‘Very, very dark aspect of online abuse’: Consent activist in Adelaide
‘How many more moments of reckoning do we need?’: High-profile consent lobbyist Chanel Contos headlines a major Adelaide event today as more female politicians reveal the extent of ongoing abuse.
Teach Us Consent CEO Chanel Contos, whose ‘Fix our Feeds’ campaign resulted in the Federal Government last month announcing it would draft new national social media law reform, headlines an event about online gendered abuse in Adelaide today.
Contos and SA’s Minister for Women Katrine Hildyard have drawn together young South Australian women to tackle the ongoing barrage of online threats. An event being held as Victorian MP Helen Haines remains in a critical condition after an alleged attack on Monday.
Contos has received death and rape threats online, as well as defamatory and negative comments, some of which she had to escalate to Australia’s e-safety commissioner for investigation.
The event comes as female MPs in SA tell InDaily about ongoing abuse and negative comments about their appearance on social media.
Federal social services minister Tanya Plibersek revealed on Tuesday that after Haines’ alleged attack she received an online comment saying “she deserves to meet a LandCruiser”.
While Elizabeth Labor MP Ella Shaw, SA’s youngest state government elected member, told InDaily she no longer posts online in real time, after an incident where she was tracked and followed to her car.
Shaw said she posted an Instagram story about attending a community event, when a person who had repeatedly messaged her on social media was waiting outside when she left.
As a backbencher, Shaw only has three staff members in her electorate office and monitors her social media content herself.
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"“I don’t know how many more moments of reckoning we need to take the problem of violence against women extremely seriously,” Contos said today about the horrifying incident involving Haines."
Today’s Adelaide forum called “more than words”, would focus on the “manosphere” and online gender-based violence, with Contos saying “the ramifications of online abuse are very real”.
“They contribute to intimidation. They contribute to threats. They contribute to reinstating a gendered hierarchy that puts all women in a constant state of fear,” she said.
Contos’ work as an outspoken advocate against sexual assault began in 2021, when she built a website with 7000 victim-survivor testimonies and more than 50,000 signatures on a petition calling for consent education to be mandatory in Australian schools.
She has drawn extensive criticism online, including from controversial anti-abortion lobbyist Joanna and James Howe, whose comments on consent went viral last month, causing Adelaide University to come out with a statement in support of consent education.
The event at the SA Museum comes as national condemnation of growing abuse online and in the political realm explodes after a 43-year-old driver of a Land Cruiser allegedly mowed down Haines.
He faced court today on charges of dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official.
The Australian Federal Police today revealed it was charging almost one individual every week for threatening parliamentarians and high office holders, both female and male.
“It’s obviously shining a light on this very, very dark aspect of online abuse,” Contos said.
“We kind of see the internet as like a different space where we excuse it, and in that same vein, maybe men are thinking of it as a different space as keyboard warriors are saying what they wouldn’t in real life.”
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Research into Misogyny, Online Radicalisation and Youth Extremism in Australia found roughly one in three teenage boys expressed misogynistic attitudes and mistrust of women, while 23 per cent of Gen Z men believed “feminism should be resisted with violence”.
Contos said she “rarely responds” and chooses not to talk about her experience with online abuse “because I don’t want to fuel the fire”.
She moderates her own comment section, which “takes time” and leaves up a lot of critical comments, and will only remove rape or death threats or defamatory content.
“I feel like I have better and more important things to do than to delete these comments,” she said.
Contos’ Fix our Feeds campaign advocates for giving informed consent to user data and social media feeds, requiring an “opt-in” option so users can turn algorithms on and off.
But she says the problem is a cultural one, not purely algorithmic.
“People who choose to turn the algorithm off won’t be protected from this as a whole; it will still exist,” she said.
“There’s always going to be a new technology product that can be used to perpetrate some sort of violence or discrimination against women.
“We need the top-down stuff, the big world-leading policy on tech regulation but we also need the bottom-up, embedding a culture of empathy and being conscious of how technology can be used for harm.”
SA’s minister for women Katrine Hildyard has also experienced abuse online, including having her image manipulated and being filmed without her consent, which was shared online.
“I remember some posts that were so graphic about me and about my mum, and that one of my sons called really upset to check if I was okay,” Hildyard said.
“But as I’ve said before, it’s not just about me. I am determined to do everything that’s in my power to call out this behaviour, to shift culture, stop this behaviour, and to tackle all that drives it.
“This debate that we’re having about how precious our democracy is and how it needs to be absolutely preserved and it needs to be safe is a debate that we need everybody in.”
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