After her viral moment, Lauren Duca is dealing with the worst of the internet
The internet is a brutal place for female journalists. It is especially bad for women who find themselves the target of a particularly aggressive brand of harassment for which there seem to be no lines left to cross.
Right now, few people on the internet — if any — are enduring abuse on the same level as Lauren Duca. And nobody is enduring that kind of abuse with more boldness or zeal.
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Duca, a freelance journalist who has bylines in The New Yorker, Vice, Teen Vogue and many more publications, appeared on Fox News in December opposite Tucker Carlson to discuss a news story about Ivanka Trump and her family being heckled while on a commercial flight.
The discussion grew heated, with Duca pushing back against Carlson. Carlson shot back with comments about Duca's fashion coverage, telling her "stick to the thigh-high boots." Duca called him sexist, and Carlson cut her off.
The exchange quickly spread across the internet.
Since then, Duca has been a target of hyper-conservative trolls that have lobbed almost every imaginable type of insult and threat at her on Twitter and over email. Speaking with Mashable's Biz Please podcast (featuring reporter Heather Dockray), Duca spoke about how she handles her legion of trolls.
"Take time to read the positive responses," she said. "I have that 20 beautiful letters ... versus one evil comment. What do they weigh in my heart? Let the positive ones soak in too... And know that every single woman is dealing with it, know that you have a voice and they can't let them silence you."
It's far from over for Duca, and might just be getting started. She recently had a run in with Martin Shkreli, who you may remember as the young pharmaceutical executive who bought the rights to a drug only to raise the price excessively. Duca publicly declined an invitation from Shkreli to go to the inauguration of Donald Trump with him. Shkreli responded with some particularly creepy Twitter activity involving doctored photos of Duca, leading Twitter to suspending him from the service (the podcast recording took place before Shkreli's account was suspended).
You can find the entire interview with Duca below. For more Biz Please, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and find it here on Stitcher.
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
