagine when I first got online. So if the internet
Speaker 1: is the backdrop upon which we're all living our lives,
Speaker 1: what happens when that backdrop is really harmful or toxic?
Speaker 1: What's it doing to a generation of younger folks who
Speaker 1: are coming up completely immersed in it and we've never
Speaker 1: really seen it. Because we are at kind of hovering
Speaker 1: on the edge of the first real generation coming of
Speaker 1: age who have lived their whole lives on social media,
Speaker 1: we have this kind of unique political moment that never
Speaker 1: really gets picked up on this. I find it wild
Speaker 1: that we're living at this moment in history has never
Speaker 1: happened before and will never happen again, and yet it's
Speaker 1: never really discussed where a generation of non digital natives
Speaker 1: is parenting and educating a generation of digital natives, and
Speaker 1: there is this chasm, there, this huge gap in culture
Speaker 1: and understanding of what their world is like, what the
Speaker 1: day to day landscape of their online world is like
Speaker 1: amongst parents who grew up in a pre Internet age,
Speaker 1: and that generation will becoming of age, and what will
Speaker 1: that look like when our political representatives are being drawn
Speaker 1: from a generation who have literally grown up with the
Speaker 1: sheer daily bombardment of racism and misogyny and transphobia that
Speaker 1: comes with living your life on the Internet in the
Speaker 1: way that young people do today. And I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll know what that looks like until we get there,
Speaker 1: And I think when we do, it will be a shock. Wow.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I hadn't even thought about that, but you
Speaker 1: know it's true, and I do think. I think about
Speaker 1: this a lot. So I don't I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're a parent. I don't have children, but I have
Speaker 1: a lot of young people in my life, and I
Speaker 1: think about how hard it is, how hard it must be,
Speaker 1: or how different it must be to be wading through
Speaker 1: this very complex online experience that young people so they
Speaker 1: have to wade through, and like, as you said, that
Speaker 1: experience is often racially charged, politically charged. It's often I
Speaker 1: think that it very much overlaps with like real life.
Speaker 1: You know. I think when I was coming up, coming
Speaker 1: up online, people were like, Oh, your online world and
Speaker 1: your real world. Today it's very clear that those are
Speaker 1: those overlap. You know, things that you say online get
Speaker 1: you fired from your job or in trouble at school,
Speaker 1: and they're largely wading through it with parents who have
Speaker 1: not had that experience. You're exactly right. I hadn't even
Speaker 1: thought about that. It's and I think the people we
Speaker 1: see it in the way that we report on things
Speaker 1: that happened live, we don't take them seriously, we don't
Speaker 1: look seriously at them, and as you were saying in
Speaker 1: the beginning of our interview, that lack of scrutiny allows
Speaker 1: for these things to just go on check. And so
Speaker 1: you know, if you spend if you're a reporter who
Speaker 1: spent all this time being like, oh, kids, on the internet.
Speaker 1: What do they do and taken Selfie's like, oh, just
Speaker 1: just just trivializing it. When it really becomes an issue
Speaker 1: that we should pay attention to, you know, it can
Speaker 1: be a problem. Absolutely. One of the experts I interviewed
Speaker 1: for the book, Dr Carlin Ferman. She said that one
Speaker 1: of the things that she really sees in her work
Speaker 1: with young people around sexual violence is that it's extremely
Speaker 1: rare for her to come across a case of sexual
Speaker 1: violence that doesn't have an online component, and that adults
Speaker 1: find it difficult to recognize that connection, but for young people,
Speaker 1: there is no meaningful distinction between their real lives and
Speaker 1: their online lives. And she said that the normalization of
Speaker 1: violence in the online world is having a massive impact
Speaker 1: in young people's perceptions of violence offline. And that's very
Speaker 1: much something that I see in my work as well.
Speaker 1: When I'm working with young people, it's really common to
Speaker 1: hear them say things like rape as a compliment. Really,
Speaker 1: it's not raper she enjoys it. You hear young people
Speaker 1: repeating stuff that they've seen an online porn and assuming
Speaker 1: that that's how they'll be called upon to behave in
Speaker 1: a sexual relationship. So um, For example, I've visited a
Speaker 1: school where they've had a rape case involving a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old boy, and a teacher had said, why didn't
Speaker 1: you stop when she was crying? And he had said,
Speaker 1: because it's normal for girls to cry during sex, because
Speaker 1: that's what he'd seen online. And so much of what
Speaker 1: they're very mainstream, readily available online pornography is showing kids
Speaker 1: that sex apparently is something very violent and aggressive that's
Speaker 1: done by men to women. Again, it's racialized. There are
Speaker 1: these kind of fetishized racial stereotypes there. It very much
Speaker 1: suggests that it's normal for women to be hurt, humiliated,
Speaker 1: and degraded during sex. And so I'm seeing young people
Speaker 1: who've experienced quite extreme sexual abuse and wouldn't recognize what's
Speaker 1: happened to them is wrong, or that they would ever
Speaker 1: have the right to tell someone, or that support would
Speaker 1: be available, because it's so normalized by what they're seeing online,
Speaker 1: and there's a real barrier to dealing with that. When
Speaker 1: the majority of the parents I speak to, their conception
Speaker 1: of what online porn looks like is a kind of
Speaker 1: Playboy centerfold, but online it's like FHM photos, but you
Speaker 1: see them on a website. There's very little recognition of
Speaker 1: of what the reality of that landscape looks like for
Speaker 1: the teenagers who immersed in it on a daily basis. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be so incredibly difficult to
Speaker 1: navigate as a young person. And then you know, talking
Speaker 1: to your parents about porn and sex is already so hard,
Speaker 1: and then that they had there be that kind of
Speaker 1: extreme barrier in terms of like understand your parents ability
Speaker 1: to even understand what you're experiencing. That's that's kind to
Speaker 1: be so hard. I don't envy, but I mean I
Speaker 1: always I say this in so many different ways, like
Speaker 1: I don't envy kids today who have to navigate this
Speaker 1: largely on their own. It must be very complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me neither. And then when you add into that mix
Speaker 1: the fact that you've got this generation of teenage boys
Speaker 1: being actively groomed and sought after buy these extremist groups
Speaker 1: really sort of training them and radicalizing them to dehumanize
Speaker 1: their female peers, to objectify their female peers, then that
Speaker 1: kind of almost sets a match to the whole tinder pile,
Speaker 1: and up it goes. In Atlanta last month, eight people
Speaker 1: were murdered by a gunman at three spas. Initially, Sheriff's
Speaker 1: Captain J. Baker parroted the perpetrator's own words that his
Speaker 1: heinous crimes were not motivated by race. But six of
Speaker 1: his victims are Asian women, whom he conflated with sexual temptation.
Speaker 1: So why the rush to not describe his actions as
Speaker 1: a racially motivated and gendered act of terror against Asian women. Well,
Speaker 1: the investigators they interviewed him this morning, and they got
Speaker 1: that impression that yes, he understood um, the gravity of it,
Speaker 1: and he was pretty much fed up and it ben't
Speaker 1: kind of at the end of his rope. And and
Speaker 1: if they was a really bad day for him and
Speaker 1: this is what he did, I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: to I don't know if ether are more slow or not.
Speaker 1: We see this time and time again. Yet when we
Speaker 1: talk about these these these issues, like in Atlanta, that
Speaker 1: awful sheriff said, oh, well, this guy had a bad day.
Speaker 1: He said he was a sex adic blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: I've never seen a situation where they just take the
Speaker 1: perpetrator at their word, like, oh, not motivated by race
Speaker 1: checks out. You know, I wonder, why do you think
Speaker 1: it is so difficult for people to recognize this as
Speaker 1: extremist or even in some cases like terrorism, we almost
Speaker 1: never describe the kind of havoc that extremist extremist views
Speaker 1: on women and folks of color. Domestically in the United States,
Speaker 1: we almost never talked about that as terrorism, Like why
Speaker 1: do you think that is? I think as a society
Speaker 1: we are very comfortable with homogenizing other groups than white
Speaker 1: men um, but we tend to afford white men the
Speaker 1: dignity of discrete and unique identities. And so when a
Speaker 1: white man commits a mass atrocity because he doesn't fit
Speaker 1: the stereotype our society has of a terrorist, we look
Speaker 1: for other reasons, and we dig into mental health, and
Speaker 1: we see these these kind of almost glowing photographs of
Speaker 1: him as a cherubic child, and we get a quote
Speaker 1: from his neighbor to say that he was a really
Speaker 1: nice guy who helped out with d I Y around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and and hey, something from his granny to
Speaker 1: say how sweet he was as a boy, And we
Speaker 1: portray these men as we we can't. It's almost like
Speaker 1: as a society, we can't compute the fact that this
Speaker 1: could have happened because we're not able to recognize white
Speaker 1: men as a group who can be radicalized and who
Speaker 1: can carry out extremist acts. Even when we reach a
Speaker 1: situation where they actually become the majority of perpetrators of
Speaker 1: mass shootings, we still fail to recognize it. And I
Speaker 1: think partly it's an inability to kind of see those
Speaker 1: white men in that way when the media reports on
Speaker 1: them in such a kind of forgiving and normalizing and
Speaker 1: excusing way. But it's also about who the victims are
Speaker 1: and a society tea that is used to seeing those
Speaker 1: folks as victims as well. In the case of men
Speaker 1: who have gone out and massacred women because there are women.
Speaker 1: For example, we haven't called these men terrorists. We never
Speaker 1: called Elliot Roger a terrorist. Alec Menassian, the Toronto van
Speaker 1: attacker who murdered ten people and injured six, of the
Speaker 1: people who murdered being women, who explicitly told police I've
Speaker 1: murdered these women because I hate women, because women won't
Speaker 1: have sex with me. And the police came out and
Speaker 1: gave a press conference and said there's no evidence of
Speaker 1: terrorism here. The city is safe. And I think in
Speaker 1: part it's because brutality against people of color, and violence
Speaker 1: against women are the wallpaper of our daily lives. These
Speaker 1: are things that have become almost normal. If one in
Speaker 1: three women on the planet is raped or beaten in
Speaker 1: her lifetime, then a man violently murdering women isn't exceptional,
Speaker 1: and so we struggle to recognize it as terrorism. And
Speaker 1: I think the police and the criminal justice system are
Speaker 1: at fault here. The media is at fault here. The
Speaker 1: way that all of us talk about these crimes and
Speaker 1: about these criminals are at fault um. And unless we
Speaker 1: start to recognize these particular forms of terrorism and extremism,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to see how we'll move forward. Because
Speaker 1: right now, because we don't call those men terror list terrorists,
Speaker 1: we don't look at their often online journeys that have
Speaker 1: filled them with hate as forms of radicalization. And if
Speaker 1: we don't do that, it means that nobody is looking
Speaker 1: at the grooming of the next generation of these attackers.
Speaker 1: Nobody is looking at boys. When I was researching the book,
Speaker 1: I rang up a lot of counter extremist counter terror
Speaker 1: organizations globally, and I was really shocked that when I
Speaker 1: used the word in cell typically there would be a
Speaker 1: long silence on the other end of the phone, and
Speaker 1: then somebody would say, can you can you spell that
Speaker 1: for me? There was a US Government Accountability Office report
Speaker 1: which was literally looking at the U. S government's response
Speaker 1: to forms of terrorism, and in the period of the report,
Speaker 1: there were three massacres carried out by male supremacists by
Speaker 1: people with kind of in cell backgrounds online and they
Speaker 1: weren't included in the report. But over this ten year
Speaker 1: period they were tracing and carefully tracking people with extreme
Speaker 1: views on federal ownership of public land or extreme views
Speaker 1: on the environment, and um shockingly, in the period of
Speaker 1: the report, no one was killed by people with those views,
Speaker 1: So we're looking at the wrong people. And you know,
Speaker 1: you look at someone like Donald Trump describing Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter activists as extremists, as terrorists, and you realize it
Speaker 1: matters if the people who are choosing who is designated
Speaker 1: as a terrorist or an extremist isn't representative of the
Speaker 1: communities that they're serving and has the ability to carry
Speaker 1: deep prejudice in them. So I guess it also comes
Speaker 1: back to that issue we discussed earlier about representation in
Speaker 1: the people who are policing and governing our countries and
Speaker 1: how we respond to this threat. You know, the people
Speaker 1: who are talking about it, who are investigating it, who
Speaker 1: are you know, mired in it, they also have things
Speaker 1: they can't see. Well, we all have biases, and so
Speaker 1: it really is I think it's critical that we think
Speaker 1: about inclusion in terms of you know this, If we
Speaker 1: don't think about it and aren't able to talk about it,
Speaker 1: it will hurt us all as a society. I completely agree.
Speaker 1: Um And just as a side note, you know your
Speaker 1: work with Everyday Feminism creating a database for women to
Speaker 1: talk about their experiences with sexism and misogyny online. Even
Speaker 1: even even things like that, where you're building these spaces
Speaker 1: in these platforms where you can sort of clip the
Speaker 1: script a little bit and say like, hey, we're here,
Speaker 1: we have experiences that we want to talk about online.
Speaker 1: You might think that the online experience is just you know,
Speaker 1: dominated by men, but actually here is a slice of
Speaker 1: what we deal with or what we experience. I think
Speaker 1: doing that kind of archival chronicling, storytelling work is also
Speaker 1: very important in terms of getting us to like a
Speaker 1: culture shift where we think of these spaces as you know,
Speaker 1: places where we are and places where we're you know,
Speaker 1: showing up and taking up space. If that makes sense, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I hope so. I hope the Internet is in a
Speaker 1: transitional phase. You know. I feel like the Internet is
Speaker 1: in its infancy. It's basically still teething. I had, These
Speaker 1: are teething problems. It's so new, relatively speaking. Surely we
Speaker 1: can't carry on like this. Surely it can't be forever
Speaker 1: a space where where women, where people of color, where
Speaker 1: transfolk have to practically brace themselves to step in. You know,
Speaker 1: that can't be sustainable in the long run. I really
Speaker 1: hope and believe that this can't just be the way
Speaker 1: that things are. This has to be a transitional period.
Speaker 1: I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I want
Speaker 1: to take a moment to thank all of y'all for
Speaker 1: the reviews that many of you have left. They really
Speaker 1: do help the show grow, and yes, I personally read
Speaker 1: each and everyone. I wanted to highlight one particular review
Speaker 1: because they really stuck with me. This is from listener
Speaker 1: Lisa Hazn. I've been listening for a while but hadn't
Speaker 1: bothered rating the show and noticed the weirdly high proportion
Speaker 1: of one star reviews scrolled through. When I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: anything shocks me anymore. But did some guy really just
Speaker 1: say a black woman's podcast is as bad as Jim Crow?
Speaker 1: How does someone go about the trouble to find the show,
Speaker 1: leave a rating type that out hits end and never
Speaker 1: have a single moment of self awareness. Jokes on them though,
Speaker 1: people like that are just enthusiastically proving the point that
Speaker 1: this podcast is necessary and more people with the birth
Speaker 1: perspectives need to have platforms. And Lisa, I just have
Speaker 1: to tell you this review made me legit laugh out
Speaker 1: loud in my first few weeks of making this podcast.
Speaker 1: It's true someone did leave a review comparing the podcast
Speaker 1: to Jim Crow, which I gotta say feels a little
Speaker 1: bit harsh. And Lisa, your review reminded me of how
Speaker 1: hard it was to keep pushing through even when vocal
Speaker 1: critics like that left that kind of feedback. But reading
Speaker 1: your review today, you know, fifty episodes in, just made
Speaker 1: me really happy that I stuck with it, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to share this for anybody who's maybe thinking about
Speaker 1: starting a podcast of their own, or making anything at all. Really,
Speaker 1: just ignore the trolls, ignore the haters, ignore that discouraging
Speaker 1: little voice in your head that tells you to stop
Speaker 1: and just keep going to Lisa. Thank you for the reminder.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you at Hello at tango dot com. Disinformed is brought
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Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeart Radio and unbost Creative Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland is our executive producer. Tory Harrison is our supervising
Speaker 1: producer and engineer. Michael Lamatto is our contributing producer. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Bridget Todd. For more great podcast check out
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