People Are Accusing Emma Watson of Exploiting Alan Rickman's Death by Quoting Alan Rickman

Impact

Actress Emma Watson used Twitter to commemorate her good friend and former Harry Potter colleague, Alan Rickman, who died Thursday — and people are pissed. 

Watson posted an image of Rickman with a quote of his, in which he discusses feminism, superimposed. Of course, Twitterati were quick to latch onto this gross and flagrant misstep.  

Many Twitter users accused Watson, a UN goodwill ambassador and the pioneer of the UN's feminist HeForShe campaign, of exploiting Rickman's death to further her agenda. And, as trolls are wont to, they weren't shy about expressing their disapproval.

The internet, and social media platforms in particular, are rife with anti-feminist trolling, and this is far from the first time Watson has been the subject of it. 

In October, she was the target of a "cum tribute," a colloquialism that describes the act of a man ejaculating on a picture of a women's face and then posting it online.

xhamster

"They're a brutal and highly public form of sexual debasement, a way to make the subject feel violated, a way to assert dominance over a woman from behind a computer screen," Mic's Max Plenke wrote. "They're an insidious (and not to mention gross) form of misogynistic online harassment."

There are other popular mediums for quashing feminism, such as the hashtags #FeministsAreUgly and #HowToSpotAFeminist.

The Rickman meme certainly made it easy to spot a couple of feminists — both the actor himself and Watson are unforgivably pro-gender equality. And what worse way to exploit someone than by using their own words?