How to Deal with Online Harassment

How often do you wake up in the morning, stretch your arms, think, “Today is going to be a GREAT day,” then take a quick glance at your phone to see if you’ve missed anything overnight…

Only to get hit in the face by the kind of comment NO ONE wants to see that early in the morning.

Some guy thinks you’re going to want to sleep with him if he posts a picture of his anatomy or if he delivers an X-rated pickup line so graphic that you can’t help but imagine what an amazing lover he’ll be.

Come on, guys. REALLY?

Being a woman online today means having to deal with harassment. Those guys that would normally be hanging around construction sites, wolf-whistling at women, now get to lurk online and fire off as many inappropriate comments as they want.

Why do they think that’s okay? And how can we make them stop?

Why Men Do It

You would think I would be used to it by now.

But every time I check my comments on YouTube, I see some rude or nasty comment by a guy who thinks that the women on my channel need to hear his opinion.

That’s why I manually approve each and every comment on YouTube. I don’t want anyone coming to my channel to enjoy a video and then scrolling down to see some misogynistic nastiness by some guy who doesn’t even belong here.

A lot of these guys are from the Red Pill movement, and they believe that the only purpose of a woman is to serve a man’s physical needs and produce offspring for him.

They actually think women exist for a man’s pleasure, and if a woman is inferior or broken in some way—if she’s older, if she’s divorced, if she’s not attractive enough—then she’s spoiled goods.

Let me tell you: encountering THAT attitude early in the morning can really ruin my day.

And online dating sites can be even worse.

It tends to be the free ones, like OkCupid or Plenty of Fish.

Many of the guys on there do not have basic social skills. They actually think that sending an explicit message or a photo of their less-than-generously-endowed body parts will encourage a woman to say yes.

Now, research has found that only a minority of the guys who send those pictures are doing so because they’re a jerk.

More commonly, these guys are hoping that either you’ll get turned on by their sexy pic, or you’ll return the favor by sending an explicit photo of yourself back.

(Keep waiting, guys!)

A third of these men actually think that sending naked pics is a great way to kickstart a relationship. How else would a woman know you’re interested? Isn’t this how everyone flirts nowadays?

Even crazier, these guys genuinely believe that getting a naked picture of a guy will make YOU feel more attractive.

Clearly, they need some education! So should you put them in their place by thinking up the perfect comeback?

That’s time and energy wasted on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Here’s what you should do instead.

#1. Hold up a mirror.

When you get a comment like that, you can’t help but feel it was directed towards you personally. Did you invite that comment? Were you giving off sexual vibes without realizing it? You can feel violated.

But these guys have no clue who you are. All they know is that you’re a woman, and they have this idea in their mind of what women want and what women are like.

What I’ve found helpful is to imagine holding up a mirror. Any thing a guy says to me, he’s actually saying to his own reflection.

So if a guy calls you fat or if he says he wants to do things to you, hold up that mirror. Guess he must not be happy with his own appearance. The only person he’ll be doing anything with tonight is himself.

#2. Delete, block, report.

Until guys learn basic social etiquette—and that means he doesn’t insult you, he doesn’t make inappropriate comments, and he treats you like a real human being with actual feelings—they don’t deserve your time or energy.

Don’t waste time debating them. Don’t waste time calling them out.

You’re not going to educate them. You’re not going to change them.

Your job is to get rid of them.

Think of it like a video game. You’ve got all these baddies popping out all over your screen. When you’re playing a game, you don’t think about turning those baddies good. You don’t think about shouting at those baddies, “Hey, don’t you realize what you’re doing is wrong?”

You just defeat them.

You defeat trolls in three simple steps:

Delete, block and report.

You delete the post. You block the sender. And you report the comment to the site.

And then you move on with your day. 🙂