I remember the first violent message I received on Instagram. It was a veritable bingo of hate: he mocked me, told me no one would want to look at my “dirty” crotch – though his language was worse, of course. He asked if “sluts” like me, moaning until they “get what they want”, was “what our country was coming to”, before reminding me that nothing was going to change. He finished by saying he hoped I was gang-raped “senseless” by 20 men. But, he didn’t use the word “men”. He used a racist slur instead, finishing the message with five middle-finger emojis. I remember how my chest tightened and I grew hot with fear.
That day had marked my first appearance on a big, mainstream television channel. I was three months into a campaign I’d launched to raise awareness about non-consensual upskirt photographs, something that I’d fallen victim to that summer at a music festival. While I waited patiently for a band to come on stage, a man had stuck his hands between my legs, up my skirt and taken photos of my crotch, sharing it with his friends around him. I heard laughter and sensed that they were looking at me. One of the guys was standing in front of me, head down, laughing at something on his phone. I looked around his back and saw he was on WhatsApp, looking at a picture of my crotch. I was standing in the middle of a crowd of tens of thousands, but somehow I managed to snatch the phone from his hands and run through the throngs of people to security.
