Social media and misogyny; P*rn is fine, but don’t say c*nt

Sorry about the asterisks, no one on social media would see it otherwise. Ironically, given what it’s about.

Sorry for the length of this one. If you’re here for the petition, here is the link.

Otherwise, let’s start at the beginning.

Last week, as you may have seen on Facebook, a delightful chap (let’s call him Kenny) woke up on Friday and made the extremely poor decision to send to me – someone with almost 60,000 Facebook followers (nuts isn’t it!) – pornographic videos. Mom porn, in fact. Graphic stuff.

Call me a prude, but it was shit I really didn’t fancy seeing on a Friday morning while I was babysitting my two year old nephew.

He didn’t go straight in with the porn. His first message was ‘Good morning sexy’. Maybe I should have blocked him at that point, but if you’re familiar with my page, you’ll know that me (and my other half) sometimes like to have a little fun with them.

Some couples go salsa dancing, we spend our evenings messing around on the internet.

Anyway, the conversation went like this:

There is, it appears, no way for a Facebook page owner to report messages they have been sent so at this point I blocked him from my page, and then reported his profile to Facebook. However none of this did much; Facebook did not believe he had breached community standards (send porn, but don’t say little boys can be gross. Gotcha). Then he simply used one of his many alt accounts – all under the same name (he sure does have a lot of Kenny Logins…) – to message me again. I’ve blocked four of his accounts so far.

This annoys the hell out of me.

Women are told to be streetwise and that we need to take responsibility for our safety, but we are unable to do anything when someone sends us inappropriate content. The tools just are not there. It is so easy for a website to ban an IP address (as I’ve learned to my cost, which is why I’m very careful on Twitter these days) but it seems that social networks care more about colourful language than – let’s call it what it is – harassment and women’s safety.

Now please don’t think for a moment that I’m equating receiving messages on social media to being approached on the street or, god forbid, the horrors that we’ve seen played out in the media this week.

For as long as I live, I will never forget Sarah Everard. I will always well up recalling her mother’s heartbreaking statement. I will never stop thinking about the terrifying moment when she must have realised that something was wrong, and the pain and indignity she suffered at the hands of someone who could so easily have been identified earlier, if people had taken Couzens’ worrying and misogynistic behaviour seriously.

I’m genuinely not trying to claim victim status, or make this about me.

What I’m saying is that this low-level misogyny, getting off on humiliating women and knowing that they are reading disgusting messages is the first step – it’s so bloody common it’s pretty much part of every day life. My friends get sent pornographic pictures on dating apps all the time and they have pretty much come to accept that this is just how it is, and it is NOT OK.

It is never OK.

They, and I, might appear laugh it off, but it’s invasive and violating, it’s insidious, and it has the potential to cause real harm. Not every man who does it is going to go real life, I get that, but I can almost guarantee you that those that do go on to expose themselves and worse started out with this low level stuff first.

Frankly, I realised that whether or not this specific man, Kenny, was a danger or just a strange little pervert wanking in his mum’s basement, I would be doing myself and other women a disservice to ignore it. So, in a rage, I shared his Facebook profile with my 58,000 followers.

Not the most mature route, maybe, but I’m sick of having no way of dealing with this kind of shit. If you don’t want to be outed, don’t fucking do it.

It emerged that I’m not the only person who has been treated to delightful messages from Kenny, and in a huge plot twist he even matched with one of my friends on Bumble last year, sending her abuse after she declined his advances. He has almost 20 separate Facebook profiles under his name, which I can only imagine he uses to harass women as well as posting right-wing nonsense, and pictures of fires. My warning bells were definitely going off at this point, so on the advice of followers I put in a very simple police report.

I’m not looking to press charges; I just think that someone, somewhere, needs to make a note of this guy because in my opinion, he’s a danger to women.

Never mind, eh.

I have since tweeted the ACC, who has shown a little more interest – probably by virtue of being called out on a public platform. I’ve had a visit from some very pleasant uniformed officers who seem to be taking it seriously and have explained what they can do.

Again, I don’t expect big things to come of it; I just want to make a stand and show people that this is NOT acceptable.

I want Kenny, and men like him, to realise that there are consequences to actions.

The lack of police response in the first instance doesn’t surprise me.

This thing can never be a priority in a time of huge budget cuts and it is so widespread. Social media sites need to be doing more to police this behaviour and protect women. They need to routinely share information with police, so that dangerous men can be monitored, rather than putting their efforts into being the swearing police.

I am not single, not that it should matter and I do not post sexually suggestive content, not that it should matter but it seems that we are living in a world where any woman is expected to just accept that at some point in their life they will probably be the target; if not on the street then in our private messages on social media sites.

Twitter is just as bad as Facebook; you’ll get banned for life by calling Tories cunts (not that I’m bitter) but are free to humiliate, threaten and frighten women who are doing nothing more than using the site to connect and chat with other people.

Please, take a stand with me.

My wonderful friend Suzannah who I’m sure you’ll have seen on my Instagram page has started a petition calling for social media sites to take this stuff more seriously.

Please sign it.