Is there anybody...out there?

Hello, hello, hello

Is there anybody in there?

Just nod if you can hear me

Is there anyone home?

Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

OK, that is a bit of a messed-up question. Of COURSE there is and whoever is 'out there' is a real person despite all the electronics between them and me. There is a reason I’ve asked this however so please read on.

I have been to no fewer than 3 forums here at Woodford on the issue of effective uses for media and social media. At every one of these, at least one person in the audience has bemoaned the fact that due to outlets such as FaceBook, Twitter, blogs and other social media, people no longer seem to speak face-to-face and they have begun to lose that ‘common touch’ of real human contact.

Of course, there would then be someone who would bring up a story about an 80-year old they know who is now able to stay in contact with their grandchildren in the UK or the isolated farmer out bush who can finally chat with their brothers and sisters now that they have an internet connection and access to social media.

I myself rediscovered my High School friends and was able to attend a 35th reunion last year due to FaceBook. The AVN has extensively used many forms of social media to stay in touch with our supporters and to network closely with other vaccine safety organisations both here in Australia and New Zealand as well as around the world. We are in contact with groups on every continent apart from Antarctica and that simply could not have happened without social media.

As you would probably be aware, my participation with the Woodfordia Folk Festival this year caused all kinds of angst. From the pressure on festival sponsors (including the QLD government) to withdraw their funding, to airplanes flying over the venue with a banner trailing behind saying "vaccination saves lives", this year’s Woodfordia received an awful lot of press about the question of whether or not both sides of the vaccination debate should be heard. I found this a bit confronting at first, but also satisfying.

Why satisfying? Because if people were talking about vaccination, they were also thinking about vaccination and that's what the AVN wants. We want people to consider why they are vaccinating and for their ultimate decision to be based on information – not fear or ignorance. So, the more people think about this issue, the more people there will be making informed choices rather than default decisions. Whether that choice is to vaccinate fully, selectively or not at all is not something the AVN is concerned about – we just want to protect parent’s rights to get complete information and make a choice without pressure, penalties or coercion.

Of course, the downside of the attention the AVN has garnered is the inevitable (it seems) abuse dished out by those who are concerned with preventing people from obtaining information on the other side of this medical procedure. And whilst I am now used to bearing the brunt of this hate-fest that seems to spring up around me wherever I happen to be, I do have to say that it can be a bit hurtful at times because I am a human being and the parent of a vaccine-injured child myself, though most of those who are writing the hateful and sometimes disgusting things about me seem to forget that (or perhaps they don't really care?).

One person crossed my path during my time here at Woodfordia in a most unexpected way however. A person I'd never heard of before but one who has restored my faith in the basic goodness of most people and also made me realise that anyone can fall into the trap of dehumanising other through the outlet of social media. I thought long and hard about writing this blog because I don't want to leave her open for the sort of vilification I have been getting, but as you will see, she has already come in for more than her fair share of this (though I am hopeful that this story won't lead to more) and like me, has learned to not take the abuse so personally any more.

This person’s name is Clementine Ford and she is a young freelance writer who, as many people of her age (and not so many of mine), has wholeheartedly embraced social media. She has written extensively for many different web and non-web media outlets including the rather conservative Adelaide Advertiser newspaper and the more left-thinking ABC Drum.

As I said, prior to hearing her speak, I had never heard of Clementine. I was drawn to a forum she participated in on the subject of climate change 'denialism'. I will write more about the forum at a later time - it was quite interesting and raised some very important issues - not only about the vital question of the unsustainable usage of our beautiful planet, but also about the conduct of scientific debates and how we treat those who disagree with us which, I must say, is a topic I am quite passionate about.

I listened to the forum in the morning and that afternoon, I participated in my own forum at the Blue Lotus. I was unaware of this at the time, but Clementine Ford was one of the people sitting in the audience and as I was speaking, she was sending out a steady stream of tweets which were, to put it kindly, not supportive of the message of the AVN that I was conveying nor were they considerate of me personally.

Let me make this clear - her messages were far from abusive! There were members of Stop the AVN (SAVN) present who were certainly sending out abusive messages on twitter, but Clementine Ford was not one of them. She did make some rather uncomplimentary personal comments about me which as I said, I am used to so I wouldn’t have worried too much about them anyway. Compared to some of the things SAVN members have been saying about me, Clementine’s posts were almost tame!

But an interesting thing happened later that night which sort of turned things around for both of us, I gues

Here at Woodfordia, there is a special area for 'performers' called the Green Room. Filled with smelly lounges and day beds which are well worn but comfortable and, most importantly, power points to allow us to charge our phones, laptops, ipads, etc. (None of us seems to travel without electronic devices these days!), it is THE place to be when you aren’t speaking or watching someone else perform.

In any case, after dinner, I went to the Green Room to use my laptop and charge it. There was a woman sitting in front of the bank of power points and I just asked her if I could please reach past her to plug in. She turned around and I saw that it was Clementine Ford. I didn't think more about it, but in plugging in my laptop, I accidentally knocked her on the shoulder and apologised for it.

That was it as far as I was concerned, but apparently, politeness has become even more or a rarity today then even I had noticed because right after our meeting, Clementine Ford sent out the following tweet:

I know being polite doesn't make you less wrong. But it makes it harder to truly hate the person. Why couldn't Dorey be a pushy horror?

This blew me away, to be honest.

When we first started our Facebook page (over 2 years ago, now), one of the first messages I received was from an anonymous 'fan' who said - "We're coming for you, baby killer."

At the time, I had been working with this organisation for over 15 years and had never had a death threat or anything hateful said to me before. Of course there had been arguments and heated discussions, but there was always at least the minimum amount of respect and certainly never threats of violence. Those encounters were all either face-to-face or on the phone – not quite as anonymous as the current contacts with SAVN.

When I went to the police after receiving the first threat on FaceBook, the officer behind the counter was quite unsympathetic. She simply said that if I didn’t want to get threats, I should get off of social media. I did not feel that was an appropriate response but there you go - when those who are meant to uphold the law abrogate that responsibility, the average citizen has nowhere else to go.

As anyone who has been reading this blog for any time at all would be aware, since that time, there has been a non-stop stream of attacks against the AVN - mostly targeting me as a person. Thanks to the support of Dr Brian Martin and my wonderful family, I have been able to keep this abuse in perspective and have learned to view them more as a reflection of the people sending the messages then of me or the AVN.

One of the things that has always intrigued me when considering these attacks is the fact that the anonymity of the internet seems to not only enable but encourage a certain type of person to make personal and vile attacks against those they disagree with. The net is full of trolls and SAVN seems to have more then their fair share.

I have often wondered whether - face-to-face - these people would be as strident and to be honest, I hope I never get the answer to that question. But the fact is that being on line has made me a target and that is something I have simply had to come to terms with.

In considering this situation, the one thing that comes through very clearly is the fact that the internet has made people less real to each other. Those people who have been asking me to die in a fire are not speaking to Meryl - they are addressing nocompulsoryvac. And when someone asked if they could chip in on a contract to kill me, they were not considering a mother of 4 but just an organisation that is not alive anyway - it's just a presence on a network of computers.

Where is all this going? We're getting there so thanks for your patience in reading this far.

That little encounter with Clementine Ford had an outcome that I think neither of us planned but it is one that we really all need to think about.

Clementine no longer saw me as some idiot who doesn't care about children. Instead, I was a human being who she disagrees with but who has feelings that she did not want to hurt.

The day after our meeting in the Green Room, there was another forum that Clementine participated in. To be honest, I didn't go because of her, but Andrew Bartlett was speaking and he is someone I have a great deal of respect for - plus, the subject concerned social media and that is something I am always interested in!

I sat right up front and obviously, I saw Clementine quite clearly and she saw me too.

During the discussions, someone in the audience mentioned the fact that Clementine had recently received some very abusive messages on her online articles. There was also another female journalist in Melbourne who had messages saying that she should be raped with a broom. The discussion turned to abuse of those who are on social media and Clementine looked straight at me and started to speak:

I think that the way that women are attacked in the media is – I think that sometimes people do go after them purely because they’re a woman and sometimes, I think that their being a woman just opens up a whole new way of them  being criticised.

…I think I try and be quite honest in my writing and I think I try and be quite self-reflective and I try to judge myself as well.

…I’m just going to share a little story from yesterday. I noticed that Meryl Dorey is here in the front row. I got to see Meryl’s speech yesterday on the anti-vaccination stuff and look, I don’t agree with anti-vaccination (ed note: neither do I!) and I was tweeting through it and I don’t think I was vicious and vile about Meryl but I may have made some sweeping statements the way that people do on Twitter, having 3 days before had people make the same sort of statements about me and however used to it you get, it does hurt your feelings when you read it.

And I was charging my phone in the Green Room last night and this very lovely lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, do you mind if I just plug my computer in? Thank you very much.” It was Meryl and I thought, God, it’s actually, It’s funny when you meet someone in person and you realise that all of the things that you feel hurt by about the way that people talk about you it’s because they don’t see you as being a real person either. They see you as being an identity on the internet.

So I did feel really bad about that actually because while I might disagree with what she’s saying, I think you have to be really conscious that if you’re asking people not to speak about you in that way, then you have to try hard not to speak about other people that way and that is the reality of, especially being on Twitter, that in 140 characters, somebody can just decimate your character, particularly if they feel resentful of the fact that you have a position they might not want you to have…

All the positive comments that you’ve got from people … can be totally eradicated by 5 people saying that you’re an attention-seeking whore. And that is something that you have to kind of cope with on the internet, especially if you’re a woman, but people are just going to say awful, vile things about you and can you deal with it?

I never expected that. I never expected that someone who attacked me thoughtlessly would think again and realise that yes, I am a real person. But Clementine got it! From a simple accidental meeting and her own experience with having hurtful things said about her on the internet, she realised the impact these sorts of attacks can have on another being.

I invite those members of the SAVN who have been attacking me non-stop for the last 2 1/2 to 3 years to do the same thing. Take a step back, consider moderating your language and let's get back to playing the ball - not the person. Just because we disagree with each other on a scientific issue is no reason to continue the abuse.

Let's disagree, and let's communicate about that. Let’s accept that we may never reach a common ground but that in the end, the truth of the matter will emerge regardless of what we do today but understand that we are all concerned with the health of children and we all care deeply about our own families and our own choices.

I know that the real ‘die-hards’ of SAVN will just look at this and take it as a challenge to try even harder to continue the attacks. But I also know that there are many good people involved with that group who would not want to be associated with this type of behaviour and yet, they have been sucked in due to their commitment to the issue of vaccination.

There are better ways to get your point across – there are more productive methods of debate. I invite you to join in the conversation.