“I said to Channel 4, let’s use that word in the title,” says comedian Rosie Jones in the intro to this powerful documentary about the ableist abuse she receives. “And then, hopefully,” she adds, levelling her gaze at the camera imploringly, as if to say: now that I’ve got your attention, please, listen, “by the end of this film, people will think twice before ever using [it] again.”
We see her walk outside with her headphones on, her voiceover explaining that they are a tool she uses to drown out the daily abuse she faces while walking down the street. Meanwhile, social media comments flash up on the screen, illustrating the kind of hate speech she is regularly greeted with online: from the disgusting slur “you are a retard” to the less overt, but still incredibly offensive, “windowlicker” and “the crowd drenched in dribble”. Is there any escape for Jones, you begin to wonder? Is there a safe place for her to exist?
The reality is no, not really – at least not when ableist abuse is not taken seriously. “Every time I’m on something, there will be a comment about what I look like or what I sound like,” she says, as more comments flash across the screen, each progressively more violent than the last: “She should be in a cage”, “[she] deserves to die” and, finally, a graphic rape threat. She pauses, visibly affected by those words, and says she still thinks about that message a lot.
This documentary paints a sobering picture of what it is like for Jones as a disabled woman in the public eye. The constant harassment she is subject to simply for existing in the media is so undeniably violent, and while for many social media can be an escape from the viciousness of the outside world, for people like Jones, it seems it’s just another way for bullies to reach them.
We see her meet a representative from a company that has been filtering the comments she receives, and he shows her all the offensive remarks on her appearance, her speech impediment and her disability that they have screened. Dispirited, she gazes at them. “Every negative thought I’ve ever had about myself, I can go online and find strangers saying it back to me,” she says sadly.
She reports an abusive Twitter comment and receives an auto-response saying it isn’t in violation of its rules, despite those very rules stating that they don’t tolerate discrimination on the grounds of disability. So, Rosie Jones does what Rosie Jones does best – turns a sad situation into a bit of light relief comedy. She delivers a giant cookie to Twitter HQ in London, the icing on which asks the same question as the documentary’s title, with her Twitter handle @josierones.
In the next, particularly heartbreaking, scene, Jones visits the parents of a disabled child, Lydia, who died a few years ago. Prior to Lydia’s death, her parents received online ableist abuse concerning their efforts to fundraise for potentially life-saving surgery. They included messages from strangers that suggested they would be better off terminating their child’s life, rather than trying to save it. “All they wanted was for their daughter to survive,” Jones says tearfully, branding those who sent the messages as monsters.
On her way home, she receives an email from Twitter saying that they have locked the account from which the abusive message she reported was sent. But instead of feeling triumphant, the comedian says she is livid: “What about all the other disabled people who report tweets? Does it take a biscuit for people to stop calling us [this slur]?”
The personal gets political when Jones speaks to a tech expert, who says the direction of travel on social media, especially on Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover, has meant more free speech – much of which, he says, comes “perilously close to hate speech”. Another expert tells her that social media platforms are reluctant to crack down on abusive content because it drives more traffic to their platforms. In other words, they won’t do anything because hateful content makes money.
Wanting to understand the psychology behind online trolling, Jones meets someone who once viciously trolled others and even went to prison for it. She sits alone in a dingy windowless room, where the ex-troll’s anonymised face is projected on to a dark wall. They are wearing a white mask like you might see in a horror film and their voice is distorted and gravelled to protect their identity. The theatrics of this scene seem a little over-the-top, but maybe it’s needed to make non-disabled viewers take the subject matter seriously.
Ultimately, Jones discovers that hurt people hurt people, and there are a lot of hurt people in the world. Social media platforms are failing to protect disabled users, so it’s up to us, she says. “I think we need to start another movement. This one is so simple: Stop Ableism. That’s it.” She urges viewers to call out any ableism they witness, online or off. After painting such a visceral account of the impact ableism can have on disabled people and their families, we’d surely be monsters to ignore her.
Rosie Jones: Am I A R*tard? is available on Channel 4.
For advice on reporting a disability hate crime, please visit Scope.
