Alia Dastagir sat at home and said, “I’m sorry to those who confused you with being a person because you’re not a person.”
Dustagill released a story in 2022 as part of a child sexual abuse investigation, becoming a target for online mobs. Her Facebook and email were filled with a vulgar inflammatory reaction. When I spoke on the phone earlier this month, my memory was the only thing that made me nauseous.
In her debut book on Tuesday, “To the One You Confused to Become a Person” (Crown) Award-winning journalist and former USA Today reporter weaves experiences of online violence and 13 other women It weaves in the story, the stories of 13 other women, including comedians. Confuses her harassment with Obgyn, which leads feminist humor and her anger into social media debates. She examines how a better understanding of the internet is essential to alleviating violence against women, and online misogyny is woven into white supremacy and systems designed to silence women. I insist that. Dastagir analyzes interviews with psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, engineers and philosophers to cultivate online misogyny and reveal how women can deal with violence and make meaning I’ve done it.
This interview was compiled and condensed for clarity.
Question: When you participated in journalism, did someone warn you that you are opening yourself up to be susceptible to online violence?
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Answer: No, there was no preparation. I remember the first few times I got a really profanity, disgusting, truly malicious message (from readers). I remember sitting there for a long time and becoming just like, what’s going on? It’s not shocking anymore, so it’s a bit humiliating to explain now, but that these experiences are very influential and can feel very physical and confused, especially when it first starts to happen to you I think it shows that. The origin of the book for me that people are very important when you start talking about it. They’re like, “Hmm, the internet” or “This is like for women on the internet.” So you get the message that not only is you not prepared for it, there’s nothing you can do about it, there’s nothing you should do about it, and you just have to roll with it Not there. In the first few years, it was kind of what I did. I was just like, “OK, I have to suppress this.” I have to do what so many people have to suggest that you have to do to survive in these spaces.
But then 2019 rolled, and honestly, I think the kids cracked something open. I said, “I don’t accept this. I don’t think anyone should accept this.”
While writing and publishing this book, were you afraid of opening the door for more abuse?
I’ve always been so scared and it’s hard to admit it, but I would like to admit it because some women are dangerous to cite such vulnerabilities. When I wrote those sections of the book, especially the last chapter, I was detailing what happened (for me), and writing it was tough. It was hard for me to read and reread it.
I don’t want to exaggerate it, but even when I’m talking to you now, I feel nauseous. It was a very difficult experience to talk about it, remember it, write about it, bring all those feelings to me for myself, absolutely, and bring to me. People ask me about the book and how I feel. Am I proud or excited? The dominant emotions are anxiety and it’s really hard to explain that you feel an obligation to push that anxiety forward because the book’s message feels so important.
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The point is to stop your book from being less simple than turning your eyes off your screen when you are faced with online violence. Can you turn your back from this online violence as a form of self-protection, or do you feel like you have a moral obligation to face it?
Because we all have different risk profiles, it is impossible for anyone to create statements and rules for any kind of category about what to do in any of these spaces. This wasn’t in the book, but I remember interviewing a woman when her child was younger, who said she felt there was something she couldn’t get involved online. It’s dangerous to her as a young mother. But now her children are growing up and they are leaving the house. And she told me, “I feel my risk profile has changed so that I’m probably, and that I can speak up with more specific things.”
What you really exposed in this book was Mosogynoir, the specific combination of misogyny and racism that Black women face. How did you intersect at the heart of the report in this book?
When I first started (to pursue this project in 2019), I had a really myopic idea of what was going on. For me, much of what I was going through was gender-based violence and harassment. My assumption was that many of them were merely “manospheres.” For example, the only people in that space were really excited about some of my coverage of feminism and gender. So I had this idea of what was working, but it was based on my own experience, so it was so narrow and very narcissistic. So, after opening a project to interview other women who had a very diverse experience, I didn’t pay enough attention, and I didn’t pay enough attention to this, I hate women. I realized that it’s not just the fact that. This is about white hegemony and all the systems intertwined with it. And I think it’s important to recognize that women, especially women of color and black, have been calling for abuse on these platforms for years. However, experiences of pain in black women are rarely considered notable. So when I wrote this book and started as I said early on, it was really important. This cannot be discussed about anything related to online abuse unless you understand that this is about misogyny, but also about white supremacy.
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Today, many women don’t feel safe for countless reasons. Partly because of the platforms we are involved in, but also the murder rate is rising internationally. American women face increasing reproductive rights restrictions. How are these things contributing to online abuse?
It’s all connected, right? We talk about it as if it was an online issue. It’s a cultural issue. Similarly, this is a cultural issue. It’s a political issue, an economic issue, and a human rights issue. It will be displayed online and offline. One of the reasons why I felt it was really important to write a chapter that followed women who were experiencing merciless misogyny at work and online – (welders and now plumbers named Brook Nicholas) – Her story emphasizes that it is truly inevitable. this. For women, marginalized people, people of color and strangeness, and trans people, there is no place to feel safe online or offline.
This book was rooted in your own experiences, but the story is strung alongside other women’s stories. Have you been able to see yourself in everyone’s stories by talking to these other women?
We experience violence and there are so many different ways we can respond to violence. But I think what was very clear to me was that no matter who I interviewed or looked back on my experiences, no matter how much I looked at it, everyone was “ignoring it.” Everyone treated me differently. Everyone made meaning in many different ways. It was like the most basic animation problem of the entire project. I think this was my first idea. “Why can’t I ignore it?” But I think there are reports that ignoring it is not the right word. I think sometimes people ignore them and mean “not responding” or sometimes people mean “not feeling” or sometimes people mean what they say. And I don’t think most people feel it. Once language passes through or threats arrive, you can make decisions. And whatever the emotion is, we can decide to distinguish it, or to joke about it, externalize it, or report it, but we are always doing something with it. And when I look back at my experiences and look back at all these interviews, there is a lot of variation in how I experience violence, how I make meaning out of violence, and how I respond to violence. there is. But no one ignored the violence.