“These guys have shone the light on us—thank you for making our point,” said Paula Todd, a journalist and author of Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies and Predators Online. The counter hashtag #TYFMOP (Thank You For Making Our Point) was generated during a panel in the Venn at Ryerson University on Wednesday that discussed the topic of female disempowerment.

Hosted by journalism professor, Lisa Taylor, the “Trolling for Journalists” panel addressed the growing trend of sexual harassment attacks on female journalists.

Shauna Hunt shared her experience with a prank associated with the social media hashtag, #FHRITP while doing an on-air segment for CityNews. They showed a clip of Hunt reporting from an FC event when a few young men take control of the microphone by yelling the abusive phrase to camera.

Click here to watch the video on CityNews’ website.

“This acronym is an incitement to sexual violence against women,” said Paula Todd. This “prank” started in the United States and has been re-enacted by a growing number of the public while female reporters are doing a live hit on television. Hunt says she has reached her limit with harassment while on the job.

CityNews took the incident and reported on it. Shauna Hunt says it was, “risky taking a stand because we didn’t know how it was going to play out.”

Evidently, the growing awareness on the topic has led the public to take action. “Bystanders now are stepping up to protect reporters and are policing people,” said Hunt.

Hana Shafi, a former blogger and now freelance journalist that recently graduated from Ryerson University said that she gets harassed 24/7. She got her first hate stalker on her blog and they only grew in numbers, even as a freelance journalist. “This is like masochism that I’m doing this to myself,” Shafi said about continuing to pursue her journalism career.

At first she stopped writing for a few months out of fear for her safety after receiving numerous online threats, but then decided that she needed to take a stand. The harassment is inevitable but Shafi feels that being a racialized woman in a male-dominated industry makes her more of a target, alongside her tendency to write about social justice topics.

Paula Todd used a similar example of female artist, Rebecca Black, whose hit song, “Friday” made her the most hated person on the internet. “Anyone who isn’t someone we want them to be is a target,” said Todd. Being confined to cultural expectations is an issue that women are facing around the world.  When women don’t conform to those expectations they face torment from a saturated community of misogyny online.

“When something like this happens, it’s not sexism—it’s misogyny. It’s hate against women and it’s illegal in this country,” said Todd.

Apart from the threats, tormenting and blackmailing that female journalist are facing, it’s also creating doubt in their ability to do their jobs.  Producers might think, “Maybe I won’t send a woman into a sporting event and we go back to place where women can’t be reporters,” said Todd.

The panelists shared some advice with the young journalists in the audience when dealing with sexual harassment. Hunt and Shafi agree the best thing to do when faced with a threat is to not engage with the trolls who use harassment to get attention.

Shafi sometimes goes as far as exposing the trolls by screenshotting their comments and sharing it with her followers in an effort to raise awareness. “I want people to see it,” said Shafi.

Lisa Taylor shared a statistic from Demos U.K. think tank that analyzed Twitter and found that female journalist are three times more likely to be trolled than their male counterparts.  Female journalists may also risk losing their jobs if they complain to their superiors about on-the-job harassment.

With female disempowerment being celebrated online, it perpetuates the hatred against women. “If there was more respect for women in this world, this wouldn’t be happening,” said Todd.

Currently in Canada, the definition of harassment is vague and online harassment is not typically a crime enforced through legal action. “We need to fight back ourselves,” said Todd.

Shafi said online harassment is commonly any form of hate speech, i.e.  swearing, sexist and racist comments etc. that trolls repetitively iterate at their target via online spaces. The #FHRITP prank is supposedly, “just a joke,” but the widespread social media phenomenon has become a piece of merchandising for some that continues to undermine the basis of female empowerment in the mainstream online community.