A victim of harassment chronicles the effects of online abuse in her latest book
When Alia Dastagir became the target of an online mob, a thought gripped her: What if the harassment never stopped? Could she survive it?
It was early 2022, and Dastagir, a USA Today reporter at the time, had just published a deeply reported piece profiling a victim of childhood sexual trauma. The story was a point of pride for Dastagir. But within a day of publishing, her reporting had been taken out of context and shared widely on social media. Trolls, QAnon followers and even Donald Trump Jr. accused her of defending pedophilia. Threats flooded her inbox. Her editors told her she needed to call the police.
The toll on her body, she said, was unbearable.
“People who haven’t experienced that level of abuse don’t really – can’t really – appreciate how physical the experience is,” said Dastagir, in an interview last month.
“Like, your body doesn’t always know the difference between a mob at your actual door, and a mob in your mentions. Your body is just very aware that … people are claiming they want to kill you. People are saying they want to kill your kids.”
The physical experience of online abuse is at the heart of Dastagir’s new book, “To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person.”
In the book, Dastagir profiles women who have endured similar abuse: an OB/GYN advocating for reproductive rights, a comedian, a transgender state legislator. She creates a meticulous accounting of the effects of online harassment, the way it can upend women’s careers, their health and their minds.
And she argues it’s a problem that must be taken more seriously.
“It’s not about rape threats and death threats and slurs,” Dastagir said. “It is about an erosion and slow annihilation of society and self. And if we don’t attend to that … the consequences are going to be dire.”
I spoke with Dastagir in January. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. You started the book relaying this moment with your daughter, when you just happened to pull out your phone. Can you describe a little bit of that experience?
A. I had an experience where I was breastfeeding my newborn baby, and I was doing the thing that so many mothers do – I’d pulled out my phone, I’m futzing and scrolling. And I saw that I had a message on Facebook from a reader who was very upset about, ironically, a story that I had written on online abuse of women journalists. And he said to me: “To those who have confused you to be a person, you are not a person.” It wasn’t profane. There was no cursing. It was just so chilling. And I remember feeling so confused about how he had gotten into that room with me and my baby. It felt like I was in this space that was so pure and unadulterated and peaceful, and somehow, he had gotten in there with us. And the dissonance of that was overwhelming.
Q. You describe that moment as chilling, but in the range of experiences that you describe in this book, it’s actually on the tame side. In your reporting, you explore moments where people – particularly women – receive online threats, descriptions of horrific acts of violence, comments that are totally demeaning. What do you think people misunderstand about this kind of harassment online?
A. There is this idea that you can just ignore it, or that you should. And I think that some people who say that are really well intentioned. There are people who want you to keep doing what you are doing in these spaces, whether it’s trying to agitate or publicly think or publicly write. There are people who see your value in the world, and they make these statements about, “Just ignore it,” or–
Q. Or, “Don’t give it any brain space.”
A. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” exactly. But I think the reaction is problematic, even if it’s expressed in a well-intentioned way. Because I think sometimes when we say, “Ignore it,” we mean, “Don’t react.” But I think a lot of times we’re saying, “Don’t feel.” And that is where I feel you have a problem. There is no way to ignore language. Language is information that comes into your body. You have to evaluate whether whatever is coming in is a threat to you and your survival. You have gone through a cognitive and physiological response.
This whole book is my attempt to give us a deeper vocabulary to talk about these experiences in very human terms. To suggest that we ignore those experiences is to deny ourselves our humanity.
Q. What would help address this problem? What do you think needs to change?
A. We’re so disillusioned and we’re despairing and we’re cynical. But we have to believe that this is unacceptable. We built the internet, okay? We built it. We decide what values it carries. So we can think differently about what the internet does. We can think differently about the boundaries around language. But we have to get to a place where we decide that this is an unacceptable way to live.
Q. To what extent do you believe that tech companies are responsible for this problem?
A. I mean, they’re totally responsible. They’re complicit. The harassment, in many cases, serves them. Like, this is engagement, right? The changes that (Meta chief executive) Mark Zuckerberg announced are so distressing. We are moving in the wrong direction – loosening the rules around how this company addresses hateful speech and abuse. (Meta is scaling back fact-checking and lifting some restrictions on what users can post, including attacks on LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups.) It just feels like these companies have almost an antagonistic relationship with their users. Whatever safeguards were in place, it feels like they’re just going to continue to be chipped away. They’re now being further disincentivized from doing anything about abuse, about disinformation. And we have every right to leave these platforms, and in many cases we should. And it’s not an easy calculation to make. I find myself struggling with it, too.
Q. In the book, you write about an Indigenous artist and activist named Marissa Indoe, who ultimately decides to step away from TikTok because of the abuse she faces on the platform. You write, “Sometimes retreating is its own form of courage. Marissa’s withdrawal from the app is a loss for her followers and for her activism, but it is also a refusal to participate in spaces that do not align with her values. These platforms may connect us, but they also profit off us, isolate us, sever us from the natural world. Marissa is on a break from her platform … and for now has something she values more. … Peace.”
And I couldn’t help but think, maybe that’s the answer – that this vitriol isn’t a bug in the system. That social media is this vitriol. And maybe we just shouldn’t be in these spaces.
A. Yeah, I think that the challenge obviously becomes that so many people feel dependent on these spaces – for their livelihood, for human connection. It’s a conundrum, right? And I can say that even for myself, over the past couple of years, I have not been writing publicly or posting very much at all. And then, in the fall, I received an abusive email. And I remember being like, “Why am I so upset about this email? I’ve had so many egregious experiences in these spaces. Why am I ruminating about this?” And what I believe had happened is that I had taken such a big, beautiful break from social platforms, that when I experienced an abusive message again, it felt almost intolerable. And so I think that says a lot about what it might mean to leave these platforms altogether, to the extent that you can. But also what it means to even take a meaningful break. It can totally recalibrate what you find to be acceptable.
Q. This book was clearly written before Trump was re-elected as president. What do you think Trump being back in office will mean for the experiences of people, and particularly women, online?
A. Even if he wasn’t re-elected, Trump has left a legacy – in terms of how we speak to one another and about one another, in terms of decency and civility. So to have him re-elected is terrifying, in particular because so many of these leaders in Big Tech seem to be cozying up to him and very aligned with him and feel that they have permission now to allow abuse, harassment and violence to really proliferate on their platforms because they feel like nobody is going to check them. And they might be right. So, for the foreseeable future, I hope that this book could be a resource for people who, especially over the next few years, are going to have to take really good care of themselves if they’re going to be in online spaces.