I do. In terms of the homophobia, it was very difficult for my family. Somebody once asked me, “Why don't more gay men or women run for politics?” In addition to all the stuff we may deal with because of our gender or something else, that's just one added target. It was a very difficult time.
The other difficulty was the sexism, the “She's gained weight, clearly she doesn't go to a food bank,” or “She's a retarded c-word”, and the death threats. Those all add up on somebody's psyche.
Nobody knew before I went into politics that I had a 20-year eating disorder. I didn't want to talk about it as a female politician because that, to me, was a sign of weakness and I didn't want anyone to see me as weak. We've talked to NDP MLAs who have been sexually abused as children or had violence against them as adult women, and then they will get a threat online about taking them out back and raping them. Those trigger the experiences that women have in their lives, and we've seen it in Nova Scotia. We've seen the cyber-bullying. We've all lived through Rehtaeh Parsons.
It's more insidious. It appears to be directed at women of perceived power. Whether that is your sexual orientation, your colour, your weight, how you dress, how you look, how you speak, it's more personal with women, much more personal with women, but that doesn't make us victims.
Fighting back, every time I got one of those stupid trolling pieces of garbage on Twitter, and 99% came from men, I would screenshot it and then I would tweet it out hoping that that man's mother, wife, sister, daughter would recognize it. There are all kinds of ways that we can cope, but it always bothered me and I didn't want to get that thick skin.