A new film expos­es the shock­ing cyber harass­ment faced by women

As with the impres­sive Bul­ly, which she co-wrote and pro­duced, film­mak­er Cyn­thia Lowen exam­ines one of the key issues of our times – here, abuse with­in the all-per­va­sive world of the inter­net – and how those affect­ed by it recov­er and adapt when the law fails them.

Lowen’s con­fronting film fol­lows three pro­fes­sion­al women, all with hor­rif­ic sto­ries to tell. New York-based attor­ney Car­rie Gold­berg shows us pages and pages of abuse, in a case that no lawyer would touch. Flori­da-based financier Tina Reine reveals how she lost a high-pro­file job at JP Mor­gan thanks to her abuser, who threat­ened inves­ti­gat­ing police with a first amend­ment law­suit if they pur­sued fur­ther action (they backed off). There’s also San Fran­cis­co-based YouTube iden­ti­ty Ani­ta Sar­keesian, who shows us the Twit­ter abuse she has endured, includ­ing an account set up specif­i­cal­ly to tar­get her with hate for being a feminist.

It’s the stuff of night­mares – grotesque in its abhor­rent, any­thing-goes form – and made all the more shock­ing by the lack of action tak­en by law enforce­ment and the social media plat­forms that car­ry it. Although it doesn’t name and shame pub­lic fig­ures like Trump for nor­mal­is­ing the prob­lem, the inevitable ref­er­ences to Wein­stein and the #MeToo move­ment are cov­ered off with­out dis­tract­ing from the cas­es pre­sent­ed here.

What is lack­ing is any com­ment from the cor­po­ra­tions that allow this sort of activ­i­ty to flour­ish. One imag­ines the likes of Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, Google et al declin­ing to com­ment – but even if they didn’t, would their respons­es real­ly be worth includ­ing? It is a depress­ing state of affairs when the busi­ness­es respon­si­ble for such plat­forms are not held account­able for their users’ safe­ty and secu­ri­ty. Nev­er mind what they do with all that per­son­al data they collect.

Iron­i­cal­ly, one of the more shock­ing moments in the film isn’t the abuse itself, nor even the lack of real jus­tice for the vic­tims. Rather, it’s a man’s stag­ger­ing lack of empa­thy when one of the women speaks at a pub­lic ses­sion. Tina Reine, whose bat­tle with low self-esteem appears to be at an end, patient­ly lis­tens to the guy who asks why she can’t sim­ply ignore the abuse. It’s symp­to­matic of wider views held by police, the FBI and gov­ern­ment that sees such abuse con­tin­ue unabated.

In the open­ing scenes of the film, a heart­break­ing reveal per­tain­ing to one of Car­rie Goldberg’s youngest clients draws a clear line between the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal tor­men­tors – and why insti­tu­tions must do more to pro­tect those at risk.

As one of the film’s sub­jects points out, there is no hap­py end­ing to all this, even when a res­o­lu­tion of some sort appears to occur. The dark shad­ow, the scars of abuse remain. What makes all this so awful is that in our dig­i­tal age every­thing is laid out for all to see, and for peo­ple to judge, often incor­rect­ly and unfair­ly. Despite being a mad­den­ing view­ing expe­ri­ence at times, Lowen’s film remains a pow­er­ful and hon­est look at a glob­al epidemic.