Trolls interrupted a gender-based violence meeting by exposing themselves, singing, and asking for sexual favours.
The People Before Profit-hosted meeting took place on Zoom on Tuesday night, with around 150 people in attendance.
The meeting covered the topic of gender-based violence with speeches from Noeline Blackwell from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Orla O’Connor from the National Women’s Council, and PBP councillor Fiona Ferguson.
But the call was beset by a number of trolls who sought to continuously interrupt the proceedings,
PBP rep for Tallaght South Emma Hendrick told Dublin Live: “It’s unreal, seeing something like that on the screen during a gender-based violence meeting.
“When you’re talking about misogyny, sexism....what can we do to tackle this type of stuff, and then some man has the neck to come on and do that.
“As soon as Fiona came onto speak, some guy kept interrupting, he was singing and he couldn’t be muted for some reason.
"Somebody wrote something like ‘who can give me a w**k’ in the chat, and then someone put a picture of a penis in the chat.
“Someone then came on the screen and they were exposing themselves.”
Emma explained that she never experienced anything like it before.
She said: “We'd had an anti-racism meeting before where someone came into our Zoom and started shouting, but I’ve never seen anything like that.
“Zoom needs to take some type of responsibility. People were putting in the chat to remove him, he didn’t have a real name. The hosts were trying to do that as quickly as possible.
“There was a panic on their faces which is awful to go through because they feel responsible but it’s nothing to do with them.”
People Before Profit are calling for a day of action against gender-based violence in Ireland on International Women's Day (March 8).
To get the latest breaking news straight to your inbox, sign up for our free newsletter .
