Internet trolls an online nightmare for young women

[ismnotwasm]

Last edited Mon Jan 21, 2013, 12:51 PM - Edit history (3)

“My impulse, which I have to check all the time, is to blame the girls,” observes York University Prof. Jennifer Jenson, who has been teaching pedagogy and technology for 15 years. “When you ask questions like, ‘Why do you do this?’ They say, ‘Well, all my friends are doing it.’ But the problem is so much larger than that, and they’re not even aware that it’s so much larger.”

“It’s systemic; it’s on all levels,” agrees Alice Marwick, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at New York’s Fordham University. “When you live in a culture that sexualizes young women overwhelmingly, it is not very surprising that, when you give young women the tools to objectify themselves, they use them in the same way.
But the onus of responsibility for what’s happening online is on the young men. Even if girls are posting scantily clad pictures of (themselves) on the Internet, it’s not an invitation for sexual violence, comments or hate speech.”

Last fall, when Gawker.com outed “Violentacrez,” one of Reddit’s more active contributors of “creepshots” and “racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed,” the world learned of how unsuspecting young women were subject to dirty uncle activities on the content aggregation site. And not an obscure site. It’s owned by the publishing giant Condé Nast, which also produces The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Architectural Digest.

The year 2012 may well go down in cyberhistory as the one in which the world realized it had created a socio-cultural nightmare, one made up of accumulated years of media objectification of girls combined with a generation of boys who can just Google “NSFW fill-in-your-fetish-of-choice” for free porn online, anytime, anywhere.


http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1317081--internet-trolls-an-online-nightmare-for-young-women


Interesting article. To say the least.

[seabeyond]

1. very good article.

“It’s not that men making sexist comments is a new thing. It’s just that they are so prevalent on the Internet and can be so easily accessed by people. The other new thing is the persistence of these comments. If I am walking down the street and somebody called me a sexist slur, it’s gone a second later. If somebody does that on the Internet, it can be accessed by Google, by searches on my name, and it has a more long-term impact. So that persistence and visibility on the Internet are the two things that differentiate the behaviour that goes on online from the day-to-day sexism that most women experience on some level or another.”

“Women can write any kind of blog they want about fashion or cooking or parenting and they are not going to get hate comments; those are realms where it is acceptable for women to have opinions,” notes Marwick. “But as soon as they start on politics or other subjects, the amount of hate they get is beyond the pale.”

“We need to understand trolling for what it is; it’s engineered to be socially and personally destructive,” Guthrie tells the Star. “It’s a factor of not sitting in the same room with your target, and not dealing with the negative consequences of being face-to-face.”

[ismnotwasm]

2. I got a copyright notification on that

I was thinking since a lot of it was quotes, and not most of the written article it would be ok. So I edited it a bit. Should have been more careful.

It's a good read

[seabeyond]

3. ya. i figured. i too have gotten a couple. seem targeted. i am not getting how we are suppose to

do it when i see people all over the fuckin board going all out. i try. a sentence isnt a paragraph. but, seems the new way to go after us.

[redqueen]

4. Yeah, I've noticed that too.

Interesting.

[seabeyond]

5. but, hwat i wanted to say reading this article. parents. (i was reminded in another OP)

parents. the writer is saying she too often go to the girls saying, what are you thinking. that she puts it on the girls.

parents. i put it on the parents and reading thru the article i was thinking, where the fuck are the parents. why havent the parents addressed this with the girls, giving them the tools they need.

[redqueen]

6. Patriarchy, of course.

That's why no matter what happens to girls and women, the first instinct is to blame the girls and women.

Domestic violence, sexual harassment, rape... Most of the time, people will look for ways to blame the women.

So many girls and women think feminism is a dirty word, and that feminists are women who hate sex and want to be superior to men.

The reason, of course, is patriarchy. Most people do not see it... so how can they teach anyone that this shit is more than individual conflicts? If you see it as a case of it being just a few assholes, and tell girls to ignore them and they'll go away... Well? What else can anyone expect?

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4051

[ismnotwasm]

7. Oh I just love that one

And I agree; when the US male (and females) looks over at patriarchy in India, or Pakistan or China, they'll shudder at publicized atrocities without recognizing the root cause is part and parcel of Western culture as well.

[seabeyond]

8. yes. i am told by anyonei discuss this as it is only a few. when i start spelling it out they say

they do not want to hear.

if a person does not want to see the reality of the world we are creating, (and their silence and unknowing is part of the creation), then how can they tell me i am wrong. it makes no sense to me. but, the people that would not allow, challenge, call out just do not want to know what is going on.

[ismnotwasm]

9. I'd say its fear

But it's more a lazy self satisfaction. Apparently, If one doesn't experience it directly, it goes to either the category of fantasy (not true, made up) or denial (not true despite evidence)

You Push, THEN it's its anger masking fear. Yet you'll notice this apparent need to be noticed, right? So in comes the snark or aggression or passive-aggressive ways of being noticed, without added to the conversation, offering no solutions, no actual discussion.

[seabeyond]

10. honestly with the net and with RL, it seems to me barbara bush, waste my beautiful mind...

So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

it really believe it is this mentality. if they do not know the reality of something, they do not have to expend energy or feel bad.

i prefer truths.