Former lawmaker Wendy Davis: 'Trolls want to diminish and sexualize you'

A campaign spread false explicit images of the Texan in an effort to undermine her. But the media has also played a role in public perceptions of women

When former Texas state senator Wendy Davis started seeing photoshopped photos of herself in sexual positions flooding her Twitter and Facebook streams, she finally decided she had to delete the social networks from her phone.

"I have lots of bots who follow me. I could literally say it's a beautiful day in Texas and the responses I get on Twitter are 'baby murderer'. But it rose to a sexualization during my campaign," she said. "For my own peace of mind, I finally just took them off my phone. I knew I wasn't going to be disciplined enough to not go down the comment stream."