This weekend, Emma Watson had the audacity to speak up for gender equality. Now, Internet misogynists have decided she must be punished — not by challenging her ideas (there isn't a great argument against the contention that "men and women should have equal rights and opportunity") but by threatening to release naked photos of her.

"It is real and going to happen this weekend. That feminist bitch Emma is going to show the world she is as much of a whore as any woman," one 4chan commenter wrote.

"In a documentary about the royal family and the media, she was included explained how the paparazzi were hunting her down for upskirt pics and etc, they where waiting patiently for her 18th birthday to hit so they could act like shameless savages , and when it hit, so they did , they laid down on the floor in the streets and such to snap photos of her… she is a delicate flower and it is time for her fans to see her in full bloom, unlike your shitty cow tit attention whore there," wrote another.

"She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH," commented a third. And it goes on like this. In a final threatening move, someone set up a countdown website, EmmaYouAreNext.com.

Attacking outspoken women by sexually degrading them is nothing new, and using naked photos to take celebrities down a peg or two is quickly becoming the go-to method of sexists across the Internet. Emma Watson exists at the unfortunate intersection of those two trends: She's a woman who's speaking up for feminist issues in public, and she's famous. Women who write about feminism online will tell you that rape threats, sexualized insults and sexually violent photoshop jobs are de rigueur. Talk about women's rights on Twitter and prepare for a barrage of insults from people who aren't simply content to tell you that you're wrong or even stupid — the kind of things male writers deal with — but that you're a whore, that you're a cunt, and that you should be raped. Sexuality is the bludgeoning stick and the place they aim the blow.

It's not just Internet trolls either. Emma Watson gave an important speech at the United Nations alongside world leaders and international power players, and was met with the Internet equivalent of "You're a slut." Just two years ago, law student Sandra Fluke (now running for office in California) did her civic duty by testifying before a Congressional committee about birth control access. She was called a slut by right-wing radio hosts, and her name still comes up on conservative talk shows as shorthand for "entitled floozy who wants the government to pay for her birth control pills" — all because she spoke out for women's rights.

This is not a reaction you see when men speak out. Ben Affleck testified before Congress about conflicts in the eastern Congo that have left millions dead, displaced, and victimized by sexual violence; there was no push to sexually humiliate him for it. Seth Rogan testified about Alzheimer's and saw no backlash. The difference? Watson is female, and speaking out in favor of feminism.

Nudity shouldn't be humiliating; neither should sex. But for most of us, our naked bodies are private, and we don't want them on display without our consent, particularly when the display is intended to make us ashamed of our sexual histories. And the threat of harassment and humiliation, whether that's from photo leaks or radio blowhard insults or Twitter cruelty, shouldn't hang over the head of every woman who wants to speak up for what she believes in.

Aside from investigation into the leaked photos, there are few good solutions to the problem Watson is now facing. But there is an opportunity to take the threats against a very famous woman and use them as one more reason to make small changes in the kind of behavior we engage in or even tacitly support with our silence. That means peeling back the layers of our own stereotypes and hostilities that are different in degree but not content from those currently aimed at Watson: calling other women sluts, or saying a girl who talks too much is bossy, or criticizing a straightforward female coworker as abrasive, or using gendered insults like "whore" as shorthand for "someone I don't like."

The guys who allegedly stole and are now threatening to publish nude photos of Watson are extreme public misogynists. But undercutting outspoken women by aiming between their legs isn't relegated to the darker corners of the Internet. Sometimes, you'll find it when you look in the mirror.

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Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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