00:00:23.080and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:28.600I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:32.200Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:39.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:00:43.580Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:51.200If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:56.920Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:05.580Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:07:24.420I love doing, you know, my live show, The Bituation Room, all that.
00:07:28.080But when it comes to just the world of Twitter, I am much more on my P's and Q's and not in a good way.
00:07:34.640So it's so ironic we are being trolled by, you know, generally dudes and white dudes and whatever, cishet, you know, keep adding to it,
00:07:43.820who are constantly saying that they are being silenced when in fact what they, the ecosystem they create actually just silences women, people of color, marginalized folks.
00:07:55.400anyone who feels like they are already targeted by systemic oppression that's just it's sort of a
00:08:02.500self-imposed censorship so and i hate that about so so no i have not been deliberately targeted
00:08:09.120but also i don't stick at my neck out that much and i i think that's a that's not good you know
00:08:15.580but but yeah i've been you know in in multiple i think it's also because i'm not like
00:08:20.380i'm mixed and people are like i don't know how to troll you what epithet do i use0.83
00:08:27.700exactly are you chinese are you italian are you latina i don't know damn it i'm gonna google it0.98
00:08:34.880uh my wikipedia page is all fucked up too it's like i don't know if we could swear but i am my0.98
00:08:39.460bad um so it's just like they my i think my wikipedia page says that i'm like from argentina0.97
00:08:46.100but I'm not the point is it's funny when you're not discernibly something so people don't know
00:08:51.960how to troll I will say this two year and I know you did a whole episode on Leslie Jones thing
00:08:57.000I was at the RNC in 2016 Milo Yiannopoulos was going live for Breitbart and my producers the
00:09:05.600people at AJ plus were like yo this is the day after that Leslie Leslie Jones was I think left
00:09:11.940twitter was being trolled milo started it they go yo you should like say something to him do
00:09:17.780something so on air we did our own little like trolling of him and i was like you know does it
00:09:24.840does all this make you feel better that your mom never hugged you as a child you know just like
00:09:29.380being raised by the legends of zelda like and i was something about like i said i think the first0.97
00:09:35.120thing i said to him was like it's funny that you hate black people because your heart is black0.98
00:10:10.600And I remember him walking around, like, the press area.
00:10:14.060And what a, like, you could just, you ever see somebody who you can tell wants to have their presence be something that everybody is talking about?
00:10:23.320And everybody was working, so nobody was like, oh, my God, there's Milo.
00:10:26.540Everybody was like, oh, what is, like, this person just came in.
00:10:31.400And everybody just went back to their laptops.0.98
00:10:33.760And it was kind of this, like, I remember just feeling like, this is pathetic.
00:10:37.840Like this is like reminds me of when I would like when I first got my driver's license and I would like get in my car and drive by the school playing music loud with sunglasses on and be like, I hope they see me.
00:10:56.040He like has a little boom box next to him and like plays, you know, some kind of trumpet entrance, like has a little smoke machine he wants that's in his mind.
00:11:04.580Like it goes off when he walks in a room.
00:11:07.280You know what I'm saying. My brain is on new mom.
00:11:10.720I'm sorry. But yeah, yeah, no, that he's a sad, sad man.
00:11:15.680And I think got what he deserved. But that's I know you went into that.
00:11:21.840Yeah. I mean, he talking about him is actually a great segue into the idea that I think in so many of the incidents that we have discussed, particularly around like Milo and Leslie Jones.
00:11:30.340It's this idea that it really shows, in my opinion, the way that a sort of disregard and distrust of women, particularly women of color and black women, is kind of baked into our experience of being on social media platforms.
00:11:44.920And if you've ever seen a right-wing figure attack a Black woman who was basically just minding her business like Leslie Jones was and thought, what's going on?
00:11:52.440You know, when you see a right-wing figure randomly attack Lizzo or how, like, Trump would randomly attack Yamiche Alcindor or April Ryan, right, like, women of color always, you'd be thinking, like, why are they doing this?
00:12:04.220Well, I would argue it's because it is a tried-and-true engagement strategy.
00:12:09.000And when you apply that to social media, people who run platforms, they're not really interested in sort of de-incentivizing that because it's a successful way to generate engagement, which means, you know, more profit for them.0.99
00:12:20.760And so basically, I think that attacking women of color is always going to be a way to get to, like, fire up your base and get engagement.0.79
00:12:28.760And platforms are not interested in stopping this or de-incentivizing it because they are in on the grift.0.83
00:12:37.080I mean, it's amazing. Once again, this is the right loves to accuse the left of being triggered by something. And they, the people you're naming, the reason they trigger, they are the ones triggering the right merely by their existence.
00:12:53.320The idea that black women are excelling in journalism, in music, in something that otherwise they wouldn't give a shit about.0.98
00:13:15.860Jefferson's flute, which, of course, we all know she should have smashed into a million pieces.
00:13:20.480And that's but no, she played it amazingly.
00:13:22.880And you're just like, this is what I mean by identity politics still matter. I mean, this is why I think a lot of us still say it, because it's like literally by their identity, by black women just doing them.0.92
00:13:34.480Suddenly this entire machinery of algorithms and grift and money making is actually just triggered and is set off, you know, and just keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning and victimizing, I would say.0.99
00:13:48.320But honestly, like these are also badass people who I think it takes a lot more to bring them down.0.53
00:13:53.140But yeah, victimizing usually women of color and black women specifically.0.97
00:13:56.380Absolutely. My favorite tweet that I saw about the Lizzo flute situation was when everybody was like, oh, she played that flute.0.87
00:14:03.480Lizzo should dig up the bones of Jefferson and play his ribs like a xylophone on the stage next.
00:14:25.020Social media as a sphere, because of its theatrical nature,
00:14:28.240is where you will see the most profound attacks.0.96
00:14:29.960And on Twitter, some of the most vicious attacks that are being directed at Black women, Black leaders, and Black activists.
00:14:35.560It ends up getting laughed about on the now-defunct O'Reilly Factor and other shows.
00:14:40.120There's this freedom to attack and repeated validation of it.
00:14:43.140And everywhere we go, we see corporate or government gatekeepers who decline to intervene.
00:14:47.780So I completely agree with her point.0.99
00:14:50.120We have a media landscape where attacking women of color and Black women isn't just okay, it's incentivized.0.99
00:14:56.200And I think this is key. When platforms allow racist, sexist attacks on black women and women of color and do nothing, it normalizes this behavior.
00:15:04.940And it doesn't just say that it's OK, but it says, like, this is just the cost of being a visible black woman online.
00:15:11.360And even if it starts on platforms like Twitter, I think it creates the conditions that normalize the same kind of abuse to happen more broadly out into the world and also create a pathway for escalation.
00:15:20.740Like if people don't do anything when you harass a black woman or a woman of color online, you know, bad actors will watch that response and be like, OK, well, I will reasonably conclude that I could take that behavior offline, too.
00:15:32.860And that's kind of really sad because, you know, when we're talking about women and black women and women of color who don't always get the support that we should, people are not totally incorrect in assuming that they can harass these women and escalate that harassment from the Internet to the real world and that people aren't going to do anything because they're kind of right in a lot of instances, not a lot is done.0.60
00:15:55.800Yeah, I mean, it's it's seen as like I think black women specifically because of white supremacy and the ways that like your your identities are immediately politicized, not by your not by you, but by the by white supremacy and the function of it and how it works.
00:16:20.140And so it's like, like I'm saying, folks minding their own business, women just doing themselves is suddenly seen as like, how dare you attack me?
00:16:27.940And you're like, what are you talking about?
00:17:46.460I think it's, that's a whole, yeah, yes, yes.
00:17:50.600But, you know, when you're talking about sort of this idea of women and people of color and black folks just sort of being inherently politicized, this is something that I really want to pull out because I talk a lot about things like misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, all of that.
00:18:06.180It's like my day job is like researching that.
00:18:08.100And I think that what often gets lost are the ways that these kinds of things are so often identity-based, right?0.65
00:18:15.000And so ideas about, you know, someone who is Chinese American being foreign or, you know, not, you know, doesn't belong here or ideas about, you know, black women being angry or incompetent.
00:18:28.060I think that we so often see identity-based inaccurate information, and it's so much harder to pull out and talk about as opposed to disinformation and misinformation around things like COVID or vaccines, where it's like, yeah, most reasonable people are like, like, there's a baseline understanding of, you know, oh, this is inaccurate information.
00:18:47.980But when it comes to identity, I think it's a little bit harder to actually pull out and identify and talk about because, I don't know, talking about race and culture and identity can be so fraught and difficult for our society, I guess.
00:19:02.560Yeah, and you don't want to be overly reductive
00:19:57.240And I think it's one of the reasons why talking about it is so difficult because it's like, how do you make room for the fact that no group is a monolith?
00:20:07.960You know, there are nuances and like we're a gradient.
00:20:12.700Like there's nuances in our communities, but we still need to, I believe it's still like very important to have a clear, united front against things like anti-Semitism.
00:20:21.160And I mean, this is like a tangent, but like with Kanye West, it troubles me that he can't see that like when someone is being, and this is my opinion, when someone is being anti-Semitic or, you know, anti-Asian, whatever, it is a hop skipping away from anti-Blackness.0.98
00:20:37.380That shit is all linked and that train is never late.0.99
00:20:39.580And so like if you as a Black person are engaging explicitly in anti-Semitism, do you not realize that you're creating the conditions for that shit to come back around on us?1.00
00:20:47.180And, like, all of our oppression is linked.0.99
00:20:49.620I believe firmly that our liberation is linked.
00:20:51.920And you just got, like, when I see him doing that, I'm like, can you not see the way that you are setting yourself up to later be knocked down?
00:21:00.020People are going to be like, oh, we love that he's being anti-Semitic.
00:21:11.320And, like, final, just, like, last thing on this, they're super linked.
00:21:15.800The whole Soros myth, right? Soros is a billionaire who is, fill in the blank, helping BLM defund the police, creating thugs out of inner city black children.0.96
00:21:30.620Like literally, it's always linked. It's Jews run stuff. And the running stuff inherently means they're flooding our country with immigrants and they basically help black people vote and or like flooding our like voters electoral system with like black votes like straight up that they're the orchestrators of the people of color.0.99
00:21:55.280Yeah, but it's, again, I feel like we have this, particularly on social media, we have this climate that loves to flatten things out and strip things of nuance and context.
00:22:07.440And I don't think that we have, I don't think that our platforms have the range to allow for discussing things in the way they actually need to be discussed, right?
00:22:16.040Like, social media platforms are incentivized to amplify the most incendiary, inflammatory, nuance-lacking, BS, extremist stuff.
00:22:27.940And so I don't think our platforms, our largest communication platforms, are really equipped for the level of, like, conversation that we need to be having right now in 2022.
00:22:37.560It is like say something reductive, say it unapologetically, and take out any kind of maybe could be leading to perhaps, you know, and just end it with the period and you're done.
00:22:53.660And then you'll get a million retweets.
00:23:02.040I don't care which side of the spectrum you're on, just no room for nuance, forgive no one, take no prisoners, cancel everybody, and or troll everybody, and you will win at social media.
00:23:14.020It's so funny that you put it this way.
00:23:25.820Like, this is like one of the reasons why I find myself showing up less and less on social media platforms, because I think that you're exactly right.
00:23:35.500Right wing extremists are like the worst or like the biggest bad actors, but it's certainly they are not the only ones doing it.
00:23:41.480And I think even when it's not something that is like politically charged, like, I don't know if you saw that woman who was tweeting about like, oh, I sure love sitting in my garden.1.00
00:23:49.480And everybody was like, boo, we hate you, you stupid bitch.1.00
00:23:51.980Like, we are incentivized to be our worst selves, and our worst selves are what these algorithms amplify.1.00
00:23:58.340And that has been determined by study after study.
00:24:47.620Yeah, it's funny because, like, I think we're all just, like, really miserable and we're just showing up with a lot of misery on platforms.
00:26:04.800Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:26:09.320I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:26:13.780I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:26:21.400They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:26:25.300But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:26:28.760They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:26:31.860Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:40.820If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:26:46.760This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:26:59.240I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:27:06.360I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:27:09.940From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:27:15.880It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:27:23.340Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:27:32.960Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:27:40.080so let's talk about a little bit about what we've been seeing in terms of attacks on women of color
00:27:51.500and black women when it comes to elections and holding elected office so i want to get into a
00:27:55.980little bit of research first i'll breeze through this but there's actually quite a big body of
00:27:59.860work as of late around some of what we'll be talking about today so amnesty international
00:28:04.220did a study that looked at abusive messages hurled at a multiracial group of members of
00:28:08.840parliament. And they found that black, Asian, and minority ethnic women members of parliament are
00:28:13.380impacted far more than their white colleagues. The 20 black, Asian, and minority ethnic members
00:28:18.460of parliament that they looked at received almost half of the abusive tweets, despite being almost
00:28:24.380eight times as many white members of parliament in the study. They also examined abusive tweets
00:28:29.160targeted at women journalists and politicians in both the United States and the United Kingdom0.66
00:28:32.960and found that black women were 84 percent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive
00:28:37.880tweets. Over in the United States, a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that
00:28:43.600women of color candidates are targeted by the right on social media at alarming rates. Abusive
00:28:48.520messages counted for more than 15 percent of those directed at every female lawmaker analyzed,0.97
00:28:53.240compared to around 5 to 10 percent of male candidates. Women of color are particularly1.00
00:28:57.260likely to be targeted. Rep Elhan Omar received the highest proportion, 39 percent, of abusive
00:29:02.660messages of all candidates, and AOC received the highest ratio of abusive comments on Facebook.
00:29:07.880And this is like a specific thing to women. When they looked at male elected officials who are people of color, so like Cory Booker or Tim Scott, who are both black, they received similar levels of abuse to their white male candidates. However, the attacks against them were more likely to be about race.
00:29:24.520When you look at the way that men are targeted for, you know, problematic or, you know, negative tweets and negative content, those tweets are much more likely to focus on policy, right?
00:29:36.320So, like, I don't like your position on this.
00:29:38.060I don't like your position on that.1.00
00:29:39.420When it comes to women, it's much more likely to be about their appearance or their general incompetence.1.00
00:29:44.860Female Democrats receive 10 times more abusive comments than their male counterparts on Facebook.0.98
00:29:49.920And Republican women got more than twice as many abusive comments than Republican men.
00:29:54.040And then lastly, the Center for Democracy and Technology looked at the 2020 congressional candidates in the U.S. and found that women of color candidates were the most likely to be targeted with post-tech combined mis- and disinformation and abuse.
00:30:06.860Women of color were at least five times more likely than other candidates to be targeted with tweets related to their identity and focused specifically on their gender and their race.
00:30:15.860I have to ask you, does any of this surprise you?
00:31:27.500And I was like, yeah, but he does look like he's holding a bunch of like little hatchlings of like baby salamanders in his mouth at all times.
00:31:37.200He's just, he looks like, you know, and he himself looks like a bat.
00:31:41.360Like, he's just, I need to be able to say that in the same breath that I'm like, yes, and he also demonizes immigrants and wants to, you know, privatize Medicare, all those kinds of things.
00:32:08.660I feel like if the research is anything to be looked at, like, most people are, when they see a woman, it's like, you're an ugly skank, blah, blah, blah.0.99
00:32:17.860And when you see a man, it's like, it's, I would like to see a world where, I mean, I don't know that we're ever going to get to a place where women are not insulted for their looks and things they can't control.0.93
00:32:30.140Why can't Ted Cruz take one for his looks, you know?
00:32:36.100And then I think there's always, like, Republican generally writ large, if a woman is, like, made fun of, like Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House press correspondence dinner by Michelle Wolf, suddenly they're like, oh, my God, I can't believe you didn't do that.1.00
00:32:55.260But AOC is a Latina with a big ass and we all know that she's having anchor babies, you know, like whatever in the same breath.1.00
00:33:04.140And they'll be like, how dare you make fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is eye shadow.1.00
00:33:09.980But they do not apply that at all.0.84
00:33:12.280Obviously, the other side, I mean, come on.
00:33:13.720And this is why like AOC, when she openly speaks about how she gets these death threats, they're very sexual in nature and also like really charged with that, that disgusting.
00:33:25.260like, amalgamation of both being attracted to
00:33:28.500and then also hatefulness towards her.
00:33:31.600Then Tucker Carlson will straight up dedicate a half-an-hour segment1.00
00:33:34.860to be like, oh, you think people want to fuck you?1.00
00:33:36.880I mean, we do want to fuck you, but we don't.1.00
00:34:45.000Yeah. Santa Claus doesn't exist. But like, make sure to put the cookies out every single Christmas. Like, it's just like, you're straight up talking, you're making, you're willing it into existence. And AOC to her credit, and Ilhan Omar to a lesser extent, I think obviously being a Muslim American woman, like she is targeted because of that as well, wearing hijab.
00:35:07.420but AOC is actually able to talk about it and be like yo it is sexual in nature and that doesn't0.82
00:35:13.860mean that I'm thirsty for that attention at all and then Republicans are like oh you are you are
00:35:19.840thirsty for that attention she's like no and I think that's because we are definitely taught to
00:35:23.820like when there is a tinge of like and especially if someone is attractive AOC is attractive you
00:35:29.900know we're taught to like not um or as women online like don't don't discuss or bring up the
00:35:38.740fact that someone is targeting you in a sexual manner because it'll almost feel like you're
00:35:44.680bringing it on yourself because you're like do you know what i mean oh my god i know what you
00:35:49.100wearing type of way i know exactly what you mean where it's this weird trap of like if you even
00:35:55.560acknowledge the fact that it's happening, the idea, the impression is that you're playing
00:36:01.040into it or that maybe you want it or it's a two-way street or like you're enticing it
00:43:50.720And so, like, I mean, it's one of those things.
00:43:53.060So this is a common trope with Harris.
00:43:55.100Like, if you Google the phrase heels up Harris, this was, like, a common attack on her is that this idea that she slept, quote, slept her way to the top.
00:44:03.900And it's a bit like the attacks on Ghostbusters that we talked about last episode, where the whole conversation gets flattened out and becomes people taking sides and nobody is just like talking about the merit of the movie. Right. And so when it comes to Harris, you know, people are lobbying these incredible, incredibly like sexualized attacks on her because she is a woman of color.
00:44:26.200And then people watching, they, I kind of understandably feel like they have to support her. And so Harris has an incredibly, like, robust online network of supporters who will, like, fervently push back against any and all criticisms of her online.
00:44:41.500And so the ability to just have an honest, accurate conversation about her record, her merit, her actual actions gets totally lost in the noise intention.
00:44:51.260And that is, I think, precisely the point.
00:44:53.620Nobody can talk about her actual record, whether or not she's fit for office, whatever, when you introduce these kinds of like sexist, racist, gross attacks.
00:45:03.920And so I would say, like, even if you're somebody who, you know, doesn't like Harris, doesn't think that she is, you know, didn't think she made a good president, doesn't think she makes a good vice presidential candidate, I feel like you should be invested in making sure the conversation does not rely and traffic in these sexist smears and tropes because you should want to be having space to talk about her actual record.
00:45:26.600But when these are introduced into the conversation, we don't really get that.
00:45:30.360I mean, look at how effectively it worked in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.0.72
00:45:33.620As I was mentioning before, I mean, it is, again, absent of like, put the record aside, we have seen the way women in public spaces have been completely torn down.0.99
00:45:46.620And this is why, I mean, I will say we can't have nice things.0.96
00:45:50.520And by nice things, I mean a first female president, a, you know, vice president of color, like, I mean, which we do have.0.90
00:45:57.980But like by, you know, it's a thin, we're, we're, we're treading very lightly here. And if Kamala Harris does run for president one day, again, this will only get worse and worse and worse. And folks on all side of the political spectrum, and I'm a huge Bernie bro, like, I do not like Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris, for that matter.
00:46:18.940But my God, I understand how these things are weaponized against them to tear them down.
00:46:24.460And what's fucked is that it is conflated with their record rather than separated.0.80
00:46:30.900It is automatically conflated so that people whose politics I disagree with, you know, maybe someone from the K-Hive who's like, you know, I think we need more cops like Kamala Harris.0.94
00:46:42.120Like that that I will get accused of racism or sexism when I'm bringing up a substantive point.
00:46:49.940And that is the way that I think identity politics can be weaponized in a cynical way by liberals, you know.
00:46:57.820Yeah, I find myself it's I find myself having to defend women, particularly women of color, whose politics I don't align with time and time again.
00:47:07.740where I'm like, yo, can we just talk about, like, there's so, with some of these people,
00:47:11.000there's so much to dislike. There's so much to pull apart. We really don't have to talk about
00:47:15.860the way she looks. We really don't have to rely on like sexist tropes about any of this. Like0.68
00:47:21.100there's, for a lot of these people, there's so much substance there to talk about. Why are you
00:47:25.660cheapening the conversation by introducing this stuff? And we, it's like, if you, if you're someone
00:47:32.880who doesn't like these figures, you should be investing in having a real conversation about
00:47:36.720their actual records so that like we can actually air it out when you introduce these kinds of like
00:47:42.240this garbage people aren't doing that because that is like the point of these attacks they just take
00:47:47.340up so much room and then you're defending it and then and then people are defending them and like0.94
00:47:51.620you lose you lose the thread of like well what do we act like what is this person's actual record
00:47:56.500what is their actual merit completely so i obviously had a ton to say about this topic
00:48:02.960So much that we actually needed to do an additional episode.
00:48:05.900So this is just part one of Francesca, Sophie, and my exploration0.94
00:48:09.680into the ways that online abuse and harassment can keep women out of elected office,
00:48:13.960create barriers to their success once they get there,
00:48:16.660and overall curtail speech and civic participation.
00:48:20.140We'll be talking more in-depth about specific women of color political candidates
00:48:23.760and the campaigns of harassment that they had to endure once they got into public office.
00:48:28.480In the meantime, here's Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby0.97
00:48:31.420talking about her experience as a Black woman elected official.
00:48:55.280But other than that, I'm like, baby, they will only treat you like that when you stand for what's right.
00:49:00.780And that's what comes with trying to change systems.
00:49:05.080And mommy's going to be fine, but this comes with the territory.
00:49:08.500You have to have courage enough to know that you're doing the right thing.
00:49:11.720And as long as you're doing the right thing, people are always going to come for you.
00:49:14.860Not only are these stories heartbreaking, but they also demonstrate how online harassment and abuse keeps us from having the healthy democracy that we deserve.