Drew Afualo on Unpacking Internalised Misogyny, Being Overprotective and Cleaning Up the Streets of Sexist Men
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This time last year, I often thought my TikTok For You page was broken: I would swipe onto my next algorithmically chosen video, and a gross weasel of a guy would be saying something vilely misogynistic. But then, thankfully, the screen would swap out onto a close up of Drew Afualo, often in her car, and a hyena cackle would crack through the air. In a matter of moments and a series of brutal put downs, the sexist that Drew had stitched would be annihilated in a roasting hot breath of fresh air.
“In the beginning, it was just reactionary. My video responses were always just how I would react to these men in real life, but this time I was recording it and posting it on TikTok.” Drew tells me over video call, bright and early her end but starting to darken in the evening on my line. Encouraged by her boyfriend to join TikTok after the enthusiasm her friends showed towards her Snapchat rants, it wasn’t long until Drew’s comment section was filled with men trying to insult and degrade the Californian for her feminist point of view.
Rather than having her responses constrained to text only, Drew utilised TikTok’s video reply instead. Filling the screen with pointed insults picking apart not only the comments aimed at her, but the men making them, Drew taught her rapidly growing audience that fighting fire with fire can still be an empowering act.
“Once I saw the ripple effect it was having as far as like, how I was kind of shifting the paradigm of how we handle hate online and how we deal with outwardly bigoted men online, it encouraged me to keep going.” She enthuses. “Because the internet, as wonderful as it is, has emboldened people to act awful behind a faceless profile right - or even with their full face in view they don't even care - because they're just so used to women and other people taking the high road and not wanting to engage with hate. Once I saw the power that reacting could yield, I thought to myself it's more important that I continue down this path and show people that they don't have to be nice to people who are awful to you for no reason.”
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Drew takes a deep breath, her passion for her work shining through as she fires through the answers to my questions. Drew has, after all, been setting her sights on fighting discrimination from a young age. She was - she confides, to the shock of nobody - a bold and bossy kid who hated bullies.
“I was kind of shifting the paradigm of how we handle hate online and how we deal with outwardly bigoted men online. It encouraged me to keep going.”
“I was an overly confident child who loved school and hated people who were mean for no reason, it’s been a running theme throughout my entire life. I think a big part of that was because my sister and I are close in age but we were always a grade apart and I hated when people took advantage of her because she's like the opposite of me personality wise. I was very protective of her and that bled into my friendships too, I was very protective of everybody!” Drew barks out her signature laugh, “I've just kind of been a watchdog against bullies since I was a child, too. It makes me sound awful but I promise I was fun too.”
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Drew praises her parents for setting her positive examples throughout her childhood, ones that emboldened her in being an outspoken woman. A drive for success came from watching her mother triumph in the workplace as a woman of colour. “I was always trying to emulate her and make her proud,” Drew beams. Her high standard for the actions of men followed watching the male figures in her life - her father primarily, as well as her grandfather and uncle - treating the adult women as well as herself and her sister with the utmost respect. “I’ve seen what men are capable of and seeing how toxic men act online, it’s not it. Knowing that it is undoubtedly a choice when men go out of their way to treat women badly encourages me to shoot them down.”
That said, Drew isn’t solely fuelled by rage when fighting with misogynists online. Her video content was never just about ripping white cisgender men a new one, but encouraging the marginalised people so often suffering in comment sections to stand up for themselves. The positive impact of Drew’s social media presence has invigorated her audience to similarly humiliate the accounts being hateful for hate’s sake.
“If you look at the peak of all this attention last year, there was a point in time where I was having hundreds of videos a day, made by men I don't know, saying the most awful vile shit I've ever heard. It’s not as intense anymore though, I think now I've done such a good job of cleaning up the streets that they kind of leave me alone.”
As the face of a movement putting keeping the peace to one side in favour of a fervent fight for being spoken to like equals, it could be easy to assume that the vitriol Drew receives is taking some kind of toll on the 28 year old’s mental health. But Drew comments that this is a nuanced question with a simple answer: “I've done the unpacking already, my worth and value is not held in the opinions of men who don't matter to me. I don't care what they say about me, whether it's about my looks, my body, my personality, whatever it may be. I don't care what they have to say, because I don't value their opinions.”
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“If you look at the peak of all this attention last year, there was a point in time where I was having hundreds of videos a day, made by men I don't know, saying the most awful vile shit I've ever heard about anybody but about me, and about my boyfriend and about my family.” Drew continues, “Just the worst things you could ever imagine somebody saying about you. That times a million. And if I hadn't done the internal work to build up my own self worth and confidence and make sure that it only comes from people I care about, but namely me, I would not have been able to go through that at all because it was that bad.” She laughs again, “It’s not as intense anymore though, I think now I've done such a good job of cleaning up the streets that they kind of leave me alone.”
In the time since Drew’s TikTok content was at its most viral, the creator has used her fame on the app to generate work in the field she was always most interested in - interviewing others. Having graduated with a major in journalism and even securing a job as a sports journalist at the NFL before the pandemic took the job away from her, Drew confides that her passion in this specific field of broadcasting was always with producing detailed profile pieces. Her devotion to the craft rings throughout the work she’s put out in the past year not just in quantity - two podcasts, the Oscars red carpet, a forthcoming book - but in quality too.
From prioritising marginalised voices in her podcast series The Comment Section with her array of guests and topic choices, to writing a self help guide/memoir that will come out next year, Drew’s focus has turned away from fighting with the “big circlejerk of unemployed men'' in her replies to the women that repeatedly approach the multi-hyphenate about how much she has inspired them to have confidence in themselves. In playing men at their own game, it’s undoubtable that Drew has come out victorious.
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