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The reality of sexist abuse online
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07-11-2011 6:48pm#1Since last week articles have been popping up in English media outlets about the sexist abuse that female bloggers and columnists are regularly on the receiving end of.
As someone who enjoys writing, I have always thought that being a high-profile journalist or blogger would be wonderful, but reading all of this has made me think twice. This isn't about mildly sexist comments that could be brushed off as jokes in poor taste, these are really awful comments that have left me appalled. For example, this piece by Laurie Penny popped up in the Independent on Friday:A woman's opinion is the mini-skirt of the internet
For criticising neo-liberal economic policymaking, it was suggested I should be made to fellate a row of bankers
You come to expect it, as a woman writer, particularly if you're political. You come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking, and become merely a daily or weekly annoyance, something to phone your girlfriends about, seeking safety in hollow laughter.
An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the internet. Having one and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they'd like to rape, kill and urinate on you. This week, after a particularly ugly slew of threats, I decided to make just a few of those messages public on Twitter, and the response I received was overwhelming. Many could not believe the hate I received, and many more began to share their own stories of harassment, intimidation and abuse.
Perhaps it should be comforting when calling a woman fat and ugly is the best response to her arguments, but it's a chill comfort, especially when one realises, as I have come to realise over the past year, just how much time and effort some vicious people are prepared to expend trying to punish and silence a woman who dares to be ambitious, outspoken, or merely present in a public space.
No journalist worth reading expects zero criticism, and the internet has made it easier for readers to critique and engage. This is to be welcomed, and I have long felt that many more established columnists' complaints about the comments they receive spring, in part, from resentment at having their readers suddenly talk back. In my experience, however, the charges of stupidity, hypocrisy, Stalinism and poor personal hygiene which are a sure sign that any left-wing columnist is at least upsetting the right people, come spiced with a large and debilitating helping of violent misogyny, and not only from the far-right.
Many commentators, wondering aloud where all the strong female voices are, close their eyes to how normal this sort of threat has become. Most mornings, when I go to check my email, Twitter and Facebook accounts, I have to sift through threats of violence, public speculations about my sexual preference and the odour and capacity of my genitals, and attempts to write off challenging ideas with the declaration that, since I and my friends are so very unattractive, anything we have to say must be irrelevant.
The implication that a woman must be sexually appealing to be taken seriously as a thinker did not start with the internet: it's a charge that has been used to shame and dismiss women's ideas since long before Mary Wollestonecraft was called "a hyena in petticoats". The internet, however, makes it easier for boys in lonely bedrooms to become bullies. It's not only journalists, bloggers and activists who are targeted. Businesswomen, women who play games online and schoolgirls who post video-diaries on YouTube have all been subject to campaigns of intimidation designed to drive them off the internet, by people who seem to believe that the only use a woman should make of modern technology is to show her breasts to the world for a fee.
Like many others, I have also received more direct threats, like the men who hunted down and threatened to publish old photographs of me which are relevant to my work only if one believes that any budding feminist journalist should remain entirely sober, fully clothed and completely vertical for the entirety of her first year of university. Efforts, too, were made to track down and harass my family, including my two school-age sisters. After one particular round of rape threats, including the suggestion that, for criticising neoliberal economic policymaking, I should be made to fellate a row of bankers at knifepoint, I was informed that people were searching for my home address. I could go on.
I'd like to say that none of this bothered me – to be one of those women who are strong enough to brush off the abuse, which is always the advice given by people who don't believe bullies and bigots can be fought. Sometimes I feel that speaking about the strength it takes just to turn on the computer, or how I've been afraid to leave my house, is an admission of weakness. Fear that it's somehow your fault for not being strong enough is, of course, what allows abusers to continue to abuse.
I believe the time for silence is over. If we want to build a truly fair and vibrant community of political debate and social exchange, online and offline, it's not enough to ignore harassment of women, LGBT people or people of colour who dare to have opinions. Free speech means being free to use technology and participate in public life without fear of abuse – and if the only people who can do so are white, straight men, the internet is not as free as we'd like to believe.
The topic has also been covered in Helen Lewis Hastely's blog on the New Statesman website, and in the follow up to her original post, in an article in the Observer and on a panel piece on the Guardian website. One of the comments in that last piece linked me back to this old blog post by Cath Elliott on the same topic, which is horribly depressing to read.
I've also noticed that a few prominent female boards posters have disappeared over the last while, when the online sexist abuse got too much for them... This isn't meant as a criticism of the boards moderators, I know that they're usually very quick to respond to reported posts but they can't prevent people from seeking out posters on other websites. Why is it that people resort to such tactics when they disagree with someone about something? Is it to do with the relative anonymity that the internet affords? Have any writers/bloggers here experienced anything like this? I find it incredibly disheartening and honestly it makes me think twice about the kind of writing that I'd like to get into
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Youtube comments are something to be avoided if you care about the future of humanity. :pac: Recent example was someone dying in a motor race. I thought the whole thing about youtube comments was a myth until then.
Seriously? Jeez, stick around, we don't usually go too long between YouTube videos plastered with stupid whore fecking feminazi bitches should die for destroying life for us poor little middle-class white guys type comments. :pac:Logical Fallacy wrote:Because they are assholes and cowards.
People grow enormously brave when they figure no one is gonna slap them in the mouth.
This...and the fact that without the social setting to see people looking at them like they are complete spanners, they either go on posting oblivious that they are actually spanners &/or they know they can post whatever they like because they haven't had to give a real name or reputation which can be damaged. I think having no age restrictions and the ability to be completely anonymous is generally a recipe for disaster if you want people to voluntarily use their common sense and be polite.
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I'm at my wits end with the sexist behavour online.I post in another forum on boards that is very heavly male and I've gotten used to just being ignored, not having questions answered and being very much brushed off. I've made peace with that.
I recently got brave and tried to start a thread in that forum about a subject I'm passionate about and it's ona topic thats very current. I was hoping for a good discussion but I have recieved nothing but mean replies. I've had it implied that I'm an idiot and have no idea what I'm talking about. Basically made feel like I should never have tried. One guy even said the exact same thing i said earlier in the tread and everyone just responded to him and ignored me.
(by the way, it is not After Hours. That forum is a whole other ballpark)
I'm really upset right now and sick of this sexism online. The sly insults, the ignorant attitudes. I'd close my account if I didn't love ladies lounge so much
People can be mean regardless of gender on boards to be honest, I wouldn't put it all down to sexism.
Maybe I've had it easy since everyone assumes bluewolf means male.One guy even said the exact same thing i said earlier in the tread and everyone just responded to him and ignored me.
It's infuriating when that happens! It happened to me on another board... but it was another female who'd said the same thing as me and got responded to
Anyway the OP sure is shocking. It's sad to think there's so many lowlifes out there...0 -
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Ah no, sorry, I don't mean every time it's done.LeixlipRed wrote: »Just to comment on this, because it's something I do sometimes. The reason I do it is because it's almost pre-programmed into me, like a hard-wiring. I know it's wrong, that it's sexist, that it's objectifying someone. But not everyone who does it is automatically motivated by some deep-seeded sexism, it can be a slip of the tongue as such. I know you can apply that almost anything in life but it's because these types of acts are largely allowed to go unchecked in male company that people don't think before they speak.
Shur everyone likes a bit of flattery - and there's rarely harm meant. I wouldn't go so far as to call it objectifying either (well not always) - I just mean the times when it's really, really off topic. I remember something about autism was being discussed in a serious manner somewhere and of course the hotness of the autism awareness woman had to be brought up. And while there's nothing wrong with it a bit, the almost... necessity of it. As if it HAS to be done - god forbid there'd be a discussion re a woman where her looks aren't mentioned.
On the flipside, it's also horrible to read nasty comments being made about a woman's appearance - especially, again, when it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
Possibly, but that's not always a bad thing IMO - women benefit from it too. However, sometimes it's taken too far.Society has men pre-conditioned to objectify women.0 -
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Women being on the receiving end of this type of behaviour online isn't new, but the taboo on talking about it has been broken, so there are no studies or 'impartial' data to pull apart yet. The demographics are changing online, it's no long predominately boys/men so it's not as easy for a certain portion of them to frankly try and silence women or drive them out of online places/communities with debasing comments.
It boils down to women still being seen as 'other', instead of just people. They are mocked and derided for being that 'other' and attention drawn to how they are other rather then refuting argument or opinions. It is done to reduce them to the most stereotypical roles of mate or mothering and to under cut and undermine in a way which just doesn't happen in the same way to men.
To say it's all just abuse is to ignore the insidious nature of it and the attitudes it springs from, and if you can't see it or figure out where it's coming from then it can't be addressed. If you don't get it, fair enough, wish that is was just was a case of
but I think it's more then that.
Given that women are not really a minority population wise and are increasing in numbers online, we should not be 'other', yes sure a 100 years ago in the western world we were second class citcens and that had changed slowly over the last 100 years but often the attitudes have not changed and certainly not enough for it to be general abuse. There's general abuse and then that which is aimed at those who think they are the majority against a perceived minority.
Yes people can be arsehole but we object more to sexist/racist/homophobic arseholes more.
Men are having to share their club house of the online world more and more with women and many don't like it and so lash out in a manner which is designed to demean and discourage women. They need to be called on it, it needs to change and that starts with women talking about it and having online discussions and one which play down the abuse don't help, it also discourages people from talking/sharing thier experiences, yup those personal subjective experiences which are messy cos they provoke emotional responses.
What has concerned me is that there are people trying to close down the discussion about it, trying to say it's not a big deal or those women are over reacting trying to stop the discussions and people sharing.
Let them talk let them discuss, let them share, let us/people stand up and say it's not on and then we will move on to the next group that get targeted, support them, listen to them and it gets done bit by bit as people stand up for each other.0 -
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Good points from you $hifty, but once I saw "Stop jumping on the feminist bandwagon" from that guy, I thought "Derp". Why the obsession with using that F word disparagingly? IMO it's not even a feminist issue - ok it's a gender issue, but that doesn't mean feminism is at the heart of it.
This goes back to the privilege discussion - very easy to tell someone to get over something when one is not in their shoes. Yes, men get attacked online for sure, but rarely BECAUSE they're men.
I bet if that man wrote a piece objecting to how men are depicted as idiots in ads, music videos, "chick" programmes etc, he wouldn't appreciate people telling him to get over it - and I wouldn't blame him.0 -
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Ickle Magoo wrote: »Nothing in the world would have changed if everyone just decided that as we can't rid the world of racists, racist behaviour should just be ignored and everyone else just step over or around the protagonists.
Just one other point on this.
I completely agree, but this doesn't mean that i deliberately surround myself with racists or frequent stormfront and try to get them to come around to my way of thinking. Similarly, if i found myself involved in a discussion on Boards and felt i was being ganged up on by people who weren't taking my points on board and were taking the piss, i'd just "ignore" them because quite frankly, i couldn't be arsed. As a wise woman once said, "lifes too short to be drinking bad wine".
If only real life had an "ignore" function. Fcuk it, i'd settle for a mute button
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Deleted User wrote: »Just one other point on this.
I completely agree, but this doesn't mean that i deliberately surround myself with racists or frequent stormfront and try to get them to come around to my way of thinking. Similarly, if i found myself involved in a discussion on Boards and felt i was being ganged up on by people who weren't taking my points on board and were taking the piss, i'd just "ignore" them because quite frankly, i couldn't be arsed. As a wise woman once said, "lifes too short to be drinking bad wine".
If only real life had an "ignore" function. Fcuk it, i'd settle for a mute button
Sure, but that's you.
Me, with regards your article, I just see the cheap pot shots in a hypocritical piece bemoaning that if people don't like something they shouldn't moan, they should ignore it and shut up...pots and black kettles and all that.
It's just one of many really odd mantras that frequently gets thrown out there when women complain about sexism against women on the net, or even in general - insults are insults and why should women expect special treatment? Have you ever witnessed a published article berating anyone for moaning about being singled out for insult based on the colour of their skin cos shure don't we all get a ribbing from time to time? It's laughable. Should lesbians/gay/bi/trans people run from every forum, thread and poster exhibiting whatever [latent] phobia until they can find a safe wee corner to hang out in?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, people who can be ar$ed should make a stand, bring behaviours and themes up for inspection and the site/internet/life might, eventually, be that little bit better for it?0 -
You made some good points $hifty - and it's clear you don't agree with the whataboutery. It's just the guy who wrote that article is a bit of a wind-up merchant. I think it's easier said than done to just let it go over the head, but you're not being dismissive when you suggest it.LeixlipRed wrote: »Surely trying to get under a woman's skin by threatening rape is overtly sexist behaviour? For example, to wind up a person from a minority background, you directly targeted that fact and racially slurred them, would you consider that racist Shifty? I know I would.
Last point before bed......
Yes i would. But you're not comparing like with like imo. Threatening to rape someone is not akin to calling someone the N word. Rape is not gender specific. These bloggers are being threatened because of their views and standpoints on certain issues (I think). Not merely because they happen to have two X chromosomes. Just because their attackers threaten to rape them doesn't mean its a sexism issue.
Anyway, night.
'Night! 0 -
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