I remember the lead up distinctly. My mouse was poised over the tweet button for almost a minute as I weighed up the inevitable backlash that would accompany my post with a sense of responsibility to say something.

My stomach churned and I fidgeted, left my desk and sat back down before finally deciding to put myself at the mercy of the often hostile world that is Twitter.

This scene could describe just about any time I have decided to call out gender inequity in sport online. This time, however, I made a mistake that would serve to exponentially exacerbate the abuse I regularly experience on social media.

To cut a long story short, I thought I heard AFL commentator Garry Lyon call central umpire Eleni Glouftsis "the lady" during a round 19 match.

When online trolls targeted Kate O'Halloran, she felt afraid to leave the house. ( Supplied: Kate O'Halloran )

I wasn't the only one who thought that was what he said, but his colleague Neroli Meadows tweeted me, explaining he had instead mispronounced Eleni's name as "E-lay-ni", which made it sound (to some of us, anyway) like "lady".

The damage by that point was unfortunately done, though. The tweet had gone viral, and as I'd made a public mistake, I was considered "fair game" for a takedown of epic proportions.

There was an abusive thread on Reddit entitled "Neroli 1-Kate 0". Back on my Twitter, I was subject to all kinds of sexist harassment, some which doesn't bear repeating.

Most took on a familiar theme: thanks to being openly LGBTIQ, and my non-conventional appearance, I received the usual (rehashed) classics:

Much of the harassment Kate received focus on her gender and appearance. ( Twitter )

Many tweets were misogynistic. ( Twitter )

Continuing with the misogynistic flavour, others accused me of fabricating the situation to further my apparent feminist "agenda":

Others accused Kate of deliberately misrepresenting the situation. ( Twitter )

She was also called a "sexist" and a "liar". ( Twitter )

Others accused me of being a "fake" journalist while some were more to the point with "F**k up" and "Get. A. Life".

Among the predictable litany of responses, one stood out for its callousness:

This tweet stays with Kate. ( Twitter )

"It".

The use of the dehumanising pronoun online is more commonly targeted at trans and gender diverse folks, but in this case I assume applies to me because of my sexuality and gendered presentation.

In Ginger Gorman's excellent book Troll Hunting, dehumanisation is singled out as a tool to, at its extreme, incite violence against the "other".

Women can't make mistakes

I certainly wouldn't be the only sports journalist to have made a very public "mistake".

Let's just say I presumed that mishearing and calling someone out for something they didn't say would be considered less of a crime than, for example, Eddie McGuire's litany of racist and sexist remarks or Wayne Carey's history of violence against women. Alas.

In my case, my brush with public vitriol left me an emotional wreck. Walking into a cafe on Sunday morning to meet my partner for breakfast, I promptly burst into tears.

Trolls sent Kate private messages and trawled through her social media accounts. ( Supplied: Kate O'Halloran )

Later that afternoon, I spent the day at the football with my family before my brother alerted me to the Reddit thread, warning me that under no circumstances should I read it, adding that the abuse was far worse than anything on Twitter.

I remember almost nothing of the game thereafter, spending it instead in tears scrolling my feed in search and hope that I had some defenders.

But while there were certainly messages of support, the abuse seemed to have taken on a life of its own — many of the trolls now having crept into my private inbox.

By that evening, I was worried about my wellbeing.

In what I saw as a necessary plea for my health and safety, I left an earnest note on Twitter in which I said I would be temporarily deactivating my account because I had realised that "being on social media [as an advocate for gender equity in sport] has been so harmful that it has actually impaired my capacity to do this work elsewhere [such as in media] by so negatively impacting my mental health".

I was afraid to leave the house

I had hoped this would put an end to what had fast become my most damaging encounter with online trolling, but by the next day things got much worse.

Working from home on a Monday morning, I was sent a screenshot of a story on the Herald Sun featuring Lyon responding to my "100% Wrong Twitter Gaffe".

While thankfully Lyon was critical of the response to me on Twitter, he added that people like me "want to get on the gender bandwagon, they're looking to be outraged".

Sadly, that assessment was of a similar sentiment to many of the tweets I had received, and, in combination with the article which printed my name in full for all to see, served only to further inflame the situation.

When Kate's tweet was written about in a newspaper, the abuse ramped up. ( Twitter )

Panicked, I did what I could to shut down and restrict the privacy of all of my social media accounts, but it wasn't enough, or fast enough anyway.

I couldn't change the privacy settings on past Facebook posts, and so was suddenly inundated with abuse from men who had trawled all the way back through my timeline to leave abusive comments on posts that were years old.

Meanwhile, my inbox of messages from those I wasn't friends with ticked over in real time.

At one point I clicked on some of them despite being certain it was a poor decision.

All were (again) from men, many simply laughing at me, others verbally abusive, while one at least made me laugh: "How ya doin M'Leni?" he wrote (preceded by "You're an idiot").

The harassment made Kate (bottom right) worry about her safety. ( Supplied: Kate O'Halloran )

Fear turned to paranoia. Given I was working at home, I felt strangely and suddenly vulnerable.

I was horrified to discover that under default Facebook privacy settings, my mobile phone number was listed as accessible to "anyone". I figured that anyone who wanted to find me probably could.

I was even afraid to leave the house, but desperately needed some fresh air and space from the computer and a phone that had begun ringing off the hook.

When I eventually had the courage to walk outside, I chucked on a beanie in case anyone recognised me from my Twitter photo. I couldn't believe it had come to this.

The role of online bystanders

In the wake of this nightmare, many have asked me what they could have done to help me.

A common theme is other women who tell me they were too frightened to get involved, in case they became targets of the abuse too. This is understandable, so my response would be that there's no one way to help.

Private messages often help as much as public ones. Texts and phone calls, too.

To know that my work means something to someone else, and that the abuse motivated them to reach out and support me is incredibly powerful and comforting.

Those for whom it is safer to speak up online (mostly straight, white men) a public post is often more powerful as a show of visible support.

It meant a lot to me when some of my friends who are men posted on their accounts to say that the way I was treated online wasn't OK. It sent a clear message to other men that masculinity doesn't have to be toxic or abusive.

Kate took a break from Twitter, and is now more cautious about what she posts online. ( Supplied: Kate O'Halloran )

My Twitter exile lasted just over a month. I posted nothing after the lady "incident" in July until September and logged in just once in between.

I still haven't read the comments on the post I made before I logged off. In fact, when I re-read over the abuse I received for the sake of this article, my smartwatch warned me that an "abnormal heart rate" had been detected.

Unfortunately — and beyond my own expectations — the impact has been such that I'm certain it will continue to affect my social media presence.

As a proud feminist, I have always been of the belief that trolling is an intimidation tool designed to keep me (and my uncomfortable opinions) silent. As a result, I've consciously refused to go quietly.

Nonetheless, I tend to think I'll be more cautious now — and conscious of whether I have the resilience, support network or capacity at the time to deal with the likely pile-on.

So if I have any advice, it's that next time you see someone you respect getting hounded online, it's worth thinking about how much you value their contributions to the online world.

Your support could be just the thing that keeps them connected.

Dr Kate O'Halloran is a sports journalist and research fellow at Victoria University.