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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.
‘cos, @Quark, we regulars all know Hellkell. you, not so much.
@ titianblue – I’ve read dozens, if not hundreds, of threads on here. I’m entitled to an opinion as much as anyone else, and to call someone else out on their behaviour is not “trolling”. This thread is specifically about people getting attacked for expressing opinions, and what are you guys doing – attacking me for expressing an opinion.
And yet so many stalkers do.
@ titianblue – Jeez, this isn’t a school clique. Who cares if you “know” some commentor on a blog, that doesn’t automatically give their posts more or less weight than anyone else’s.
These comments and threats do not happen in a vacuum. They are reflective of a culture that does very little to actually stop rape and violence. They feed the rape culture and keep it thriving, resulting in actual rapes and actual violence. Ivan Garcia might not travel to England to rape and murder this woman, but he perpetuates a cultural standard that does in fact result in real women, men, and children being raped and murdered. It’s part of the same spectrum.
Also, there are real life examples of women being doxed, harassed, stalked, fired from their jobs, committing suicide, etc after asshole bullies wage a campaign of hate against them. The internet is still the real world. There are still real world consequences to social media hate campaigns.
The focus here should be on the bullies and their behavior, and not on how to avoid being bullied, or how to accept and move on from being bullied. That’s a band-aid approach to a gunshot wound.
@quark Nope. We’re attacking your expressed opinion.
@ Chie – you make good points, but while I agree the onus needs to be on exposing and stopping the bullying, that doesn’t necessarily help someone who is on the receiving end right now. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to stop on-line bullying for good, and so while we are working to stop it, it is important for victims to be able to feel safe and know realistically they aren’t in any increased danger,
If somebody has dehumanized you to the point where they are making rape and death threats, you are in danger. They think of you as less than human. Hope that helps.
By this definition, satire is harassment.
I disagree. It is important for victims to know that any feelings they have about this – fear, anger, frustration, impotence – are valid. It is important for them to know that society takes the victim’s safety (both physical and mental) seriously and will start protecting them.
Here’s the thing — our culture rewards bullies. We do a lot of lip service about how terrible bullying is, but in reality, bullies win. And THAT is why those who are “on the receiving end” feel real terror about it. Because they know that our culture is simply not on their side.
So I will repeat myself. Focusing on how the bullied should behave achieves NOTHING. Telling someone who is receiving rape and death threats that “you probably won’t really get raped or killed” achieves NOTHING.
@ Tooimpure – no, you are not in danger unless they actually do something. You may FEEL endangered and that’s how they want you to feel. But it doesn’t mean you actually are. If I told everyone in here “America is about to be bombed!”, you might feel in danger – but it doesn’t mean you actually are. And there is a big, big difference between making anonymous threats on the internet to relative strangers… And making real face-to-face threats in real life. I agree that the latter represents a real danger, but the internet automatically dehumanises people because it is “virtual”, lacking authentic human connection, e.g. physical, face-to-face contact.
That’s why I’m saying in real life almost 0 of these trolls would ever dare make such threats, let alone carry them through.
Seems like “people shouldn’t be horrible human beings on the internet (but they are)” is the theme of the end of this July for me. :/
(Last week, not directly feminism related: http://blip.tv/welshy/darkside-of-the-internet-6613444 “Dark Side of the Internet” the 5th part of this years TGWTG anniversary special… yeah, some people were calling “censorship” and decrying their freeze peach on this one too.)
@ leftwingfox – satire is very, very different to sarcasm. You need genuine humour and skill for successful satire. Sarcasm is just effortless, unskilled rudeness.
Telling people not to be sarcastic on here… tends not to go down well. That word ‘mock’ in the header is there for a reason.
@ Mark – yes, mocking *misogyny*. Not mocking people for their opinions. If people express a genuine opinion it deserves the courtesy of being taken seriously. It’s fine to disagree with it, but making silly little jibes is just childish and non-constructive.
Ah, that weasel “almost”. So comforting. So reassuring.
QFT
Quark, I think one of the points you’re missing is that while it may be highly unlikely that any of the specific people who have made threats online will follow through with them, to a person receiving a whole bunch of those threats for something they said or did, it’s a reflection of how a portion of the public is responding to them. They don’t know that along with all the internet trolls, there aren’t also people equally pissed off who will act out that violence in person. Knowing lots of strangers feel hostile toward you, especially in these situations where you’re a figure in the news and strangers can easily find out what you look like, whereabouts you live, etc., is a perfectly good reason to feel unsafe. There are people who’ve received a lot of backlash online who’ve also been harassed offline. It seems to me the more backlash you’re getting online, the more likely it is there’ll be someone nearby and pissed off enough to try to hurt you in person too.
So trying to tell people they don’t need to really be scared of online threats is not just ignoring all the other reasons online threats are disturbing (regardless of how likely they are to be acted out) but dismissing a perfectly legitimate concern.
Quark,
How about you try not to deny my lived experiences because that makes you comfy, ‘kay? Thanks!
All I can tell you is, when I received a death threat on the internet, if I really thought that person was going to come kill me, it would have been much, much worse. It was very reassuring to me to know there was a 0.00000001% chance of this person doing this.
For all I know people may think there is a very high chance if an internet threat translating into reality. That’s why I think it is important for people to realise there really isn’t. That DOESN’T mean we shouldn’t prioritise stopping internet bullies.
Ah, note to self: stop being childish. Be serious. Puts on serious face.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02583/Cats_In_Hats_2583255k.jpg
“@ All – sarcasm is a form of harassment, designed to embarrass and belittle someone into shutting up. It’s not cool.”
Pecunium! You sarcastic jerk! How dare you harass me?! *dies*
Who am I harassing with this one — I am just THRILLED that my room is now full of fish tanks, including an empty 30g that I can’t set up for like a week. Harassing myself for ordering the tank before the pump?
@tooimpure – What are you talking about “making me comfy” – ? The existence of malicious internet trolls who I too have to deal with hardly makes me comfy. I’m not denying anyone’s experiences, I’m just stating a fact that just because an internet threat may make someone feel in danger, doesn’t mean they necessarily are in danger.
ah, but you don’t understand, @tooimpureangel. Quark had a death threat once and he was fine with it. So he can come here & reassure all the silly scared women with complete confidence.
Ooops. was that sarcastic? /childish