This isn’t to say that I’m advocating turning the other cheek. I don’t believe that you can love the hate out of an anonymous stranger who is telling you that he hopes you die (even if it did work that one time). It’s important to shine a light on the bigotry and oppression in everyday society if we expect change. And I do believe in the power of justice for those who have been wronged.

But it’s naïve to think that those of us fighting for equality aren’t as susceptible to the same zealotry and abuse of power as the groups we are battling.

Freedom of speech also comes with accountability for that speech — but doxxing isn’t about accountability, it’s about silencing. Techniques designed to intimidate people out of the public sphere are wrong, no matter who is doing it. Deciding that we will not stoop to their level and that we will not risk innocent people does not fix racism, sexism, homophobia and the like, but it helps us protect the ideals that we are fighting for.

I don’t believe that this recent trend of doxxing for good has appeared organically. And I don’t believe it’s rooted in malice. I believe that it’s come out of sheer desperation: Right now on the Internet, women, minorities and the LGBTQ community are under siege — targets of a massive, and often organized, effort underway to force us out of public spaces.

All day long people use the anonymity of the internet to harass, threaten, and stalk people in the Social Justice movement into silence. What recourse do we have to protect ourselves and hold people accountable? Law enforcement’s of little help if the threats are made to actual people (while vaguely ominous messages about cops will definitely get you arrested). And while Twitter has now explicitly banned doxxing, they have been slow to recognize the harassment many face on their platform as actual abuse. As Kitty Stryker points out, “We arrest people for tweeting about bombing an airport, so why don’t we take these constant threats against women that seriously?” It’s similar for other social media platforms like Facebook and Tumblr: Showing a woman’s breast on Facebook can get you banned, but a picture of the brutal beating of a gay man coupled with cheering comments is not viewed as harassment — I know because I’ve reported such an image and got exactly that response in return.

This harassment is very real. As we have seen with Elliot Rodger, the young man who wrote online about his hatred of women and eventually killed six people in Santa Barbara, these online threats can be followed up with offline terror. A tweet saying, “I hope you are beheaded and raped” (which I’ve gotten), is just as frightening to get online as it would be to get in your mailbox. Messages sent via paper are viewed as threats, while the same messages sent online are viewed as pranks. But don’t be fooled — the message is the same.

The internet isn’t just a place where we “hang out” anymore. The internet has become a vital part of our society and our economy. The internet is real life; It is us. When people find themselves harassed and threatened off of the internet, their speech is silenced. And that’s why doxxing, of anybody, is wrong.

Harassment and threats must be recognized as the crimes they are, whether they come from MRAs or from overzealous anti-racists. You’ve got to be vigilant in condemning harassment, just as you should if you witness it in the street. We need to stop making excuses for people who get joy from instilling fear in others. We need to stop telling people to “just ignore” trolls and start telling social media companies to pay more attention to them. We need to demand greater accountability from social media platforms on their efforts to keep their products safe. They make money from these platforms and they make money from our patronage. Right now they’re also profiting off of our fear and pain.

Our criminal justice system needs to take these threats to us seriously. We need legal, responsible avenues for holding online abusers accountable. And a system that does little to protect women, people of color, and the LGBT community from online violence needs to change. Social media platforms and our criminal justice system have to step up to the plate to keep the Internet truly free.

Log in to Medium and “recommend” this story.

Follow Matter on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter

(Original photograph: Steve Schapiro/Corbis)