The chilling effect

I’ve learned that my sharing about the trolling and harassment I’m targeted for online is having a chilling effect, and I’m having to come to grips with that.

Within the span of a few days, a friend told me that she’s been hesitant to start the selfie Tiktok account she wants to run due to hearing about my trolls, and a client told me she’s worried about posting regularly about Health at Every Size® and fat activism on her Instagram for the same reason.

When I started my work, I knew that trolls existed, but thought they really only affected higher-profile folks like Ragen Chastain or Lindy West. And it’s true that when I only had a few hundred followers, I was relatively safe.

I had around 5,000 Instagram followers when a troll shared one of my posts on a website full of other trolls, and I was doxxed. (Doxxing is when someone’s personal information and/or location is shared online as a terrorist tactic.) I was probably unlucky that it happened that soon.

(It’s also true that the more privilege you hold, the more support you will receive if you’re harassed. The lukewarm reactions I get when I talk about being doxxed are very different from the reactions and support I saw recently awarded to someone in a thinner body who’d been doxxed.)

The very last thing I want to do is discourage other fat folks from living their best lives online, but at the same time, it’s so important that we speak out about harassment. I don’t know how to reconcile these things.