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Writer Clementine Ford has defended her actions right after a man who left an abusive comment on one particular of her Facebook posts was fired from his job with a hotel chain more than the message.
On November 24, Ford, a freelance writer who lists her interests as “feminism, pop culture and social troubles”, shared a screenshot of a sexually explicit comment she had received.
Michael Nolan, whose Facebook profile listed his employer as Meriton Apartments, commented on that post with the word “slut”.
On November 27, Ford posted a gallery of screenshots of that comment along with posts from Mr Nolan’s Facebook page, linking to Meriton’s Facebook web page and asking if they have been aware of his behaviour.
On November 30, Ford shared the text of a message she says she received from the Meriton Group, announcing that the incident had been investigated and that Mr Nolan “no longer operates for the Meriton Group”.
“Meriton Group does not condone this variety of behaviour,” the message stated.
In the same post, Ford defended herself against accusations she had “triggered a man to shed his job”.
“He is accountable for his actions,” she wrote.
“He is accountable for the items he writes and the attitudes he holds.”
Ford stated it was not her duty to “hold his hand and coddle him” since behaving in an abusive manner may possibly have consequences for him.
She said that females are usually told to stay silent about harassment in case it ruins a man’s career, but asked “Why is their behaviour our duty? Sufficient.”
In a column for Fairfax Media’s Day-to-day Life site, Ford said that “Facebook’s techniques for responding to abuse are useless” and that females “ritually targeted by gendered harassment” have to choose amongst removing themselves from the on the web globe, or to try and produce consequences for men and women in their everyday lives.
Ford had already edited her first post about the comment to say “There are fundamentally no consequences for males who behave like this, so we have to commence creating consequences for them.”
Topics: social-media, data-and-communication, community-and-society, feminism, australia