Hello. To preface, my username is Ebbie45. I am a woman in her late 20s who has amassed a following of over 8,000 individuals on Reddit and has been a regular user of the site for four years. I have been a moderator of two abuse support subs on Reddit for two years now, both decently-sized. My work, described in more detail below, has been chronicled in The Lily and Vice.

I am speaking out today partially for myself, but mostly on behalf of all the other female Reddit users and moderators who do not feel safe enough to do so. I have reached what some of you might consider a “tipping point.”

While I use Reddit for enjoyment and as a hobby, I also use it for the purpose many other users have come to know me for - “crisis counseling.” I am a domestic violence worker in “real life” off Reddit. I have worked in the field of gender-based violence for nearly a decade in multiple capacities, including as a shelter worker, a hospital-based advocate, a public policy worker, and as the founder of my own organization dedicated to survivor support. In all of these capacities, I have worked with both male and female survivors. In short, I am dedicated to this cause.

I have spent countless hours on Reddit in the past four years, primarily commenting on posts about abuse in r/relationship_advice or the subs I moderate and providing domestic and sexual violence resources to users in crisis. I am not paid for the hours I spend on Reddit. I am not affiliated with Reddit in any professional or financial capacity, nor would I ever be interested in such. I find my engagement on Reddit to be both fulfilling and part of my larger motivation to eventually see a world in which violence against individuals of all genders is eradicated, particularly domestic and sexual violence.

But just a few days ago, I reached my “cake day” on Reddit for four years. And today, I legitimately questioned whether I should continue to use this site. The thought has crossed my mind several times before, but never so intently as today.

The reasons are multi-faceted, but all boil down to one simple reason: misogyny on Reddit is pervasive and rampant.

This morning, after asking a Redditor to refrain from invalidating and attempting to interrogate a pregnant abuse survivor in a support sub of which I am currently the sole moderator, this individual proceeded to harass me via private message, upset that I had finally banned them after a long pattern of misogyny in our sub. I was called an abuser, an abuse enabler, a person making up lies about misogyny, a bully, and was also graciously informed I have a “foul mouth.”

This is, unfortunately, par for the course for me, just as it is for countless other female moderators and female users of Reddit.

In the past four years, I have been the recipient of clear and pervasive misogyny. I am frequently the target of male users insinuating or outright stating that I am lying about my profession, simply because they disagree with my opinions and cannot seem to grasp that a woman might actually have professional expertise in a field in which they do not. I have been told countless times by male users “If you were REALLY a crisis counselor, you would do/say/think/know XYZ,” or many versions thereof. My expertise is repeatedly questioned by male users and I have been repeatedly informed that my opinions, as someone who has worked in the gender-based violence field for nearly a decade, are the result of “personal bias” for which I should seek mental health assistance. In short, I am treated as hysterical or crazy, a common historical trope negatively directed towards women.

I have also been the recipient of monthly, if not weekly, verbal abuse and harassment from male users, both as a Moderator and a commenter in several subs, most frequently r/relationship_advice. I have been called a slut, a whore, a bitch, and a cunt. I have been called hysterical and crazy. I have been threatened and told I deserved to be raped in every hole of my body. I have been told I deserved to die. The common denominator? Men. Always men. Male users have treated me this way as a woman. I have also seen it happen to countless other female Redditors. I have been called a “pushy bitch.” A freak. I have repeatedly received dozens of PM requests from male users attempting to send me unsolicited sexual images or to initiate “sexting.”

I have seen male users repeatedly and consistently use terminology such as “for the streets,” “hoes,” “bitches,” “sluts,” “whores,” “passed around,” “spitroasted,” and more on posts about women with multiple past sexual partners. I have seen men repeatedly and consistently leap to cheating on posts in which a male poster simply expresses concern that his female partner has male friends, or has a female partner who texts less frequently when visiting family, or has started wearing makeup, or ate lunch with a male coworker, or recently bought a new swimsuit. I have seen countless male Redditors espouse MRA and incel rhetoric and spread generalizations that all women are “lying, cheating whores.” I have seen countless posts in which women seek help for being the victims of non-consensual pornography, only to be asked by multiple male users for “links” to the material in question.

I keep a 15 page Google document full of harassment from a single individual, a male Reddit user of undetermined age, who harassed me extensively from January-October 2020. I made one comment on a r/relationship_advice post he disagreed with, and that was it. We were off to the races. He then proceeded to make up dozens and dozens of accounts impersonating me, using these accounts to intentionally offer dangerous advice to abuse survivors as “me.”

He repeatedly privately messaged me and told me I deserve to be anally raped, decapitated, and cannibalized. He found out part of my location. He created a sub with my username, r/Ebbie45, that he filled with images of violent porn bearing my username. He made so many accounts to harass me that the moderators of r/relationship_advice had became familiar with his tone of writing and even suggested considering contacting the FBI.

This is, as I mentioned previously, par for the course. I have been called every name in the book by male Redditors upset that I banned them from abuse support subs for engaging in predatory behavior or verbal abuse of users.

By male Redditors, I have been told I deserved to be raped so many times I’ve lost count. I have been told I deserve to be murdered and have my corpse repeatedly raped.

Many male users have expressed their beliefs that gender bias is pervasive against male users on subs like r/relationship_advice. I will admit there are certainly double standards, particularly in terms of how male survivors of sexual violence are treated on Reddit. However, I have also routinely witnessed male users blame these double standards solely on women, and then turn around and consistently tell male sexual violence survivors that they are “lucky” or should “man up” or should “enjoy it.”

I have witnessed the enormous struggles that male abuse survivors face be repeatedly and strategically blamed solely on women, without recognition that both women and men have failed male abuse survivors, and that we are all failed by the ways in which men are socialized.

I have seen women posting for help with domestic or sexual abuse be told they deserved it, or are fat whores who should shut their mouths and do as they are told. I’ve seen women who were strangled by their partners be asked by male Redditors what they did to “provoke” their partners. I have seen women in abusive relationships be told they need to sit down and make dinner for their partners every night and give them sex whenever they demand it. I have seen innumerable male Redditors tell women who are being constantly groped by their male partners against their wishes that they need to grin and bear it as women.

As a woman on Reddit, I have been threatened and verbally assaulted so extensively that “in the real world,” this would quality me for a protective order. Several protective orders.

I am tired of staying silent. Nothing I do is ever enough. I am extremely vocal about supporting male survivors on Reddit, and am known for doing so and for being one of the only users to consistently share sexual violence resources for men in r/relationship_advice.

Yet I am still accused of being a “misandrist harpy” and hating men.

I have put up with more verbal abuse and harassment as a woman on Reddit than anyone should have to endure for a lifetime. I am speaking out today for all women on Reddit who face this treatment.

I will say it again. Misogyny is pervasive and rampant on Reddit. It is targeted and vicious. It has spread, and it will continue to. While men face harassment and abuse on Reddit as well simply due to the fact that angry people will engage in angry actions, the abuse of women on this site is unchecked, virulent, and dangerous.

Women on Reddit deserve to be treated with respect. We deserve to be safe here. We deserve to be here.

If nothing else comes of this letter but awareness, then I have done my job. I hope every male Redditor reading this realizes the sheer enormity of what women face on Reddit. Know that for each incident of harassment or abuse I face on Reddit, what all women on Reddit are facing is thousandth-fold.

I am asking male users to be vocal. To call out other men when they invalidate male survivors. To call out other men when they call women all manner of the gendered slurs I described earlier in this letter. To call out victim-blaming, misogyny, rape jokes, and commentary that encourages and condones violence against women.

I am asking you to help us make a change.

No one deserves to be treated the way women are treated on Reddit.