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Twitter is a safe space for insecure men with fake handles and no volume control

Thursday July 19 2018
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A woman looks at twitter feed. Some of the things we see online, if they were to be repeated in real life, would make people look insane. AFP PHOTO | ANDER GILLENEA

By NERIMA WAKO-OJIWA

What would you do if one day as you were minding your own business when a random man started yelling at you and calling you names?

He you insults repeatedly, loudly and clearly wants to draw attention. You think at first that he is maybe be talking to somebody else, but no! He has called your name and is yelling directly at you.

Let me paint the picture for you – you are a woman just over five feet tall. I have been the same height since I was in Standard Six and worn the same shoe size.

My nine year old niece is about to fit into my shoes.

In foreign countries, there is a special section in shopping malls for people like me, petite. And sometimes when I really want to save on shopping I shamelessly hit the children’s aisle. Anyway, back to the scenario. So when this random, average size man starts picking a fight with you, what do you do?

The Internet has made this scenario a reality. I have a friend who once described Twitter as someone “screaming outside your window like a psychopath.”

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Some of the things we see online, if they were to be repeated in real life, would make people look insane. The things said online would be completely different if we were to say those very things to a person’s face. People say things that are so mean that you’re not even sure whether to laugh or to cry. It is like touching something so cold that it burns.

This happened to me recently where I was trolled online, even though it was not the first time. You never quite know when it will happen or what the triggers are – it is like hiccups, sudden and irritating.

There are three types of women online: There are those who when insulted retaliate immediately. They thrive on this, coming back with such clever remarks that you hold your mouth and gasp, “That was too good, I lost my breath.”

These women do not stop responding until they have the final say. They have built such a strong persona online that people think twice about trying them on. In fact, often times they are spoken about as a third party on an attacker’s timeline.

Then there are those who also get furious, so much so that they open a pseudo account, normally a male handle, and come back with guns blazing.

They essentially create a battalion online just to protect them from this monstrous person. It is far easier to throw insults as a man, you simply aren’t judged so harshly.

Finally, there are the silent ones, who when hate speech is hurled their way act as if it doesn’t them. They simply read the comment and move right on. They find themselves unknowingly seated in a corner repeating Michelle Obama’s famous dictum, “When they go low, we go high.”

I find myself in the last group. I will be honest, it is not that it doesn’t faze me – I just don’t understand the argument. I am a pragmatic individual and things have to make sense.

There are people in this world who fight just for hell of it, because it gives them a thrill. Most of time the stuff they are mad about is not even factual.

Such was the case in the 2016 American election when Trump used all sorts of abusive language aimed not just at Hillary but every one of his rivals.

That language made him popular even while it was obvious that Hillary could not use the same technique. That would have had her out of the race immediately.

When you defend yourself online as a woman, people judge you for how you speak because apparently women have to behave in a certain way. They should not curse or yell, otherwise they will be seen as having no class. But men have no rules.

When a man expresses himself online, that’s him being himself and is sometimes even praised for speaking up and defending himself. And of course, women are attacked more than men online, being routinely insulted over their sexuality.

“Just angry cause you can’t get a man, you just say that because of your boyfriend, we know you slept your way up, you are related to so and so,” that sort of thing. But the most common are attacks on your physical appearance and being called a prostitute.

We started with a metaphorical scenario of a man yelling at you for no apparent reason. It would be interesting if people who write these abusive tweets would they them to your face, which will never happen. So, Twitter remains a safe space for grown men who are basically insecure.

Nerima Wako-Ojiwa is executive director of Siasa Place.@NerimaW on Twitter.

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