Labour MP Jess Phillips has revealed she received 600 rape threats in just one night - days after launching a campaign to end online sexist bullying

Labour MP Jess Phillips has revealed she received 600 rape threats in just one night - days after launching a campaign to end online sexist bullying.

The Birmingham Yardley MP hit out at Twitter for allowing 'mass bullying' to take place and said their business model is 'totally flawed'.

She told her 25,000 Twitter followers last night: 'To see the attack of a pack on here check out my mentions 600 odd notifications talking about my rape in one night. I think twitter is dead.'

She said this morning that many of the abusive messages she received told her she wasn't worthy of being raped.

Ms Phillips revealed earlier this year she was sexually assaulted as a teenager and she has spearheaded campaigns to highlight sex abuse, domestic abuse and online bullying since being elected an MP in last year's General Election.

Her campaigning on Ms Phillips has been a regular target for Twitter trolls. The wave of abuse she received yesterday appears to have been launched after she replied to one person who told her: 'I wouldn't even rape you'.

She has previously been subjected to rape threats online after she laughed at Conservative Philip Davies when he called for a discussion in Parliament to coincide with International Men's Day last October.

Speaking about the recent abuse, the Labour MP told BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme: 'I could never block them - you would need someone employed full time to block the amount of people who have been in touch with me over the weekend.

'It's not a solution just to block and ignore them in my case. The only solution in stopping me seeing it is if I stop going on Twitter which is a very real possibility.'

She added that the 'ringleaders' of the abuse should face either civil or criminal action.

Jess Phillips, the Birmingham Yardley MP, hit out at Twitter for allowing 'mass bullying' to take place and said their business model is 'totally flawed'. She told her 25,000 Twitter followers last night: 'To see the attack of a pack on here check out my mentions 600 odd notifications talking about my rape in one night. I think twitter is dead.'

Jess Phillips said this morning that many of the abusive messages she received told her she wasn't worthy of being raped

Jess Phillips has received thousands of abusive messages on Twitter since she launched the 'Recl@im the Internet' campaign last week

JESS PHILLIPS RAPE THREATS PROVE TWITTER HASN'T LEARNT FROM STELLA CREASY TROLLS A man was jailed for 18 weeks for retweeting posts threatening to rape Labour MP Stella Creasy (pictured) The rape threats sent to Jess Phillips proves Twitter's problem with online trolls has not gone away since judges handed an 18-week jail sentence to a man who sent similar abuse to fellow MP Stella Creasy. Peter Nunn, a 34-year-old man from Bristol, was sentenced after retweeting posts threatening to rape the Walthamstow MP and branding her a 'witch' on the social media site. Ms Creasy was bombarded with abuse after she supported a bid by feminist Caroline Criado-Perez to keep a woman on a British bank note. Mr Nunn retweeted a threatening message sent to Ms Creasy which read: 'You better watch your back, I'm going to rape your a**e at 8pm and put the video all over.' In his next message he posted: 'Best way to rape a witch, try and drown her first then just when she's gagging for air that's when you enter.' Later that evening he wrote: 'If you can't threaten to rape a celebrity, what is the point in having them?' He had initially said he was appealing his sentence at the Old Bailey but he hacked down at the last moment. Advertisement

Ms Phillips added: 'Until Twitter makes this sort of thing stop happening and stops accepting that this sort of dogpiling and mass bullying can happen, their business model is totally flawed. People who don't like this feral side of the internet are just going to walk away.'

Twitter said it did not comment on individual cases for privacy and security reasons.

Kira O'Connor, Head of Trust & Safety Outreach, said: 'Hateful conduct has no place on the Twitter platform and is a violation of our terms of service.

'In addition to our policies and user controls, such as block, mute and our new multiple tweet reporting functionality, we work with civil society leaders and academic experts to understand the challenge that exists.'

Ms Phillips was among a group of top female political figures launched the Recl@im the Internet campaign to tackle hate speech and abuse on social media.

She was joined by ex-Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper, former Culture Secretary Maria Eagle, Labour MP Stella Creasy and former Lib Dem women and equalities minister Jo Swinson.

It was launched at the same time as research found that women are responsible for at least half of all misogynistic posts on the internet.

The think tank Demos tracked the number of times that the words 'slut' and 'whore' were used on the social media site Twitter – and found that in Britain alone, 10,000 such tweets were sent.

Worldwide, no less than 50 per cent of the hundreds of thousands of aggressive tweets using these words were sent by women, with 40 per cent sent by men. The rest were sent by organisations or users whose gender cannot be classified.

The author of the study said the findings suggested that misogyny is being 'internalised and reiterated by women themselves'.

Jack Dale, from the think tank, wrote: 'This represents over 9,000 aggressively misogynistic tweets sent per day worldwide during this period, with 80,000 Twitter users targeted by this trolling.

'Interestingly, this study reflects the findings of out 2014 report, in which women were as comfortable using misogynistic language as men.

'These figures suggest that misogyny is being internalised and reiterated by women themselves.

'This use of language is not, therefore, confined to one discrete online group but rather persists throughout society – making this issue more complex than it first appears.'

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has said that tackling abuse is a priority.