Shafiqah Hudson was looking for work in early June of 2014, switching between Twitter and email, when she noticed a strange hashtag trending on the social media platform: #EndFathersDay.
The posters claimed to be Black feminists, but they had questionable handles like @NayNayCan’tStop and @CisHate and @LatrineWatts. They declared that they want to abolish Father’s Day because it is a symbol of patriarchy and oppression.
They don’t seem to be real people, thought Ms. Hudson, but parodies of Black women, spouting ridiculous propositions. As Ms. Hudson told Forbes magazine in 2018“Anyone who has half a God-given feeling in a cold bowl of oatmeal can see that these are not feminine feelings.”
But the hashtag continued to trend, circulating in the Twitter community, and conservative news media picked it up, citing it as an example of feminism gone off the rails and “a neat illustration of the cultural trajectory of progressivism, ” as Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review, tweeted at that time. Fox News is committed a segment of its “Fox & Friends” show to brag about it.
So Ms. Hudson sets out to fight what he perceives to be a concerted action by trolls. She created her own hashtag, #YourSlipIsShowing, a Southernism that seems particularly useful, about calling out people who think they’re showing themselves flawlessly.
He started grouping the troller’s posts together under a hashtag and encouraged others to do the same, and block fake accounts. His Twitter community took up the mission. They include Black feminists and scholars such as I’Nasah Crockettwho did his own digging and discovered that #EndFathersDay is a hoax, as he told Slate in 2019organized on 4chan, the dark community of web forums dominated by right-wing hate groups.
Twitter, said Ms. Hudson and others, are largely unresponsive. However, their actions are effective. #EndFathersDay has been relatively quiet for a few weeks, though fake accounts have continued to pop up over the years, and Ms. Hudson, like an endless game of Whac-a-Mole.
But #EndFathersDay, it turns out, is more than a joke. This is a well-structured disinformation action. As Bridget Todd, a digital activist who interviewed Ms. Hudson in 2020 for her podcast, “There Are No Girls on the Internet,” was a sort of test balloon for the election-disruption campaign that began in 2016 with tactics. by Russian agents, as Senate hearings have shown. Looking back, the efforts of Ms. Hudson added an early and effective bulwark against misinformation that could threaten democracy.
“It should prove it,” said Ms. Hudson to Slate. “But it is rather worrying and alarming. No one wants to be right about how much danger there is to all of us, even if you saw it coming.”
Ms. Hudson, a freelance writer who worked at nonprofits but since 2014 devoted herself to activism on Twitter, died on Feb. 15 at an extended-stay hotel in Portland, Ore. He is 46 years old.
His brother Salih Hudson confirmed his death but said he did not know the cause. He had Crohn’s disease and respiratory ailments, he said. Her followers were told in her posts that she had long-standing Covid and had recently been diagnosed with cancer — and that she had no money to pay for her care. Many pitched in to help.
His followers expressed frustration and anger that Ms. Hudson was never paid by the tech companies whose platforms she patronized, that she was improperly credited by scholars and news organizations that cited #YourSlipIsShowing, and that she never received the health care she needed .
“The world owes Fiqah more than it has given her,” said Mikki Kendall, a cultural critic and author of “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women Forgotten by a Movement” (2020) , by phone. Ms. Kendall is one of many Black feminists who have fulfilled the mission of Ms. Hudson and befriended him on Twitter, called X.
“The world owes it to Fiqah not to let this happen to anyone again,” said Ms. Kendall. “Unfortunately, she exists in a long tradition of Black women activists who die in poverty, who die sick and alone and afraid, because we love an activist until they need something.”
Shafiqah Amatullah Hudson was born on January 10, 1978, in Columbia, SC. Her father, Caldwell Hudson, is a martial arts instructor and author. His mother, Geraldine (Thompson) Hudson, was a computer engineer. The couple divorced in 1986, and Shafiqah grew up with her mother and brother, mostly in Florida, where she attended the Palm Beach County School of the Arts, a magnet school.
Shafiqah earned a BA in 2000 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, majoring in Africana studies with a minor in political science. After graduation, he moved to New York City and worked at various nonprofits.
He is new in the city and lonely. He found community on blogs and social media sites, including Twitter, which he joined in 2009. (She chose as her avatar an image of Edna Mode, the powerful fashion maven from “The Incredibles.”) And like many Black women on that platform, she was mocked and harassed. He received rape and death threats, he told Ms. Todd.
In addition to her brother, Ms. Hudson his father and his sisters, Kali Newnan, Charity Jones and Mosinah Hudson. Geraldine Hudson died in 2019.
In the last months of her life, Ms. Hudson about her deteriorating health and her fears of not being able to pay for her care or housing. He cannot work because of his disabilities.
He moved to Portland, his brother said, because the climate was better for his respiratory ailments. But he didn’t get health insurance. Doctors discovered that the painful fibroids she was suffering from were cancerous. He needs money for more biopsies and for transport to the hospital. His Twitter community stepped in, as usual. He did not ask his family for help.
“He was very private and very proud,” Margaret Haynes, a cousin, said by phone, adding that she spoke with Ms. Hudson a few weeks before he died. “He told me: ‘I’m good. If I need anything, you’ll be the first to know.’”
But on Feb. 9, he told his followers: “I feel that I am homesick for nothing. And it’s raining. And I’m just trying not to drown.”
February 7 turned out to be a difficult day. Ms. Hudson was dizzy and in pain, he wrote. She felt her own mortality and posted about her decision to be celibate and childless — “to be an Aunt(ie) and not a mother,” as she put it, recalling a conversation she had with he spoke to a young member of the family.
He died eight days later.
Alain Delaquerière contributed research.
