‘It’s uglier out there now.” So says Laura Kuenssberg, the first woman to hold the position of BBC political editor and the only one to have required a bodyguard to report on a Labour conference. Kuenssberg was talking about social media, but she may as well have been referring to our openly sexist world.
Like any high-profile woman who dares to – what? Do the job for which she is unequally paid? – Kuenssberg has been plagued by online abuse. She has considered leaving social media. Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has broken some of the biggest stories of the Trump administration, is “taking a break” from Twitter. “The viciousness, toxic partisan anger, intellectual dishonesty, motive-questioning and sexism are at all-time highs,” she explained.
There is a pattern – and it is not the obvious one about powerful women being taken down by men. It is the fact that we are failing to celebrate, perhaps even notice, the vital role women are playing in these frightening times.
Women such as Rose McGowan, one of the first to speak out about Harvey Weinstein. Or Samantha Bee, whose gleeful, whip-smart outrage has made her the US’s most important satirical voice. Or Tarana Burke, the civil rights activist who started the #MeToo movement. Or the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story. Or Margaret Hodge, who is standing by her confrontation of Jeremy Corbyn over antisemitism in the Labour party. Or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is almost certain to become the youngest woman elected to Congress. Or the Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman, without whom the Windrush scandal would not have been exposed. Or Michelle Wolf, whose White House Correspondents’ dinner routine was a sublime takedown of the government. Wide Awoke could go on.
These women have achieved extraordinary things, yet the abuse and criticism they receive, as well as the reporting of it, gets much more oxygen than any acknowledgement of their successes. That they continue to do what they do in the most hostile environments (for example, Leave.EU posting an Airplane! video where Cadwalladr’s face was substituted with that of a “hysterical” woman being repeatedly hit about the head) only makes them more impressive.
In an era of white-male supremacy, it is women – who tend to have the most to lose – who are daring to speak truth to power. When so many acts of violence, from shootings in American schools to Isis killers detonating bombs in public places, can be traced back to toxic masculinity, it is women who refuse to be silenced.
