Ashley Judd Fights Sexist Tweeters Like A Boss

Like a badass feminist goddess, Ashley Judd won't let the chauvinist jack-holes get away with harassing her on Twitter. Ashley Judd will be pressing charges against misogynist trolls that pummeled her with atrocious social media hate. What is the impetus for all of this haterade, you may ask? She had the gall to be a woman sounding off on basketball. UGH!! COME ON, INTERNET!!

Salon reports that Judd attended a March Madness game on Sunday to cheer on the Kentucky Wildcats against the Arkansas Razorbacks. As sports fans sometimes do when they feel that their own team is being mistreated, Judd tweeted that the Razorbacks were "playing dirty." Even though Judd was merely expressing her opinion, her thoughts were greeted with a series of hateful, explicit, and sexually threatening messages. Judd retweeted some of the messages to show some examples of the hate she was receiving for a simple thought.

As a noted feminist and social justice advocate, Judd is refusing to tolerate all the harassment. She reportedly told MSNBC on Monday that she plans to press charges against her assailants in order to emphasize how not OK their actions were. She told the news outlet, "Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for what they write, and [for] not allowing this misinterpretation and shaming culture on social media to persist." WORD, girl.

All one needs to do is to look at the tweets that female celebrities receive from Internet trolls to see that what Judd is talking about. From the nude photo leak of 2014 to the way that people react to Lena Dunham on Twitter, online gender violence targeted at women is pervasive. Part of this has to do with the deep-seated misogyny that still exists in our culture. On top of that, many people think that they can get away with it behind the cloak of a Twitter handle. Even if those folks feel that it's acceptable to be casually cruel online, the words still hurt the target. Words have power.

Judd's quest to fight back against this in her own life couldn't be more righteous. She's calling out the trolls and applying a concrete consequence to this casual woman-hating behavior. She's shattering the black mirror and forcing her wrongdoers to be accountable for their actions. My hope is that others will follow her example and fight back against this everyday misogyny. Because ignoring it won't make it go away.