Sometimes when I post links, they’re simply interesting things I’ve run across. These, though, are essential reads:
Why the Trolls Will Always Win, by Kathy Sierra, Wired
A detailed post by Java expert and game developer Sierra describing the harassment and vilification she’s faced for the crime of, well, basically for being a woman in the tech world. While long and a bit rambling in spots, this is an important piece that, among other things, describes how harassers can sometimes transform slanderous assertions about their targets into “conventional wisdom,” details the damage that “trolls” can have on a person’s reputation (and their life generally), and offers some sobering reflections on the culture of harassment and how difficult it can be to fight.
She offers these thoughts on the ways in which Twitter can serve as an enabler of this kind of harassment:
Twitter, for all its good, is a hate amplifier. Twitter boosts signal power with head-snapping speed and strength. Today, Twitter (and this isn’t a complaint about Twitter, it’s about what Twitter enables) is the troll’s best weapon for attacking you. …
It begins with simple threats. You know, rape, dismemberment, the usual. It’s a good place to start, those threats, because you might simply vanish once those threats include your family. Mission accomplished. But today, many women online — you women who are far braver than I am — you stick around. And now, since you stuck around through the first wave of threats, you are now a much BIGGER problem.
And she takes on the “troll logic” of those who insist that unless there’s legal action no “real” harassment has happened:
You’re probably more likely to win the lottery than to get any law enforcement agency in the United States to take action when you are harassed online, no matter how viciously and explicitly. Local agencies lack the resources, federal agencies won’t bother. (Unless you’re a huge important celebrity. But the rules are always different for them. But trolls are quite happy to attack people who lack the resources to do anything about it. Troll code totally supports punching DOWN.)
There IS no “the authorities” that will help us.
We are on our own.
And if we don’t take care of one another, nobody else will.
We are all we’ve got.
Much of Sierra’s piece focuses on one of her biggest enemy in all of this, “hacktivist” Andrew Auernheimer, better known as weev. He’s posted a response to Sierra’s piece. It’s pretty appalling; weev is a hateful misogynist and white supremacist. Here’s a sampling:
Kathy Sierra is the epitome of what is wrong with my community. She had something coming to her and by the standards set by her own peers in the social justice community, there was nothing wrong with what she got.
I do not hate women. My colleagues include quite a few (cis and trans) women. I support women making tech. However, it is high time for the “women in tech” to get the fuck out.
The other essential bit of reading?
Telling My Story, by Adria Richards, Storify.
Developer and tech evangelist Richards, you may recall, ignited the fury of the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine by tweeting about sexist jokes she overheard at a tech conference. At the time, she largely kept silent about the harassment she was getting. But now she’s speaking up and sharing the details.
In a series of Tweets yesterday, Richards posted screenshots documenting some of the worst harassment she’s gotten; this Storify collection pulls these together in one place.
Make the effort to enlarge and read the screenshots; they’re horrifying. And Richards promises to post more.
If there is one thing I have learned in the last year when being harassed online it is: DON'T BE QUIET ABOUT IT!
— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) October 9, 2014
While I’m posting links, here’s one that’s hardly essential but that’s pretty funny:
Local Chicago Man Would Like Women to Smile, Accept His Advances, by Kara Brown.
No, this last one isn’t from The Onion. It’s REALLLL.
As someone who’s reasonably socially awkward myself, I find that genuinely awkward people tend to listen INTENTLY whenever someone tells them what they’re doing is inappropriate, because we’ve gone through life feeling like everyone has a manual for this interaction stuff that we somehow missed out on and HOLY SHIT SOMEONE IS TELLING ME THE BEST WAY TO INTERACT WITH THEM IN PLAIN ENGLISH, JACKPOT.
Of course, sometimes I myself might take things too literally, as in “Someone told me to leave them alone and now I must NEVER TALK TO THEM AGAIN”, but I listen. People who are told that their actions are inappropriate and still continue to take those actions aren’t being socially awkward. They’re being predatory.
Catalpa,
Agreed. It’s always been mortifying to me to find out if I’ve been off putting in some way.
So I opened the talk by Anita in youtube and had quite a chuckle. One of the video thumbnails on the side was titled “Reason vs Feminist Frequency” and the image was her face badly photoshopped into a butt. Reason ur doing it rong.
There’s a similar issue with men with big dogs. They’ll let the dog lunge at you and tackle you off your bicycle, then claim “he’s just being friendly.” Oddly, they never seem to want to be friendly to cops or bikers.
Like these guys only want you to smile, they just can’t understand the “fuck off” body language. Yet somehow, mysteriously, they have absolutely no trouble interpreting the body language of bikers who don’t want someone pinching their arse or telling them to smile.
Funny that.
Shitheads.
The complaint about sunglasses is especially obnoxious. Sometimes it means, “Bugger off, I don’t want to talk to you”, which is of course perfectly within a woman’s rights to do.
However, sometimes it means, “I have, or am actively trying to avoid getting, a migraine.”
I have a friend who has to wear sunglasses even on mostly cloudy days. Too much direct sunlight can put her in bed for a day or two in excruciating pain.
Er, I mean, how rude of her to prioritize her ability to function over strangers’ comfort level with interrupting her to give commentary on her outfit. Misandry.
I’m really almost triggered to anger and gruef by strangers commanding that I smile. The first time that happened to me I was trying to by Christmas gifts for people two months after my father (who I loved very much) passed away. I was too shocked to react. I wish I’d told the entitled creep off.
Syburi ,
I know the guys you are talking about! My dogs are large and not all dog friendly and my heart skips a beat when another dog, big or small comes running at us. Little dog people will just stand there like, “What?” or tell me what an awful dog I have for snarling and lunging at their small dog that ran up to us, snarling and sometimes snapping. The big dog guys will yell from what ever distance they are from their loose dog, “It’s OK, he’s friendly!” as I play goalie to avoid a fight. I finally just started yelling first, “He/She WILL bite! Get your damn dog!”. I’ve gotten so much stink eye and it is so stressful that I hardly ever walk my dogs anymore. Things like that can trigger panic attacks.
Those people never pick up their dog’s poop either. They just keep walking like they didn’t notice their dog stop to take a dump. I want to yell, “We all saw that! You did too! Stop looking at your phone and pick up the poop!”
I assume they are the same people who let their kids act like caffeinated monkeys in public and only pay attention to traffic lights when it is convenient.
Ugh. Ugh! UGH!
And thank you, cloudiah, for that excellent comic!
I’m going back to bed now.
b-but i’m socially awkward s-so it’s okay to be a creep
FUCK. YOU.
F U C K Y O U F U C K Y O U F U C K Y O U
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I have diagnosed Aspergers’s and ADHD, I blow social cues fairly often. In high school I had no interaction with the opposite sex that went beyond decently friendly, and I did some things were actually a bit creepy and lame, for example secret notes and the like, (because I was scared of rejection and didn’t have the confidence to talk to girls that I was interested in, though I was fine talking to girls I *wasn’t* trying to date at the time. The difference was, that shit is embarassing and painful and generally when stuff is embarassing you want to do it LESS, not more. So I’m very careful and polite in my social relations in general, in fear of doing something embarassing or awkward. I find it mindboggling that someone can be socially awkward like that, with all the attendant traumas, and not develop an overwhelming selfconsciousness about one’s social behavior These guys either:
Are socially awkward and don’t care, possibly because MRAs and other internet kiddies told them they didn’t have to because it’s SOCIETYS/WOMENS FAULT that socially awkward people have difficulty with social relations like say, flirting.
Aren’t socially awkward and are just using it as a cover to be assholes to women.
I’m pretty sure I saw the guy from the Craigslist ad yesterday on my way home from work.
Adding my voice to the “socially awkward is not an excuse to be an ass”.
@Amanda
Social awkwardness is a thing. I’m not denying that. I am awkward occasionally, a holdover from my deathly-shy phase. If someone greets me in a context where I don’t expect it, I don’t always react correctly and instead just sort of stare at them. It comes across as rude and I always feel bad afterward.
It’s the dudes (almost always dudes, but not entirely exclusively dudes) whose “social awkwardness” makes things awkward for you that get the side-eye from me. It’s clear from looking at them that they don’t feel awkward in the slightest. A guy who is physically obstructing you until you acknowledge him to his personal satisfaction? Is not socially awkward. If he doesn’t look like he feels awkward (and from your description he clearly doesn’t), then his “social awkwardness” is a ruse and a cover for knowingly bad behavior.
re: SMILE
I’ve learned that when dudes ask me to smile, the proper response is NOT “why?” Because that invites further interaction, and they always have some kind of dumb-ass reason, like, “Because life is grand!” I’ve started telling them, “I don’t take orders from you,” which usually seems to work. It upsets them, which is awesome actually, but because it upsets them I don’t want to deploy it against guys who are behaving in an intimidating way.
So, does anyone have any other possible responses that shut them down?
I think there’s a big difference between the “aware” type of socially awkward, where you might feel discomfort during an interaction, but you fervently hope the other person doesn’t feel the same way; and the “jerk” type of socially awkward, where they deliberately offload their own discomfort onto other people (by resorting to hostility and insults when faced with rejection, for example).
Manners, empathy, civilization, the social contract, basic emotional maturity – it all boils down to concern for other people. Those are the very things trolls, libertarians, and MRAs spend their lives railing against.
@strivingally
That’s pretty much what PUA techniques are – it’s probing the crowd to locate women with weak boundaries. I wish parents/schools/magazines/pop music/movies/YA novels could do a better job of teaching girls how to spot and dismantle this type of bullshit. We teach the obvious predator-spotting techniques (creepy guys with vans) but we don’t teach them to spot more subtle red flags in everyday situations. Meanwhile, we train young girls to be pleasing to boys, to focus on hair and clothes and makeup, to be desirable but not have desire, and to mistake stalking for romantic love (hello, Edward and Christian Grey). All of that keeps girls less attuned to their own needs and more vulnerable to predators.
Even at my relatively advanced no-nonsense age, I’ve learned so so much from reading the posts and the comments here. It’s helped me connect the dots between street harrassment, negging, gaslighting, bullying, body commodification, and other abusive boundary-violating tactics. They’re not just isolated instances of creepiness. They’re all part of a pattern. In the past, whenever someone made me feel uncomfortable, I’ve never been able to articulate why – just a gut feeling that I wanted to get away from this person. It’s so easy to get “argued” out of your gut feelings and self-esteem by a skilled predator, or even just a garden variety d-bag who targets you at a college party. It would have really helped me when I was younger to have the tools and vocabulary to deconstruct this stuff, name it, and be able to defend appropriately against it.
On the flip side, we should be teaching boys empathy, restraint, emotional literacy, how to take responsibility for their actions, and how to relate to girls as human beings. Rigid gender roles are just as toxic for boys as they are for girls. The happiest, most relaxed guys I know are the ones who are the least concerned about “manliness”.
You’d think the purity ball crowd would be on board with educating and arming their children against sleaze, but I have a feeling they’d be dead set against it. It might make their daughters less willing to be married off to authoritarian buttwads.
I remember reading this article by a feminist writer/blog (I can’t recall if it’s Amanda Marcotte or Skepchick) that one way they would rather deal with trolls wasn’t to “feed” them or stay silent. It was to drag them out into the public light, and basically let as many people as possible know how big an asshat they are.
I think you may be right. I read somewhere that one woman got hit on three separate times by the same PUA. He didn’t seem to realize that he’d already met and been rejected by her before. He was just so entrenched in his numbers game that he would approach any unaccompanied woman he could find, wherever he was, with the same stupid spiel every time. She was more amused than anything else by his ignorance, and never said “Excuse me, but you’ve already hit on me twice before. The answer is still NO.” (I kind of wish she HAD, because I can just picture the look on that dude’s face.)
A thousand times YES to this. I was always so grateful whenever someone set me straight about something I was doing wrong when I was a very socially awkward kid. Embarrassed at first, but grateful soon after, because as soon as I started acting more like others, I found myself being treated more like others, too. And for me, who wanted nothing more desperately than to fit in and be accepted, that was so important. These guys who think they’re “standing out from the crowd” by making themselves obnoxious are, as you say, predators. Yes, they stick out, all right…like a sore thumb. And nobody wants one of those.
@Amanda
Also, I should have mentioned: someone doesn’t have to behave in an overtly flirtatious way to display symptoms of being an entitled douche. The guy who kept wanting to talk to you when you had signaled that you were more interested in a different conversation? That’s almost textbook entitlement. That’s not social awkwardness; that’s him feeling like his desires were the most important consideration at hand, and feeling like your desires basically didn’t exist.
PoM,
Well, it’s only ever happened to me once. I’ve been informed that I can have a scary ‘Nothing would give me more joy than to end your pitiful existence, but imagining it still makes me warm inside’ smile.
I don’t know how I developed it, because I don’t really get warm fuzzies about ending folks…
Dude backed off pretty quick. He asked for a smile; it’s not my fault he didn’t like/feel comfortable with what he got!
Re: SMILE
“I’d love to smile, but it’s really hard when the landlord slit his wrists and bled out in your bathroom this morning, and you’re holding back a tsunami of diarrhea.”
They want to invade your physical space? Great! Invade their mental space with a disgusting, boner-killing image.
@Buttercup
Oh LOL! I don’t think I could do that whole thing, but saying, “I can’t, I’m having terrible diarrhea today,” is something I might be able to pull out in the moment.
That’s awesome! Thank you!
Yeah, you’re right, PoM, they don’t really deserve the effort it takes to say that whole sentence. But even the shorter version would have the effect of reframing the situation and puncturing their power play. The standard responses – ignoring, “f*ck off”, smiling through gritted teeth – just reinforce what they want, which is to get some kind of response from you and make you dance their jig. It’s all about demonstrating their superiority in public.
Playing the diarrhea card just confuses them. You haven’t outright rejected them, so they can’t get hostile and go the name-calling route…yet you’ve effectively sprayed their libido with a hose, so they can’t continue along the harrassment route. The only valid face-saving response left to them is “Oh, sorry, go on with your day.”
(I like this response better than something like “my dog died this morning”, because the dog excuse relies on them being emotionally empathetic enough to back off, which is not a given with street harassers. This one is more visceral and graphic, without actually being potty-mouthed.)
The only drawback is: what if this guy is into scat? But that’s probably an acceptable risk.
@Buttercup: YES. I was trying to put it into words, but you said it much better. Basically, I never learned how to distinguish between me overreacting and a real threat. I, too, was taught to avoid the guy in the van calling me over, but not subtle intimidation. Like I’m just expected to smile, be polite and give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they do something REALLY overt, and to ignore my own discomfort. But these guys know exactly how much they can get away with, without crossing the line that triggers most women to do something about it, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve both been at the company for over 10 years.
The Chigago letter: I think it is attempt at parody or some kind of “ironic sexism”. It just seems so self-aware ofthe sexism and that earbud as signaling wanting no contact and so on. Also the last line “Do not contact me with unsolicited offers” =>hypocritical humour.
(Hope this works)
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Wouldn’t this be useful ?
@Amanda – exactly! PUAs take advantage of the fact that women are socialized to be nice, to take care of other people’s feelings, and to want to please. Girls aren’t taught to pause and say “wait a minute, this isn’t right” when a guy is doing a lot of soft boundary testing, or to say to themselves, “so what?” in response to insults. They just assume they’re being too sensitive. In social settings, there’s a lot of pressure for women to be friendly and approachable and positive. It can be hard to distinguish friendly meetcute banter from negging, unless you’re aware of PUA tactics and have a strong sense of what is appropriate for a stranger to say to you.
PUAs also take advantage of the fact that many women have internalized the idea that their entire worth is based on looks. When all else fails, they play the “yer ugly” card to bring women back in line. Imagine if society valued women’s actions and character traits as much as men’s: then “yer ugly”, the 10/10 rating system, and the constant public appraisal of women’s features by random strangers would lose all of its power.
I think that’s why redpillers hate fat acceptance and self-esteem so much. They don’t want to lose that trump card. If they can’t be the ultimate arbiters of beauty and value, then what power would they have over women?
@PolicyofMadness
Well, that’s true…you don’t want to get into a kinkier-than-thou contest. If someone’s harassing you on the street, they’ve already demonstrated they have no regard for normal social convention.
If he’s into scat, maybe that’s a good time to mention your recent giardia and Hepatitis C diagnoses.
@Buttercup
“I can’t, I was just diagnosed with AIDS.” Too far?