TPM: Let’s Be Real: Online Harassment Isn’t ‘Virtual’ For Women

[geek tragedy]

Note: if this subject offends or bores you, feel free to trash thread and read something of interest.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/let-s-be-real-online-harassment-isn-t-virtual-for-women

Stuck at home and going swiftly down an online rabbit hole, I spent hours reading posts that extended beyond commenting on my rape-ability into users posting dozens of photos of me, commenting on my body, rating my physical attractiveness and listing my contact information. And halfway down one of those threads, I got to this:

“I actually happen to have met her before. She’s extremely pretty in person.”

It was an innocuous comment, even a kind one. But more followed, in other threads – people who claimed to know me in real life, or said they had at least met me, or seen me, or maybe talked to an ex boyfriend of mine. They had details about what I wore to class and what I said. I felt very suddenly like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to fill my lungs.

More:

I know how quickly the lines between the “real” and the virtual can blur. Before I discovered the AutoAdmit threads, I had already been blogging about feminism for a little while, and rape and murder threats weren’t new. It remains standard for people to leave comments like, “Here, babycakes, let me give you some roofies and fuck you up the ass, in the ear and up your nose until you weep and bleed” on my site. For the first year or two they shook me up. Then I learned how to roll my eyes, copy and paste them into a dedicated folder and hit the delete key. I did what all the male bloggers told me to do: I ignored the bullies, I grew such thick skin that now I worry about my lack of a fight-or-flight fear reflex, my ability to eat whatever shit is put in front of my face, how in real-life arguments with loved ones and moments of trauma I go stone-cold and it’s almost like my heart shuts off. But I bucked up. I knew how to be tough on the Internet.

And then, the summer after I graduated and was studying for the bar exam, one of the AutoAdmit posters showed up at my door.

Conclusion:

But what about the things you can’t put a price on? How many stories weren’t written because the women who could best tell them were too afraid? How many people like me, damaged and lashing out, paid their online cruelties forward? How many women look back at the person they were before their skin thickened, before they learned how to deal, when they were a little more sure-footed, and how many of them grieve a little bit for all the good things that got lost in the process of surviving?

What does an online landscape look like when the women most able to tolerate it are the same ones who are best capable of bucking up and shutting parts of themselves down?

This is something we men simply can't appreciate upon reading the first or 15th time. Online misogyny and harassment is REAL, not virtual. It is a REAL problem for women. Not because they're oversensitive, because they're human beings.

[athena]

1. K&R (n/t)

[el_bryanto]

2. That is well worth considering;

Most of the message boards I've participated in have been pretty well moderated, but sometimes I look at comments sections on other websites and I'm just astounded at the quickness to talk about violence.

And that last line - when you write stuff and edit yourself - that rings true. If it's painful to talk, people will stop talking.

Bryant

[geek tragedy]

3. to build on that, the toxicity follows the women even when they're not on an unmoderated site.

Trauma affects the brain in a lot of different ways, and here’s how those AutoAdmit threads affected mine: I don’t remember most of law school, except for the sharp retreat inward. As a college student, I was a self-confident loud-mouth. By that second semester of law school, nothing terrified me more than speaking in class – not only because I knew whatever I said would show up on the message board, although that was true, but because the people on the message board were probably right: I was a fat idiot, a dumb cunt who had no business being here. I wore a lot of hoodies to school because they shielded my face. I skipped classes if I suspected I would be called on. I glared at anyone who made eye contact with me. I made no friends.

As a practicing attorney, the inward turn faded a little, but it never completely went away. I avoided professional events, feeling immediately self-conscious if someone looked at my name tag a little bit too long – the legal world is small, so did they know me from the AutoAdmit boards? I dreaded the thought of clients or other counsel Googling me. I felt like an impostor, too dumb for the job I was given, a stupid interlocutor into the legal world, and someone who any day now would be discovered as a fraud.

And, can you blame them?

They realize that the guys who post the rape threats where they're allowed to are also present on websites where they're not allowed to. Heck, they're present in real life, around women. Could be any classmate or colleague or online community member.

And when a guy in those 'safe' settings gives them that vibe . . .

[DLevine]

4. K&R. nt

[thucythucy]

5. Thank you

for posting this.

[ScreamingMeemie]

6. It isn't. And it shouldn't be "virtual" for anyone.

I keep a blog and some of the comments on it, by people who were once "friends," shouldn't be "virtual" even from their point of view. We forget that, on both sides of the screen, exist real people. For every horrible thing you say, while giving to the poor, helping out your friends, or claiming to be there for others... you've erased with words. I can shrug it off, but it proves my point every time.


on edit: Thanks for sharing this. I hope more take the time to read it.

[cinnabonbon]

7. Stories like these are so important

especially if you're of the opinion that rape threats are 'no big deal'.

[redqueen]

8. K&R nt

[AgingAmerican]

9. The same goes for all cyber-bullying

It is real.

[pnwmom]

10. Thank you, geek tragedy, for your very enlightened and sensitive post. n/t

[Lunacee_2013]

11. THANK YOU!

It's amazing what ppl will post when they're hiding behind a computer screen. Unfortunately, on-one harassment doesn't always stay on-line. I have a friend who was cyber-stalked for months on Facebook by her estranged husband, right up until she took him to court to get divorced and even then the judge had to tell him to knock it off. To me on-line bullies seem to be even bigger cowards than the real-life ones. At least IRL bullies have to actually look at you.