General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet [View all]BarackTheVote
(938 posts)I gave my general thoughts on cyber bullying back in post 73. As for this article in particular, I really do find it kind of offensive because I feel it uses its statistics to massively distort the issue of cyber bullying, online harassment, and trolling. It says that of all the people online, 72.5% that get harassed (or rather that REPORT harassment) are women. Approximately 100% of people who have ever been online have been bullied in some way shape or form in their online lifetimes. Yes, "Surfing while woman" will get you harassed a lot of places, and except for very specific parts of the internet, you won't get harassed for "surfing while a guy." But sex or gender is just one of the things that set bullies off. God help you if you go onto a Cards message board and say "Go Cubbies!" They'll tear you a new asshole, and depending on the quality of person on that particular site, you might very well get some extremely vile insults thrown at you and maybe even death threats. Same for any other sports team, even if there's not a rivalry. Or movie news message board, go in there and say Michael Bay is a genius--or that Michael Bay is terrible... whatever you say, you'll get harassed. And just look at DU... God help you if you come in and say something favorable about GW or unfavorable about LGBT... the lynch mob (righteous, I would say, don't get me wrong) is something to behold.
Acting like cyber bullying is a phenomena that disproportionately effects women is a gross misstatement of what cyber bullying is and how it effects every citizen of the internet. And, as I said before, the kinds of cyber bullying that lead to suicide usually are a continuation of actual bullying IRL, and bullies can be mean girls or dick guys, and I'd say the kind of bullying that leads to the sort of collapse that results in suicide would have to be coming at you from all directions, including from people of your own gender.
Yes, woman ARE cyber bullied just because of the accident of their sex (by accident, I, of course, mean something generally beyond your control); no, that is not right, and it absolutely DOES deserve attention. But it's just one of a myriad of things that can be like ringing the dinner-bell for trolls. We are all in this together, and using these kinds of misleading statistics to hold yourself or your sex up as the ONLY one(s) that have to deal with this issue is not productive and is extremely unsympathetic for others dealing with this issue.