[Thread]1/ I see a lot of disgusting things online, but tonight the level of high level misogyny on 'Gulf Twitter' is astounding. There is a systemic campaign to smear two women journalists @OlaAlfares and @ghadaoueiss, who work for Al Jazeera. The campaign involves thousands 
2/ of tweets from well-known verified accounts. The premise is revolting. Accounts, mostly based in Saudi, have leaked private photos of @ghadaoueiss - doing nothing but hanging out in her jacuzzi (how they even got the photos is alarming). The images are being deliberately
3/ spun to be lurid. The hashtag "the farm of Hamad bin Thamer" is trending. People on the hashtag are stating with little to no subtlety that women journalists such as Olaa and Ghada engage in sexual favours for increased salaries. Cartoon like below have even been created
4/ It essentially translates as a woman journalist (ghada) saying she wants a raise, with Hamad bin Thamer responding that 'we can reach an understanding on the farm'. The scale of it is frightening. Read on....
5/ Here are about 25000 tweets, RTs, replies etc on the hashtags "Farm of Hamad bin Thamir", "Ghada Oueiss" and "Olaa Alares". All taken from the past 24 hours. The names mentioned in the graph are the most retweeted or engaged with accounts using the hashtags. Who are they?
6/ One Saudi Poet Abdullatif Abdullah Al Shaikh @Alshaikh2 @s_hm2030, writer/journalist @70sul Ibrahim Al Sulaiman, @5a1di -to name but a few. There are thousands more, but these represent some of the most influential. Millions of followers between them.
7/ This guy even created a lurid story about Ghada, and how she got her current position. I am not going to translate it, but maybe someone replying to this will.
8/ Even as I am doing this thread, accounts with Saudi flags in the name are tweeting laughing emojis at me, with more innuendo about Ghada. Someone even tweeted someone taking an overdose (wtf?)
9/ You can see the industrial level of misogyny and harassment here. This graph shows the number of incoming tweets going to both @OlaAlfares and @ghadaoueiss since 6th June. That's 3000+ between them, most, as you can see, a part of this hate campaign
10/ Now as @WafHeikal mentioned earlier, women journalists get harassed a lot. This instance is just particularly notable due to the sheer scale, which is not news to anyone on Gulf Twitter. This really be something for @RSF_inter to investigate re "digital predators".
@WafHeikal @RSF_inter 11/ this is not new, nor is it a secret. There appears to be no moral leadership preventing this kind of behaviour. On the contrary, it is encouraged. The fact much of the behaviour is illegal just reinforces this. If this is what liberal reform looks, I truly feel bad for women
12/ Anyway, that's enough for now. With government's doing little to stop this, and @Twitter seemingly reluctant to do anything, this behaviour is likely to just to continue to get worse. Just boggles the mind how people can feel no shame about writing such things. Night all.
هناك ترجمة رائعة باللغة العربة يكتبها @MoeHamadi
