Women can prove their trolls wrong about the myth of female fragility

For as long as I’ve been alive, feminism has sought to empower women, to make them feel they can do and be anything they want.

But lately a focus on callout culture and online trolling has brought a number of damaging stereotypes about female fragility to the fore in ways that are profoundly undermining the independence and resilience we need to complete our journey towards full equality. 

Take a recent discussion on trolls and social media from two young women on ABC’s Q+A (to make it more readable, I’ve cleaned up the ums, ahs and other verbal tics in the transcript). 

Woman 1: We all probably get trolled on our socials. For me, it’s the times that I’ve spoken out about certain things that people, you know, don’t agree with, but things that need to be said… [and] people say some really vicious things … Female presenters that I respect [have left] Twitter … because the trolling has got so bad that they’re constantly told that they shouldn’t exist and all these awful things.

Woman 2: Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is just go about our day [and] do our job. We are … public figures, but that shouldn’t stop us from … having an Instagram … I’m trying to do something good with my platform and create a safe space … And then you … get a bit of this hate and … trolling … [like] “Are you going to try and kill yourself again?” with a laughing emoji … They have no idea how much damage they are doing.

There is a lot to be unpacked in this exchange, most importantly the nature of the posts that have left these women, and the female presenters mentioned, so distressed. The truth is that unless the posts are described or left up — which is often not the case to avoid amplification — it’s hard to determine what’s being described as “foul”, “vile”, “disgusting”, “dangerous”, “unacceptable”, “bullying”, “harassment”, “misogynist”, “harmful”, “unsafe”, “attacks” and “abuse”. 

However, from what we do know, the posts that upset these women — some to the point of closing the account and leaving the platform — range from the deranged response to a woman’s public suicide at one extreme to critiques of how the woman does her job on the other, with sexist, sexualised or unkind insults of her physical appearance in between. Rarely, there are also credible threats of violence that — just like their analogue counterparts — cross the line and should be immediately reported to police.

Given this, is calling it out and/or leaving the platform the right response?

While I’m loathe to judge the choices other make, from a feminist standpoint I’m confident it’s not. Women have fought long and hard to have a seat at the table in all areas of public life, and they shouldn’t give it up without a fight. But with the privilege of a public profile also comes some obligations. These include wearing legitimate criticism of what you did or how you did it from other experts and from the thinking part of your audience, and expecting crude insults of the way you look, talk or dress by the random mads, bads and sads who are tuned in, too. 

To suggest that women should have all the benefits of public exposure but none of the downsides is unrealistic and entitled.

To model — through hyperbolic finger-pointing at negative posts and shutting down accounts — that the less salutary side of the bargain can’t be borne, is to both demonstrate and validate the claims of emotional fragility that the patriarchy has used to lock women out of the public conversation for so long.

As suffragette Harriet Taylor Mill wrote in 1851, the patriarchy has a way of “set[ting] afloat” ideas about what femininity requires that women “under their dominion” catch and “imbibe”. The most powerful of these is that a woman’s job is to please, to bring men pleasure by how we look and avoid their displeasure by saying or doing what they don’t like. 

Fragility is a direct outgrowth of trying to please others and feeling a failure when you can’t. To be a feminist is to resist such passive and self-abnegating outlooks and adopt more robust strategies for affirming who we are and what we’re here to do with our lives. It is to rid ourselves of people-pleasing as a meaningful life objective, and develop a more self-sufficient sense of regard or what is known in common parlance as being our own best friend.

Finally, because self-esteem has a social aspect to it, it is also to refuse to put one’s self-confidence, sense of mastery, life goals or even day-to-day feelings in the hands of randos on the internet and to instead seek support, feedback and constructive criticism only from trusted colleagues, family and friends. 

Both of the women on Q+A are right. Women need to stay on the platforms, because we are entitled to be there and because future generations of women need us to be there — and everywhere — where public opinion is expressed, discussions are had, and power is trafficked. 

And we can do it. By expecting criticism and responding reasonably to those who make it, by using tools unavailable in real life to block and delete and — most potently — to ignore those who get in our way. Because what was true of the bullies and beasts of yesteryear remains true of those trolling the internet today. They enjoy the attention. That’s why they do it. 

Which means that if we stop making it so satisfying to insult us — including by bemoaning the misery it causes — the number of trolls will lessen or, in my 30-year experience as a feminist columnist and abortion rights activist, largely fade away.