14 DAY TRIAL // Actress Ashley Judd is done with people abusing and bullying her on social media, so she’s taking a stand, announcing plans to sue those who have been bombarding her with vile messages these past couple of days.
It all started with a tweet she posted after a game on Sunday, when she said that one of the teams was “playing dirty.” She didn’t accuse anyone of cheating outright, but this is what a section of the Twitterverse understood: and they proceeded to attack her viciously.
Judd says no to bullying
Obviously, they messed with the wrong person. Judd’s initial reaction was to repost some of the vile messages she received, all of them calling her names and / or telling her to go and die, among other things.
She apologized to her own followers prior to that, telling them that she would have never exposed them to this kind of language had she not been turned into a target for no reason. This was her way of fighting back, she explained: by shaming those who tried to hide behind their computer screens, she was taking a stand against bullying.
Apparently, as she would later tell Today’s Craig Melvin and MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts (video below), she’s doing more than just retweeting the abuse: she is also filing police reports against those who abused her.
“I'm pressing charges,” she says. “The amount of gender violence that I experience is absolutely extraordinary. And a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that's directed at me in social media.”
It’s the gesture that counts
Ashley Judd isn’t trying to fool herself into believing her action of filing police reports will actually see her bullies prosecuted but, she argues, this is one of those situations where the gesture counts.
She wants to send a message that online bullying is not ok, no matter who the person targeted is or if they’re famous or not.
Today’s culture allows for anyone with a computer or a smartphone (and an Internet connection) to use them to attack others online, celebrities or not. Hiding behind a computer like this shouldn’t be perceived as the easiest thing to do because it has no consequences, because the police would never take the time to follow up on those threats and bring whoever made them to justice.
This is why she’s pressing charges, to show that the mentality has to change and, hopefully, when that happens, the bullying will stop too.
Who would have guessed this would become a robust conversation, at last? Today's threads show misogyny persists and your voices roar back.
— ashley judd (@AshleyJudd) March 18, 2015
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