By Raquel Reichard • April 1, 2015 • 5:58pm

Each time Kat Lazo publishes a new video on her YouTube channel, she anticipates a barrage of disparaging and threatening comments. Some users slut-shame or body-shame her, while others resort to racial slurs. Many, however, use a combination of racism and sexism when threatening her with rape.

Rape threats are so common for the YouTube star that she has become desensitized to the violence. Kat, whose YouTube channel Thee Kats Meoww questions and challenges social norms, remembers her first experience. It was three years ago, when, as a fresh YouTuber using the platform as a site for both activism and creative media production, she and her business partner Sara Weber produced a video titled, "Dear Men, Street Harassment Sucks."

“It wasn’t just one. It was pages and pages of rape comments. Rape threats saying, “I want to rape you” or “shut the fuck up. I’m gonna rape you.”

Kat expected these alarming remarks -- not because what she said warranted sexual assault and harassment, but rather because she was a woman and a Latina publicly raising her voice. Women of color who dare to speak out against injustice, whether on or offline, have always been met with censure or violence, and she knew she’d undergo a similar fate. What really disturbed Kat was how these threats acted as a deterrent to other young women of color who hoped to use the platform as a way to produce their own media.

WATCH: Dove & Twitter Team Up To End Social Media Negativity!

“I get private messages from young girls saying they don't want to start a YouTube channel because they don’t want to have those types of comments,” Kat said. “We’re losing diverse and authentic voices from marginalized people. We are missing out on media created from marginalized folks. So YouTube, what’s supposed to be an accessible platform, becomes like mainstream media in a sense that you start seeing the same white cis faces.”

This self-silencing is an experience Cassandra Esparza, who goes by the name GringaTears (real name: Cassandra Esparza) on Twitter, is familiar with. With more than 4,000 Twitter followers, Cassandra Esparza uses social media as platforms to educate, discuss and advocate for Latino rights, immigration reform and feminism. She started an Ask.fm, a social networking site where users send each other questions, with the option of doing so anonymously, to expand this activism and allow her followers to pose questions they may have felt uncomfortable asking in a public online setting like Twitter. But the barrage of harassment she received was ultimately too much, forcing Cassandra Esparza to deactivate her account.

“People were genuinely asking me things about my feminism and identity, and I appreciated that," she said. "But it was really overwhelming getting all those other people as well. Literally, the last question I remember reading was from someone asking me if I was a product of rape.”

MORE: 12 Celebrities Who Speak Out Against Bullying.

While Cassandra Esparza remains on Twitter, she does acknowledge that online harassment is used as a silencing tool that places boundaries on what women, especially women of color, can say or do. Though all women who share their perspectives online undoubtedly face some sort of online intimidation or coercion, Cassandra Esparza says that Latinas, and women of color in general, experience heightened levels of abuse. Society has never allowed women of color a voice, so social media, which offers a microphone for almost anyone with an Internet connection, becomes a contested space.

The data, though minimal, support Cassandra Esparza’s observations. In 2014, a Pew Research study found that while men, overall, come across a greater number of name-calling online, it’s women users who experience more severe forms of online harassment like cyberstalking and threats of sexual assault. These figures continue to rise when race and ethnicity is considered. For instance, in the same study, 34 percent of white Internet users experienced at least one form of online harassment. However, for African-American users, that rate grew to 51 percent, while Latinos, at 54 percent, encountered the most online harassment.

“When you talk about your oppression, your oppressor gets mad,” said Cassandra Esparza . “It’s threatening to them.” For Kat and Cassandra Esparza, it’s white men who make up the overwhelming majority of trolls and harassers. But for other Latinas, it’s men in their own communities who are committing the virtual violence against them.

When Nicole Martinez* started college, she was finally given the opportunity to explore and embrace her sexuality. But not everyone was as welcoming of her sexual awakening. After an altercation with someone she had once considered a close friend, the crony-turned-foe hacked into Nicole’s Facebook account and began messaging Nicole’s sexual partners, filling them in on her other sexual relationships. Soon after, it felt like everyone in and outside her group of friends had a catalog of Nicole’s sexual partners, and she learned that, despite the ordinariness of her behavior, a lot of people took issue with a Latina enjoying her sex life.

“I became a free-for-all for attacks. I got nasty Facebook messages, people were writing ‘hoe’ on my photos and commenting ‘you're a slut for saying that’ on even my most innocuous status updates. And these were from other Latinos,” Nicole said. “I became uber paranoid. I was attached to my computer and phone, just waiting for the next notification.”

Nicole says that there is a culturally embedded double standard in the Latino community, where men are accepted as sexual beings and women are viewed as not having sexual desires. Any woman who moves away from this standard and welcomes her sexuality is marked for slut-shaming.

Dash Harris, a Panamanian filmmaker whose documentary series Negro and online activism center on the Afro-Latino experience, is also flooded with harassment from men in her racial and ethnic communities, including some in the movement for social justice.

Latin American men who don't want the problems of colorism in the Latino community discussed and African-American men who believe the African diaspora is singular to their experience constitute Dash’s largest assailants. For her, online harassment, from trolling to cyberstalking, has come from these two groups of men, both of whom deluge Dash with attacks for simply bringing light to one of the most discriminated and oppressed groups across the Americas — Black Latinos. One gentleman, who was Afro-Latino himself, even donated to Dash’s series, believing that his contribution gave him the right and authority to lead her content.

“It's not criticism; I welcome that. It’s a constant talking down. Like I’m in need of an education, and they’re here to help me. These men feel entitlement and ownership over my voice in a way you never see men talk to other men. It’s condescending, paternalistic and relentless,” said Dash. “Online harassment is violence. It’s intimidation, it’s this violent patriarchy showing up in a new space, where you can’t open your email or pick up your phone without being inundated with it.”

All social networks have policies and guidelines on bullying, harassment and abuse, but their reporting systems and moderation teams still fall short.

In February, after an internal Twitter forum post of CEO Dick Costolo telling his staff that they "suck at dealing with abuse and trolls" was leaked, Twitter Vice President of User Services Tina Bhatnagar announced that they were working to improve that. While Twitter's support staff has tripled, with moderators reviewing "more reports than ever before," the team still doesn’t investigate each record of abuse. It’s also worth mentioning that Twitter does allow some filtering. Tailored filtering allows users to select an edited version of their notification timeline, so users can decide if they only want to receive notifications from people they follow or only verified Twitter users. Quality filtering, which Twitter rolled out this month, offers users the alternative to remove all tweets from their notification timeline that contain "threats, offensive or abusive language, duplicate content, or are sent from suspicious accounts." The catch: Both of these options are only available to verified users, meaning that many of the everyday women, including the Latina activists quoted in this article, are unable to take advantage of these helpful tools.

MORE: Lizzie Velasquez Talks About Online Bullying.

The problem doesn’t just fall on Twitter. For instance, Facebook and YouTube have been working with women’s advocacy groups to address their own mammoth issues with harassment. But, as feminist writer Jessica Valenti argued in an op-ed for the Guardian, neither talent nor resources are the issue; the lack of motivation from these social media platforms is. If YouTube, for instance, can run a program that scans videos for copyrighted material and quickly remove them, they should be able to easily develop similar technology to eliminate abusive content and block repeat offenders.

Until then, Latinas, and all targets of online harassment, are left figuring out how to handle the abuse themselves. This year alone, Cassandra Esparza has blocked nearly 300 Twitter users, and, for almost two years, Nicole has been off of Facebook completely. For Dash, while blocking harassers has been helpful, she finds the most support and strength in speaking with fellow Afro-descended Latinas, who, like her, encounter online harassment based on her gender, race and ethnicity.

*Nicole’s name has been changed to protect her identity.

*Cassandra’s last name has been changed to protect her identity...but the dumbitch tweeted it out in an old bout of attentionwhoring

https://twitter.com/Brittley22/status/571916479525875712

Cassandra ‏@gringatears Dec 22

White people at my mom's work have managed to whiten/Americanize her name from Magdalena to bland ass "Maggie" and I want to choke them.

80 retweets 194 favorites

Cassandra ‏@gringatears Dec 22

Ppl started calling me "Cassie" in grade school. When I turned 19 I said fuck that. It took me yrs to realize I didn't have to accommodate.

26 retweets 49 favorites

Cassandra ‏@gringatears Dec 22

How hard is it to say Cassandra? Lazy asses. Gringo voice: "Um.. I can't say Esparza." Yeah but y'all can say Zach Galifianakis real quick.

117 retweets 172 favorites

Cassandra ‏@gringatears Dec 22

Pro-tip don't give others nicknames/shorten their name for your convenience. Try your best to pronounce names correctly. It's important.

176 retweets 184 favorites

Cassandra ‏@gringatears Feb 28

#MyNameIsNot pic.twitter.com/U5j9qhISEN

118 retweets 154 favorites

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27632731)

lol @ plural

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27632784)

“I became a free-for-all for attacks. I got nasty Facebook messages, people were writing ‘hoe’ on my photos and commenting ‘you're a slut for saying that’ on even my most innocuous status updates. And these were from other Latinos,” Nicole said. “I became uber paranoid. I was attached to my computer and phone, just waiting for the next notification.”

Nicole says that there is a culturally embedded double standard in the Latino community, where men are accepted as sexual beings and women are viewed as not having sexual desires. Any woman who moves away from this standard and welcomes her sexuality is marked for slut-shaming.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27633956)

Latin American men who don't want the problems of colorism in the Latino community discussed and African-American men who believe the African diaspora is singular to their experience constitute Dash’s largest assailants. For her, online harassment, from trolling to cyberstalking, has come from these two groups of men, both of whom deluge Dash with attacks for simply bringing light to one of the most discriminated and oppressed groups across the Americas — Black Latinos. One gentleman, who was Afro-Latino himself, even donated to Dash’s series, believing that his contribution gave him the right and authority to lead her content.

“It's not criticism; I welcome that. It’s a constant talking down. Like I’m in need of an education, and they’re here to help me. These men feel entitlement and ownership over my voice in a way you never see men talk to other men. It’s condescending, paternalistic and relentless,” said Dash. “Online harassment is violence. It’s intimidation, it’s this violent patriarchy showing up in a new space, where you can’t open your email or pick up your phone without being inundated with it.”

All social networks have policies and guidelines on bullying, harassment and abuse, but their reporting systems and moderation teams still fall short.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27633957)

http://static.tumblr.com/5878c6dfe345b44bf2c2b31bb3fbc660/lyjelp2/2kRn0d79z/tumblr_static_hj.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27640691)

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/sandra-esparza/43/142/18

Sandra Esparza

Program Assistant, Time and Attendance at University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California

Higher Education

Previous

California State University, Los Angeles, TELACU Industries, Shield Packaging of California

Education

University of La Verne

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27640714)

I have said before, the culture of America is such that 6 months of it is enough to fuck you up. You could literally bring a 13 year old African refugee over here, and 6 months later, they would be spewing this filth.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2848433&forum_id=2#27666009)