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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.
thermodynamic gel polishes…I have never heard of this! Yay, Google! Sounds awesome.
So let’s get this straight:
Someone comes here to state an opinion and has absolutely no desire to offend or upset anyone with it.
Other people disagree with that opinion, so that person is bullied, attacked, sworn at and generally harassed until they leave.
Got it.
I’m about to get BINGO off all Quark’s responses.
@Quark, I totally agree with Freemage, and I think your response to zir missed the point and was factually incorrect. I do think that the vast majority of people out there, especially public figures (even if it’s a relatively anonymous public figure like a blogger), are well aware that the vast majority of internet threats will not be followed up on. You aren’t providing a necessary PSA here, as a brief reading of women who have been threatened like this will show you.
But when you’re getting literally hundreds of rape and death threats in graphic detail, it’s hard not to be shaken. It’s even harder when you consider that even if 99% of these threats would never be followed up on, you’ve gotten (say) 600 threats…that leaves you with 6 people to worry about. Or maybe they’d never follow up on them in a public place, but what if you run into them alone at a conference? Or…?
Yes, the odds of being harmed by someone who threatens you publicly are small, but they’re there. But more importantly, the whole argument misses the point, which is that these threats are specifically designed to frighten women out of voicing their opinions publicly, and often succeed *even with women who know that the actual physical threat is relatively small.* The psychological damage is both the point and the problem here, not the actual physical threat.
As Freemage said, I would say exactly what you are saying if a friend came to me with these problems and asked for advice. I’d advise her to take reasonable practical precautions but not live in fear, because she probably won’t be harmed. But that’s a vastly different situation than posting a vague PSA-style announcement like you did here, which manages to both imply that women are ignorant of the actual risk (or worse, incapable of logically assessing it) and that this isn’t really a significant problem. I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but it certainly came across that way to me and obviously to many others here. And FWIW, I recognize you from other threads and am not predisposed to think you’re a troll. I think you’ve just wildly missed the mark here.
@ hellkell – Er, no. I enjoy debate and like to hear alternate perspectives. What I don’t like is verbal abuse, being sworn at, belittled, attacked etc.
And amazingly, even abuse that is “not as bad as a death threat” is still unpleasant and still has a bad effect! Imagine that!
Quark, your behavior is itself dangerous and boundary trampling. I can see how being called on it is unpleasant for you, but that is not the same thing as being threatened.
Gel II Reaction is the colour change ones, and I just popped to the website (to get the name) and apparently they’ve re-mixed it with sparkles! Wheee…
http://www.geltwo.com/
Hellkell — don’t you see the hypocrisy in telling someone to fuck off while condemning rape and death threats?!
I’ll bring the nail polish, I have a bunch I’ll never use but idk how good it is, a lot of it is a decade~ old.
“And amazingly, even abuse that is “not as bad as a death threat” is still unpleasant and still has a bad effect! Imagine that!”
So, we’ve managed to change your mind about your original opinion?
Quark: then step back and stop doubling down on your bullshit. You’ve earned your welcome.
Quark, you have “at no point intended to offend”? Can human beings actually die laughing, because I might be about to.
@AK – that was a very eloquent and balanced post, and I entirely understand your point of view, as well as your criticism of mine.
Thank you, and thank you for not stooping to insults and swear words. I appreciate it.
Quark: See, this is why we keep suggesting that reading comprehension is not your thing. None of us are against ‘aggressive, horrible, nasty comments on the internet’. (I’d suggest that none of what you’ve gotten would qualify as ‘nasty’ by any stretch of the English language, but that’s a minor part of it.)
What we’re against are threats, both direct and by implication, being leveled at anyone, in any medium. “Fuck yourself,” “fuck off” and the like are not threats, not in any permutation or environment. They are merely statements of contempt and derision, which some of us feel you’ve been working very, very hard in this thread to earn.
Aregnti- was that sarcasm?
We can put some acetone in the old polish and see how it’s held up.
Hey Quark, guess what, you’re not entitled to respect for your bad opinions. If you don’t like it here, GO AWAY. In fact, I think we’d all feel you did us a favor if you did exactly that.
Oh what’s this? Things can be not as bad as a death threat and still hurt your tender little feelings? Well then guess what, asshat, maybe we can talk about how death threats are problematic without you derailing and saying how we all have out panties in a bunch over nothing. Also you can please go fuck yourself.
@ CL – when did I ever say internet abuse was not unpleasant? Can you please stop misrepresenting what I actually said?
I have said endlessly it is a terrible thing and people who engage in it should be exposed and stopped.
Incidentally, that applies to all the people who have been aggressive and unpleasant to me. Would they behave this way in real life or under their real names? Not a chance.
Quark: apparently you missed this in your in-depth MBZ studies*: just because a person isn’t swearing, it doesn’t mean they aren’t saying something awful. Like you, my dear.
*more of Q’s fave
Quark: I guarantee you that if we were face-to-face, I would have told you to fuck off at this point.
@ dusty – I never said any of the things you’re ascribing to me, and you are now using EXACTLY THE SAME bully-justifying logic you earlier decried. “If you don’t like being attacked, don’t use the internet”.
I cannot believe the astonishing hypocrisy or that none of you, apparently, can see it.
@Quark, frankly, I don’t appreciate being used to make a point to other posters. I wrote that since you claimed to be interested in actual debate. Your response seemed less directed at me (considering it didn’t actually address any of the criticisms I made) than composed to contrast my response to the other ones you have received, and which I don’t disagree with.
@ hellkell – easy to say, but would you reveal your real name here? Course not.
And yet you continue to assert that if we just UNDERSTOOD it a little better, and accepted that we are not in any PHYSICAL danger it wouldn’t be such a big deal. If you feel you are being that drastically misunderstood, maybe work on your argument a little bit.
Also, WHOOP WHOOP TONE POLICE.
“Incidentally, that applies to all the people who have been aggressive and unpleasant to me. Would they behave this way in real life or under their real names? Not a chance.”
Oh this again? Yes, yes I would, I have a spring loaded middle finger.
Hellkell — yep! I’m a horrible person! Why is pecunium at work when I want a good sarcastic banter?!
Ak – you are not being “used”, you were being “thanked”. There is quite a difference. I genuinely did appreciate your politeness.
Quark: that’s not quite the gotcha you think it is.
You say you’re not a troll, but you’ve managed to hit all the high notes of one so far. I don’t think you’re here in good faith.