To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person - by Alia Dastagir (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An urgently needed reckoning with the harm, harassment, and abuse women face on the Internet, complicating how we think about violence online and featuring deep reporting on how women are surviving the trauma--by an award-winning reporter

When Alia Dastagir published a story for USA Today as part of an investigation into child sexual abuse, she became the tar­get of an online mob launched by QAnon and encouraged by Donald Trump, Jr. While female journalists, politicians, academ­ics, and influencers receive a disproportionate amount of online attacks because of the nature of their professions, all women online experience hate, creating profound harms for individual women and society.

In To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person, Dastagir uses critical analysis from psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, technologists, and philosophers to offer a uniquely deep and intimate look at what women experience during online abuse, as well as how they cope and make meaning out of violence.

Dastagir weaves together her story with those of thirteen other women, including a comedian who uses feminist humor to subvert her harassment and an ob-gyn who channels anger over her abuse to fight attacks on reproductive rights. Dastagir explores why language online cannot be ignored, how it damages bodies, when it triggers and traumatizes, and why women's responses are so varied. Dastagir analyzes why online abuse is perpetrated by people across the ideological spectrum and how it intersects with the dangers of disinformation. She argues that while online abuse is often framed exclusively as a problem of misogyny, it is also connected to a culture of white supremacy and the systems with which it intertwines.

To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person is the book on online abuse for this cultural moment, when being online is a daily necessity for so many, even as we grow ever more polarized. Systemic solutions are key to combating violence online, but the narrative of reform does not help women today. This nuanced examination of what it means to effectively cope will empower women to raise their voices against the forces bent on silencing them.

Review Quotes

"An astonishing, brilliant, and timely book, Dastagir's To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person sheds more light on misogynistic online culture and what women face today as a result than any other book I have read. A courageous, moving, and vital piece of reporting that I want to press into the hands of every person with an Internet connection."--Kate Manne, author of Unshrinking

"Alia Dastagir has written an urgent and necessary argument for a more humane internet and, as a result, a better world. Weaving together profiles of women who have become the center of targeted harassment campaigns, To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person untangles the violence of internet abuse and shows how it silences the voices we need to hear the most. This book is both a manual and a manifesto for bringing about a better way to exist online. Dastagir has written a must-read for our digital age."--Lyz Lenz, New York Times bestselling author of This American Ex-Wife

"Online harassment is not only a common precursor to offline violence; it is violence. Alia explores how the Internet has heightened vulnerabilities and created new ways for abusers to tell lies, target, and terrorize. Women are told to ignore the trolls and stalkers that live on our screens who deny us safety even within our own homes, but Alia highlights the necessity of allowing survivors to feel pain and anger. To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person marries scientific research and lyrical writing to remind readers that our bodies react to violence in different ways and that resisting patriarchal and white supremacist forces is never easy, but the fight will always be worth it."--Carrie Goldberg, author of Nobody's Victim

"Alia Dastagir has given us an important book that will help us make sense of the very real, material violence of the modern Internet and what we should do about it. She is a voice that the public and scholars can rely upon to know what to do with violence against women on the web, as her work makes immediate and urgent the issues that policymakers and companies can no longer ignore. This beautifully written book gives us the courage to make sense of the concerns we all hold about the harms of the Internet and is a clarion call that our humanity is valuable and worth caring deeply about when it comes to how we engage with technology on an everyday basis."--Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

"You are lucky to be holding this book. Lucky because it will make you rethink violence and language and the ways the two create each other. It will make you rethink misogyny and the way it's not just about women but also white supremacy and structural oppression. But more than this, you are lucky because Alia Dastagir has written a way through these seemingly entrenched systems--by writing with immense care about those who fight back."--Cris Beam, author of I Feel You and To the End of June

About the Author

Alia Dastagir is an award-winning former reporter for USA Today who frequently covers gender and mental health. Dastagir was one of eight U.S. recipients of the prestigious Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. She won a first-place National Headliner Award for a series on suicide and was the first winner of the American Association of Suicidology's Public Service Journalism Award. The Media Awards Committee for the Council on Contemporary Families named her story on America's lack of affordable childcare the winner for Outstanding Media Coverage of Family Issues. She is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at NYU, where she is an Axinn fellow.