Dealing With Trolls Will Make Young Women Sympathetic to Hillary Clinton

By Jessica Valenti, Guardian UK

17 April 15

When Hillary Clinton last ran in 2008, social media hadn’t yet exploded. Now, the majority of young internet users have been harassed online

hen I visit college campuses, young women always ask me how I deal with negativity online – and how they can. How can I write and participate on social media when it inevitably results in ad hominem attacks and vitriol? The students I speak to increasingly feel like they have to consider, before choosing a career path or posting an opinion in a public forum, whether they can cope with violently sexist responses and a never-ending barrage of misogynistic bullshit.

If anyone knows the answer to their questions, it’s Hillary Clinton. Her career has long epitomized how misogyny can haunts female politicians: the Hillary “nutcracker”, the pokes about her headbands, her hair, her pantsuits, her voice. She has too often been the target of insults based on men’s fear about powerful women – an unenviable position that few can understand.

At least, we couldn’t understand it in 2008. But thanks to the explosion of social media, everyone is a public figure, at least in a micro sense: we all have friends, followers, fans and drive-by haters. And a new generation of young female voters who have grown up being targets of digital abuse may empathize with the sexism that was and will be directed at Clinton.

After all, young women hear similar kinds of invective day after day, albeit on a much different scale. Whereas a man yelled, “Iron My Shirt!” at Clinton during a New Hampshire speech in her last campaign, young women posting on Tumblr get told to “make me a sammich”. As Clinton’s age and looks are dissected in the national media, a female college student somewhere will be told that she’s a hideous slut on YikYak.

According to research from Pew, 65% of young internet users have been harassed online. Young women, in particular, were more likely to experience harassment on social media: 26% of young women polled said they had been stalked online and 25% were sexually harassed online. A 2006 study from the University of Maryland showed that internet users with female-sounding usernames were 25 times more likely to receive sexually explicit and threatening messages. (And that’s not even taking into account revenge porn or Gamergate.)

The online harassment of women is not likely to end anytime soon; neither is the sexism that targets Clinton. Jamia Wilson, the executive director of Women, Action & Media, told me that, while the misogyny aimed at Clinton may be less explicit than in 2008, that “undue focus on her husband, her looks, her attire, her personal life and her age will persist.”

So instead of ignoring the trolls – as we are all so oft told to do – it could be beneficial to Clinton’s campaign for her to speak directly about the sexism she faces and how she deals with it every day. After all, one of the defining moments of Clinton’s last presidential run was when someone asked her how she “keeps upbeat” in the face of it all and, in an authentic moment of frustration and sadness, she welled up a bit while giving her answer.

Clearly there is more to winning over young female voters than commiserating over sexist awfulness and advice on overcoming misogyny. But I’m betting there’s a deep-seated desire in a lot of young women to see sexist tormentors get theirs. Maybe they can’t stop the guy who tweets fat jokes at them, and maybe they’re too embarrassed to report the anonymous sexual threats in their Facebook messages. But what they can do is give a big “fuck you” to every get-back-in-the-kitchen YouTube bottom-dweller or cable news host jerk who mocks Clinton’s appearance by making their distaste known at the voting booth.

Then we’ll see who is making the sammiches. I’ll take an Italian sub.