Blogger highlights nasty comments against female politicians
Posted February 14, 2013 12:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – She’s hoping to shine a light on sexism against female politicians online. A local blogger is collecting vulgar and often violent tweets against leaders like Christy Clark.
The blog, called Madame Premier, shows a slew of nasty tweets that target women in Canadian politics from BC’s premier to Ontario’s new leader, Kathleen Wynne.
Diamond Isinger says she started the blog this week after seeing a sharp rise in crude and vulgar comments.
“It’s a very useful tool to name and shame the nasty sexism that exists online, and I think it’s a good way to poke a little bit of fun, a little bit of humour at what is a very unfortunate topic,” she tells us.
She says this is a growing problem, now that five of our first ministers are women.
“This kind of behaviour from people online as well as people in the media who may have… [perhaps] a little less explicit and slightly more subtle sexism towards women… it certainly does nothing to encourage women to get involved in politics and I think that’s a huge problem.”
More than 100 tweets up have gone up on her blog in the last two days alone, many of them homophobic and violent. Isinger says she’ll keep the site going until she sees the problem go away.
Premier Christy Clark says while the language and messages on the site are disgusting, she’s not surprised.
“I haven’t visted, but I certainly see some of the comments that are directed at me are the kinds of things that women experience every single day in the workplace. In every workplace — not just this one — but every, single workplace,” she tells us.
She hopes this blog pushes forward the conversation about the way women are treated at work.
(The following link contains language not suitable for all audiences)
Isinger’s blog can be found here.
