Gretchen Carlson - Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back

Go back to Minnesota & Shut the Hell Up!!

Gretchen needs to let it go. She brought it on herself!

So what if someone said a couple things to you? Grow up, move on and stop whining.

Gretchen, your show sucked! You are a dumb old never-has-been!

Hope nobody hires you, Skank!

Gold digger MILF!

I wouldnt stand with you or next to a disgraceful person like you!! I hope people will walk away & let you suffer, Bitch!!

W elcome to my daily Twitter feed. Imagine having to swallow this kind of hate with your morning coffee! After many years on TV, I wasnt a stranger to mean tweets. I used to laugh at them, even read them out loud on the air. But now the meanness was like being stabbed with a dagger, and it seemed to have no purpose except to hurt me. It didnt surprise me that one of these peoples favorite weapons was to attack my age or looks: Minimally talented, over the hill, crowed one critic. Old and washed up, another. Many tweets were typical of what other women whove experienced harassment say they hear all the time: Youre too ugly to be sexually harassed you wish you looked that good! Desperate old cow.

Hmm so only hot young babes get sexually harassed? Only fame-seeking, money-grubbing old hags complain? In the convoluted logic of the Twitterverse, my experience couldnt be valid because I wasnt young enough or pretty enough. And even if I were, my experience couldnt be valid because I opened my mouth and spoke up for myself, making me a bitch. I resisted the impulse to reply to the male tweeters: Does your mother, wife, or sister know youre talking trash to a woman on social media? I didnt know what I would say to the female tweetersthere were plenty of those too.

One morning, as I was hunched over my iPad scrolling through a fresh batch of vitriol, I glanced up and saw my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kaia, watching me.

Mom, you have a funny look on your face, she said. What are you reading?

Its nothing, honey. I smiled, but Kaias radar was finely attuned to my moods. She was, unfortunately, very aware of what was going on in her moms life. She knew that it wasnt nothing.

Our children really see us. They hear us. And when I took on this fight, I had my children and their future foremost in my mind.

Many people have heard about the sexual harassment case I filed against my former boss. That lawsuit was settled, and there are things I cant discuss about it. Thats the nature of a settlement. But when it was all over, I decided I wasnt ready to shut up and sit down.

Labor Day 2016 became a marker in my lifenot just the first day of school for my kids, but a change in the way Id done things for the last twenty-five years.

Every year on the day after Labor Day, my husband, Casey, and I have made sure that one or both of us drives the kids to school and drops them off. (Theyre now at ages where they dont want us to come in!) This tradition has also involved Casey and me then driving into the city together to go to work. But 2016 was, of course, different for me. As we made our way into the city, I was actually going in to get a haircut. For the first time in a long time, I wasnt going to work to report the news.

Insteadon this dayI was the news.

We got into the city an hour before my appointment, so Casey dropped me off and went on his way. With an hour to kill, I walked into a nearby nail salon to get a pedicure. There I was, all by myself in the salon.

During that hour, the news about me started trickling out; first one report, and then dozens and dozens more. I began to read about myself on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I sat there with tears streaming down my face. The nice lady helping me out was probably wondering what the heck was wrong with me. But she didnt ask, and I didnt tell.

My life had become surreal. But thenas if nothing was happeningI still needed to get my hair cut. Once in the salon, the young woman sitting next to me at the hair washing basina total strangerlooked at me and simply said two words, Thank you. I felt more tears welling up again. My eyes burned. It wasnt like I was sad. Im not sure I can even describe the emotion. I just knew my life would never be the same. At that moment I knew the issue of sexual harassment was bigger than just my story. So I decided I would write a new, powerful,