Labour MP Jess Phillips reveals how she was bombarded with 600 rape and death threats A DAY after standing up to left-wing sexists
Birmingham MP had a panic room fitted in her constituency office after the hateful deluge peaked two weeks ago when she called left-leaning men 'the absolute worst sexists'
LABOUR MP Jess Phillips has revealed how she was bombarded with 600 rape and death threats A DAY after standing up to left-wing sexists.
The hateful deluge peaked two weeks ago after the Birmingham MP called left-leaning men “the absolute worst sexists”.
On some days she receives up to 25 rape threats an hour — and she has now had a panic room fitted in her constituency office.
She said her Twitter feed flows with “men telling me I didn’t understand sexism, that I deserved it, that I was fat, ugly, that I was probably on my period.”
She now uses filters on Twitter to block the most menacing messages.
The mum-of-two, 35, a star of the 2015 intake of new MPs, claims she is targeted because she is an outspoken feminist.
Her political outlook was forged when she ran domestic refuges for the charity Women’s Aid.
In an interview with The Times, she called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to say that “this is totally unacceptable”.
Zoe Cairns, a social media expert, said Ms Phillips’ experience was not uncommon for women in the public eye.
She explained: “MPs have tens of thousands of followers and they’ll get hundreds of these misogynist trolling messages whenever they say something deemed controversial.
“Twitter has started to address the hate problem by introducing filters. But it has a very long way to go. It must go after individual trolls shutting them down permanently.
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“The Crown Prosecution Service said this week it will take online hate as seriously as offline hate. That really would stop this.”
Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP who heads the home affairs committee, criticised Twitter for failing to curb abuse.
"Twitter claims to stop hate speech but they just don’t do it in practice,” she said.
It comes as Rebekah Vardy, the wife of England ace Jamie Vardy, opened up about the hateful abuse she receives online - with one troll even threatening to rape her two-year-old.