Too many people—and as I found out the first time I was trolled, even some close to me—doubt the severity of online abuse. They doubt that it affects women more than men, and women from marginalized communities more than white, cisgender women.

As MacArthur Fellow and legal scholar Danielle Citron writes in Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, many people trivialize online misogyny and harassment. They tell us to simply ignore the threats we receive. We are told women who report harassment are “drama queens” and the men who harass them are simply “frat boys” or sad men sitting in their underwear in their mothers’ basements. We are blamed for wanting to equitably engage in the public sphere. (My trolls have told me more than once “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”) We are reminded that the internet, as the “virtual Wild West,” has no rules, nor should we expect any to be enforced.