The use of online fake porn to harass female election candidates is unique to Northern Ireland amid a wider culture of misogyny “intersecting” with sectarianism, a political advocacy group has claimed.
Aoife Clements, chief executive of 50:50 NI – a group that works to increase the number of women in Northern politics – described the targeting of two Assembly candidates with explicit videos on social media as “sinister”.
Police are investigating “online misogyny” cases involving the SDLP’s Cara Hunter and DUP’s Diane Forsythe.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this happening in a general election and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it in our Assembly elections,” Ms Clements said.
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“I’m in a UK consortium with representatives from England, Scotland and Wales and no one has ever brought it up. For them, it is more the online harassment and Twitter, which is still bad but it’s not quite as sinister as this.
“It’s just misogyny; Northern Ireland still has a very misogynistic culture. It’s actually the most dangerous place in western Europe to be a woman statistically.
“But this isn’t happening in a vacuum; it’s within that wider culture of misogyny and how it intersects with sectarianism here,” she added.
Interviews carried out with female election candidates as part of a report due to be published by the group this autumn will expose the “alarming prevalence” of harassment.
“Every single woman – councillor, MLA, MP – we’ve spoken to has some kind of story about getting harassed or receiving inappropriate messages or being abused online,” Ms Clements said.
“Even some of our male politicians can be quite conservative. Women have told me in council chambers they’re expected to make the tea, the culture is just there. So this is a symptom of that.
“What makes the fake porn videos unique to Northern Ireland is that the culture is often ageist as well – a lot of the women being attacked are younger women – and sectarian for sure.”
In a statement to The Irish Times, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) confirmed it received 117 reports relating to May’s Assembly elections “which include online misogyny”, covering the period between March 22nd and June 13th.
Despite a record number of women taking Assembly seats for the first time – accounting for more than a third of Stormont’s 90 MLAs – there are concerns about the long-term impact of sustained intimidation on their careers.
Warning that many women were now questioning their decision about going into politics, the 50:50 NI chief commended Cara Hunter and Diane Forsythe for going public about their experiences.
“These issues need to be highlighted otherwise we wouldn’t know it’s happening. This is the reality of being a woman in politics.
“I welcome the fact we have a big increase in female representatives. For us, it’s important that we don’t just get women into politics but make politics a job that is congruent with women’s lives; it’s a job women can do comfortably and safely. At the minute, that’s not the case.”
Newly elected Alliance MLA Connie Egan (27) has sought legal advice several times and reported online intimidation to police.
One abuser claimed to know where she lived, accused her of electoral fraud and threatened to “run her out of Bangor” when she was first elected as a councillor in 2019.
“Very often, when I look into the accounts that harass me, they’re also spewing sectarian abuse. There seems to be a huge cross-over with that. These people are very prejudiced, they’re very bigoted,” she added.
“I think those small comments, being critiqued about your appearance and not being taken seriously feeds into a wider narrative of something much more dangerous – and into a culture whereby ultimately videos of such a sexist, horrific and damaging nature are circulated about female politicians. If you’d shown me four years ago the kind of stuff I was going to get, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
