Combatting Online Attacks Against Women with Alia Dastagir

Air Dates: April 7-13, 2025

As children we learned the that “stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But Alia Dastagir says it’s not true—online attacks with words produce real physical and mental health consequences for their victims.

Dastagir is an award-winning journalist and former reporter for USA Today who frequently covers gender and mental health. Dastagir was one of eight U.S. recipients of the prestigious Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. She won a first-place National Headliner Award for a series on suicide and was awarded the American Association of Suicidology’s Public Service Journalism Award. Her book on women and online abuse, “To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person: Words as Violence and Stories of Women’s Resistance Online,” was published by Crown in February 2025. She is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at NYU, where she is an Axinn fellow.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Dastagir dives into her new book, “To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person,” discussing the role of technology in the attacks women face online and the impacts to the victims’ physical and psychological health.  Dastagir captures the lived experience of a group of women who are victims of this kind of online abuse and includes a tool box for women in the event they experience such attacks and offers ways to support victims.

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