ohnoes women on teh intarwebz?!
I should have blogged about this the first time I read faint whispers about what happened to Kathy Sierra, and now it's basically everywhere, but..
There are some people making some really rude comments about what she did, and there are others harshly criticizing all that has happened in the short...two? weeks since Kathy originally wrote that blog post about canceling an appearance at a conference because she received death threats - everything from all the big bloggers considering a code of conduct, to people discussing how to deal with such things.
As much as I am for freedom of speech on this beloved medium, I'm adding my name to the very extremely long list of women who are disgusted with all the shit they have to deal with for being female on the internet. Regardless of the magnitude of discrimination...when it happens every single day all the fucking time..you'd hate it too, no matter what you are, if you had to deal with it.
You have jerks and idiots who, instead of even starting out with a civilized "hi", ask you "asl?", even on an IRC network like Freenode where I naïvely believed that this doesn't happen as often (yeah right). There are people who refuse to believe that you are female, at all (oh the memories of "GIRL = guy in real life"). There are people who assume things based on your feminine pseudonym/name. It runs the gamut from assuming total ignorance on your part of the topic at hand to blatant sexism in general. There are "men" who seemingly spend all their time shitmouthing women, and talking about how they love to treat them badly. Not like, D/s kind of badly, but like, borderline abuse and just absolutely disgusting kind of badly. Some stereotypes never, ever go away, and when one person starts the sexism train, everyone else hops on board. Some of the best known memes and whatnot are extremely sexist in nature. And you find that you have to start building a thick skin in order to deal with these inhuman entities without having a virtual mental breakdown...or explosion, depending on what is said, or leaving that which disgusts you forever.
And you see this and experience this everywhere. You are nothing but someone who is harassed for sexually explicit pictures and stripdances on webcam. You are rated on how attractive you are, and if deemed attractive, hit on regardless of age. People randomly call you a bitch or a whore for something utterly trivial that would not have provoked the same reaction were you a man and not a woman. You have to prove your knowledge twenty times over before people will listen to you without questioning or ignoring every part of it, otherwise your good advice ends up being wasted time as they'll easily listen to anyone else with a hint of knowledge on the topic that might just be spouting complete bullshit but happens to not be female.
It's not amusing. It was never amusing to begin with. Listening to someone getting off on watching porn where a guy seemingly smashes in the girl's head with a brick is not amusing.."i love the look on her face oh i gotta save that shit it was great LOL". Yeah, great, sure. Talk about donkey punching someone? I really don't feel like listening to you say that shit. Did you just say that you'd have sex only with a particular woman if you had a threesome with me and her so you could fuck me and tell her to fuck off cause she's an "ugly bitch" and I was apparently vastly more attractive than her? Thanks for making her cry for real, oh your epenis must be so big. Did you just call me a cunt cause I told you to shut up per the rules...after you meekly obeyed the rules after a guy brought it up? Fuck off.
So, you try to get down and dirty with these idiots, but it's not very fun to keep up all the time. Everyone does it, the trolls, random people...even friends..or should I say..."friends", sometimes.
Eventually you feel that you've learned what to do to not deal with this, and start over with a masculine or even gender-neutral name. And then all of a sudden, you don't ever have to deal with the discrimination or assumptions, you never have to prove yourself, and you are just accepted. Or you get together with other women like you, and most of those hassles go away.
And let me make it clear that there's a fine line between behaviour similar to this where it's just teasing between friends, and this. This means all you people in #dissonance, I love you all and I'm not offended cause you guys strip on webcam and want me to join in. >:P Just the more despicable behaviour that I'm bitching about now happens in other channels where it's not as nice, and it's a lot more annoying.
How has it come to this, honestly?
I'm reminded of the old adage of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"...bullshit. try "sticks and stones may break my bones but words from misogynistic dickheads wear me down to the point that I feel like hurting someone".
And yes, this was provoked by an article on AlterNet by the wonderful Jessica of feministing.com. If you have time, check it out, it's an amazing site.
There are some people making some really rude comments about what she did, and there are others harshly criticizing all that has happened in the short...two? weeks since Kathy originally wrote that blog post about canceling an appearance at a conference because she received death threats - everything from all the big bloggers considering a code of conduct, to people discussing how to deal with such things.
As much as I am for freedom of speech on this beloved medium, I'm adding my name to the very extremely long list of women who are disgusted with all the shit they have to deal with for being female on the internet. Regardless of the magnitude of discrimination...when it happens every single day all the fucking time..you'd hate it too, no matter what you are, if you had to deal with it.
You have jerks and idiots who, instead of even starting out with a civilized "hi", ask you "asl?", even on an IRC network like Freenode where I naïvely believed that this doesn't happen as often (yeah right). There are people who refuse to believe that you are female, at all (oh the memories of "GIRL = guy in real life"). There are people who assume things based on your feminine pseudonym/name. It runs the gamut from assuming total ignorance on your part of the topic at hand to blatant sexism in general. There are "men" who seemingly spend all their time shitmouthing women, and talking about how they love to treat them badly. Not like, D/s kind of badly, but like, borderline abuse and just absolutely disgusting kind of badly. Some stereotypes never, ever go away, and when one person starts the sexism train, everyone else hops on board. Some of the best known memes and whatnot are extremely sexist in nature. And you find that you have to start building a thick skin in order to deal with these inhuman entities without having a virtual mental breakdown...or explosion, depending on what is said, or leaving that which disgusts you forever.
And you see this and experience this everywhere. You are nothing but someone who is harassed for sexually explicit pictures and stripdances on webcam. You are rated on how attractive you are, and if deemed attractive, hit on regardless of age. People randomly call you a bitch or a whore for something utterly trivial that would not have provoked the same reaction were you a man and not a woman. You have to prove your knowledge twenty times over before people will listen to you without questioning or ignoring every part of it, otherwise your good advice ends up being wasted time as they'll easily listen to anyone else with a hint of knowledge on the topic that might just be spouting complete bullshit but happens to not be female.
It's not amusing. It was never amusing to begin with. Listening to someone getting off on watching porn where a guy seemingly smashes in the girl's head with a brick is not amusing.."i love the look on her face oh i gotta save that shit it was great LOL". Yeah, great, sure. Talk about donkey punching someone? I really don't feel like listening to you say that shit. Did you just say that you'd have sex only with a particular woman if you had a threesome with me and her so you could fuck me and tell her to fuck off cause she's an "ugly bitch" and I was apparently vastly more attractive than her? Thanks for making her cry for real, oh your epenis must be so big. Did you just call me a cunt cause I told you to shut up per the rules...after you meekly obeyed the rules after a guy brought it up? Fuck off.
So, you try to get down and dirty with these idiots, but it's not very fun to keep up all the time. Everyone does it, the trolls, random people...even friends..or should I say..."friends", sometimes.
Eventually you feel that you've learned what to do to not deal with this, and start over with a masculine or even gender-neutral name. And then all of a sudden, you don't ever have to deal with the discrimination or assumptions, you never have to prove yourself, and you are just accepted. Or you get together with other women like you, and most of those hassles go away.
And let me make it clear that there's a fine line between behaviour similar to this where it's just teasing between friends, and this. This means all you people in #dissonance, I love you all and I'm not offended cause you guys strip on webcam and want me to join in. >:P Just the more despicable behaviour that I'm bitching about now happens in other channels where it's not as nice, and it's a lot more annoying.
How has it come to this, honestly?
I'm reminded of the old adage of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"...bullshit. try "sticks and stones may break my bones but words from misogynistic dickheads wear me down to the point that I feel like hurting someone".
And yes, this was provoked by an article on AlterNet by the wonderful Jessica of feministing.com. If you have time, check it out, it's an amazing site.