All the world’s a herd

For whatever reason, the Express posted my column last week (“The art of forgetting”) on its Facebook page with an introductory heading comprising these 30 words of the 900 I’d written. “I come from a Muslim family, and when I entered puberty I rejected Islam for telling me that menstruation made me unclean. My mother has never forgiven me for that.

” I didn’t know that they posted my columns on this platform and I wouldn’t have known if a friend had not sent me a link to it. At last count, it had elicited 425 comments, most of them inflamed responses to those 30 words, some downright nasty. I am not objecting to the decision by the Express to highlight two sentences that were not the core of my article; they were obviously selected for their potential to bait readers.

I was told that the algorithms are designed to reward posts that elicit rage, with greater digital reach. What was of more interest to me was the way people can be so easily lured by lines that are deliberately chosen to rile them up. It is the way words can skew interpretations.

I am certain that the responses came from people who either had not read the article itself, or were so predisposed to object because of the introduction that everything else was lost on them. One responder directly addressed the Express: “You read this article and your choice of heading completely missed the point of her article. Typical clickbait—wants a controversial header vs any other line where she spoke about how to process trauma.

” When Wired868 carried the column, Lasana Liburd’s headline was “The Art of Forgetting—tangling with trauma”. The one comment was: “A profound conversation, not just for families.” The e-mails I got from the column itself referred to personal experiences in trying to deal with traumatic memories.

People were inclined to absorb the column when they were not being pointed in a certain direction. It just tells you how easily people can be swayed. Politicians do it all the time.

Here is one of the minority responses from the Express which conveyed a sense that the reader had actually taken the time to consider what I had written. “Disgusted by the comments, but not surprised by the fact that most chose to focus on the one line referencing menstruation, which, as such comments frequently do, illustrates how ingrained the misogyny and patriarchy is in this society, among men and women alike. Also revealed is the re-traumatisation that occurs when a woman or girl brings up a defining moment in their lives, that they either suppress or try to work through.

You’re either stupid, too sensitive or ignorant of ‘how the world works’. The author’s story is not unique to her, but infuriatingly common for women and girls.” Her comment was treated with contempt.

In fact, although the majority of comments sought to make distinctions between “ritual impurity” and the idea that menstruating women are considered unclean in several religions, they degenerated into name-calling and unnecessary assumptions. Once the label of “rebellious woman” was affixed, others took it up. Here’s how this one went: “she just didn’t want to submit to headship being a man.

She will however submit to her boss tho. Btw ma’am you are unclean when it’s that time.” I was called a dotish modern woman.

I was declared a lesbian more than once, “and no man wants u and your living all alone with cats and dogs, I’m pretty sure. Who wants to deal with that”. I was told that if people were to follow my advice they would end up old and lonely.

I was also advised that a woman is “supposed to submit to your husband...

not yuh man, mister, bf, yuh outside man, nor to a nx woman husband or bf”. I am citing these responses, because I found that they illustrate very clearly the way the Internet provides a platform for people to spew all manner of spurious nonsense, unchecked and unfettered. On February 16, CBS News carried an article reporting that German police teams raided several homes in a crackdown on people suspected of posting hate speech online.

“As prosecutors explain it, the German constitution protects free speech, but not hate speech. And here’s where it gets tricky: German law prohibits speech that could incite hatred or is deemed insulting.” “.

..In 2015, a meme posted on Facebook falsely implied that Renate Künast, a prominent German politician, had said that every German should learn Turkish.

Künast said she started receiving threats and hate-filled comments from anonymous users online. She’d spent decades in politics, but this was different from anything she’d experienced before. “The first point was it was much more personal: ‘You’re looking so ugly.

You are an old woman. We know where you live.’ Or even, ‘You should be raped by a group of men so that you see what all these immigrants are doing,’” Künast said.

“Künast asked Meta to delete the false quotes attributed to her. She said the company told her it couldn’t be done, but Künast sued and won. In a landmark case last year, a German court ruled Meta had to remove all fake quotes attributed to Künast.

Meta is appealing.” People take liberties because of free speech, but mostly because they are easily swayed by the herd. Nothing original there.

—Vaneisa Baksh is an editor, writer and cricket historian. E-mail: [email protected] .

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