Arisha Hatch, the interim executive director of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, condemned the verdict as “a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers” and called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”
“This is a decisive moment for our justice system, one which threatens to undo the sacrifice of courageous survivors who stepped forward to share their stories in this trial, as well as to all those abused by Diddy who weren’t able to,” said Arisha Hatch, Ultraviolet's interim executive director
Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists held demonstrations outside the Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which would ban most abortions after 15 weeks.
Activists hold a light brigade urging “Abortion Is Essential” at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 30, 2021, in Washington, DC. (TASOS KATOPODIS/Getty Images for UltraViolet)
Early on Wednesday, activists on both sides of the abortion debate gathered in front of the court in Washington, D.C. brandishing signs and placards.
Dozens of anti-abortion activists met outside the court for a candlelight vigil on Tuesday night. Women’s advocacy organization UltraViolet also organized a gathering outside the court, holding up brightly lit letters that to spell out “Abortion is freedom.”
A national women’s advocacy group renewed their calls for CNN to take action against anchor Chris Cuomo following revelations he attempted to steer the narrative surrounding the downfall of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
UltraViolet, a feminist group that promotes women’s rights, including anti-sexual harassment and pro-abortion efforts, upped its call for the network to punish Chris Cuomo after his involvement in the scandal was detailed in documents made public on Monday.
“Reports that Chris Cuomo not only joined strategy calls with his brother, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, on how to respond to the numerous sexual harassment allegations against him, but actively advised his brother to push back against the allegations, using his position at CNN to seek information on the accusers, are completely unacceptable. He should be fired immediately,” Elisa Batista, campaign director of the Washington-based group said Tuesday in a statement to Fox News.
The group previously called on CNN to suspend Chris Cuomo in May, following his admission that he was “looped into calls” about how to manage the scandal.
Chris Cuomo on Tuesday used his SiriusXM show to speak about his brother’s resignation as governor of New York despite being banned from discussing it on CNN — which is weighing his future as a network host amid calls for his ouster.
Elisa Batista of the women’s rights group UltraViolet also said Chris Cuomo “should be fired immediately” for “using his position at CNN to seek information on the accusers.”
“This [is] a severe breach of journalistic ethics,” Batista said in a prepared statement.
“CNN should immediately sever ties with Chris Cuomo. Anything less is unacceptable, and further harms survivors of sexual abuse.”
CNN didn’t immediately return requests for comment, but on Monday said it was reviewing the documents released by James to determine “their significance as they relate to CNN.”
The network also said it expected to come to a decision within “the next several days.”
Activist groups are demanding accountability, especially after the attack on Ocasio-Cortez. “In any other workplace, a person would be fired immediately for sharing content threatening violence and murdering a coworker. There should be no difference in Congress,” said Bridget Todd, the communications director for the gender justice group UltraViolet. “Representative Gosar’s tweets depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and violence against President Biden are horrific.”
The organization called for “removal proceedings against Gosar from Congress without delay.”
Advocates are worried that rising online misogyny will leave more women unwilling to run for office, a concern highlighted by a video posted by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) showing him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Although Gosar’s video, which used an edited clip from the anime show “Attack on Titan,” targeted a member of Congress, critics warn the amplification of such content via mainstream social media can dissuade women from participating in politics at all levels.
“There’s a silencing impact,” said Bridget Todd, director of communications at the feminist group UltraViolet. “I think it really does trickle down where everybody — whether you’re a public figure or just someone who’s interested in getting involved in your kids school board in your town — I think that everybody can see the way that these platforms have tolerated this abuse, how they’re treating it like it’s not a big deal.”
“And why would anybody want to speak up and be a full participant in their democracy when that’s the case?” Todd added.
Feminist advocacy group UltraViolet has released a report card ranking some of the biggest social media platforms on how they handle misinformation, hate speech, harassment, and misogyny. Nobody did well.
Compiled in partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the report evaluates Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube’s policies against UltraViolet’s 11 Policy Recommendations. It then averages each platform’s scores and assigns a letter grade according to Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s grading rubric.
“Social media has become an almost ubiquitous part of modern life,” said UltraViolet communications director Bridget Todd in a press release on Wednesday. “Despite the advantages of keeping in touch on social media platforms [sic], we can’t allow the companies behind them to peddle lies and conspiracy theories, or tacitly condone racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic attacks.”
In addition to the report card, UltraViolet also published an open letter to the CEOs of all the platforms it evaluated, demanding the companies immediately adopt and enforce the advocacy group’s policies to better protect marginalised groups. UltraViolet’s open letter was also signed by 75 other international organisations, including Color Of Change, GLAAD, and Public Citizen.
“Black, Indigenous, and women of color and LGBTQ people are being harmed on the internet by an onslaught of racist and misogynist attacks,” the letter says. “The actions of your companies — Alphabet, Facebook, Twitter, ByteDance, TikTok, and Reddit — have demonstrated that you care more about your profit margins than keeping people safe.”
A new report from UltraViolet, a national gender-justice organization, identified 38 companies that gave more than $132,000 last year to Ohio lawmakers who are backing the anti-abortion bill introduced last week. That list includes health care companies such as Pfizer, Anthem, Molina Healthcare and Merck. Other donors include telecommunications company Charter Communications, Dominion Energy and General Motors. UltraViolet sourced much of its report through OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks political spending.
“Where you decide to spend your political dollar ― in this case literal dollars ― is a huge barometer of your values and who or what you’re willing to sacrifice,” said Sonja Spoo, director of reproductive rights campaigns at UltraViolet. “Corporations are directly funding the erosion of our rights with their political dollars.”
Ohio’s H.B. 480 is nearly identical to the extreme anti-abortion law that went into effect in Texas in September. The Texas law bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and deputizes private citizens to enforce it by offering a $10,000 bounty to anyone who successfully sues someone “aiding or abetting” a person seeking an abortion. But Ohio’s bill goes even further, prohibiting abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
Spoo said UltraViolet will continue to hold big corporations’ feet to the fire to ensure that consumers know where their money is going.
“We’re going to continue to put pressure, especially on AT&T, but also on other companies who think they can get away with saying they support equality in their PR statements and then turn around and open their purse, so to speak, to fund candidates who are directly working to explicitly roll back equality.”
Experts are warning of more political violence amid a furor over Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-Ariz.) animated video that featured him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and attacking President Biden with two swords.
“We are talking about this one video but we are really talking about a bigger picture,” Bridget Todd, the communications director for gender justice organization UltraViolet, told this column, referring to the Gosar tweet. “They are counting on this idea of ‘Oh, it was a joke, it’s just Twitter.’ But we have to do something to make sure this kind of behavior is not normalized.”
Todd added that the video was “emblematic of a deeper culture toxicity, and we need to call it out for what it is.”
None of the major social media companies are excelling at preventing harassment and abuse against women on their sites, but some like Reddit and Twitter are faring better than others, according to a new report by an advocacy group shared exclusively with The Technology 202.
Developed by feminist group Ultraviolet, in collaboration with researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, the “misogyny report card” gave platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok subpar-to-failing grades for not taking greater steps to shore up their policies against harmful treatment of women. That’s especially the case for women of color, Ultraviolet wrote, who “face an onslaught of both racist and misogynist attacks, including vicious gendered disinformation campaigns.”
“Across the board, social media platforms fail the test when it comes to creating an internet experience that is safe and inclusive for Black women, women of color, and LGBTQ people,” Ultraviolent wrote in its findings, released Wednesday, which dozens of advocacy groups are rallying around to call for policy changes.
The report card, which assigned sites letter grades from A to F based on how thoroughly they have implemented recommendations that groups say are needed to curb gendered abuse, gave top overall marks to Reddit with a C and Twitter with a C-.
The group credited Reddit and Twitter with having “fairly robust” policies against hate speech, but say the platforms should expand their policies against gender-related forms of disinformation, including about “abortion, pregnancy, eating disorders, and extreme dieting.” They also praised Reddit for partnering with a mental health text line that helps victims of harassment or abuse.
“Reddit, the platform once known as a haven for white supremacy and misogyny, has set itself apart as an industry leader in the last two years by making robust changes to its hate speech policies, as well as to moderation and enforcement,” they wrote.
Facebook and Instagram drew the lowest marks, with a D- and an F, while TikTok and Google-owned YouTube fell in between, earning a D+ and a D, respectively.
The group called Facebook’s enforcement of its policies against harassment and disinformation “slow” and said the company “fails victims of harassment by putting the burden on them to report each individual post and user.” And they argued that Instagram needs to do more to differentiate its policies from Facebook to address problems that are more pronounced on video- and image-based platforms, such as body image issues.
Feminist advocates said the incident served as a reminder of how social networks are failing women, including high-profile users like Ocasio-Cortez.
“While it’s no secret that social media platforms can be toxic places for women of color, Gosar’s perpetuation [of] violence against Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter is completely unacceptable,” Bridget Todd, communications director at UltraViolet, said in a statement Tuesday.
UltraViolet and 74 other advocacy groups and nonprofits including Color of Change, MoveOn and Media Matters called on all six social media networks in a letter to adopt new policies to mitigate risks to women on their sites.