Stories of 2015: the barrister branded a 'feminazi' in LinkedIn sexism row

When junior barrister Charlotte Proudman tweeted a screenshot of her LinkedIn exchange with a senior City solicitor, rebuking him for complimenting her on her profile photograph, the backlash was phenomenal.

Proudman, 27, had not expected the furore. “Never, not in a million years”, she says. But her actions detonated an explosive and deeply divisive sexism debate and she found herself engulfed.

Three months later, she has no regrets, despite finding herself condemned as a “feminazi” and subjected, she says, to death and rape threats on social media. She said the fallout won’t stop her working at the Bar, though she has yet to see if it will affect her career as a barrister.

“Yes, I have had to pay a personal price”, she agrees, but she believes it is a price worth paying to highlight the issue of gender equality at work.

It was in September that Proudman publicly reprimanded solicitor Alexander Carter-Silk. She had connected with him through the business-networking site LinkedIn and received the reply: “Charlotte, delighted to connect. I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for best LinkedIn picture I have ever seen.”

Proudman fired back, stressing she was on the site for business purposes and “not to be approached about my physical appearance or objectified by sexist men”. She adds: “The eroticisation of women’s physical appearance is a way of exercising power over women. It silences women’s professional attributes as their physical appearance becomes the subject.” She said: “Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour. Think twice before sending another woman [half your age] such a sexist message”.

Then she tweeted a screenshot of the exchange, inquiring if other women had had similar experiences, and in so doing triggered a bitter sexism debate. Her public naming and shaming of Carter-Silk was questioned by her detractors.

Could she have handled it differently? “I have thought about it since,” says Proudman, “but I think when you are willing to send such a sexist, misogynistic message through a professional networking site to somebody you don’t even know, you have to be prepared for consequences. And if they are not, I just don’t think people’s behaviour will change.”

Proudman says while other people were offered jobs on LinkedIn, she was getting “chat-up lines from someone double my age. It is completely inappropriate”.

At the time of the media storm Proudman was on sabbatical from the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC, where she is an associate tenant, and working on her PhD thesis on female genital mutilation policy at King’s College, Cambridge. She was just about to go to the US as a visiting researcher at Harvard law school.

“I was due to leave for the States in a couple of days, and thought, well thank goodness”. The press were contacting her friends, colleagues, anyone that might know her. “I found it incredibly intimidating, harassing. It was perhaps the most upsetting aspect of all this. The bullying, that level of intrusion,” she says.

Some media attached to her the label of “feminazi”. She says: “I never expected, of course, to receive that. To be compared to Hitler and to the extermination and murder of millions of Jews, I think it is utterly abhorrent. Completely unacceptable. That term should never be allowed to be used. And to be used in such a casual way, as though it is innocuous, a bit of a joke, a bit of fun.

“Of course, it is not. It is a very serious label to render you unemployable and suggesting there are certain characteristics associated with you: that you’re racist, authoritarian, you want to impose your views on others. It’s vile. They talk about ‘armies of feminazis’ and ‘feminazis mobilising’ to invoke the image of a war-like situation.”

On Twitter and social media it was, if possible, worse. Cyber abuse included death threats and rape threats, she says. “All incredibly harassing and threatening. It’s a form of hate speech against women. It is everyday real behaviour that has an immobilising effect on you.”

She adds: “We have this idea of free speech, which of course I fully support, but it is no longer free speech when it is preventing other people from speaking out. Every person who speaks out against gender inequality will receive this kind of abuse. Hundreds of comments on one small tweet about gender inequality. The trolling is phenomenal.”

Proudman considered, briefly, going to ground, but decided against it because she did not want to give the media unchallenged control of the narrative. So she spoke out, accepting television and radio interview requests, inevitably fanning the flames. There were supporters, too, which got her through.

It has, she believes, defined her in an unexpected way, as she finds herself “a spokeswoman, to an extent, on feminist issues and other social justice causes”.

“The personal price is I didn’t have the opportunity really to decide this is what I want to do, this is the direction I want to go in,” she adds. “I didn’t expect to be spending my time doing these type of interviews.”

As for any impact on her career, Proudman – who specialises in family law and human rights issues – says: “Let’s wait and see. I think there will be positives and negatives. There are those solicitors who think, ‘Gosh, we definitely want her, she’s a fearless advocate for women. We want her in court. Then there will be those who think, ‘No way will we touch her after this. She could misconstrue everything we could possibly say.’

“It will be women, I think, who are much more likely to instruct me, rather than some men who may be reluctant. But it is a fight I am willing to take on. I am absolutely damned if I’m not going to go back to the Bar because of this. Absolutely no way.”

Proudman believes she has helped highlight workplace sexism and is playing her part in bringing about change.

“I felt I absolutely had a duty to speak out, otherwise the rightwing media would have completely controlled that narrative. They would have made me into a feminazi, tried to portray me as hypocrite, someone irrational, hot-headed, hysterical, all those stereotypes that are thrown at women.

“You take the ground and say, ‘I’m going to stand up to this, I am not going to allow the media to dictate this. This is not right. This is my viewpoint, and I’m going to put this forward.’”