Her articles on gender inequality, violence against women,
and rape culture, often go viral.
She famously calls out online trolls, publicly naming and shaming them.
She was also briefly banned from Facebook
just for reporting the torrent of abuse
she was sent for this semi-nude photo.
She's fierce, she's divisive, she is Clementine Ford.
Why did you post a semi-naked or naked photo of yourself on Facebook?
I did it in defence of all of the girls who were ever told
that it's their fault
that photographs that they'd taken of themselves
are stolen and shared by men who want to undermine and abuse them,
and demean them and dehumanise them.
What is it actually like waking up every day,
wondering whether you might be getting a torrent of abuse online
from people who don't even know you?
You can always predict when the abuse might come in
and it's usually when something specific has occurred.
On the worst day it would be hundreds.
All of them saying pretty much the same thing,
from people I've never encountered in my entire life
and often on ScreenCap
and I'll share those messages again with other people.
When you take their messages
and broadcast it to a much bigger audience,
it positions them suddenly as a subject of critique.
When you fight back against that by turning the spotlight on them
it suddenly gives you the power and it also makes them very angry.
Some people would say that you're writing all your articles
to poke the trolls. Why keep doing it?
I get told "Just block them" so I block them
and then I get told "You can't handle debate, you can't handle criticism,
"you just silence and censor people." So you can't really win.
There was one particular moment last year with a troll
where you say it was a moment that you ruined a man's life.
The reason that I joke that I ruined a man's life
is not because I feel proud of ruining anyone's life,
but because that's what people said to me,
they said that because I had stood up for myself
and because I'd reported this man for abusing me publicly on the internet,
that I had ruined a man's life.
You've been very open about the fact that you've had 2 abortions.
Why do you think that's important to talk about that publicly?
Because it's still seen as something that women need to apologise for.
There's too many women
who feel like they need to preface their accounts of abortion,
if they even feel confident enough to share them,
with lines like "It's the hardest thing I've ever done,
"it was the most difficult decision I've ever made."
That's actually just not true for a lot of women.
People talk about abortion being the irresponsible choice.
Abortion is a very responsible choice for a woman who understands
she doesn't have the capacity to raise a child.
A child is a serious business.
You've just had a baby.
But not every moment of the pregnancy was great for you.
I'm going to read out a passage from your book
which is quite shocking to read.
"Inside I heard a voice screaming to get it out of me.
Gripped by anxiety, I imagined myself plunging a knife into my belly,
forcing the thing that lived there to drain itself away from me.
Every day started with me vomiting
and each night saw me lying in the bath thinking about killing myself.
Why did you think it was important to share something so confronting?
The narrative around pregnancy is that women should always
be happy about it, women should always be glowing
and grateful to be growing this beautiful life inside them.
And the fact of it is that when I was feeling that,
it was for a pregnancy that I had planned and that I wanted.
And I didn't actually want to do any of those things.
That's what made it so traumatising,
because I didn't want to feel that way.
I loved the baby that I was carrying and the baby that I have now,
it was a really scary time.
If I can give other women knowledge that they're not alone in that
then that's a hugely important and powerful thing to me
because one of the things that scared me the most about it
was feeling like I was alone
and feeling like no one else had had those feelings before.
Clementine Ford, thank you for coming in and chatting to us today.
Thank you so much for having me.