Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Not as easy as you might think

    You may think it’s a cinch getting rid of misogyny. Turns out it’s not. Sady at Tigerbeatdown started out thinking it was (or more like assuming it was without noticing she was assuming it – we all know how that goes), and then she realized it’s not.

    In 2009, I genuinely believed people were going to change their minds about being sexist, because they read my blog.

    I know, right? If only someone had come up with this plan before! All I had to do was register a WordPress domain, compose some charmingly ironic yet pointed analyses of Ye Aulde Patriarchy, cite some academics so they knew I wasn’t stupid, throw a lot of jokes and references to oral sex in there to prove feminists weren’t “humorless” or “frigid,” and the sexists, they would be delighted. So delighted they decided to stop being sexists! “Hmmmm,” they’d say. “Sady sure doesn’t appreciate it when I do the sexism. Since she’s my new Internet Best Friend, I had better cut that shit out pronto! Then we can all join a bowling league!” BLAM. REVOLUTION ACCOMPLISHED. No more problems, for anyone, ever, because I blogged.

    I hate to tell you this, friends. But I think my plan, it had a minor flaw. Which is: Misogynists don’t like women. It doesn’t matter how uniquely charming and witty and acquainted with various fine bourbons you are. Are you a woman? Then they don’t like you. And they especially don’t like you telling them what to do. By, for example, asking them to cut it out with the misogyny.

    There may be one exception to that rule. It may be that if you are a woman who likes misogynists then they do like you – for now. But apart from that, no.

    What I got, friends, were comments. Comments about myself. And blogs about myself. And message-board discussions, also about myself. And e-mails. What I got was what every woman (feminist or not) and openly anti-sexist person (woman or not) on this our Internet gets: I got targeted. With threats, with insults, with smear campaigns, with attempts to threaten my employment or credibility or just general ability to get through the day with a healthy attitude and a minimal amount of insult.

    This is a recurring problem! Not a Special Sady Problem, but an Everyone Problem. And, increasingly, folks are identifying it as such.

    Which means we can count on the threats and insults and smear campaigns to expand hugely, but it also means we can do a better job of resisting.

     

     

  • What should we do about sexist abuse online?

    Helen Lewis-Hasteley, Zoe Williams, Bella Mackie and Catherine Redfern offer suggestions.

  • A highly gendered phenomenon

    Anyway, even though I have no immediate plans to out any of the people who put a little sparkle into their drab lives by calling me and some of my friends cunts and manginas and worse than genocidal dictators, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do anything at all. Nuh uh. I’m going to go on kvetching and nagging, like the other women bloggers who have decided no thanks, not having any more of that.

    I’m going to call your attention to the AAUW report on sexual harassment in schools, for instance. I’m going to quote from it.

    Girls were more likely than boys to say that they had been
    negatively affected by sexual harassment—a finding that
    confirms previous research by AAUW (2001) and others.
    Not only were girls more likely than boys to say sexual
    harassment caused them to have trouble sleeping (22
    percent of girls versus 14 percent of boys), not want to go
    to school (37 percent of girls versus 25 percent of boys),
    or change the way they went to or home from school (10
    percent of girls versus 6 percent of boys), girls were more
    likely in every case to say they felt that way for “quite a
    while” compared with boys. Too often, these negative
    emotional effects take a toll on students’ and especially
    girls’ education, resulting in decreased productivity and
    increased absenteeism from school (Chesire, 2004). Thus,
    although both girls and boys can encounter sexual harassment
    at school, it is still a highly “gendered phenomenon
    that is directly and negatively associated with outcomes
    for girls” (Ormerod et al., 2008).

    It’s not harmless. It’s not just “how it is.”

    Many of the students who admitted to sexually harassing
    others didn’t think of it as a big deal (44 percent), and
    many were trying to be funny (39 percent). Only a handful
    of students who harassed others did so because they wanted
    a date with the person (3 percent) or thought the
    person liked it (6 percent). Thus, sexual harassment does
    not usually appear to be a misunderstanding. Few harassers
    see themselves as “rejected suitors,” and many appear
    to be misguided comedians or simply students who are
    unaware, or unwilling to recognize, that their actions
    may bother others. These findings suggest that prevention
    efforts need to address when humor crosses the line and
    becomes sexual harassment. Moreover, for some students,
    understanding that sexual harassment can indeed be a big
    deal for other students is a necessary first step.

    Of course, for the ones who do it precisely because they do understand that it’s harmful, it’s more difficult to know how to improve their thinking. What’s a school to do? Sit them down and look them in the eye and say “why are you so determined to be a malicious piece of shit?” Well no. I don’t know what they can do though.

  • Secularist of the Year 2005

    Since Maryam has just joined FTB and Kenan is about to, I thought I would repost this item from October 2005, when Maryam was named Secularist of the Year and I rejoiced rather noisily. Pleasingly, I quoted an earlier article in the Guardian in which Kenan talked about and quoted Maram. It all joins up, you see.

    October 9, 2005

    Maryam won! Maryam Namazie is Secularist of the Year. Ya-hoooooo. Sorry to be so American, but I’m really really pleased. As a matter of fact, I’m also damn smug. Here I’ve been publishing her articles like mad all this time, which I haven’t noticed the Guardian or the Independent bothering to do. Well? Well??! Wouldn’t you be smug? Wouldn’t you? Who has the better judgment? Eh? Eh? Which would you rather have published – Dilpazier Aslam, or Maryam Namazie?

    Well maybe now they’ll start publishing her. Maybe this will be the push they need. Kenan Malik said, you know. Remember that? In the Guardian (she said pointedly). All the way back in January.

    It also creates a climate of censorship in which any criticism of Islam can be dismissed as Islamophobic. The people who suffer most from such censorship are those struggling to defend basic rights within Muslim communities. Marayam Namazie is an Iranian refugee who has long campaigned for women’s rights and against Islamic repression. As a result she has been condemned as an Islamophobe, even by anti-racist organisations. “On the one hand,” she says, “you are threatened by the political Islamic movement with assassination or imprisonment or flogging. And on the other you have so-called progressive people who tell you that what you say in defence of humanity, in defence of equal rights for all, is racist. I think it’s nothing short of an outrage.”

    I don’t see anything about the award in the papers yet (Maryam told me herself, and Azar Majedi sent a congratulatory message), so I’ll just link to this for now. It wouldn’t do for people not to know.

  • Would Mississippi’s Prop 26 outlaw birth control?

    Legislators, judges, and district attorneys will be empowered to implement personhood as they see fit. Nothing to worry about there.

  • You should be ashamed of yourself, JD

    Chris Rodda points out a really staggering example of abuse of privilege: an Air Force Major defaming enlisted service members who can’t reply because he outranks them. You probably won’t be astonished to learn that the Major is a Christian, and a proselytizing one at that, while the soldiers he goes after are atheists.

    For the past three years, an atheist Army sergeant has had to remain silent as lie after lie was told about him by an Air Force Major named Jonathan Dowty. Major Dowty, a.k.a. JD the Christian Fighter Pilot, is a Christian officer who belongs to the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF), an organization that thinks the real duty of a military officer is to raise up “a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.”

    As a devout Christian officer, Major Dowty has made it a practice to publicly attack and defame atheist and other non-Christian enlisted service members by name, knowing that they can’t respond to defend themselves because he’s an active duty officer, so it would be insubordinate for them to respond to him.

    Would you believe it? I really do find myself incredulous. Wouldn’t you think he would recognize that that is taking a grossly unfair advantage?

    Major Dowty has relentlessly targeted five particular service members on his christianfighterpilot.com blog — three atheists and one Muslim in the Army, and one Air Force tech sergeant who practices an earth-centered religion. All of these service members are or have been clients of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), and include my fellow blogger here on Freethought Blogs, foxhole atheist SGT Justin Griffith.

    Well, one of the soldiers Major Dowty has been lying about on his blog, SGT Dustin Chalker, just got out of the Army, and is now free to fight back against this Christian bully who has dogged him for the last three years.

    Dustin’s “first order of business” upon becoming a civilian was to go straight to Major Dowty’s blog and post a little comment on a post that Dowty wrote about him just this week. Dustin’s comment, submitted last night, has not yet shown up on Major Dowty’s blog, where the comments are, of course, “moderated,” so I thought I would post it here.

    And she did. It’s not a “little” comment, and it’s very satisfying. Go read it.

  • One stop shopping

    All your bases are belong to us, or, Freethought blogs assimilates more of the very best secular and/or atheist bloggers, or, yee-ha! Coming soon to a Freethought blog near you:

    Kenan Malik

    John Loftus of Debunking Christianity

    Richard Carrier

    Do admit.

     

     

     

  • Officer bullies subordinates in his blog

    They of course can’t fight back – until they leave the military. Atheist Sgt Dustin Chalker is finally able to reply to Christian Major Jonathan Dowty.

  • Read the AAUW sexual harassment report

    Sobering statistics about the prevalence of sexual harassment and the damage it does to students’ education.

  • More on sexual harassment survey

    Nearly a third of the victims said the harassment made them feel sick, affected their study habits or fueled reluctance to go to school at all.

  • Sexual harassment is pervasive in schools

    48% of US middle and high school students suffered sexual harassment in the past school year, both in person and online, a national survey released Monday said.

  • It’s mine and you can’t play with it

    This is no good. No good at all. The video of the Haught-Coyne Q and A is mysteriously gone. Just gone. Page unavailable.

    Perhaps there is some explanation other than the obvious (and discreditable)? I don’t know. I await further knowledge.

  • My ladder doesn’t go that high

    From Tigerbeatdown, less than a month ago.

    It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people, especially women, but not always, as I can attest, and particularly feminists, though again, not always, as I can attest, online. The readers, the consumers, the fans, may not always notice it because people are silent about it. Because this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it.  To open your email, take note of the morning’s contents, and then quickly shuttle them to the appropriate files for future reference or forwarding to the authorities. To check on the server, fix what needs fixing, and move on with your day. To skim the comments to see what needs to be deleted, to know that when you write a post like this one, you will have to delete a lot of heinous and ugly comments, because you want to protect your readers from the sheer, naked, hate that people carry for you. To weigh, carefully, the decision to approve a comment not because there’s a problem with the content, but because you worry that the reader may be stalked by someone who will tell her that she should die for having an opinion. And when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is.

    I really despise this idea that you’re supposed to “rise above it.” I fucking hate it. It makes it our problem, while the shit-throwers don’t have to do anything – they just get to go right on throwing shit. I despise the idea (that I’ve seen touted approximately seven trillion times in the last few months) that saying this is misogyny and it sucks is “playing the victim.” I beg your pardon? If you’re mugged is it “playing the victim” to say you were mugged? Sure, it’s childish to make too much of a fuss about one cross remark; it’s spoiled and whiny to talk about your own thin skin while ignoring tanks running over other people; but that doesn’t mean anyone should “rise above” deliberate calculated sustained campaigns of vituperation. If people are trying to bully you into shutting the fuck up, you really do get to resist. Not “rise above”; not ignore; resist.

  • US warns of attacks on Lagos hotels

    The Hilton, Nicon Luxury and Sheraton hotels were named as possible targets of Boko Haram.

  • Boko Haram attacks kill at least 100

    An unnamed local government official in Damaturu was quoted by AFP as saying that hundreds of wounded people were being treated in hospital.

  • How Many More People Will Boko Haram Kill in Nigeria…..?

    The news has just come in that at least 150 people have been killed in a coordinated attack by the radical Islamic sect in Nigeria known as Boko Haram. Many government buildings have been reportedly destroyed. The group’s leader has threatened to carry out more attacks. And that means more innocent lives will be lost in the coming days, weeks or months.

    My question is this: should the world keep quiet, stand by and watch this bloodthirsty group continue its killing spree? How long will the international community continue to pretend not to know that Boko Haram is a deadly terrorist group that is capable of destroying and destabilizing the country and the region? I mean how many deaths will it take till the world knows that too many people have died and many more are to die? How many people will be killed before the UN decides to intervene?

    It is obvious that Nigeria is battling its own version of al-Qaeda. There is ample evidence that Boko Haram has allies in North Africa and the Middle East who are supplying it with arms, training and intelligence. Boko Haram has openly used and advocated violence. It has not hidden its extremist agenda.

    Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for so many attacks and killings including the attacks carried out at the Police Headquarters and the UN House in Abuja. This group has literally declared a war against the government of Nigeria and against any individual or groups locally or internationally which it suspects to be opposed to its Islamist cause. No one knows who will be the next target or the names of the individuals, agencies or embassies on their hit list.

    How many more people will Boko Haram kill before the world comes to the aid of Nigeria? It is obvious that the Federal Government of Nigeria is too weak and has proved incapable of defeating these Islamic jihadists. This is particularly the case in a region where militant Islam has local and political sympathy and support.

    Nigeria lacks the intelligence and expertise to battle this local al Qaeda group. Boko Haram is a transnational Islamist terrorist group. There is need for a transnational operation to battle and defeat it.

    Before it is too late.

  • A guide to online abuse

    And the excuses given to pretend it doesn’t happen.

  • You come to expect the vitriol

    Laurie Penny knows about misogynist abuse of writers who have the effrontery to be women.

    You come to expect it, as a woman writer, particularly if you’re political. You
    come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the
    emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking, and become merely a daily or weekly annoyance…

    An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the internet. Having one and
    flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male
    keyboard-bashers to tell you how they’d like to rape, kill and urinate on you.
    This week, after a particularly ugly slew of threats, I decided to make just a
    few of those messages public on Twitter, and the response I received was
    overwhelming. Many could not believe the hate I received, and many more began to
    share their own stories of harassment, intimidation and abuse.

    Note to self: Follow Laurie Penny on Twitter.

    Perhaps it should be comforting when calling a woman fat and ugly is the best
    response to her arguments, but it’s a chill comfort, especially when one
    realises, as I have come to realise over the past year, just how much time and
    effort some vicious people are prepared to expend trying to punish and silence a
    woman who dares to be ambitious, outspoken, or merely present in a public
    space.

    Quite. The time and effort create a very sinister impression of dedicated, indeed downright Spartan, rage and hatred. The lack of proportion is unnerving.

    Many commentators, wondering aloud where all the strong female voices are,
    close their eyes to how normal this sort of threat has become. Most mornings,
    when I go to check my email, Twitter and Facebook accounts, I have to sift
    through threats of violence, public speculations about my sexual preference and
    the odour and capacity of my genitals, and attempts to write off challenging
    ideas with the declaration that, since I and my friends are so very
    unattractive, anything we have to say must be irrelevant.

    And one starts to think it’s not worth it.

    I’d like to say that none of this bothered me – to be one of those women who
    are strong enough to brush off the abuse, which is always the advice given by
    people who don’t believe bullies and bigots can be fought. Sometimes I feel that
    speaking about the strength it takes just to turn on the computer, or how I’ve
    been afraid to leave my house, is an admission of weakness. Fear that it’s
    somehow your fault for not being strong enough is, of course, what allows
    abusers to continue to abuse.

    I believe the time for silence is over. If we want to build a truly fair and
    vibrant community of political debate and social exchange, online and offline,
    it’s not enough to ignore harassment of women, LGBT people or people of colour
    who dare to have opinions. Free speech means being free to use technology and
    participate in public life without fear of abuse – and if the only people who
    can do so are white, straight men, the internet is not as free as we’d like to
    believe.

    Well then, the internet is not as free as we’d like to believe.

  • Laurie Penny on the normalization of misogyny

    Many commentators, wondering aloud where all the strong female voices are, close their eyes to how normal this sort of threat has become.

  • Women bloggers call for an end to misogynist trolling

    The violent online invective levelled at female commentators is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions.