Online Harassment and Being a Woman

TLDR: it's tiring

I started a blog back in 2007, so I’ve been a woman online for almost 20 years. To be a woman, visible and have the nerve to have an opinion on anything kind of opens you up to people coming at you from all corners of the internet.

But these days I just try to spread joy through movement and I talk about that online a lot. The vast majority of my internet interactions are absolutely lovely. But then there’s the weird stuff.

A guy had been following me on Instagram for a few months, he had a faceless account, all to do with spinning, mainly reposting videos of instructors. He started liking and commenting on all my stuff. Then that grew to him DMing me, then interacting with every story or post I put up. The messages became daily. Sometimes I’d just like the message, sometimes I’d respond. But they were just…so frequent. It felt like he was always kind of trying to force me to interact with him. Nothing he was saying was particularly offensive, per se, but I was just getting a weird vibe from him. I’m sure every woman reading this knows what I mean.

So, one day, a couple of weeks ago, I realised, I don’t know this guy, I don’t owe him anything, he’s not entitled to my time or engagement and he was just making me uncomfortable, so I blocked him.

A few days later, my boss text me and said she’d been getting emails from this company harassing her and sent me a link. This guy from Instagram, who’d creeped me out to the point I blocked him, apparently found that so offensive, he lost his shit. He wrote a scathing blog post about me and contacted my boss several times with the intention to get me fired.

And this…this is what it is to be a woman online. Or simply a woman, trying to exist.

Men feel entitled to our time, attention, energy and conversation and if at any point we choose to not engage or withdraw it, he will throw his toys out the pram and go on a rampage.

My only crime here was choosing to protect my peace, choosing to decide who I allow to have access to me, which I should be allowed to do, right?