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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.
Oh, the page jump! Browsers calculate where the internal link goes based on the original uh, layout we’ll call it, of the page. Then the twitter links load and lengthen the page and BAM your link is lower on the page than the browser calculated it to be.
Short version? It’s a side effect of the twitter links length being calculated after the rest of the page.
Anyone not experiencing it? I want your browser.
Oh! I also meant to say that I just finished reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. Fascinating book, and great for a really fucking heavy summer read. (It really is good, just a heavy subject)
Argenti – so is it because of all the Twitter links in the article?
Argenti, that algae… …um… ick?
Regarding the jump, though, why would it be happening more now than before. I didn’t notice the behavior until this evening.
That’s a point, too, gillyrosebee – I don’t think the jump happened this morning.
Feckin’ feckityfeck stupid WordPress!
I know we’re all sick to death of Trolly McTrollerson and the notpologies, but …..
By far the most unpleasant thing in this comment section was yours, Quark. You’d already been told a couple of times that you weren’t doing very well. And then you fell splat on your face. When was that? No one’s mentioned it yet, probably because I’m in a different timezone and I’m reading afterwards, rather than during all those exchanges, so I’m seeing it as a whole rather than comment by comment.
Trigger Warning esp for those who’ve not read all the previous pages.
You read gillyrosebee’s description of what happened to her – a truly vile and violent consequence that started out from online harassment, moved to stalking, then rape and finished up with the offender in jail. When I read her report I was horrified, then my next thought was “What’s that Quark person going to say now?”
What did you say? Absolutely nothing. Some pages, pages!, of comments later you vaguely alluded to her experience in one of your feeble attempts at ducking apologising for your behaviour generally. But, even now you haven’t, not once, not directly, not indirectly, so much as mentioned, let alone apologised for triggering memories of her ghastly experience. As it happens, she’s been indicating that she is, at least for now, on top of it.
Have you even considered how she or anyone else with her experience might be feeling if they were in a bad place right now? No matter the reason, a bad time in their lives just happens to coincide with your lead-footed, slow-witted, unreasonable obsession with people swearing. All the while you’re clutching your pearls on your fainting couch at the swearing you’ve seen dozens of times before on those 50+ plus threads you say you’ve read, you’re ignoring someone who’s said right out loud that online harassment turned into real life abduction and rape.
Unpleasant?
You can fuck right off and stay there for fucking eternity.
Kittehs, cat furs are the best comfort I can think of, especially as they are usually the physical residue left behind by feline affection. Evidence, as it were, of the polar opposite of cat anger consequences!
@gillyrosebee, No worries, you’re a good person for trying.
Oh holy fuck….. Quark, you’re whining and disingeniousness and general bad argument is tiresome. You aren’t being harassed nor are we preventing you from using the Internet.
Why did the ferengi named quark pop into my head? This one is almost as annoying, especially as all posts written by zir are reading in quarks voice.
Whoops. Didn’t refresh before hitting that button. It had been mentioned.
No matter. Someone had to explain in detail just how fucking awful that person was. I doubt anything any one of us says could get through that one way thin skin, but it’s done now.
Huh? It should be stable weirdness, I have no idea why it wouldn’t be, unless maybe the first comment page is calculated differently but that makes next to no sense…
Yeah, I’m stumped.
gillybeerose — that about sums it up, yes. Hair algae is one thing, I usually don’t even bother fighting it, this stuff is gross and manages to completely cover my LED light in a matter of days (not kidding here, this is the second time this week I’ve had to remove it because it was actually ocluding the light)
gillyrosebee: you have nothing to apologize for. Quark, on the other hand, has so much to apologize for.
Okay, so I’m pretty drunk by now, and I’m watching old Voyager episodes. The story line includes a baby born because of DNA “stolen” and used against the father’s will.
Out of the blue, it hit me. SPERMJACKING! In the 24th century, y’all!!
I…yeah. The other reason I won’t use my real name here (besides it being highly gendered and blarg in that)? Stalker ex. Have I mentioned stalker ex is rapist ex #2? Reverse order, but him popping up in my online life literally years later is not some “probably not dangerous” annoyance but the reminder he can still upset me.
Which is why the last time he reared his nasty head, I said, in so many words, to stop contacting me and any further contact would be considered harassment. It seems to have at least prevented him from bothering me, though I have no idea if he’s lurking or being an anonymous pain (reason 302 I love you guys, he wouldn’t have to out himself as my stalker ex for his shit to get roundly shot down, y’all are like herd immunity to the stalker virus or something 🙂 )
Point here? Sometimes people who make Internet threats are following up on proof that they can make good on them. In which case fear is not just appropriate (as any response would be) but completely logical.
Tangentially, in “ways to keep yourself safe”, years ago now I ran across something saying that a beware if dog sign is as good as a dog for your average burglar, risk of dog = not worth it, pick an easier target. Idk if it’d really help with people determined to do you, personally, harm, but it came off as one of those amazingly easy tips that isn’t all “never go out”. Probably is a bit victim blamey but feels like one of those “the more you know!” things. Sorry if this isn’t appropriate.
mildlymagnificent – don’t worry, it needed to be said in detail and you said it well.
gillyrosebee – LOL so furs are Cat Affection Consequences!
Hmm, I had some of those last night; Fribs wanted a Big Cuddle while we watched telly. Which was great, except the other CAC was that my jammies smelt of her breath afterward … ew.
I’m watching “Imitation of Life,” cheesy tear-jerker fun.
I often have that problem when the actors look too much alike. (I think I have slight face-blindness). So the diversity of the cast of OitNB helps me with that too.
Kittehs, have you tried teeth brushing? Adora barely tolerates it, but all I need to do is hold up the toothpaste tube (malt flavor, yum!!) and Evie comes running. She tolerates the brushing in exchange for the taste of the paste.
OT, but check out this post on a forum I frequent; it’s a great example of how arrogant and ‘splainy (for lack of a better term) critiques of identity politics can be: http://libcom.org/forums/theory/nationalism-oppressed-31072013#comment-520217
A “gem” from that post:
=S
Okay, now that Trollololol is gone, I want to share with you the funniest comment I saw on r/mensrights yesterday. I’ve been saving it just for you. 😀
ō.Ó? Your skin color changes based on whether you’re oppressed? This oughta be “good”.
Ally: WTF? That is a gem.
I’m all out of spoons at the moment to read that thread.
Ally, that comment is total WTF. I have no words.
I have to come clean with you guys: my real, legal name is Blast Hardcheese. You can put your faith in that.
Beware if dog WHAT? Sounds like the Black Beast of ARGgghhhhh!