I’m still officially on my Man Boobz staycation, but I felt I needed to mention yet another example of a woman saying that men can stop rape … and getting rape threats in return.
Political analyst Zerlina Maxwell went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News earlier this week and made the terrible mistake of suggesting to a hostile audience that men aren’t really doing any favors to women by telling them to arm themselves against rapists. Instead, as Salon notes, she said this:
“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” She told Hannity, “You’re talking about this as if it’s some faceless, nameless criminal, when a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” adding, “If you train men not to grow up to become rapists, you prevent rape.”
Indeed, increased rape awareness has contributed to a dramatic decrease in rape over the last thirty years.
But apparently a lot of men were shocked – shocked! – that a woman would suggest that their patronizing advice was less likely to prevent rape than rape prevention education aimed at the demographic group that is responsible for the overwhelmng majority of rapes. That is, men.
So, naturally, the angriest of these men decided they would show Maxwell just how wrong she was … by threatening her with rape on Twitter.
Here’s just one example:
Rape culture in action.
Maxwell’s supporters have stepped up to defend her and her remarks, and have started a hashtag — #TYZerlina — to continue the discussion. If you’re on Twitter, join in .
Here’s the Fox News segment in question featuring Maxwell:
Proves how obsessed someone is and it isn’t CassandraSays.
Thing is, let’s say it’s one of our other boomerang trolls. Who cares? It’s still pathetic that they won’t just take the hint and go away.
@cassandra says
Sorry that the troll is creeping on you 🙁
The obsessive googling is not only creepy, it is also more than a little pathetic. Wasn’t there some other troll (or this one with a different name) who went on about googling Manboobz? It is sad that they seem proud that none of them can remember the url. (I occasionally get to websites by using Google, but I don’t brag about it or assume that it is the only way to get around the internet.)
@Some Gal:
Because there are no harmless explanations to google for a username (with ‘site:’). NOPE, none at all. It has to be stalking or creepy. And the top of the hypocrisy is that you guys (<= opportunity!) were the ones who made tons of searches so that it got into auto suggest. And now you're in denial mode.
Well now I am sorry I tried to actually engage with Poxy on the other thread, with the shoes. Bleah.
@Poxy
It proves an obsession, and it is totally harmless! You sure are engaging here as a non-troll. *serious nodding*
Riiiiiight.
Go away now creeper, off you fuck. You lost plausible deniability for being here in good faith about five pages ago.
After a point, they don’t want plausible deniability. Their swollen egos demand that we know what they’re about.
They just want us to keep talking to them. Why, I have no idea.
Hey, Poxy: I see that when I replied to your shifting of goalposts, and the ways in which soceity doesn’t abjure the merest hint of raping kids to be forgiveable you let the crickets chirp, while you continued to be intentionally offensive to Cassandra, and hellkell.
While I’m loathe to immediately say, “sockpuppet” there was someone who had that habit. That you share it is curious.
Because there are no harmless explanations to google for a username (with ‘site:’). NOPE, none at all. It has to be stalking or creepy. And the top of the hypocrisy is that you guys (<= opportunity!) were the ones who made tons of searches so that it got into auto suggest. And now you're in denial mode.
So now it’s not that when you googled, “cassandra says mr al” the number of times that exists is the reason, but rather that you are accusing “us” of being so obsessed that google has noticed how much we search for that phrase?
Yer daft man.
What you are arguing is that we spent so much time and energy looking for that pairing that it’s now a search term, rather than the possibility that so much time and effort was spent by him, as a result of his obsessive behaviors that there is an actual correlation.
Right.
I’m no ithiliana but…
Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture. Volume 6, Issue 2, Pages 215–242, ISSN (Online) 1613-4877, ISSN (Print) 1612-5681, DOI: 10.1515/jplr.2010.011, July 2010
“Whilst computer-mediated communication (CMC) can benefit users by providing quick and easy communication between those separated by time and space, it can also provide varying degrees of anonymity that may encourage a sense of impunity and freedom from being held accountable for inappropriate online behaviour. As such, CMC is a fertile ground for studying impoliteness, whether it occurs in response to perceived threat (flaming), or as an end in its own right (trolling). Currently, first and second-order definitions of terms such as im/politeness (Brown and Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987; Bousfield, Impoliteness in interaction, John Benjamins, 2008; Culpeper, Reflections on impoliteness, relational work and power, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008; Terkourafi, Towards a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness, and rudeness, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), in-civility (Lakoff, Civility and its discontents: Or, getting in your face, John Benjamins, 2005), rudeness (Beebe, Polite fictions: Instrumental rudeness as pragmatic competence, Georgetown University Press, 1995, Kienpointner, Functions of Language 4: 251–287, 1997, Kienpointner, Journal of Politeness Research 4: 243–265, 2008), and etiquette (Coulmas, Linguistic etiquette in Japanese society, Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), are subject to much discussion and debate, yet the CMC phenomenon of trolling is not adequately captured by any of these terms. Following Bousfield (in press), Culpeper (Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence, Cambridge University Press, 2010) and others, this paper suggests that a definition of trolling should be informed first and foremost by user discussions. Taking examples from a 172-million-word, asynchronous CMC corpus, four interrelated conditions of aggression, deception, disruption, and success are discussed. Finally, a working definition of trolling is presented.”
Searching for Safety Online: Managing “Trolling” in a Feminist Forum
Susan Herring, Kirk Job-Sluder, Rebecca Scheckler, Sasha Barab
The Information Society
Vol. 18, Iss. 5, 2002
“A common phenomenon in online discussion groups is the individual who baits and provokes other group members, often with the result of drawing them into fruitless argument and diverting attention from the stated purposes of the group. This study documents a case in which the members of an online community–a feminist web-based discussion forum–are targeted by a “troll” attempting to disrupt their discussion space. We analyze the strategies that make the troller successful and the targeted group largely ineffectual in responding to his attack, as a means to understand how such behavior might be minimized and managed in general. The analysis further suggests that feminist and other nonmainstream online forums are especially vulnerable, in that they must balance inclusive ideals against the need for protection and safety, a tension that can be exploited by disruptive elements to generate intragroup conflict.”
Ooh, that sounds promising.
Jane, E. A. (2012). “Your a Ugly, Whorish Slut” : Understanding e-bile. Feminist Media Studies
“In recent years, the mainstream media has identified on-line vitriol as a worsening problem which is silencing women in public discourse, and is having a deleterious effect on the civility of the public cybersphere. This article examines the disconnect between representations of “e-bile” in media texts, and representations of e-bile in academic literature. An exhaustive review of thirty years of academic work on “flaming” shows that many theorists have routinely trivialized the experiences of flame targets, while downplaying, defending, and/or celebrating the discourse circulated by flame producers. Much contemporary scholarship, meanwhile, ignores e-bile completely. My argument is that this constitutes a form of chauvinism (in that it disregards women’s experiences in on-line environments) and represents a failure of both theoretical acuity and nerve (given that it evades such a pervasive aspect of contemporary culture). The aim of this paper is not only to help establish the importance of on-line vitriol as a topic for interdisciplinary scholarly research, but to assist in establishing a theoretical problematic where what is seen is barely regarded as a problem. Overall, my argument is that—far from being a technology-related moral panic—e-bile constitutes a field of inquiry with a pressing need for recalibrated scholarly intervention.”
I’m still chuckling at the fact that the Journal of Politeness Research is a thing that exists.
@Some Gal:
Has is occured to you, that if you want to find a certain comment here, username + some words + ‘site:manboobz.com’ is the way to go? Because you don’t have something like a board search?
Of course, searching for a comment of a certain user is always creepy! Must be stalking! And that’s also why those evil, white dude-developers of the patriarchy implemented that feature in like phpBB or practically any other forum software. It’s to stalk women!
@Pecunium:
Because I never googled that. It’s the autosuggestion you get when you type “cassandrasays”, someone else is obsessed here, of course it could just be MRAL.
@Marie:
Oh, this genuine empathy from a true friend even melts my heart.
Please tell me it’s based in either England or Japan.
It actually appears to be German. If it were British, it would be the Journal of Politeness Research, Queuing, and Would You Fancy a Spot of Tea?
@claudiah: There’s something missing in the definition of troll: somebody who asks for evidence.
If it was Scottish it would be the Journal of Fuck Off You Ignorant Gobshite But Would You Fancy a Cup of Tea First Because It’s a Bit Nippy Outside.
Ok, ignoring the fact that poxy is boring, I’m pretty sure he’s also wrong, since I tried google cassandra says to test it and the only things it suggests is cassandra saeijs and cassandra says blog.
Ooh ooh, Poxy-the-Well-Named, I’m also sorry you’re creeping on CassandraSays! Do I get to be called disingenuous too?
Google autosuggest also works based on your own personal searching history, so it appears that Poxy here is the one who is obsessively searching for CassandraSays.
Creepy as fuck, in other words.