Jess Eastland-Underwood

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 20:11 UTC

But I was surprised at how many people replied ‘This is why I’m not on Twitter.’ I will say that this reeks of victim blaming. Please, don’t make women and other marginalised groups feel that their participation in social media is electing to be harassed. I can assure you, we don’t see it coming.

0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 20:08 UTC

But I write this with the full acknowledgment of the many structural advantages of my whiteness and Western identity. This is more insidious for people with many intersecting disadvantaged identities.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 20:07 UTC

Needless to say, this was all very unnerving. Social media harassment is unpleasant. But it is particularly difficult when it is connected with your research - when you share your academic work and you find your identity becomes the focus.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 20:04 UTC

So I reported this individual, sharing the Urban Dictionary evidence. After an investigation, Twitter reported the user had been suspended. As of writing this, I can confirm that the user is back on X. You will be unsurprised to learn they are still posting misogynistic, racist content.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 20:03 UTC

Let’s be clear: race is reproduced in part through sexual regulation. Conditioning white women to fear social exclusion if they cross racial boundaries is one of the ways that racial divisions are sustained. But importantly, this marginalises and dehumanises Black men.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:59 UTC

I finally received a specific, very strangely worded post. I won’t fully re-post it here, but it was difficult to understand what was being said. As a race scholar, my alarm bells went off for coded language. I turned to urban dictionary for help. That’s when I understood the person said I had ‘BCS’

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:56 UTC

But I had a look at the other targets of the Real Peer Review. Perhaps unsurprisingly they tend to target people in gender studies, race studies, etc. Who works in these fields? Women, people of colour, queer fold. Yup.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:54 UTC

However, I started getting tagged to an account called ‘The Real Peer Review’. The implication is that my article was not rigorously reviewed, so these folks would give me a ‘real’ review. News to me, who had to work through major corrections to please NPE. 😅

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:52 UTC

Initial response: lots of congratulations and retweets. It was great. Exactly the kind of visibility you hope for. Then the counter reaction… ‘Do you think it’s bad on purpose or on accident?’ / ‘O regret to inform you the political scientists are at it again.’ Whatever, right?

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:51 UTC

I published a paper in New Political Economy literally the last week of December 2022. I’m not great at Twitter, but I kept it around for one reason: sharing my academic work. Apparently sharing on Twitter can increase chances of citations - important for ECRs.

1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes

Jess Eastland-Underwood @jessunderwood.bsky.social [ View ] Nov 02, 2023 at 19:48 UTC

Just returning home from the first Women in Academia event at the University of Warwick. I did not present my research. I presented on gendered (and racialised) harassment I received from sharing my research on Twitter. Wanna know the ☕️? A 🧵

1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes