A UCD lecturer's talk on violence against women was "zoom bombed" by "misogynist" activists who shouted sexist abuse and displayed pornographic images.
Dr Mary McAuliffe was giving a talk on gendered violence against women in revolutionary Clare to a local historical society when the "horrific" attack took place.
The UCD Director told Dublin Live the talk was targeted because she was a woman talking about male violence against women.
And the organisers of the talk tracked down the ring leader's twitter profile which showed a history of organising attacks on events discussing male violence against women.
She said: "I was just giving a lecture to a local history society on revolutionary violence against women in County Clare. It was local history - not something you would think would bring a targeted attack.
"It was a targeted attack. It wasn't just one person. It was multiple accounts. So, obviously it was coordinated and targeted and planned.
She added: "About twenty minutes into the talk, there was a bit of noise and I wondered if it was a kid that had unmuted one of the attendees.
"Then, suddenly, you know the way on zoom you can see tiles and you can see faces and stuff, and I could see dick pics and naked penises, erect penises and pornography. There were actual sex acts."
The "zoom bombers" hurled sexist abuse at Dr McAuliffe and started drawing penises on her slides before the talk had to be abandoned.
She said: "They were screaming get off the screen b***h, get off the screen c**t. There was all sorts of stuff in the text box and then somebody took control and was drawing penises on my slides.
"The moderator tried to shut it down but the more he shut down, the more that popped up. We had to abandon it."
She added: "Most of the attendees would be older members of the historical society. There were some of my history colleagues there who were attending to hear me talk and students as well. It was all ages.
"It was just horrific. I felt so bad for the attendees."
Dr McAuliffe had been speaking about an attempted sexual assault in revolutionary Ireland when the "zoom bombing" began.
She said: "The talk was going great and, ironically, I had just finished describing what was an attempted sexual assault by the Black and Tans on a woman in Clare and suddenly we were targeted by this sexual violence online. It was horrific.
The organisers of the event tracked down the ring leader's twitter account which showed a network of "misogynists" that go out of there way to orchestrate these types of attacks.
Dr McAuliffe said: "It is followed by many twitter accounts that target other things but all of them target women speakers and anything to do with women and feminism.
"I was female talking about male violence, no it was historical male violence, but that was it. I had advertised it on twitter as had the historical society. So, it was open season on a woman speaker talking about women. It is misogyny in action.
The anonymous account has since been suspended but Dr McAuliffe saw posts that celebrated "shutting down" similar talks.
She said: "I had a quick look at it before it got suspended and you could see that day after day it was just 'zoombomb this meeting', 'get into this' and 'we managed to shut them down hahaha'.
"That sort of thing. It is a man and all the voices zoom bombing us were male."
Sign up to the Dublin Live Newsletter to get all the latest Dublin news straight to your inbox.
