VOICES
One Sentence
Paragraph Backdropper McKenna Christy shares her experiences dealing with online harassment as a student journalist. BY MCKENNA CHRISTY | DESIGN BY RACHEL RECTOR Content warning and disclaimer: This story includes transphobic and misogynistic comments from Facebook, of which certain users will remain anonymous for safety reasons. ournalism is not an easy passion to have. Being a journalist can be all-consuming and exhausting, but sometimes, that is part of the fun. Throughout the five years I have been involved with journalism, I have learned, explored and pushed myself. I am learning the universals of the profession, such as the experiences most journalists have, through my involvement with publications at Ohio University. But there are certain experiences some journalists don’t face this early in their careers. I am a young woman with an unrelenting motivation to achieve my goals. This is “intimidating” to some people, such as older men, who were often taught growing up that women should not act passionately by our patriarchal culture. There is more depth to the idea I mentioned and I will touch on its complexity later. My interactions with men who have ideas of how women should act speak for themselves, however. During my senior year of high school, I was our magazine’s editor-in-chief. We produced an issue dedicated to social justice in 2020. I wrote a letter from the editor detailing the contents of the issue and why, given our country’s problematic origins, it was an important read. A takeaway from my letter is the following quote: “This issue was written with the goal to feature those who have stories to tell about their experiences facing racism, homophobia, microaggressions and other forms of discrimination. If this issue is uncomfortable to read at times, that’s a reason to continue reading and reflecting.” A month after we released the social justice issue, my letter was posted on a Facebook group dedicated to
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“informing people” of happenings in my hometown of Powell, Ohio. A person was angry about what I wrote because some people believe that critical race theory is being taught in public K-12 schools. I ignored it and the comments because I didn’t feel it was beneficial to my growth as a writer and student. Around the same time, I noticed a new “community” Facebook group emerged. This one was committed to criticizing teachers in my former school district for being “socialist indoctrinators.” I defended a teacher in the comment section of the post and said I felt threatened by the group. My comment was deleted but I took my comment to another post and published it there. My second comment caught the attention of the creator of the group who posted my letter and in response to my writing said: “All can agree that Christy would have benefited from more instruction in English composition and less indoctrination in social activism. A one sentence paragraph? C’mon, man!” I was blocked from commenting, so this person must have been intimidated by someone who supposedly can’t write. Although the group was created anonymously, it became clear who the owner was when someone posted my letter on a comment thread this past February, a year after it was originally posted on Facebook. The person’s account used their last name and had a picture of them. They used the same criticism of my letter saying: “This would not be considered 12th grade level writing in the 1980s …” The comments about my writing do bother me but the comments that this person makes about others bother me more and prompted me to write this piece. Some of the worst comments I found were transphobic and misogynistic. “Do teenage girls still deal with anorexia, bulimia or cutting? Or do they all decide they’re trans these days?”
