Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls
Riveting and an essential timely conversation-starter, Nobody's Victim invites readers to join Carrie on the front lines of the war against sexual violence and privacy violations as she fights for revenge porn and sextortion laws, uncovers major Title IX violations, and sues the hell out of tech companies, schools, and powerful sexual predators. Her battleground is the courtroom; her crusade is to transform clients from victims into warriors.
In gripping detail, Carrie shares the diabolical ways her clients are attacked and how she, through her unique combination of advocacy, badass relentlessness, risk-taking, and client-empowerment, pursues justice for them all. There are stories about a woman whose ex-boyfriend made fake bomb threats in her name and caused a national panic; a fifteen-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted on school grounds and then suspended when she reported the attack; and a man whose ex-boyfriend used a dating app to send more than 1,200 men to ex's home and work for sex. With breathtaking honesty, Carrie also shares her own shattering story about why she began her work and the uphill battle of building a business.
While her clients are a diverse group — from every gender, sexual orientation, age, class, race, religion, occupation, and background — the offenders are not. They are highly predictable. In this book, Carrie offers a taxonomy of the four types of offenders she encounters most often at her firm: assholes, psychos, pervs, and trolls. “If we recognize the patterns of these perpetrators,” she explains, “we know how to fight back.”
Deeply personal yet achingly universal, Nobody's Victim is a bold and much-needed analysis of victim protection in the era of the Internet. This book is an urgent warning of a coming crisis, a predictor of imminent danger, and a weapon to take back control and protect ourselves — both online and off.
Author: Carrie Goldberg | Publisher: Plume
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Rating: 5 / 5
I picked up this book on recommendation from my friend Mel (@melannrosenthal), and I’m so glad I did. It was FANTASTIC. There are a lot of nonfiction books out there that end up being pretty good, but ultimately not very memorable. This is NOT one of those books. In fact, I liked it so much that after I finished my library’s audiobook copy, I bought a physical copy so I could loan it out to friends.
Warning, though: If you are a victim of sexual assault, stalking, harassment, or other sexual/gender-based dating violence, then this book may not be the one for you right now. There are a lot of stories and examples of these crimes, and I imagine they could become serious triggers.
Carrie Goldberg is an attorney who owns a law firm that represents people facing this kind of abuse and violence — a specialization that’s incredibly rare, but incredibly needed in today’s day and age. The laws have simply not caught up to all the ways that technology has enabled harassment and abuse. Goldberg has taken on Grindr, sued the NYC public school system, and brought anti-revenge-porn legislation to a ton of states across the country.
There is just so much mind-boggling information in this book, and she really highlights exactly how the system is broken and what we need to do in order to fix it. She also (very bravely) weaves in her own experience with stalking and sexual assault, which inspired her to build her career and which also adds a ton of color to the narration of the book. The result is a compulsively readable call to arms that will teach you SO MUCH and make you want to join the fight.
Even if nonfiction isn’t usually your genre, give this one a shot. I’m only sorry that I didn’t hear about it a few weeks sooner so that I could attend her book event at my local bookstore!