Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet

[phantom power]

I was 12 hours into a summer vacation in Palm Springs when my phone hummed to life, buzzing twice next to me in the dark of my hotel room. I squinted at the screen. It was 5:30 a.m., and a friend was texting me from the opposite coast. “Amanda, this twitter account. Freaking out over here,” she wrote. “There is a twitter account that seems to have been set up for the purpose of making death threats to you.”

I dragged myself out of bed and opened my laptop. A few hours earlier, someone going by the username “headlessfemalepig” had sent me seven tweets. “I see you are physically not very attractive. Figured,” the first said. Then: “You suck a lot of drunk and drug fucked guys cocks.” As a female journalist who writes about sex (among other things), none of this feedback was particularly out of the ordinary. But this guy took it to another level: “I am 36 years old, I did 12 years for ‘manslaughter’, I killed a woman, like you, who decided to make fun of guys cocks.” And then: “Happy to say we live in the same state. Im looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head.” There was more, but the final tweet summed it up: “You are going to die and I am the one who is going to kill you. I promise you this.”

My fingers paused over the keyboard. I felt disoriented and terrified. Then embarrassed for being scared, and, finally, pissed. On the one hand, it seemed unlikely that I’d soon be defiled and decapitated at the hands of a serial rapist-murderer. On the other hand, headlessfemalepig was clearly a deranged individual with a bizarre fixation on me. I picked up my phone and dialed 911.

...

making quick and sick threats has become so easy that many say the abuse has proliferated to the point of meaninglessness, and that expressing alarm is foolish. Reporters who take death threats seriously “often give the impression that this is some kind of shocking event for which we should pity the ‘victims,’” my colleague Jim Pagels wrote in Slate this fall, “but anyone who’s spent 10 minutes online knows that these assertions are entirely toothless.” On Twitter, he added, “When there’s no precedent for physical harm, it’s only baseless fear mongering.” My friend Jen Doll wrote, at The Atlantic Wire, “It seems like that old ‘ignoring’ tactic your mom taught you could work out to everyone’s benefit…. These people are bullying, or hope to bully. Which means we shouldn’t take the bait.” In the epilogue to her book The End of Men, Hanna Rosin—an editor at Slate—argued that harassment of women online could be seen as a cause for celebration. It shows just how far we’ve come. Many women on the Internet “are in positions of influence, widely published and widely read; if they sniff out misogyny, I have no doubt they will gleefully skewer the responsible sexist in one of many available online outlets, and get results.”

So women who are harassed online are expected to either get over ourselves or feel flattered in response to the threats made against us. We have the choice to keep quiet or respond “gleefully.”

But no matter how hard we attempt to ignore it, this type of gendered harassment—and the sheer volume of it—has severe implications for women’s status on the Internet. Threats of rape, death, and stalking can overpower our emotional bandwidth, take up our time, and cost us money through legal fees, online protection services, and missed wages. I’ve spent countless hours over the past four years logging the online activity of one particularly committed cyberstalker, just in case. And as the Internet becomes increasingly central to the human experience, the ability of women to live and work freely online will be shaped, and too often limited, by the technology companies that host these threats, the constellation of local and federal law enforcement officers who investigate them, and the popular commentators who dismiss them—all arenas that remain dominated by men, many of whom have little personal understanding of what women face online every day.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/

[snot]

1. If a man made this kind of threat in person, or through the mail, wouldn't it be illegal?

And what recourse would the woman have?

[frazzled]

2. Contact law enforcement (FBI and/or local) and ...

if they find them (big if?) prosecute, prosecute, prosecute. This not only should be illegal. It is illegal. The only way to stop women from being harassed and threatened online is to send these people to jail. Eventually, it will become less prevalent.

Here are some helpful suggestions for what to do:

(2) Quick-reference: Federal law enforcement agencies, what they do, and how to contact them

If you observe or are the victim of what you consider to be online threats or stalking at HuffPost or elsewhere, you can report the matter to one of two federal agencies:

F.B.I.: Investigates and works with the Department of Justice to prosecute threats against government officials and citizens. The F.B.I. has established an Internet crime reporting page here. Or, you can contact your nearest F.B.I. field office here, or call the DC headquarters at [phone].

A number of states have also enacted laws against cyber-threats, urgings of violence, and cyber-stalking. You may consider contacting your local law enforcement agency for more information, or to report an incident that affects you, or someone within the boundaries of the state within which you reside.

>

(b) Threatening another person, or his property or reputation (18 U.S.C. 875):
It is a felony to "transmit [including on the Internet] in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another [or make] any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee." (Ed. We presume that "property," in this context, includes threats against one's pet, or website.)

(c) Threatening or stalking another person while hiding behind a fictitious identity --- or knowingly allow one's website to be used for this purpose (47 U.S.C. § 223(a)(1)(C), 2006):
“Whoever ... in interstate or foreign communications ... makes a telephone call or utilizes a telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication ensues, without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications...." (2006) "n the case of subparagraph (C) of subsection (a)(1), includes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… (or) (2) knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under his control to be used for any activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity… shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
It is generally accepted that cyber-stalking and cyber-harassment includes acts such as trying to find out an anonymous user's actual identity, gathering an inordinate amount of information about an individual, searching public records about them, running on-line searches, contacting third parties about them, setting up a dedicated online chat room to discuss them, etc. --- and demonstrating that one is engaging in this behavior.


(d) Soliciting others to commit a crime of violence (18 U.S.C. § 373):
[Paraphrasing]: A solicitation, command, inducement, or attempt to persuade [another person or persons to engage in the] "use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against property or against the person of another."

http://huff-watch.blogspot.com/2010/11/online-threats-and-stalking-and-law.html