Over the past few days, "Ghostbusters" actress Leslie Jones has been subject to horrific sexist and racist remarks on Twitter. It started when Milo Yiannopoulos, infamous internet troll and editor of the conservative news blog Breitbart, released his personal review of "Ghostbusters."
The beauty of the internet is that anyone can release their own reviews of anything, at any time. Let's face it, people love sharing their opinions. That's all well and good until you start using hate fueled speech to replace valid argument. Yiannaopoulos did exactly this with his review. In his blog post, he stated that the film was just "full of female characters that are simply stand-ins for men plus a black character worthy of a minstrel show."
Yiannaopoulos also took direct aim at Leslie Jones, stating that she was "spectacularly unappealing" and contributed her character to "flat-as-a-pancake black stylings."
Soon after the review was released, Jones responded on Twitter, calling the piece disgusting and perverted. There was immediate backlash to Jones' tweet, instigating a fire so full of hate that Jones eventually left Twitter all together.
The most popular of the hateful tweets were statements in which users compared Jones to various apes. One tweet showed a picture of Harambe, the gorilla who was shot and killed at the Cincinnati zoo earlier this year. The corresponding caption read "I know you only wanted to protect that kid @Lesdoggg." Another user referred to the actress as "Leslie Kong."
An overwhelming series of comparable tweets followed.
Yiannaopoulos voiced his opinion and exercised his right of free speech with the release of his review. As did Jones with the release of her rebuttal. So why is it that Jones was the one being attacked?
Instead of keeping quiet and letting it all blow over, Jones took a stand. She started screenshotting the worst of the racist tweets, exposing the true colors of her attackers. This was a brave move not because Jones was getting even, but because she was bringing to light the racism that is happening all around us.
The experience of Leslie Jones is absolutely something that needs to be talked about. It is the perfect example of the behavior minorities encounter on social media. The term "cyberbulling" seems to trivialize what is happening here, so I am going to call it by its very real name: abuse.
The abuse may use the internet as its medium, but it's affecting thousands of users every day in real life. Just because the interaction is virtual, it doesn't mean that the words don't still hurt.
Leslie Jones deactivated her Twitter account Monday night, saying "I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today...wrong."
The fact that the vile words of racist strangers could be enough to knock this queen off of her throne is very disheartening. No one should ever be made to feel that way; not because of their gender, not because of their sexual preference, not because of their body shape and especially not because of the color of their skin.
Is this the world we want to bring our children into? A world that normalizes racist remarks hidden behind anonymous internet accounts? A world that sheds a dark shadow of hate onto everything it encounters?
That's not a world I want to live in. It's time for a change.
It appears that an overwhelming number of people feel the same way. The hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ arose, sharing love with this wonderful, hilarious woman. Eventually, Yiannaopoulos was banned from Twitter. The queen picked back up her crown, dusted it off, and joined the Twitter community once more. (Like she said—"Who else is gonna live tweet Games of Thrones!!")
Take a little time this week to decide how you're going to use your freedom of speech. Is it going to be to spread hate, racism and misogyny? Or is it going to be to spread love, and create a better world?
