Editor’s Note: Netizens is, as of September 1, 2020, streaming on HBO MAX.
Women on Twitter know that personal attacks from strangers are just the cost of doing business. You want to talk about current events like Donald Trump or Infinity War or just what happened during your day, you do so knowing that some dude might look at your post and feel the need to respond: “stick to the Kardashians, you ugly bitch.”
Outside of the emotional toll, those comments don’t really have much impact outside of the internet. But what if the hateful sexism driving them had real-world consequences? That is the subject of director Cynthia Lowen’s documentary, Netizens, which premiered at Tribeca this weekend.
Filmed over a period that covers both the 2016 election and the birth of the #MeToo movement, Lowen uses the film to examine the systemic forces that allow cyber harassment to be such an effective way of silencing and hurting women. Though Lowen features a number of victims of cyber harassment, three women in particular drive the film.
The first is lawyer Carrie Goldberg, who started a firm focusing on cyber harassment after her ex’s attacks made her realize how ill-equipped the legal system was to stop it. Next, is Tina Reine, a former Wall Street commodities trader whose reputation was so destroyed by the defamatory websites her ex posted it forced her to leave both the financial sector and New York City. Finally, there’s Anita Sarkeesian, creator and host of the web series Feminist Frequency, where her critiques of female representation in video games made her a target of the Gamergate crowd.
Of the three, Sarkeesian is the only one who doesn’t know her harassers — though that’s not to dismiss the daily death threats she reports to the FBI. However, while anonymity is often a factor in online harassment, Lowen makes it clear that it’s hardly a prerequisite. One of the most striking things about the women Lowen showcases is the brevity of their relationships with the men who harassed them. For Goldberg, they dated for four months, for Reine, only two. And though we never learn exactly who in the life of Goldberg’s client “Celia” harasses her, there’s a possibility it’s a man she briefly interacted with exclusively over OKCupid. Still, the thing to remember is that no amount of time could begin to justify what these women experienced.
That’s the whole point.
Rather, Lowen is emphasizing how nasty and even downright evil this particular form of misogyny is. Reine’s story perhaps illustrates this best. When we first meet her, we learn that part of Reine’s harasser’s abuse includes the claim that she was once a prostitute. However, Lowen doesn’t tell us if the claim is true until about halfway through the film. The goal is to emphasize that it’s irrelevant. Reine is a human being who deserves the right to pursue her career. Any decisions she may or may not have made are not the reasons the only job she can get is teaching aerial classes in Florida, it’s the patriarchy and misogyny used to shame her. The eventual reveal only emphasizes that.
Perhaps Lowen’s greatest achievement, though, is the way she conveys aspects of patriarchy and misogyny that are much more complex. The first is the systemic issues that keep women facing cyber harassment from getting help. Whether it’s the male cop who dismissed Reine’s situation as a “bad break-up” or Goldberg’s assertion that the First Amendment actually protects the perpetrator more than the victim, it is sobering to realize how unprotected women are by the very laws and institutions that are supposed to keep them safe. No wonder men have such a hard time believing women when society is set up to dismiss their fears.
Nowhere is that influence on the individual more infuriatingly portrayed than when Reine speaks with a younger man after she gives a speech at her local Toastmaster’s meeting. Despite hearing Reine’s story and watching her cry while giving it, he has the audacity to suggest that her ex’s harassment only has power over her because she allows it to.
While there’s no malice in the man’s tone, his unwitting condescension will feel painfully familiar to many women and will seem totally reasonable to any number of otherwise nice guys. A guy doesn’t need to ruin a woman’s life to be an asshole, he just has to decide to ignore the truth a woman speaks because he never can or will share her experience.
Watching the way the profiled women not just survive their victimization, but learn to thrive despite it, you admire their resilience. The thing is, they and every single woman shouldn’t have to be so resilient in the first place. #MeToo has made women’s stories more visible than perhaps any other point in history and it will lead to change. Unfortunately, as Sarkeesian notes late in Netizens, the women fighting in that movement probably won’t get to see much of the change they seek. While that’s true, it’s equally important to remember that nothing at all can change unless men actually listen.
Women are screaming their stories into the world hoping to change it forever. For the love of God, listen to us.
Rating: 10/10
