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So what sorts of things make some men so furious that they feel the need to send women they’ve never met literal death and rape threats on the internet? It doesn’t take much, apparently. A woman suggesting that it’s not such a good idea to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. A woman making videos suggesting that there’s sexism in video games. A woman captured on video telling some men to shut the fuck up. A woman complaining about sexist jokes at a tech conference.
Add to this: a woman campaigning successfully to have Jane Austen’s face put on the Bank of England’s ten pound notes.
Over the past week, writer and activist Caroline Criado-Perez, who organized the campaign to get Austen memorialized on the bank note, has been harassed relentlessly on Twitter by assholes and misogynists and trolls for her efforts. Some of this harassment has taken the form of literal rape and death threats. One 21-year-old Manchester man was arrested and questioned in connection with the threats.
Similar threats and harassment were directed at noted British classics professor Mary Beard and female Members of Parliament.
Here’s a sadly typical example of one of the threatening comments sent to Criado-Perez from an account that Twitter temporarily banned — then reinstated.
https://twitter.com/CCriadoPerez/status/362499703285358592
And a more graphic example:
https://twitter.com/ianmcqui/status/361587787511779328
And some even more graphic threats directed at female MPs.
https://twitter.com/JonathanHaynes/status/361967658087890945
https://twitter.com/JonathanHaynes/status/361964227516309504
For many more examples of messages sent to Criado-Perez and others, see Catalina Hernández’ blog I Will Not Put Up With This: here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
And if you had any doubt about how little in the way of repercussion most of these harassers expected to get for their threatening tweets, some tweeted using what are presumably their real names. Here are some comments from one Ivan Garcia of San Diego, as collected by Hernández.
And here is his blog, where this fan of jazz, video games and threatening rape shares his poetry with the world.
The harassment obviously raises a lot of issues,most notably: Why the fuck does this keep happening? And: What’s the best way to deal with this sort of harassment — and these sorts of harassers?
Twitter has promised to add a “report abuse” button; some activists see this as a step in the right direction, while others worry that the “report abuse” button will be itself abused to shut down critics of harassment. Twitter’s record in dealing with harassers has not exactly been a great one; just ask Anita Sarkeesian.
British journalists and assorted bloggers have been trying to sort through some of these issues over the past few days. Here are some links to some of the more interesting pieces, from a variety of perspectives. (Well, I’m not including the pro-rape threat perspective.) Links aren’t necessarily endorsements.
First, for a little more background, see:
Twitter under fire after bank note campaigner is target of rape threats
Caroline Criado-Perez Twitter abuse case leads to arrest
And here are some posts and pieces looking at the issues:
A ‘report abuse’ button on Twitter will create more problems than it solves, by Sharon O’Dea
A button will not, alone, rid Twitter (or the wider world) of mysogyny and abuse. These are complex issues that will take more than a button to resolve. But ‘report abuse’ buttons have been known to be widely abused on other networks. ….
Introduction of a similar mechanism on Twitter ironically creates a whole new means by which trolls can abuse those they disagree with. The report abuse button could be used to silence campaigners, like Criado-Perez, by taking advantage of the automatic blocking and account closure such a feature typically offers. In that way, it could end up putting greater power in the trolls’ hands.
Why does it always come back to rape? by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter of the Vagenda Magazine, in the New Statesman
Rape is the popular choice when women become more visible than they apparently should be, and that’s because it’s easy. …. Whatever their opinion, however they conducted their arguments, however well-researched and nuanced their replies to criticism are, they’re women and male trolls could rape them and that’s what really matters. …
[Academic] Mary Beard got called a “dirty old slut” with a “disgusting vagina” just as [Member of Parliament] Stella Creasy was being tweeted “YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK… I’M GONNA RAPE YOU AT 8PM AND PUT THE VIDEO ALL OVER THE INTERNET”. …
The message is that women’s vaginas are, literally, always up for grabs. If they’re young, the rape threats will come thick and fast; if they’re older, maybe the trolls will settle for insulting their vaginas and telling them that they were “sluts” in the past.
If Every Male Troll Took a Walk in Women’s Shoes, Would He Finally Feel Our Outrage? by Elizabeth Plank
Withstanding rape threats has become a right of passage for female writers or personalities, just as making them as become a right of passage for cowardly and anonymous misogynist trolls. If you’re a woman who happens to possess opinions, and write about feminist issues (god forbid!), chances are you will be violently trolled. … the issue is not that women receive more criticism than men, but rather that it comes in more violent and vitriolic forms. Men will be attacked for their opinion, whereas women will be threatened because they have opinions.
[O]ne study showed that female usernames in chat forums received 25 times more abuse than male ones. In an experiment conducted by the University of Maryland, researchers found that “Female usernames, on average, received 163 malicious private messages a day.” So all else equal, if you’re a woman online, you’re going to be on the receiving end of more hate.
I believe it. I get a lot of shit from misogynists for running this blog — and the occasional threat — but what I get is nothing compared to the harassment similarly controversial feminist bloggers who happen to be women have gotten.
What women-hating trolls really believe, by Emma Barnett
First troll up was Peter from Whitechapel. …
“She was asking for it,” he told me. According to this nitwit, if you campaign about issues such as keeping a woman on English banknotes, you should “expect to receive rape threats”. I delved further.
“If you put your head above the parapet, like she has, then you deserve this type of abuse. It’s what you get when you are a woman shouting about something,” Peter told me, starting to get a little irate. …
Then Gary from Birmingham decided to call in [and] told me in no uncertain terms that “feminists like Caroline were undermining what it is to be a man” and needed “sorting out”.
“Men are predators,” he explained calmly. “And this [rape threats] is what we do.”
And here, after all this awfulness, is a piece that manages to be funny about it all: How to use the internet without being a total loser.
Ah, Lovecraft. I was reading his work when I was too young to notice how racist it so often was. It’s almost embarrassing to read Call or Red Hook now, and imagine how my teenage sons would think of it. Foucault’s Pendulum – wonderful. I think I’ve read it three times. Curious, but it was the Belbo-sections that slowed me down – his autobiographical reminisces were less engaging to me than the High Woo stuff.
oh, and the ten pound note looks great.
Yes, the fact that you keep telling me to “fuck off” and I don’t will maybe illuminate to you that this strategy doesn’t work and stop you doing it.
@Briznecko, I did the same thing once while reading a New Yorker article on Eurovision. Reading nerds unite!
Watership Down I’d not one of my personal favorites, perhaps because I didn’t read it as a child, but I really appreciate that it’s about the only talking animal story that takes into account that animals have different cognitive abilities than people.
DINGDINGDING
Time to ignore the self-obsessed troll.
I do but, hey, we make mistakes. I’ll admit, rereading the post, I misread. I’d of edited were that possible to fix that.
You’re right that I misread it, so I apologize for that.
However – the rest still applies to you. You have an unwarranted sense of entitlement for someone who is not only new to visiting this blog but expecting people to not react negatively to your posts. And, yes, it’s the kind of trollish behavior we’ve seen on this blog.
I’m not the one who is making himself a martyr because I can’t stand dealing with criticism…oh, sorry, “bullying”. ‘Cause it’s never free speech when you don’t like it…
Speaking of recent flighs, I went to Alanya, Turkey, some months ago, and as we came in for a landing in their new airport at Gazipasa we went right through an actual thundercloud. I had a window seat and an actual bolt of fuckin’ lightning hit just below it.
Cloudiah… David hasn’t banned me. Maybe he will. Maybe he will ban you. Who knows? But gloating “nerr nerr, you’re going to get banned” when, uh, I haven;t been banned, kind of makes you look a little silly.
cloudiah: *fistbump*
Someone on Twitter (please don’t make me go and find out who) commented that the rape-threateners are stupid not to realise that when the police come knocking at their door, they (the police) will be examining every pc, laptop, talbet & mobile they own. I liked that thought.
One thing I have noticed is that self-centered people think everything is about them. Today in tautology.
@Quark
Ok, I’ll break this down. Saying “I’m sorry if I offended” is not a sincere apology; it’s couched with that weaselly “if” that abdicates responsibility. So I, assuming that you are sincere in your desire to apologize, am asking you what you feel you did to offend people. Then, once we’ve established that, we can formulate an apology in the mold of “I’m sorry I [did thing] that offended people”
@saintnick – thanks for your apology.
However, this idea many people seem to have that they have more “rights” to attack others because they’ve been here longer is absolutely stupid and childish.
This isn’t some high-school clique with a secret handshake. It’s a public internet blog and everyone has equal rights to comment here, unless and until David bans them. That’s it. You don’t become less “deserving” of abuse just because you’ve been here longer. No-one deserves to be abused and to say otherwise is bullying and victim-blaming, pure and simple.
Nah, bro, it’s kinda fun, tbh. Plus, who knows, maybe at some point you WILL fuck off! And then we’ll have a party!
By which I mean we won’t have a party, do you really think you’re that important? (I’m pretty sure you do.) We’ll just go back to our usual pleasant space until the next troll wanders in or back. Now please fuck off, you’re clearly not enjoying the atmosphere here, so unless you’re staying to piss everyone off (I am pretty sure you are still here because you enjoy pissing people off), I can’t for the life of me imagine why the fuck you’re sticking around.
Again: FUCK OFF, QUARK, NO ONE LIKES YOU HERE.
@ Chi – okay.
I’m sorry THAT I offended people.
Is that really what this is about, the difference between “if” and “that” – ?
I am staying here for just the same reason abused women out internet trolls.
To show you you cannot bully, harass and otherwise intimidate people into silence.
So get used to it.
You missed the point. You explicitly, specifically got the benefit of the doubt in my first couple of posts. I also explained to you why the stance you were taking was unhelpful at best, and damaging and hurtful at worst.
You did not apologize or even engage with any of that.
I was very clear and direct about what I found problematic and why, and why you needed to take a step back and learn a little bit from people who have more experience with the situation than you do. You insisted that your feelings about people using swearwords were more important than getting it right when talking to people who are legitimately being threatened online. No, you didn’t say that, so please spare me the “why are you misrepresenting me” whine. What you did was ignore those points completely and go on and on and on and on about how mean everyone is.
You are wrong about the implications of internet harassment and its potential for harm beyond the bad feelings such speech may incite in those who are subjected to it. Moreover, the ways in which you are wrong (and yet insist on “expressing your opinion”) may cause people to disregard real danger and not take necessary steps to protect themselves when they are facing harassment, and it also tends to diminish and dismiss the experience of those who have been harmed.
You have not apologized for this.
It does not matter what your intentions are if you actually harm people.
It is not an apology if you are more focused on your feelings than on those of the people you have harmed.
This is not trivial. This is not “nit-picking”. This is the key at the center of the matter. Your feelings are not as important as those of the people you harm with your insistence that you have a right to your (misinformed, erroneous) opinion and a right to share it with everyone who doesn’t explicitly block your IP address.
You’re not going to get banned, Quark. You’re going to flounce. You’re going to angrily announce that you’re leaving and stomp off and then in all probability come back later and pretend it never happened. And every time you announce that you’ll never leave it makes the future flounce more glorious.
Ooh great leader, I implore you not to wield your mighty ban hammer. This one must self destruct on her own.
Look at this beautiful street in Porto Alegre:
To everyone who hates me – obviously at some point I’m going to have to stop this for today and go to bed (it’s late here), but please don’t be so arrogant as to assume that means you’ve “won” with your bullying and harassment. I will return another day. I like David’s blog, and won’t let nasty, ill-mannered people stop me from engaging with it.
@ katz – I’m hardly going to say I’ll “never” leave. One day I will die, as will we all, so my eventual leaving is inevitable. But I will keep coming back for as long as *I* want to.
I read it again not too long ago and found it more enjoyable the subsequent time. It also kind of helps to have watched Blade Runner, its film adaptation, prior to the novel. Philip K. Dick has an odd style and – as such – a lot of the concepts dealing with religion and sociology and history are hard to get at first. It tends to be more about the setting than the characters as it was with the movie (though the aesthetics involved were amazing), many who are basically plot vehicles to showcase it.
katz called it! Your prize, a kitten from the early 1900s:
gillyrosebee… well, fuckin’ done.