Few people experience the power of social media more profoundly than those who are the targets of hate online.
And a new feature-length documentary examines the toll such attacks can take on the people they seek to harm.
The movie is called Backlash: misogyny in the digital age. And it features a former Vermont lawmaker, named Kiah Morris, who left office after becoming the target of racist and sexist attacks online.
Morris endured years of orchestrated online attacks targeting her and her family. The attorney general at the time declined to press charges, saying the attacks were protected as free speech under the First Amendment.
The film makes its US debut at a screening at the Vermont Statehouse on Tuesday, February 7 at 6:30 pm Details on how to register for the screening can be found on the Vermont Network.
Morris now serves as the executive director of Rights and Democracy. Vermont Public reporter Peter Hirschfeld spoke with her about her involvement in the documentary and what he hopes viewers take away from the experience.
Peter Hirschfeld: The film includes some explicit examples of the threats and harassment that you and other women suffered. And it takes viewers to some very uncomfortable places. We see the screenshots of vile insults and images directed at women, we learn of the teenager who committed suicide after a video of her sexual assault was posted online. What do you think is the value of painting such a visceral portrait of this trauma and suffering?
Kiah Morris: The guts of what’s being presented is the reality that each of us was experiencing. You can’t sugarcoat that any less than I would any other act of violence. So it was a great value on everyone’s part to participate in a project that was years in the making and continually step back to be willing to tell that story one more time, so that we could get the fullness of it in a way that we couldn’t in a newspaper article, or in a quick conversation.
dive deeper into this Vermont Edition discussion of adult bullying and harassment in public view.
For people who have experienced something similar to what the people in this movie have been through, you don’t need a documentary, obviously, to tell you what this looks like and how it makes people feel. For people who haven’t been through that experience, what do you hope they take away from watching this movie?
At the very least, they can start asking questions, because it is also assumed that only a few are experiencing this. And one of the reasons I felt it was important that this first screening take place in Vermont, and at the Statehouse, in front of so many, was to highlight the fact that a lot of my former classmates are experiencing this, that there’s people running for office, and I’m constantly faced with that question from people about their safety. Is there somewhere they can find safety?
How can they be sure, because they know bullying is inevitable right now, in this day, the way the internet works, the unrestricted access people have to manipulate social media? It’s inevitable, it’s probably happening to your niece who’s in high school, it’s probably happening to that activist you knew from college, it’s happening everywhere. And how are we responding? And even ask those questions? What is it like and how can I support you?
You just talked about the extent to which this is already happening in Vermont to people whose names have not made headlines like yours. In what ways? Is this affecting our political, cultural and social landscape?
Yes it is. It’s part of a campaign, I think, very organized to disrupt our democracy on a fundamental level. If people are afraid to run for office, or if they choose to withdraw, which we’ve seen happen, we’ve seen happen in the years after I left the Legislature, including here in Vermont, that there were a lot of women of color who gave a step forward. say I want to run, it can be done, many of those women are no longer in their elected seats. There was a calculated decision that it wasn’t worth it. It was not worth knowing that they were serving their communities and the state, and would not be protected.
So as we’re entering this new biennium, a lot of the bills that are coming up are about violence, they’re about gun violence, they’re about hate, they’re about bias, they’re about To do with bullying, there is a calculated decision on who is going to sponsor these bills, because those individuals would become targets. We’ve seen it where young people in Vermont have been attacked, teachers have been attacked.
“[O]ne of the reasons I felt it was important for this first screening to take place in Vermont, and at the Statehouse, in front of so many, was to highlight the fact that many of my former classmates are experiencing this, that there are people who are running for office, and I’m constantly faced with that question from people about their safety. Is there somewhere they can find safety?”
Kiah Morris, former legislator from Vt.
One of the things that this film does particularly effectively is show that this is a global phenomenon, that anywhere people have access to social media, we’re going to see this kind of bullying online. Do you think there’s something in Vermont that makes us more susceptible to that? And on the contrary, are there aspects of this state that put us in a position to approach it in a different or better way?
Well, starting with, if you were to think about the ways that we’re most vulnerable, vulnerability comes in that the online space is often the testing ground for what can happen in the physical space, right? So the online space is the way of saying, how does that person respond? Do the police care? How does the community respond? Is there going to be some kind of safety net or protection system if we are going to attack these individuals? And that litmus test just gives a way for people to say, okay, now what are we going to do in the physical space, we’re going to start creating malicious hubs, we’re going to start creating these groups where people can go and participate in taking that. online hatred of the physical plane, of our daily lives.
What’s a challenge around that is we don’t necessarily have a way to track what’s going on with that, not efficiently or effectively assessing the threat in a real way. And not just again, the worst case scenario where even sometimes having something as direct as saying “I want to kill you” still may not give you the protection or response you need as an individual. Or understanding.
I think in the depth of how complex this is, I think it makes Vermont vulnerable and has made it vulnerable for a long time. I mean, it’s important to know that he doesn’t just live online, but then floats around in the real world. We have an opportunity to see, to test our systems and their ability and their readiness and willingness to address this issue. And because of the size of our state, we can see results faster, but it really requires that there be a willingness to do it, it requires that there be full cooperation. And we know that’s not necessarily the case. We know that this is not something that is universally understood or felt. So someone’s experience with this bullying in one community will be very different than it will be in another, and that’s where the disparities make it very difficult to say how we’re going to progress, how we’re going to get better.
Do you have questions, comments or advice? Send us a message or contact reporter Peter Hirschfeld:
