By Talitha Stone
I’m a 23-year-old psychology student from Sydney and in June this year, I was subjected to a horrific torrent of abusive tweets from fans of touring American rapper Tyler Okonma. I challenged Okonma’s lyrics which encourage rape and violence against women by vocally supporting a petition on change.org that suggested he shouldn’t be playing all-age shows.
At Tyler’s concert in Sydney the next day, he told his fans he hoped my children got STDs, and “dedicated” songs to me that included lyrics like “punch a bitch in her mouth just for talkin’ shit”.
The abuse started almost instantly. First a drip, then a rush, then a flood. I felt physically sick. He had 1.7 million fans, and it felt like every single one of them had some violence stored up for me – a promise to assault me, the threat that they would rape me, an expression of hatred for my life and my freedom.
It was terrifying at first, and then I started to feel totally disconnected from myself. When one of them said he was going to mutilate my body, I couldn’t comprehend that he could be talking about me. The messages were coming at such a rate I couldn’t keep up.
Tyler Okonma, aka Tyler The Creator, is a member of powerful hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (usually abbreviated to OFWGKTA or Odd Future). It’s unclear how many members are part of the collective (somewhere between 25 and 60), but its best-known members are Okonma, Earl Sweatshirt, Syd tha Kyd, Hodgy Beats and last year’s Grammy-winning breakout artist, R&B singer Frank Ocean.
As a solo artist, Okonma has released three albums, his horrorcore-style lyrics taking in subjects such as violence, rape fantasies, murder and even necrophilia.
His lyrics include:
“F— Mary in her ass.. ha-ha.. yo, I tell her it’s my house, give her a tour, In my basement, and keep that bitch locked up in my storage, Rape her and record it, then edit it with more shit”
“You call this shit rape but I think that rape’s fun, I just got one request, stop breathin”
“I wanna tie her body up and throw her in my basement, Keep her there, so nobody can wonder where her face went, (Tyler, what you doin’?) Shut the f— up, You gon’ f—in’ love me bitch, Shit, I don’t give a f—, your family lookin’ for you, wish ‘em good luck, Bitch, you tried to play me like a dummy, Now you stuck up in my motherf—in’ basement all bloody, And I’m f—in’ your dead body, your coochie all cummy, Lookin’ in your dead eyes, what the f— you want from me?”
I received threats from Okonma’s fans constantly for two weeks and I still get the odd tweet of abuse today. In a tone eerily similar to Okonma’s lyrics they sent messages like: “shut the f— up cuz if I see you on the streets I’m gonna snatch u in a alley and force this d— in you,” “how’s that for promoting rape? I’m f—ing DOING it! So watch ur back, but ur families will be first” and “you know you secretly want @f—tyler to forcibly penetrate your anal cavity”.
On the flipside I received an abundance of support from friends and family. People who read about my experience in The Sydney Morning Herald and other media outlets couldn’t believe that this kind of behaviour was being tolerated in Australia.
When I was attacked I did all the things you’re meant to do: I reported individual tweets to Twitter (after diligently filling out their long-winded forms) and was staggered to be told that tweets like this did not breach their guidelines: “f—ing waste of flesh worthless female. its girls like u who make guys want to #rape a helpless pussy like u”.
I blocked the people abusing me and then I reported it to the police, who said there was nothing they could do, other than work with Twitter. Their advice was to delete my account, and not provoke people – letting the abusers win.
After thousands of threats of rape, murder and experiences like mine, Twitter has recently announced that they’ll be rolling out a report abuse button on all platforms. That’s a great first step, but it’s kidding itself if it thinks this will solve the problems faced by myself and millions of other women right around the world. It’s also underestimating the consequences of creating a powerful global platform that is unsafe for women to share their opinions on.
Twitter’s rules and processes are badly broken. Other tweets, to other users, that Twitter has said are within their guidelines include: “I will rape you when I get the chance” and “Ur a f—ing faggot, go kill urself.” If you’re a woman who has used Twitter to talk about things that matter to you, chances are you’ve had a similar experience. Chances are, even if you report each and every abusive, threatening tweet, many of them will be OK’d by Twitter and the abuse will continue.
Twitter has significant power, and is playing an important role in world affairs – but it’s facing a critical moment. The people who run Twitter, like Del Harvey, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, need to realise that the platform must enable people to talk about the things that matter to them without facing a torrent of threats and abuse.
I’ve joined a global petition to get Twitter to stop rape abuse on its platform. The campaign was inspired by Caroline Criado-Perez, a British feminist who used a petition on change.org to fight to keep a woman on banknotes in Britain. Immediately after she won that campaign, she faced the horrendous backlash of violence and threats that come to so many women who raise their heads online. The momentum from her campaign for reform is now beginning to put pressure on Twitter, and I hope an international outcry will get them to act with a comprehensive zero-tolerance policy for abuse.
Public discourse shouldn’t be something anyone should have to “learn to deal with”. Twitter can, and must, play an active role in being a positive voice among the multitude of violent tweets some of its users dish out. Twitter’s actions here can have life-saving consequences – but it needs to act, swiftly and effectively.
We are now asking Twitter Australia to meet Talitha. Support this call by tweeting at @TwitterAu and asking them to #meettalitha, who started the petition at www.change.org/twitterabuse
A report here on Talitha’s meeting with Twitter
Join Talitha Stone’s campaign to get Twitter to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for threats and abuse by signing this petition at Change.Org.
Reprinted with Talitha Stone’s permission from Daily Life
2 Responses
Typical response from police advising women to delete their Twitter and not ‘provoke people.’
The police know these ‘people’ are men and boys and police also know women do not ‘provoke’ these innumerable women-hating males to make direct threats of committing male sexual violence against women.
Rather the male dominated and male controlled police force prefers to ignore the issue because ‘it has nothing to do with us since we males aren’t the ones being subjected to male sexual violence.’
Wonder if police would have told a non-white male ‘not to provoke white males when he charges white males with subjecting him to threats of white male violence via Twitter? I think not because males’ right not to be subjected to male threats of violence or even subjected to vile ‘sexualised insults’ is rightly seen by other powerful males in positions of immense power as real.
Yet as usual women are being blamed for ‘provoking people’ and as usual it is men who are the ones claiming it is women who are to blame – not the males who are the ones engaging in virulent and violent male hatred of women because their sex is female.
Tyler the women-hater is not unique – he is a product of our male supremacist system and endemic male hatred of women. But Tyler is responsible for inciting other males to utter their vile sexually degrading insults at women.
What needs to happen but won’t is for men to take responsibility for their actions and shame those males who continue to believe women aren’t human so therefore threatening women with male sexual violence is okay because no woman has right to express her views or ‘threaten (sic) male spaces!’
Laws need to be passed making male hatred of women a criminal offence wherein if the male accused is convicted he is imprisoned for at least two years. There also needs to a cultural change regarding males’ continued pseudo right to subject any woman or girl they choose, to vile male sexual harassment irrespective of whether it happens in a public street; on-line or via social networking sites.
But this would mean curbing males’ right to utter such vile women-hating views and males hold their precious right to utter women-hating threats to women as sacrosanct.
So women either continue to try and live their lives knowing that males have right whenever they choose to subject them to real male threats of sexual violence and which is commonly copied from the malestream pornography these males have been avidly viewing, or women can band together and condemn the males and their male bystanders who continue to believe ‘free speech’ means right of any male to subject any woman or girl he chooses to threats of male sexual violence if the said woman/girl doesn’t obey the male’s demands.
Remember it will be a win win situation for males if women do not stand up together and name the problem which is pandemic male hatred/male contempt for women and girls and which is being fuelled by social media; malestream media and popular culture. All of which continue to be male dominated and male controlled.
Remember also mens’ supremacist system will do everything it can to absolve males of any accountability because as the police claimed ‘women shouldn’t provoke these people!’ Meaning of course women shouldn’t provoke men because men must never be held accountable for promoting/condoning/excusing/justifying male hatred/male contempt for women and girls.
This is why Men like that don’t last long. Their bound to make a mistake that will send them to prison, and once prison Inmates find out what he did, His life expectancy in prison will drop like a rock. Men like Tyler Okonma are the reason why they wind up in prison or 6 feet under.