Ashley Judd is reporting her trolls to the police

Ashley Judd’s not only an actress but also a passionate basketball fan, which is too much for some misogynists, apparently. This weekend, she tweeted that she thought the Arkansas Razorbacks were ‘playing dirty’ against her team, the University of Kentucky Wildcats. The kind of thing sports fans say all the time, right?

Not according to a small subsection of the internet, who began bombarding her with abuse on Twitter for daring to be a woman with an opinion. It’s not worth repeating the kind of messages she received (and is still getting now), but if you’re a woman on the internet, you can probably guess how charmingly the gendered insults and threats of sexual violence were phrased.

Judd’s been answering back and retweeting some of the worst offenders, but it must be getting her down. According to Salon, she told MSNBC that she’ll be pressing charges, saying, ‘A significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that is directed at me on social media.’

Unfortunately for Ashley Judd (and for humanity) this isn’t a one-off. As a feminist who often advocates for pro-women causes like reproductive rights and ending sex trafficking, she often faces a barrage of abusive messages. She told MSNBC, ‘The amount of gender violence I experience is absolutely extraordinary.’ Fortunately for feminism, it isn’t going to shut her up.

Image by Mingle MediaTV via Wikimedia Commons.