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Some women aren’t boycotting Twitter with Rose McGowan—here’s why

Women are divided on the Twitter boycott, even with it's well-intended message.

Photo of Samantha Grasso 

Samantha Grasso

IRL

Posted on Oct 13, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 2:24 pm CDT

On Thursday night, women across Twitter shot off their final tweets of the day, posted one last message about their intent to be offline all of Friday, and closed up shop.

https://twitter.com/raqueldesigns/status/918647460163129344

These women have chosen to stand with Rose McGowan in response to Twitter locking her account for 12 hours after her days-long callouts of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein and his purported enablers, including Ben Affleck. Twitter explained it took action because McGowan tweeted out a private phone number. However, sexual assault advocates pointed to the company’s hypocrisy in censoring  McGowan’s account but doing little to prevent repeated harassment of women and hate speech on the platform.

So women said, enough is enough, and launched the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter, vowing to spend all of Friday off the website. Male allies joined, too, in a move to promote solidarity and amplify McGowan’s story.

However on Friday, some women were still on Twitter, explaining why they decided to forgo the boycott. Some found irony in the style of protest—Twitter had silenced McGowan’s ideas, so what use did other women have in removing their voices from the conversation to prove a point to the corporation?

https://twitter.com/Mom101/status/918800395299848195

Others explained why silence, for them, was not an option. Regardless of the intent of the boycott, women expressed that they didn’t agree with the impact the boycott might have on conversations solely centered on sexual assault.

https://twitter.com/Sheezer96/status/918826979729686530

https://twitter.com/caponeagain/status/918825446418124800

For women of color, however, critiques of the boycott were more pointed, and with good reason—where was this boycott of Twitter when the company did nothing to alleviate, if not eliminate, the years of harassment that Black women have faced on the platform?

https://twitter.com/rgay/status/918714270862340097

https://twitter.com/eveewing/status/918687376691511296

When Milo Yiannopoulos encouraged racist trolls to attack Leslie Jones‘s account last summer, where were the droves of women using their social media clout to shame Twitter into acting? Where were the protests when Fifth Harmony’s Normani Kordei also received an onslaught of racist hatred, causing her to leave the site? And most recently, as ESPN’s Jemele Hill continues to serve a two-week ESPN suspension for her tweets on boycotting advertisers, why have women not shown her the same level of solidarity given to McGowan, all while the President of the United States bashes Hill on the same platform?

https://twitter.com/BlairImani/status/918680741524881409

https://twitter.com/ava/status/918718017030168578

Instead of ruminating on Twitter’s and its users’ longstanding inaction regarding racism, women not partaking in the boycott are actively demonstrating on the platform by using the hashtags #WOCAffirmation, #BoostWOC, and #AmplifyWomen to promote their own work and the work of women yet to be recognized.

Regardless of how women chose to demonstrate on Friday, a deeper look into the trolls celebrating the #WomenBoycottTwitter hashtag proved how necessary it is that the conversation extends beyond the day of division.

https://twitter.com/2Run26/status/918894463128182785

https://twitter.com/American1765/status/918875120210505728

https://twitter.com/LadyLSpeaks/status/918870485722595328

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*First Published: Oct 13, 2017, 2:00 pm CDT

Samantha Grasso

Samantha Grasso is a former IRL staff writer for the Daily Dot with a reporting emphasis on immigration. Her work has appeared on AJ+, Vox, Splinter, Los Angeles Magazine, and Austin Monthly.

Samantha Grasso