An Aussie is currently faces charges of menacing and harassing use of a carriage service for verbally attacking a woman and her friends on social media.
It all started with Olivia Melville’s Tinder profile, which had the following tagline: “The type of girl that will suck you dry and then eat some lunch with you.”
In other words, the type of girl that every guy wants to date. Leaving that aside, somebody named Chris Hall took a screenshot of her profile and posted it on his Facebook page with the caption: “stay classy ladies… I’m surprised she’d still be hungry for lunch.”
Numerous people commented on the post and got enough shares that Melville eventually saw it. Naturally she was offended, and reposted it with the offensive comments attached.
That’s when Melville’s friend, Paloma Brierley Newton, came to her defense. Unsurprisingly, she became the target of harassment as well, particularly from some guy names Zane Alchin, who listed constant insults on the comment feed. Newton fought back with full force.
“When men shame you, it feels pretty gross and awful. For me, I felt angry, I can’t speak for Olivia, but when this individual posted things with my photo on the comment thread with things like ‘kill it before it breeds’ I literally saw red,” Newton said. “Men will shame women to try and shut them up, bring them down and stop them from having a voice.
“I stood up for my friend because I believe when you see an injustice you do something, if you see something horrible happening to someone else and you don’t do anything, you are being compliant in that awful thing,” Newton said. “When you do something you are helping to effect actual social change. Social change is what we need in order to have sexual equality.”
Newton started a campaign to raise awareness of what happened and, in response, police showed up at Alchin’s house and charged him with using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense. He will appear in court on October 29.
“I’m happy this has been taken seriously but I’m also aware that it has been taken seriously due to huge public outcry … We’re standing up because we are lucky enough to be able to and we want to create social change, so that people who aren’t in our position never find themselves in a situation where they’ve been harassed but don’t feel like they have anyone to turn to,” Newton said.
Newton says that she wants men to understand that their words can have an effect on others — even when they’re online.
“The Internet is not an invisibility cloak, behind every computer is a living breathing human being who has feelings and emotions,” she said. “The Internet is not a fake place, it is a very real place and it actually makes harassment and shaming huge. We don’t do things online or offline anymore, we just do things and we need to be responsible for how we treat people.”
Dude Formally Charged For 'Slut Shaming'
