Great Article in the Guardian
Yesterday, I came across an article in the Guardian that should have shocked me, but sadly did not. (Just to get it out of the way, here is the link to the article. Go on and read it. I’ll wait.) Of course, I knew about all the various point covered in the article, as I have read about each incident separately around the blogs I read, many of which are feminist blogs. I heard about Jessica V.’s boobs and the study about women being harassed online and Ann Althouse and the other women who are right on board with their right wing oppressors (and, let’s be real here, it’s not as if the left wing of American politics has widely embraced feminist values, either). Yes, I’d even heard of Kathy Sierra and the campaign of threats and harassment against her. But, I never wrote about any of these things separately, because while I could see the trend, sure, I guess I needed the trend put together and placed under my nose to really tap into my righteous indignation.
Or, maybe like everyone else, I needed to see someone who wasn’t “asking for it” for it to really hit home. I want to hit on three things, here. The first being how this trend really came into the spotlight and what that says about perceptions of the feminist movement - even within the feminist movement. The second point is where I believe law enforcement has failed women online, and what I believe should be done about it. The third point is where I think we, as internet users, are failing one another. My stress is on the third point, and since we feel most passionately about things that affect us directly, I’ll be applying this concept to the quarter of online that I most frequent: that is to say, in online chatrooms.
But, first thing is first. Why did we wait to bring this issue out into the open until Kathy Sierra was harassed and driven out of the online life? That isn’t to say that I’ve never seen blog posts about this issue of online harassment of women (and, let’s face it, minorities), pointing out that the anonymous nature of the web acts as the white hood in a way much more effective than any racist, sexist or otherwise discriminator could have ever dreamed, but it was almost a footnote. Jessica was very outspoken during the incident where she was being harassed about her breasts (despite wearing a rather modest sweater… not that she deserved it whatever she’d chosen to wear), and noises were made here and there but… and this is a judgment call, I realize, but one I state pretty confidently based both on my reading of feminist blogs and my own experiences with this stuff… I just haven’t seen any real passion for the issue.
But, then this woman who writes a non-issues related blog. She writes an innocuous but successful technology blog, and does speaking engagements on the subject. Bully for her. But, there were people online who were harassing and threatening her with, amongst other things, rape and murder in, I gather, graphic detail. Pictures of her were posted, her personal information… well, you can read it in the article. Her quitting blogging and canceling her speaking engagements has been pretty widely publicized, because she wasn’t speaking out about anything controversial and still attracted this kind of negative attention.
Let me put this in other words, for the people in the cheap seats: Women who express opinions and stand up for themselves and their issues online are asking to be harassed, so it’s not as big a deal when it happens to them. This whole “She was asking for it” is the oldest story in the book when a woman is somehow attacked based on her gender.
I sense eyes glazing over. I’m going to keep writing, but break this up into three posts, to make them easier to swallow. So, consider this installment one.