Troll Hunting by Ginger Gorman

Author:Ginger Gorman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
Published: 2018-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Back at home, forty-eight hours later, I’m telling another friend of mine. A writer. A white feminist, like me.

‘Fuck off, troll,’ she says, furious.

My husband’s response is different. Drinking wine with me, he listens as I pour out this story without taking a breath. My rage. My hurt.

‘I’m out,’ I say defiantly, and out loud this time.

Quietly, Donnie thinks about XT – what I’ve told him now and a few previous snippets. ‘Didn’t XT just break up with his girlfriend?’ he asks. ‘Was she white? Maybe he’s just feeling misogynist because of that. Go back online and talk to him.’

Awash in angst, I can nevertheless see this seems calm and reasonable.

Gingerly, I go back to my desk very early the next morning. I reinstall the messenger app and send XT what, once upon a time, would have been a letter handwritten in cursive on stiff, crinkly paper and sent by post with a franked stamp. (Too bad we gave all that up for the likes of 4chan, Tumblr and Facebook.)

It says:

I don’t even want you to be sorry. That’s not the thing. The thing is that you actually think that most white women are bitches or cancer.

Firstly, I’ve had cancer, as you know. The doctor slit my throat to take it out. So that’s awesome, relating the whole thing back to that #notatall

Second, when you were withdrawing from Xanax I stayed with you online.

Just imagine you’re me for a second. I work 60–70 hours a week doing journalism and then my domestic load is about 25 hours (about). So it’s a lot. I’m stressed and busy, just like you. When that happened, I was cooking my family dinner and playing with the kids. But I stayed with you online. Because I cared that you were safe. I don’t want ANY thanks or congratulations for that. I wanted to. I chose to. The point is … you’re not seeing what’s right in front of you.

You’re ignoring the kindness and cherry-picking the evidence to suit your pre-decided stigma about white women. It’s confirmation bias. (I don’t know why you’re doing that. If it’s because of your ex-girlfriend or the kind of stuff people say in IRC – the culture around trolling and the alt-right.)

And you kept going on and on about how white women can’t be hackers.

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