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Telegram journalist’s online harassment shows why FemFest is needed: organizer

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The article was like many others that appear in local daily newspapers, with Telegram reporter Tara Bradbury interviewing Jenny Wright about FemFest, a new festival about to launch in St. John’s.

But the vitriolic response to the reporter and her article — emails calling Bradbury “a biased bitch” and “brainwashed cultural Marxist,” while tweets charged her with “promoting radical feminism” — highlights exactly why the Newfoundland and Labrador capital’s first feminism festival is needed, founder Wright tells Yahoo Canada News.

“Although I’ve experienced it for years and seen it happen for years to others, it still does surprise me when I see it,” Wright says of the online abuse the reporter received. “What was so disheartening with Tara was that in her case, she was simply acting as a journalist who was simply writing about FemFest.”

Bradbury’s article explains that FemFest is part conference and part arts festival, with events including presentations, panel discussions, musical performances and evenings out in St. John’s. Running from August 25 to 28, the festival focuses on both issues affecting local women and those that are felt well beyond Newfoundland’s shores, says Wright, who is the executive director of the St. John’s Status of Women Council/Women’s Centre.

The online harassment Bradbury received after the Aug. 15 article was published is one of those widespread concerns. Author and feminist activist Jessica Valenti recently left Twitter after receiving online threats against her five-year-old daughter. Actress Leslie Jones was the target of sexist and racist attacks online after the release of her most recent movie, “Ghostbusters.”

Other prominent women on Twitter have either left the service, temporarily or permanently, or increased their account privacy. There have been calls for Twitter to improve its protections against online harassment, and last month the service suspended several accounts because of abusive behaviour. A week ago Twitter introduced notifications settings and quality controls meant to give users more options over what they see on the platform.

“Strong feminist women who are speaking out are receiving so much hatred, so much misogyny they are leaving Twitter en masse,” Wright says. “We’re losing so many really important voices on women’s issues and the women’s movement, and I think that’s really frightening.”

In Bradbury’s case, the harassment included slurs sent to her over Twitter and email. On Monday, Bradbury wrote about how another Telegram reporter, Louis Power, was told he was a traitor to his gender when he tweeted in support of FemFest. In that article Bradbury outlined how she has dealt with sexism regularly as part of her work, including having the “FHRITP” slur yelled at her when she filmed TV segments.

“The fact that the article was a simple event-advancer yet it stirred a burning anger in some men that they just couldn’t hold back is disturbing,” Bradbury wrote. “The fact that most of the guys hurling the abuse used their real names, showing a passion and conviction in their argument that’s not there with anonymous comments, is unsettling and shows the depth of their misogyny.”

FemFest will address the issue of online harassment specifically at the conference during a presentation and panel discussion on using social media for online activism and addressing harassment on Twitter and other places online, Wright says.

Festival organizers set the schedule based on an open call for submissions, and the result is events, discussions and presentations on topics as diverse as midwifery, sex work, indigenous feminism and sexism in the workplace.

Some of the discussion will be on issues that specifically affect women in the province, like a gender wage gap larger than that in any other province and evidence of increased rates of domestic violence during the ongoing economic downturn.

“I think that there’s going to be something there for everyone,” Wright says.

And though the harassment Bradbury’s article prompted was disturbing, it had also had the perhaps-unintended effect of highlighting exactly why an event like FemFest is necessary, she says.

“I think it started a really important dialogue,” Wright says. “This is it, this is what it looks like and we don’t need to put up with it anymore.”