Backlash: Misogyny in The Digital Age… Ugly, But Not News
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
It’s hardly a hot take that social media can be a disgusting place. That’s particularly true for women and girls, who run the risk of being insulted, stalked, and threatened with sexual and other violence, in ways that affect their sense of emotional well-being and safety.
A new Quebec-made documentary, Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age, by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist, works too hard to shock and confront us with this ugliness, at times in ways that risks distracting from its message.
Thus, the film is packaged with a horror movie poster: suspenseful music, staged scenarios, and offensive words blasted on the screen at regular intervals. At least the English title, a nod to Susan Faludi’s 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, is more subtle than the original French title, Je vous salue salope, literally, “I salute you, slut.”
Get past the schlocky trappings though, and the core of the film has value, focusing on four women from different countries who have been through the social media fire and are willing to speak about it. They include Canadian schoolteacher, Laurence Gratton who, along with other women in teacher’s college, was harassed for years by a male classmate and now teaches classes in online bullying.
There’s also Italian politician Laura Boldrini, who faced thousands of threats for her pro-feminist, pro-immigrant politics, and was forced to sue a mayor for saying online that she should be raped. French feminist YouTuber Marion Seclin, who describes the fear and emotional toll of receiving more than 40,000 hate messages after posting a video condemning street harassment.
Misogyny joins racism in the case of African-American politician Kiah Morris, who was driven from her job as a Vermont congresswoman, and eventually her home, by a white supremacist harasser.
The film also includes an interview with Glen Canning, who recounts the heartrending story of his teenaged daughter Rehtaeh Parsons, who took her life in 2013 following 15 months of social media harassment after photos of her sexual assault were posted online.
The main takeaway here is that online abuse is not simply the ravings of twisted individuals, but often part of systematic campaigns of terror, designed to frighten and silence women in positions of influence and power. These campaigns are abetted by the failure of governments and police forces to take online threats seriously and by social media companies, which profit from inflammatory material.
Although Backlash is light on statistical information or historical perspective, three academics interviewed in the film focus on the language of hate speech and its relationship to social media. The experts include Laurence Rosier from Brussels, Sarah T. Roberts from the University of California, and, most provocatively, Donna Zuckerberg, a Princeton professor, who says social media — including Facebook, which was founded by her brother, Mark Zuckerberg — provide a bullhorn for misogyny.
The sensational tone and TV-friendly newsmagazine pace of the documentary may be ascribed to its intended young audience. The filmmakers, partly funded by the Telus media company, have launched a website, along with a French-language learning guide, which is being distributed in Quebec high schools.
Backlash: Misogyny in the Digital Age. Co-directed by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist. With Laurence Gratton, Marion Seclin, Laura Boldrini, Kiah Morris, Glen Canning, Donna Zuckerberg, Sarah T. Roberts and Laurence Rosier. Screening multiple times at Toronto’s Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema; click here for showtimes.