{"id":9016,"date":"2026-10-20T14:32:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9016"},"modified":"2026-10-20T14:32:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:32:05","slug":"the-big-interview-mary-anne-franks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9016","title":{"rendered":"Sexual Assault Is a Free Speech Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">It is a<\/span> testament to the deeply misogynistic nature of social media that, shortly after the horrifying sexual misconduct allegations against seven Cornell frat members made news last month, people on the internet immediately started trying to dox the victim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Over the past few weeks, right-wing provocateurs and random troll accounts alike have attempted to publicly identify Jane Doe, the anonymous former Cornell student who accused seven Chi Phi fraternity members of sexually assaulting her in 2024. The drive to publicize her name and other personal details is stomach-turning\u2014but according to Mary Anne Franks, in the context of the history of social media and sexual assault, it\u2019s all too common.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Franks is a professor at George Washington University Law School specializing in the intersection of civil rights, free speech, and technology. She is also the president and legislative tech policy director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, where she has spent years fighting online abuse and image-based sexual abuse. For decades, Franks has had a front-row seat to the myriad ways in which men on the internet have been abusive toward women, as well as some of the constitutional arguments invoked by independent commentator Michael Tracey, who has argued that his doxing of Jane Doe is legal under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cWhen you have a cultural fetishization of an abstract notion of free speech, one thing that it does is it disembodies a conversation,\u201d Franks says. \u201cSomehow physical safety becomes oppositional to this supreme value of speech.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">With her work at the CCRI, as well as her history advocating for legislation criminalizing nonconsensual intimate images in all 50 US states, Franks hopes to reframe the conversation by making clear that \u201csexual abuse is a free speech issue. It silences people, and when we allow sexual abuse to happen with impunity, we are essentially saying, \u2018We do not care about women&#8217;s voices.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">I spoke to Franks as the Cornell story was rippling through social media. During our discussion, we discussed the doxing of Jane Doe, the \u201cElon Muskification\u201d of the internet, the terrifying world of the far-right \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/burnerverse-maddie-kowalski\/\" class=\"text link\">burnerverse<\/a>,\u201d and Cornell\u2019s troubling history of looking the other way when it comes to the abuse and objectification of women. Check it out below.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>EJ DICKSON:<\/strong> <strong>Mary Anne Franks, thank you so much for being here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>MARY ANNE FRANKS:<\/strong> Thanks so much for having me on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/the-big-interview-mary-anne-franks\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a testament to the deeply misogynistic nature of social media that, shortly after the horrifying sexual misconduct allegations against seven Cornell frat members made news last month, people on the internet immediately started trying to dox the victim. Over the past few weeks, right-wing provocateurs and random troll accounts alike have attempted to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[377,550,562,446,124,378,231],"class_list":["post-9016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-big-interview","tag-digital-culture","tag-free-speech","tag-gender","tag-podcasts","tag-qa","tag-uncanny-valley-podcast"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sexual Assault Is a Free Speech Issue - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mary Anne Franks has spent years fighting against online abuse. When people are abused with impunity, she says, the message becomes \u201cWe do not care about women\u2019s voices.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9016\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sexual Assault Is a Free Speech Issue - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mary Anne Franks has spent years fighting against online abuse. 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