Ashley Judd drew the line in the sand this week after having had enough of Twitter trolls.
In retaliation for offensive tweets directed at the Ashley Judd after she posted her own tweet during the SEC Basketball Championship, in which her beloved University of Kentucky Wildcats were playing and won, the actress penned a powerful essay about violence against women, in which she talks about her personal experience with rape and incest.
Ashley Judd entitled the essay, Forget Your Team: Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass. She felt compelled to write the essay after she tweeted a post criticizing the U.K.’s opponent in the game, Arkansas, and subsequently received a barrage of graphic tweets in response.
Please note the language in Judd’s essay is graphic and may offend some.
Ashley Judd pens essay on 'devastating' sexual violence in #Mic: http://t.co/7JxitgxwT5 pic.twitter.com/fgn0NH833B
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) March 19, 2015
In the essay, Ashley Judd writes:
“Tweets rolled in, calling me a c-t, a whore or a bitch, or telling me to suck a two-inch d-k. Some even threatened rape, or ‘anal anal anal.’
“I deleted my original tweet after the game, before all hell broke loose, to make amends for any genuine offense I may have committed by describing play as ‘dirty.’ (Of course, other people, including my uncle who is a chaplain, also expressed fear that the athletes would be hurt badly. But my uncle wasn’t told he was a smelly p–y. He wasn’t spared because of his profession; being a male sports fan is his immunity from abuse.)…”, she wrote.
MT @AP_Top25: @AshleyJudd says she receives threats for being Kentucky's No. 1 fan: http://t.co/5Ojq9a3CHZ pic.twitter.com/2TOtpIlx7A
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 20, 2015
“What happened to me is the devastating social norm experienced by millions of girls and women on the Internet. Online harassers use the slightest excuse (or no excuse at all) to dismember our personhood. My tweet was simply the convenient delivery system for a rage toward women that lurks perpetually. I know this experience is universal, though I’ll describe specifically what happened to me.
Ashley Judd Fights Back Against Sexist Twitter Trolls in the Best Way Ever http://t.co/mfhgImuU03 pic.twitter.com/jdgcjcP6sP
— Cosmopolitan (@Cosmopolitan) March 18, 2015
“I read in vivid language the various ways, humiliating and violent, in which my genitals, vaginal and anal, should be violated, shamed, exploited and dominated. Either the writer was going to do these things to me, or they were what I deserved. My intellect was insulted: I was called stupid, an idiot. My age, appearance and body were attacked. Even my family was thrown into the mix: Someone wrote that my ‘grandmother is creepy…’
Trolls attacked Ashley Judd for tweeting about sports. Now she's fighting back. http://t.co/4GztN25Ky6 pic.twitter.com/ySKEgFvS4g
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) March 19, 2015
“I am a survivor of sexual assault, rape and incest. I am greatly blessed that in 2006, other thriving survivors introduced me to recovery. I seized it. My own willingness, partnered with a simple kit of tools, has empowered me to take the essential odyssey from undefended and vulnerable victim to empowered survivor. Today, nine years into my recovery, I can go farther and say my ‘story” is not ‘my story.’ It is something a Higher Power (spirituality, for me, has been vital in this healing) uses to allow me the grace and privilege of helping others who are still hurting, and perhaps to offer a piece of education, awareness and action to our world,” Ashley Judd concluded.
