TO SAY it’s been a tough fortnight would be an understatement. A fortnight ago, I wrote a column about cycling – a safe enough subject for a cyclist to delve into, or so I thought. The fallout from those 1,200 words has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever had to deal with professionally. A fallout that has moved far beyond words, and elbowed its way into my personal life.

In my article, I suggested a fundamental barrier to decent cycling infrastructure was the public attitude towards it. I argued that being seen as an outgroup is damaging our progress. One person didn’t read it that way and took matters into his own hands.

Over the course of my writing career, I’ve had some pretty nasty stuff from disgruntled readers. Rape, death and violent threats. Sexism. I’ve been told I’m ugly. I’ve been called fat. I’ve been told I look like a man. I’ve been stripped of humanity (“what even are you?”, “what is a Vonny Moyes?”). It’s been grim, but I’ve waded through because I love what I do, and I’ve worked hard to get to here. This latest instance has been a different calibre to the usual throwaway stab. It’s still going two weeks later.

There were unrelenting tweets. To me, about me, about my life. My writer’s website and linked accounts were mined for ammunition. What was billed as a critique was a three and a half thousand word online essay, with paragraphs devoted to destroying my credibility as a person and a journalist. There were pictures of my children with their eyes blacked out. Pictures of me. Close-up disembodied bits of me; segments of my hair, my eyes and bits of my fingers. Flippant pictures of Tate and Lyle sugar pots recast as proof of being ‘owned’. I’ve been called a child exploiter, a racist and a shill. I’ve spent hours watching my children referred to as mannequins, props, child models and used as fair game in bringing me down.

A version of me that has been cconstructed from pieces of my online life. Dots have been connected where no connection exists, and it’s being used to discredit me as a person and as a professional. The conflict zone extends from my written work, through my photographs, into my work history and training. I’ve watched a sustained character assassination in slow motion, with no power to do anything about it other than to ask the essay’s hosting site to remove the photos used without my permission.

All because I wrote about cycling.

I laughed it off. I reacted badly. I retweeted his abuse. I tried to rationalise it. I cried. I got angry. I called my mum. I cancelled plans. I called the police. I spoke to a lawyer. I hid. I fought back. I asked him nicely. I appealed to his humanity. Nothing worked. I knew none of it would work, but I had to do something. At times, Giphy was all I had to stop me from losing the plot completely.

I am not a robot. There are chinks in my armour. There’s a thermal exhaust port, and if you know how to get in, I will break down. Like most mothers, it’s my children. So I responded, even though it was the ultimate exercise in futility.

Trying to fight back on the internet is like trying to catch the wind in a butterfly net. Trying to apply rules and logic to a lawless place makes an idiot of you. Social etiquette is meaningless when you don’t have to show your face.

The conventional wisdom is to shut up and ignore it. Don’t feed the trolls, they say. Talking about it is seen as some sort of Candyman summoning: pointing it out will invoke more.

I’m sick of being told to ignore it. Block/ignore/mute is not the solution to a widespread problem plaguing the confluence of internet and journalism. Blocking everyone just pushes the abusers onto someone else. This is just one instance, and knowing he’s not the first and won’t be the last is something I’m reminded every time I put pen to paper. Preparing mentally for backlash has become an integral part of what I do.

Don’t mistake this for a problem with criticism. Criticism has sparked some of the best conversations I’ve had online. This is a different beast. I never anticipated how much of my working life, in a creative profession, would involved dealing with this type of conflict.

We’re supposed to be tough, patient and endlessly resilient. It’s no secret that a prerequisite of this job is a thick skin. But there is a limit. There has always been an agreed limit in the real world. Harassment laws exist to protect those dealing with offline abuse. The anonymity the internet provides has created a space where those limits have been pushed far beyond what would be acceptable in the real world. The law has not caught up with lives increasingly lived online.

And it’s the same for online spaces. Communities have been slow to respond to growing abuse. Many don’t have obvious kill switches when privacy becomes a problem. Instagram and Twitter require logging in from a computer. LinkedIn has no deactivation option, even though it’s so easy to piece someone’s life together from their CV. I’m the one who has to take action, to be careful of what I say and how I present myself, so as not to encourage it. I can’t be the only one getting sick of that narrative.

Sitting down to write has been hard. What has always felt like the most natural thing in the world to me has been invaded by doubt and upset. I’ll admit that at times, I now choose what I write about based on how able I feel mentally to cope with the anger, abuse and vitriol of online strangers. That’s not press freedom. Knowing certain subjects that I really want to cover will put me in the crosshairs of anonymous, protected people means don’t write them in favour of something that will ruffle less feathers. Why? Because I don’t get to be anonymous: my name and my face are printed every time I write, so I have to factor that into my editorial choices.

Journalists are forced to cede their anonymity by virtue of what they do. It leaves us, and those close to us, open to attack, making for a Darwinist media landscape, populated by those who can stand it the longest.

At times, it’s made me want to stop writing. It’s made me want to hide. It’s seen me trying to purge every trace of my online footprint, and fantasize about moving somewhere remote without access to a computer. It’s made me angry for not being able to shrug it off. It makes me worry that I’ll lose work because I’m not bulletproof. I’m worried opportunities will pass me by because of the things written about me.

This is just one instance of my experience. Scale that up to an entire sector, and you’ve got a workforce trying to operate under the heavy, downward pressure of harassment. Each instance that happens in isolation, adds up to an unhealthy and at times dangerous workplace.

Canvassing fellow journalists, most have been on the receiving end of someone’s grief - but the instances have been more commonplace, more threatening and more intense for the women. Cat Boyd recently wrote about her experiences in the Daily Record. Lindy West’s dead dad haunted her on Twitter. The Guardian recently revealed a study into 70m comments that showed the most abused eight writers were women. It all adds up to serious threat to the plurality of the media through systematic silencing.

The internet has presented journalism with new challenges. How can you tackle abuse but uphold free speech? I don’t know what the answer is; where do you draw the lines, when free speech is at stake?

For now, all I can do is offer advice to anyone considering a writing career: is this an environment you’d want to go to work in each day? Gone are the days of angry letters in green ink. Every part of you and your life is up for grabs when someone decides you’re wrong. So purge yourself of feelings, reactions, and any trace of personality that can be used against you. Forget shorthand; online combat navigation has become the most important part of your toolkit.