After dealing with her fair share of trolls, video blogger Anita Sarkeesian knows one thing for sure — she detests the term itself.

“I think the word troll is kind of a problem," she said on April 24, speaking to a mostly female audience at the Women in the World summit, a three day event in New York City that tackles the issues women face today.

The term "troll" is "juvenile," its cartoonish influence playing down the harmful and often violent aspects of social media harassment, she says.

Ashley Judd, New York Times staff writer Emily Bazelon and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris also shared the stage with Sarkeesian, speaking about their own experience with online trolling. The conversation was moderated by Katie Couric.

(L-R) Emily Bazelon, Kamala D. Harris, Ashley Judd, Anita Sarkeesian and Katie Couric on April 23 at the Women in the World Summit. Image: Courtesy of Women in the World

In 2009, Sarkeesian created the video web series Feminist Frequency to address the way women are portrayed in "pop culture narratives," according to the site. As "a woman on the Internet," she was used to getting negative comments, but things blew up when she created a Kickstarter for a video project called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games," which aimed to analyze female stereotypes of women in the gaming world.

What followed was an almost instant flurry of online harassment, so vitriolic and misogynistic that it altered the course of her life. Her social media activity is bombarded with racist and sexist comments. She constantly receives rape and murder threats. Strangers attempt to dox her, disseminating her personal information online. Her website, social accounts and email accounts are regularly attacked by hackers.

She's become "hyper-vigilant" in her daily life, employing security and being watchful of restaurants and coffee shops she frequents. Sarkeesian refuses the term "paranoid," however, because it implies irrationality.

"It’s been going on for three years nonstop," she says. "There’s nothing irrational about my fear."

Last October, she was forced to cancel a talk at Utah State University because an anonymous threat promised "the deadliest school shooting in American history" if Sarkeesian spoke. However, she was still willing to speak, provided the school amp up security measures. They didn't.

To be clear: I didn't cancel my USU talk because of terrorist threats, I canceled because I didn’t feel the security measures were adequate. — Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014

Dealing with serious online threats and harassment is a huge gray area for law enforcement and for the social media companies whose outlets facilitate hateful speech. Actress and activist Ashley Judd has found her own ways to deal with it.

After receiving numerous violent threats online, Judd penned an op-ed for Mic, declaring "online violence toward girls and women" could kiss her ass. Then, she took action.

Ashley Judd speaks at the Women in the World Summit. Image: Courtesy of Women in the World

She hired a social media firm to "scrub" her account, seeking out the harmful messages lobbed at her via social media. Then, her firm determines which threats are "legally actionable." Just last month, she announced she was pressing charges against various trolls.

Women who file charges against online trolls, however, often face confused law enforcement, who are ill-equipped to tackle the problem.

"There’s no clear person to talk to, or clear protocol," Kamala D. Harris says.

Sarkeesian recalls speaking to police officers who didn't even know what Twitter is.

Anita Sarkeesian: "Police tell me to stop doing what I'm doing. How is that an appropriate response?" #WITW http://t.co/KjrOW4R6fW — Women in the World (@WomenintheWorld) April 23, 2015

Another one of the great obstacles is getting victims to come forward, Harris continues. Emily Bazelon agrees.

"So many people do not want to come forward publicly," she says. "The police have to be convinced, I think, in some places to take this seriously."

One of the best ways to tackle that is to force government agencies to embrace and adapt to technology, Harris says. People in her field used to think they were tech-savvy "because they email," she says with a laugh.

"If you’re not associated with someone in your life 17 or younger, you’re probably not hip to modern technology," she says.

Companies like Twitter and Facebook are also tackling this issue, seeking new ways to crack down on trolls. Twitter is currently trying a new algorithm to monitor trollish tweets, Bazelon says, which will be interesting. For her, one of the main issues is that people can create throwaway Twitter accounts, making it harder to nail down trolls. A short-term fix for Twitter is to suspend a bad account — but then people can quickly make new ones.

Handling these vicious trolls is also a smart business move, Harris adds.

"These business want to be good businesses, if for no other reason than they don’t want to lose consumers," Harris says.

Though it's "late in the game," Sarkeesian admits to being impressed with Twitter's response to handling trolls. But when the audience tries to applaud, she shuts it down.

“They’re actually starting to do their job," she remarks. "They don’t need a cookie for that.”

Judd agrees. She slammed Twitter for their "demoralizing" automated message that users receive when reporting trolling accounts, calling it an "inadequate" response to women who are being viciously threatened online.

However, she chooses to stay on Twitter, because she likes "being connected and approachable and real." She fervently believes a resolution can be made between her and her trolls.

"I want to love the person...for me there has to be a spiritual solution." @AshleyJudd on cyberbullying #WITW http://t.co/ltj5MIAFBJ — Women in the World (@WomenintheWorld) April 23, 2015

In this day and age, simply not feeding the trolls isn't enough. These women are fighting back.