“Every little bit of hate just gees me on to do better and prove them all wrong,” Fallon Sherrock says with quiet calm as she explains how the abuse she has suffered online helped her to make history as the first woman to win a match at the PDC world darts championship in December. “It made me a stronger person, and more determined. I don’t know if I’d still be as strong if I didn’t have all that hate. I needed hate to make me more determined.”
It seems the best and most coherent way of dealing with the epidemic of hate, especially towards women, that infects social media. Sherrock not only won two matches in the world championship but on Thursday in Nottingham she will become the first woman to play Premier League darts.
She has also been exalted on social media, with plaudits for her sporting breakthrough ranging from tweets by Billie Jean King to Instagram posts by Sarah Jessica Parker who wrote of Sherrock: “Making history and our hearts stop as we watched in astonishment and awe.” But, after 45 minutes in Sherrock’s company, it is plain that bleak misogyny has fired her determination.
Leave a Reply