One trend online and on talk shows has been reading of mean tweets. Celebrities and sports players have read “mean Tweets” on the Jimmy Kimmel show for ages. But they’re not the only people that have to deal with online harassment. Female sports writers receive terrible, violent social media messages daily—just for doing their jobs.
Two women that have been on the receiving end of Twitter’s darker side are Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro. According to Esquire, Sarah Spain is a sports columnist, radio host and reporter for ESPN. Julie DiCaro is a radio anchor is Chicago and a Sports Illustrated writer. These are their jobs. These are their passions. Yet, Twitter is filled with sexist and hate-filled responses over the fact that these women are covering sports. To show that these Tweets are not “just mean,” but straight-up wrong, Just Not Sports brought in real men to read these very real tweets.
This was a part of Just Not Sports’ #MoreThanMean campaign. And it was straight-up painful to watch. “I’m having trouble looking at you when I’m saying these things,” one of the men said.
“I hope you get raped again,” said one especially horrible Tweet directed to DiCaro. The man reading it looked up after and all he could say was, “I’m sorry.” Even though those weren’t his words, he still felt the need to say sorry just reading the tweet out loud.
One of the other men said, “I’m sorry on behalf of other people everywhere that you’ve had to deal with this.”
“We wouldn’t say it to their faces, so let’s not type it,” the video reads, signing off of the video. Just Not Sports encouraged readers to share the video with the hashtag #JustNotMean to raise awareness about online harassment of female sports writers. These are things people should never say to others, especially not in person. Saying them online under the guise of anonymity doesn’t make them okay, either.