On Halloween day, Katie Hill, freshman congresswoman from California’s 25th district (just north of Los Angeles), stood up on the floor of Congress to announce her resignation. Hill was the clear star of the freshman class. Just 32, she had headed an organization that worked on homeless issues before she was 30. She was elected as co-representative to leadership from the freshman class, and she was selected to be the late Elijah Cummings’ deputy chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. She was smart, knowledgeable, prepared and articulate, in addition to being young and attractive.
It was the last two things that were weaponized against her, apparently by a vindictive ex-husband and definitely by a gleeful, moralizing rightwing media, which made public private photos and tapes she said she didn’t know were being made and were released without her consent. With impeachment hearing ramping up, the smears about her private life were a distraction and many Democrats expressed the desire that this gifted woman with a bright future be gone. For her part, she stepped down for her own mental and emotional health, threatened with the constant release of more material (She said in a moving New York Times piece published December 8 that she contemplated suicide seeing her private affairs turned into a circus).
While many Democrats expressed sorrow over her move, others blamed her, saying she made “bad choices” or clung to another rightwing smear that she’d “broken rules” by having an affair with a staff member, something she denied and he hasn’t spoken about. But when that charge was initially made, before the release of the video, it didn’t have any traction; it’s just too common a story. So they moved on to private photos and tapes. But even some Democrats needed a hook to blame the woman for being the victim of cyberbullying.
What happened to Hill was a red flag for what could happen to other young women who stand up to be leaders and run for office, even to the point of discouraging them from doing so. Nude photos and sex tapes aren’t rare in this digital age, and in this era of social media, they can be shared and spread rapidly. Right-wing operatives have now seen how effective this is, so Katie Hill won’t be the last young woman they come after.
They’re driven by misogyny anyway, vividly shown by the fact that after the new representatives were sworn in last January, there were 102 women in the House: 13 Republicans and 89 Democrats. Clearly then, it’s Democrats who stand to lose most if young women are dissuaded from running for office.
It’s encouraging then to see Democrats striking back.
One of the first to step up was Cleveland Heights city councilman Kahil Seren who introduced legislation on November 22 to add protections for victims of revenge porn and other nonconsensual dissemination of an individual’s private sexual images to the city’s existing fair practices laws. The Ohio Revised Code criminalizes such abuse but there are no federal or Ohio state-level laws to protect victims from discrimination or retaliation.
Seren said, “My hope is that once this law takes effect, it will send a strong message to anyone considering engaging in this type of abuse, which is, that they shouldn’t bother because the extent of their intended harm won’t be realized. Our city is going to protect victims and we will never let an abuser put their victim’s job, education, or housing on the line.”
He added, “I would also encourage legislative bodies at all levels of government, from our neighbor city councils to the Ohio General Assembly, to use this legislation as a model to extend this protection to all Ohioans.”
Don’t hold your breath. The Ohio General Assembly has ectopic pregnancies to re-implant. But the Democratic Party is quickly making this part of their platform, responding to pressure from women’s rights activists. Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper spearheaded the passage of a resolution by the Democratic Party’s Association of State Democratic Committees, comprising the state Democratic chairs, with a “Resolution on Protecting Our Candidates from Cyber Exploitation.”
Cleveland Heights women’s rights activist Mallory McMaster explained the significance of the resolution.
“One of the biggest motivators for abusers is to attack women as they are rising in their careers. If men know it won’t work, maybe it will protect some women. It reassures women that they can run for office even if they have something in their past they might worry about — an abusive ex that might use private messages or pictures against them. It sends a message to abusers that their tactics won’t be effective.”