Historical society’s Zoom lecture disrupted with porn and abuse

AN online lecture delivered by Kilrush and District Historical Society was disrupted by a number of people with sexist and racist abuse, while they also exposed themselves and displayed pornography, writes Owen Ryan.

The lecture was being given by Dr Mary McAuliffe, a historian, lecturer and Director of the Gender Studies Programme at UCD, who described herself as being “pretty shocked” by the events of the evening. 

She said that a decision had to be taken to shut down the lecture.

“We had to abandon it, the images were of porn, there were naked genitalia. Then there was the screaming, it wasn’t just images there were voices and in the chat function there were horrific things, sexist abuse, racist abuse. Everything was being impacted.”

Dr McAuliffe also said that sex acts could be seen coming from some of the accounts on the call, but it was unclear if they had been recorded or were being shown live.

There have been similar incidents in recent months, she says.

“I know colleagues who have encountered it, particularly activists and women giving talks. They are deliberate, gendered, targeted attacks. I personally never want to experience it again, it’s horrific.”

She said the disruption had been carefully planned. “This was a co-ordinated attack, it wasn’t like they happened to find their way in by accident or that they were messers. In the aftermath Twitter were able to able to point out the account that had co-ordinated the attack. It had sent out the Zoom codes, told people when it was on, what to do, how to get in and how to co-ordinate the attack.” 

Children could well have been impacted by the behaviour of those who caused the meeting to close.

“These public lectures, people watch them online in their houses so their could be kids in the background. Sometimes if teenagers are interested in history they might join in, maybe they’d be doing a project for their Leaving Cert. I’ve had that on multiple occasions, where people who are doing projects on Cumann na mBan or something like that would tune in for the talk because their teacher told them it was on.”

The lecture she was giving was entitled Republican Surveillance of Women during the War of Independence.

“It’s kind of ironic, I had just finished talking about a horrific attack on a woman in Clare by the Crown Forces, an attempted sexual assault during a raid on her house, and how the Black and Tan and Soldier were found guilty. Then, suddenly there is gendered violence online being committed against me and the attendees.”

While those involved in the events of last Tuesday evening forced the meeting to close, it is going to go ahead again.

“We are going to reorganise it, we’re not going to let them grind us down. I’ve just got an email from the society inviting me to come to Kilrush and give it again. They will live stream it but there’ll be more security in place and I’ll actually be in the room with some of the people and I haven’t done that since pre-Covid.”

She has no doubt why the lecture was targeted.

“It’s about trying to deplatform ideas these people don’t like. I know from colleagues, particularly women colleagues and feminist activists, that this has happened quite regularly over the last few months.”

“The first time I would have been very aware of it was when the online Ashling Murphy vigil was Zoom bombed and cyber flashed, these are words I’ve got to know over the last few days.

“It’s horrific, it was for a woman who had been killed and some person decides that’s a platform on which to expose himself to women who are mourning.”

She said that those who disrupted the meeting are active on various social media platforms and that the major technology companies need to work together to stop such behaviour.