Ashley Judd Fires Back Over Online Threats, Comments

Actress and Kentucky Wildcats fan Ashley Judd is firing back at those who posted threats and hateful comments online after she tweeted that she thought Arkansas was playing dirty in its SEC basketball matchup with her alma mater.

In an online essay posted Thursday on mic.com, Judd says she routinely copes with tweets that "sexualize, objectify, insult, degrade and even physically threaten me."

But she writes, "this particular tsunami of gender-based violence and misogyny flooding my Twitter feed was overwhelming."

Judd said this week in an interview on MSNBC that she planned to press charges if she could.

She wrote in the essay, "I must, as a woman who was once a girl, as someone who uses the Internet, as a citizen of the world, address personally, spiritually, publicly and even legally, the ripe dangers that invariably accompany being a woman and having an opinion about sports or, frankly, anything else."

She said she took the tweet down soon after posting it Sunday, in case anyone was offended by her saying Arkansas' play was unsportsmanlike. But that didn't stop the comments.

"What happened to me is the devastating social norm experienced by millions of girls and women on the Internet," Judd wrote. "Online harassers use the slightest excuse (or no excuse at all) to dismember our personhood. My tweet was simply the convenient delivery system for a rage toward women that lurks perpetually."