Stephanie collected some of the nonsense from the distant watchers of Women in Secularism 3. It’s pretty pathetic, as usual.
I found this one amusing for its brazen…invention.
Oh really? Who and where are all these women? I know of a handful on Twitter, but a handful is not “most” – there were far more than a handful right there at Women in Secularism, enjoying the hell out of it. I have a feeling Sara Mayhew is inventing that “most” out of thin air.
PZ also marvels at this idea that internet bullying doesn’t count. (PZ is at the AA Convention; I wonder if he’s dropped in on the art show yet.)
He starts with the suicide of Amanda Todd and the arrest of the guy who harassed and extorted her.
I pointed out back then that some members of the atheist community have a vile lack of empathy. I will mention it again. Miri rages against the online idiots who insist that internet activity can’t really do psychological harm — they diagnose freely over the internet, and claim that you can’t possibly develop stress disorders from the bullying tactics of the usual slymey suspects — Miri tears that argument up with basic scientific facts from the field of psychology (remember the days when skeptics at least paid lip service to science?)
I’m just going to point to Amanda Todd. Her death wasn’t virtual.
And then, he goes on – if they think internet bullying is so ineffectual, why do they spend so much time and energy doing it?
Good question.
One commenter – Bronze Dog – expands on the point.
I’m once again disgusted by “the internet isn’t real”. The internet isn’t some griefer-friendly MMO we can just quit playing. For many of us, it’s a large part of our social lives. It’s a large part of many people’s professional lives, too. You might as well say that mail and telephones aren’t real. Hell, I’d say the internet is more invasive than the telephone was originally, since there was a time you could switch to an unlisted number. Now, any sufficiently determined troll can find your phone number, email, or blog.
Also – we really need to jump all over this idea that it’s the job of the people being harassed to stop participating in whatever technology or social media site that is conveying the harassment, instead of the job of the people doing the harassing TO STOP DOING THE FUCKING HARASSING. No no no no no no no no, it’s not my job to hide inside and throw away my computer. It’s the job of shitty people to keep their shittiness to themselves. They’re the ones doing bad things that they need to stop doing. They are. I’m not, Melody’s not, the targets are not; they are.
Another chapter in the annals of harassment, especially harassment of women. A guy called Hunter Moore posted a photo of a young woman that had been hacked from her computer on his Revenge Porn website. Her mother had worked as a private detective, and she got on his case.
I emailed the site owner, Hunter Moore, and asked him to take down the photo in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He refused.
I was not surprised. By this time, I’d perused Moore’s online TV and newspaper interviews. He called himself a “professional life ruiner” and described his website as “pure evil.” He threw legal letters in the trash, addressed his followers as “my children,” taking a page from the Charles Manson handbook; and regularly taunted victims, encouraging them to commit suicide. People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear of lawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza), and forever link a woman’s name with the image she hoped to hide.
Moore maintained that his victims were sluts, asked to be abused and deserved to lose their jobs, embarrass their families and find themselves forever ruined. Below photos on the site, his followers posted crude and mysogynistic remarks. Victims were taunted as “fat cows,” “creatures with nasty teeth,” “ugly whores,” “white trash sluts” and “whales.” One commenter said, “Jesus, someone call Greenpeace and get her back in the water.” The website was not about pornography; it was about ridiculing and hurting others.
Sound familiar?
Jill was a kindergarten teacher in Kansas. I knew she was going to be posted. Moore had mentioned it on his Twitter feed — which I had been monitoring — and he asked his followers if they thought she’d get fired. They had responded with the typical landslide of loutish and smutty comments.
An hour later, her photos were visible to the world along with identifying information, including the name of the school where she taught. This was the cue for followers of Is Anyone Up? to bombard the principal and school board with Jill’s naked shots and crude remarks, such as “Fire that slut” and “You have a whore teaching your children.”
“Is Jill there?” I said to the school receptionist. “She’s in class right now.”
“I’d like to leave a message. This is urgent. Please tell her to call me when she gets time.”
While I was leaving my message, the principal had marched into Jill’s classroom and interrupted her lesson.
“Please gather your things and go home,” he said while five-year-old students watched in wonder.
Score. Just like that, some random guy and his random fans can trash a woman’s life.
A bookend for the Sara Mayhew item, because this one strikes me as peculiarly vicious and tiny-minded.
Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 9 Nov
CFI combating superstition in Uganda http://dlvr.it/4HqYQp [link to guest post here by Bill Cooke]
Skep tickle @Ellesun 9 Nov
@OpheliaBenson Might I suggest link to original post at CFI on campus, 3/2013? Also, how to earmark? Donation link doesn’t allow that option
Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 21 h
Bill sent me the article directly, w/o mention of link. I didn’t steal it.
Skep tickle @Ellesun
Sure, I get that, & I know he welcomed help spreading word. But as his employer, CFI may hold © on original 3/2013 post, 1/2
and AFAIK mentioning it’d been previously posted, w/ link back to original, would be standard even if permissions all ok. 2/2
Ok can anyone explain to me what on earth is the point of that other than to be an obnoxious officious meddling aka harassing ASSHOLE? Because I can’t. For the life of me, I can’t.
“Skep tickle” was at the CFI Summit, and I assume she was at Bill Cooke’s talk, in which case she knows how it galvanized everyone and how affecting it was and how the Q&A and the conversations afterward were full of “gosh I didn’t even know CFI was doing this, you guys need to make more noise about it!!” And in fact she must know in any case, not least because she said so in that penultimate tweet.
So what the fuck is her point? What can her point possibly be?
Update Her latest.
I told her if she really thinks I’m violating CFI’s copyright she should alert Ron Lindsay.
Update Her latest latest. Yes how could I possibly think her intentions were anything but benevolent and helpful.
M. Justin @mateus_justino
@16bitheretic @Ellesun @D4M10N I went over to Ms. CopyPasta’s page and saw an add for Christian Mingle. pic.twitter.com/7gxzyb7Wzz
LOL though. How exactly is what @Ellesun asked of Ofeelya Butthurt “particularly vicious” or “tiny minded”?
16-bit[ch] @16bitheretic
@mateus_justino The way it works is that since @Ellesun posted at unapproved places, anything she says is EVIL! Hence, DRAMA BLOG! @D4M10N
Skeptickle @Ellesun
I used2 point out at FTB/B&W when OB made horrific news 2b about OB, finally suggested help 4 paranoia
M. Justin @mateus_justino
@Ellesun @16bitheretic @D4M10Nre: “horrific news” I don’t understand. Is this about the email she used to cancel having to give a speech?
Skeptickle @Ellesun
@mateus_justino Acid attacks; ~8 posts on that violent rape/murder in India; etc. Many posts ended w/ fear for self.
How dare I. How dare I have any fear for self, merely because a large group of strangers have been publicly obsessing over their hatred of me for more than two years. How very terrible of me, and how noble and public-spirited of Skep tickle to encourage and participate in the obsessive hatred of me. How stupid of me not to realize that her tweets about Bill’s article were entirely friendly and helpful.
Laura Bates takes a look at online sexism. (Cue a rumble of outraged outrage in response.)
The internet is a fertile breeding ground for misogyny – you only have to look at the murky bottom waters of Reddit and 4Chan to see the true extent to which it allows violent attitudes towards women to proliferate. But, crucially, it also provides a conduit that enables many who hold those views to attack and abuse women and girls, from what they rightly perceive to be an incredibly secure position. Meanwhile, the police seem near-powerless to take action, social media sites shrug their shoulders, and women are left between a rock and a hard place – simply put up with the abuse as a part of online life, or get off the internet altogether.
These are not just nasty comments, or harsh criticisms – they are extreme, detailed and vitriolic threats of rape, torture and death. I have received messages detailing exactly how I should be disembowelled, which weapons could be used to kill me, and which parts of my body should be raped. When I ignored the threats, they intensified and proliferated, finding out information about my family members and threatening to rape them instead. They are the kind of messages that race around your head at night when you try to sleep, no matter how much you wrote them off as empty scare-mongering during the day. They make you hesitate to post online and change the way you use social media. And nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Of the three rape threats I reported to police in recent months, two have already been dropped because the police are unable to trace the perpetrators…
Just like Sweetie and any other young girls her age venturing into shared online spaces, the answer seems to be an ambivalent shrug – this is just what happens to women online so you might as well get used to it. And woe betide you if you try to protest the apparent unfairness of that, because didn’t you know that you are threatening free speech?
If this really is just what happens to women online then women face a massive obstacle to being online, don’t we. It’s not a thing you just get used to, nor should it be. The price of participation should not be bullying and harassment, let alone threats of violence. Using harassment and threats to stop people participating is itself a threat to free speech. Which speech has the better claim to freedom? The kind that harasses women just for showing up, or the kind that objects to being harassed just for showing up?
Mother Jones has a long article on “ElevatorGATE.”
Earlier this month, at least five women contacted Xavier Damman, the CEO of Storify, to complain that a user who goes by the handle “elevatorgate” was harassing female users via Damman’s popular social-media curation site.
I could have told them that two years ago, or any time between then and now. I did tell Twitter several times. Twitter yawned.
…the women who complained about him say he has a history of sending abusive and misogynistic messages on other social networks. Elevatorgate’s Twitter account is suspended, but his YouTube page includes a video of Rebecca Watson, a 32-year-old New Yorker who runs Skepchick, a site about feminism and atheism, edited to make it sound like she’s saying she “had sex with Richard Dawkins,” the famous evolutionary biologist and author. Another video on elevatorgate’s YouTube page has been edited to make it appear that a female writer says, “heck yeah, I want to hook up” and “would you like to come up to my room now and have sex?”
I didn’t know that. I looked at the first one. Yup it does that. Fortunately it’s blindingly obvious that it’s edited, but still – that’s a shitty trick, aka abusive.
Storify isn’t the only tech company to cite the principle of free speech to defend its refusal to remove allegedly harassing content. But companies aren’t obliged to honor the First Amendment the same way the government is—they have the legal right to kick out or ban anyone they don’t want using their service.
“The idea that a social-media network should be entirely neutral is a myth,” says Jaclyn Friedman, the executive director for Women, Action and the Media, a nonprofit that advocates for gender equality in the media. “Neutral platforms are only neutral for straight white dudes. These companies need to make a decision: Do I want to be making a money off of a platform where abusers and harassers feel more comfortable than the abused and harassed?”
They’ve already made it. Yes, they do – probably because they think (perhaps correctly) that abusers and harassers and people who don’t mind them are more numerous than the abused and harassed and people who dislike abuse and harassment. They’ve made what they take to be the correct financial decision.
Online harassment can have serious consequences. The International Journal of Cyber Criminology says aggressive online conduct can trigger PTSD…
That’s interesting, because it’s a claim the abusers and harassers like to laugh at. Oh hahahahaha, they shout, go get blown up in a war and then talk to us about PTSD! The bullies’ defense – other people have it much worse, so what I’m doing to you doesn’t count as abuse. Pu-leeze.
After Women, Action and the Media criticized Facebook in May for failing to take down hate speech against women or remove photos depicting rape and domestic violence, the social network is now requiring sections that contain vulgar and offensive content to be clearly marked, and in some cases requiring the page’s administrator to post with his or her real name. “While it may be vulgar and offensive, distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies,” a Facebook spokeswoman tells Mother Jones.
Look how the terms shift, for no reason and with no explanation. The problem with hate speech and photos depicting rape and domestic violence is not that they’re “vulgar and offensive” or “distasteful.” Talk about missing the point.
In response to questions from Mother Jones, a person claiming to “work with elevatorgate” provided access to a Google document in which elevatorgate addressed allegations that he has harassed women through Storify and other social networks—before later revoking access to the document. ”We’ve decided this story isn’t for us,” the intermediary emailed. “If you would like a villain for your piece, I would recommend finding somebody who is actually guilty of something. There are far worse people out there than a man who Storifies people’s tweets.”
See? There it is again! There are worse people out there than ElevatorGATE. Yes of course there are; that doesn’t mean ElevatorGATE doesn’t do bad things. He does do bad things. He does horrible things, and he does them all day every day.
In the Google doc briefly viewed by Mother Jones, elevatorgate wrote that he does not use his real name on social media because doing so could make him a target of harassment.
Ah. Now where did I put that irony meter…
No.
Still. I get that it probably felt like bullying and harassment to them, so in that sense perhaps it was. On the other hand Mooney was a Name at the time, in the wake of the success of his best-seller The Republican War on Science. He was able to get articles published in a lot of very visible mainstream outlets. He made new accusations about “new atheists” each time. I still don’t think it was particularly unfair for bloggers to respond to the accusations. I get that Mooney sees it differently though.
So I should be able to see the same thing about the people who harass me every day, right?
No. Because the two are not comparable. Thanks anyway.
So there’s Nugent’s response to the shamelessly dishonest “Open Letters” demanding that he denounce me for doing something I didn’t in fact do. Let’s take a quick look at it.
Thank you for the various open letters and emails regarding the ongoing conflicts between some atheists and skeptics on an interacting range of issues including sexism and harassment, feminism and free speech, personal abuse and bullying, and the impact of these issues on the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin on June 29 and 30.
No. He shouldn’t be saying thank you. This is just more harassment, ramped up to trying to get me denounced or disinvited from the conference. The “Open Letters” are thick with lies. He shouldn’t be taking them at face value, or as a favor, or as a good and legitimate thing to do.
Firstly, from a personal perspective, I know from experience of much more vicious conflicts than these that it is likely that there are good people on all perceived ‘sides’ who are unfairly hurting other people because they or people close to them have themselves been unfairly hurt, and who are unfairly attributing malign motivations to other good people who in turn are unfairly attributing malign motivations to them.
No. He doesn’t know that. He only thinks he does. That’s one of the ways he’s gone so badly wrong on all this. No, the sides are not equivalent. Sometimes there just really are bullies and harassers who bully and harass people because they like doing it. He can’t be bothered to figure even that much out, yet he can be bothered to meddle in the matter while being that clueless about it.
Since I started facilitating the paused online dialogue on these issues, I have been listening to and considering what people on all perceived ‘sides’ have to say.
Ohhhhh no he hasn’t. Oh no he has not. He’s been dismissing and ignoring what at least one person centrally involved has to say.
I have had the pleasure of working with moderators and participants in the online dialogue who have been acting with integrity and reason despite unfair criticism of them from people opposed to dialogue.
Meaning me, for one – and of course me especially, since I am the subject of those “Open Letters.”
I am not “opposed to dialogue.” I am opposed to this “dialogue,” run by someone who admittedly knows little about it, against the will of the people most targeted by the harassers. I’m opposed to forced dialogue. I’m opposed to people taking over the management of other people’s problems while refusing to talk to those very people.
As many people have commented here lately, if someone is punching you in the face, is it fair to try to force you to have a “dialogue” with that someone? Isn’t the job rather to make the puncher stop punching?
I have read a great deal of the online material that shows how various issues have both escalated and became entangled with each other in recent years. And I want to add to my understanding by talking to some of the people involved when they come to Dublin, because I think that face to face discussion can be more useful than online discussion.
He wants to “add to his understanding”? As if this is just some educational project for him? And he wants to talk to us when we come to Dublin instead of now? To say nothing of two months ago? He wants to wait until after all the damage has been done to the conference and to some of the participants, especially me – why? Because it will be more fun for him that way? Well what about other people? What about the people he has exposed to more lies and libel by hosting them on his blog?
He’s wrong about the face to face discussion, too. His refusal to discuss this “online” – while forcing an online conversation about it on unwilling targets of harassment – is not going to make face to face discussion one bit more useful.
Secondly, as chairperson of Atheist Ireland, I want to make clear that the Empowering Women Through Secularism Conference is not ‘my’ conference. It is an Atheist Ireland conference, and it is disrespectful to the committee members of Atheist Ireland, and particularly to the conference chairperson Jane Donnelly, to frame it as something which I control personally.
No, it is not disrespectful, because this is the first I’ve heard of it.
We invited speakers to contribute to this important agenda, and not on the basis of their involvement in the ongoing conflicts. We won’t be uninviting any speakers, and we won’t allow our ongoing work as an advocacy group to be used as a vehicle for adding to the escalation of the conflicts by unfairly maligning any speakers or any other person who is attending the conference.
It’s distracting some people from the conference and its agenda, isn’t it. It’s too bad he insisted on this “dialogue” then, isn’t it.
We considered having a session during the conference to discuss the ongoing conflicts, and we decided against doing this. The background would require too much explaining for conference attenders, many of whom function mostly in real life and are blissfully unaware that these conflicts even exist. Also, we do not want it to unduly dominate the focus of the conference.
Indeed. Neither do I. It’s too bad he insisted on this “dialogue” then, isn’t it.
We are asking speakers and participants to focus on the agenda for the conference, and to leave discussion of the conflicts for the many opportunities that exist to discuss them elsewhere.
But I never wanted to discuss it in the first place. That was his idea, not mine.
Please be respectful to all of the speakers and to all of the other participants. Please do not attribute malign motivations to any person who is attending the conference.
Not even one who has been relentlessly harassing you for nearly a year, and who is quite open about his hostility and scorn for conferences about empowering women through secularism.
Ultimately we need to resolve the ongoing conflict issues in some manner, and I have been actively trying to work towards this by facilitating dialogue.
There is no “we” there. He does not need to resolve the ongoing conflict issues, and he is also not able to do so. His active work has made it worse, and shows no signs at all of “resolving” it.
And then there’s the muck in the comments. Like “Eucliwood” “Eu” etc etc etc, here “Sister Eu” –
And, just like that mishap with the signature sheet (hmm.. wonder who signed Ophelia’s name and gave FTB a way to invalidate it?), it could so easily be them themselves putting threats there so that no one can argue about the actual topic.
That’s great, isn’t it? I get both the harassment of sticking my name on that thing, and an accusation of doing it myself.
And Renee Hendricks –
Michael, thank you for taking the time to write out your stance with regard to the upcoming conference and the online conflicts. At this point, I cannot see an amicable end to the bickering back and forth, short of putting us all in one room and letting us duke it out.
She sounds like Nugent. “Put” us all in one room, whether we consent or not. I refuse to be put in a room with Renee Hendricks. I don’t want to “duke it out” with anyone. I want to be left alone by assholes. There’s nothing to “discuss” or even “duke it out” about. There’s just: leave me alone.
How do you demonstrate that you are too wise and grown up and sensible to feed internet drama? By ignoring it bringing it up out of the blue for no apparent reason when no one was talking about it.
Miranda Celeste Hale@mirandachale
@saramayhew @desertyard Has you-know-you stopped blogging about you& the pineapple yet? The last time I checked she’d done ~4352 posts on it
Sara E. Mayhew @saramayhew
@mirandachale @desertyard It’s okay, Hermione, you can say the name: Ophelia Benson! Oppressed Pineapple!
Miranda Celeste Hale
@mirandachale@saramayhew desertyard Heh!
I just died of lulz. I’ll be resurrected in 3 days’ time.
Desertyard
@desertyardsaramayhew How many blog posts did she do about the pineapple thing? like 5 or 6? @mirandachale
Sara E. Mayhew@saramayhew
@desertyard@mirandachale one was too many…
Desertyard@desertyard
@saramayhew so much for ignoring you, huh? @mirandachale
Like that. Rise above it and ignore it by dragging it into a conversation for no reason apart from obsession.
A couple of points. One, I did a search. It wasn’t ~4352 posts, it was 4. Two, it wasn’t my idea, it was Mayhew’s idea. It was Mayhew who tweeted random out-of-nowhere malice about my way of blogging. My posts were in reply to Mayhew’s continued sniping. Miranda Hale is being dishonest in implying that I’m the one who picks these fights.
I could move on and rise above it and ignore it, but sometimes I choose not to because I think it’s worth showing the endless sniping and obsession.
Sara Mayhew must have wanted more attention, because as tonyinbatavia pointed out in a comment, she posted another random tweet about Stephanie and me, apropos of nothing.
Learn to summarize someone else’s point instead of quoting huge blocks of text. Lazy blogging. Bad writing. Examples: @OpheliaBenson @szvan
She’s weirdly persistent about picking fights with me. I don’t know why, apart from wanting more attention (but then there are billions of people in the world, and I don’t know why she wants attention from me in particular). I don’t know her. I haven’t written about her here (except about these bizarre random fight-pickings). I haven’t interacted with her. But pick pick pick.
She did a more extended version (less lazy! less bad!) on Facebook, too. It’s a public post. (We’re not Friends, needless to say.)
The post:
Bad blogging is when you need to quote huge blocks of text. It makes me believe you’re either a lazy or incompetent writer, when you can’t make a summary of someone else’s point.
Her comments, following one by Dan Fincke:
Dan Fincke it takes a lot of work to write a good paragraph. I don’t blame bloggers for not spending their time rewriting others’ ideas when they can simply quote them for their readers and save their hard writing energies for their own original stuff. A blog is a journal, a place you sometimes just record other people’s words that are interesting sometimes.Sara E Mayhew It starts to become really lazy, like Almost Diamonds and Ophelia Benson’s blog, when it’s 90% blocks of quotes and they insert a sentence or two in between.12 hours ago · Like · 1Sara E Mayhew At that point, just link to the entire article you’re discussing. But I guess Zvan and Benson aren’t really generating content as much as just being the two old muppets in the balcony.
…four photos, of four dresses. And some writing.
Strapless dresses from SammyDress! This wholesale Hong Kong fashion site has incredibly cheap clothing prices, but my experience has been that what you save on items is made up for with very expensive shipping. Quality is typical of Chinese produced fashion—cute on the outside but low quality is seen on the inside of the dresses with imperfect stitching. Petite sizes. I haven’t yet bought a dress from them I didn’t like.
That’s good hardworking writing.
Having conceded that point, I’ll say a few words – of my very own writing, that I wrote myself! – about Mayhew’s claim that quoting is lazy and bad compared to summarizing.
The first word I’ll say about that is “horseshit.” That’s horseshit. It’s not true, not as a generalization. Sometimes summarizing is preferable to quoting, but certainly not always. If it were always preferable, why would the Daily Show use so many clips? The Daily Show is quite popular, and also well thought of. It’s both. It’s considered good tv, good commentary, good humor, good news analysis. Part of what’s good is the use of video clips that show people saying things, so that we can all see exactly what they say and how they say it. A summary would not be better than that for the purposes of the show. The same goes for the Rachel Maddow show and plenty of other shows. The same goes for many many blogs that quote extensively. Some websites do nothing but link to others’ material with a headline and a teaser – like Arts and Letters Daily for example. That’s different from writing a book or an article, but that doesn’t make it worthless.
I’m interested in language and rhetoric, in the words people use and the possible reasons why they use them and the likely effects the words will have. When I’m looking at that I don’t want to summarize, I want to give the actual words, so that readers can see exactly what I’m talking about. This is a new genre that blogging makes possible in a way it wasn’t before. I like the genre, and I use it a lot. It would have been useless to “summarize” what Rod Liddle wrote, for instance; it was necessary to give a good sample of it so that people could see his particular brand of smug laddish dismissiveness.
I don’t consider that a whole lot more lazy than posting four photos of dresses.
On the rest of Christian Munthe’s post on internet harassment in Sweden and in general.
The behaviour of the “net haters”, as the established term has come to be, is often equivalent or very close to criminal harassment, libel or threat. However, existing laws are obviously not constructed for a situation where these sort of patterns are the rule and occur in a systematic and coordinated (albeit perhaps not always in a specifically planned) way.
That’s an interesting point. So a one-off is criminal but a systematic campaign is free speech?
At the same time, as had it been pre-ordered, we have another sort of reaction – the idea of the haters themselves as either victims or, at least, guiltless due to structural forces that direct their actions. The former type of reasoning is, of course, a well known spineless tactic from the new racist movement – it’s your own fault that you’re being attacked, you should count on it when saying such things as you do. Not so little resembling the rapist’s or molester’s so-called defense that “her dress/smile/dance/intoxication made me do it” (surprisingly similar to the orthodox islamist motivation for obligatory veils for women, by the way).
Well that certainly is their official view. I won’t let them post mildew here, therefore I deserve whatever they choose to dish out. They think I should stfu, so they try to make that happen.
In conclusion:
It is of extra importance to note that the institutions of free speech, opinion and expression in liberal democratic societies in fact rest on the presumption that people keep within the sort of moral limits just set out. It may of course, be debated exactly how harmful a behaviour needs to be for the limits to the just mentioned freedoms to be approached. But what in any other circumstance would be considered as unlawful threat, libel or harassment is clearly residing in this territory.
It’s very important to note that, because in fact threats and libel and harassment do inhibit free speech, opinion and expression.
In comments on a post of PZ’s about “the peace process” for instance, Cyranothe2d talked about that.
I am really fucking tired of people who have harrassed, stalked and threatened women I look up to and love being treated (by people like you) like they have some rational points, and we are just having a jolly chummy academic argument. Ask Jen if she thinks being harassed off the internet was just a “difference of opinion about the roles of women”. Ask Ophelia. Ask Rebecca. Fucking ask any woman in this thread.
Because this “fight” has been about and remains about my fucking dignity as a human being. My right to inhabit atheist spaces without fear of reprisal or attack because of my gender. My right to be represented by other women.
I saw that comment late in the day yesterday, and it was helpful to me. I was feeling very over-harassed yesterday, and Cyrano’s second paragraph there reminded me that shit that’s done to me is also done to all the women who are aware of it. (Mind you, a few of the women who are aware of it are fine with it, I suppose because they think it will never happen to them, and perhaps it won’t.) Today Cyrano said, replying to me, how it does inhibit her free speech, opinion and expression.
I really think that the reason you’re targeted is because you’re public. That’s it. Its nothing that you’ve done to bring it on. It could be any one of us. That’s why I say, “When they do it to you, they do it to us.” Because I’ve no doubt that they would harass, stalk and attempt to run ANY OF WE WOMEN off the internet if we dared to talk about sexual harassment or feminism on a popular blog. And the harassment, while targeted at you, has enormous splash damage. *I* am offended and angry and feel hated, trapped and afraid because of these people. *I* have decided not to go to conferences because of them. *I* have curtailed my net presence because of them.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have it directed at myself, day after day.
That shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t.
This is a parody. I am being sarcastic. No bison were harmed in the making of this parody.
I have a question. It is this. Why does this one woman that I hate and that a lot of people hate get so much sexist abuse via the Internet? Why why oh why?
While this post applies to several prominent and outspoken women in the atheist community that I hate, I’m going to focus on this one woman because she seems to be the easiest target for most of the sexist online vitriol. Her name is Annabelle Jones and everybody hates her, including me. That makes it much easier for me to focus on her, because there is so much hate of her sloshing around out there already that I don’t have to think, I can just type. All those other prominent and outspoken women in the atheist community that I hate are just as bad though, don’t make any mistake about that. You know who they are. We all know who they are. We all hate them. Right? Right? We all hate those prominent outspoken women. Who doesn’t hate prominent outspoken women? I ask you.
First of all, let me say this. If you’re engaging in anything other than legitimate criticism of her arguments or behavior, I beg you to stop. Don’t be mean. It demonstrates to people who already despise atheists that atheists are immoral, and confirms their worst fears.
There, now that’s out of the way, I’ll explain why Annabelle Jones (whom I hate) gets so much sexist abuse. I do not believe that Jones is getting trolled because she’s a woman. Many vocal women on the Internet do not get any negative sexual attention, provided they haven’t been vocal on the Internet for too long. And oddly enough, it works like this: the less you care or protest, the less online abuse you get. If you don’t care or protest at all, it totally doesn’t happen. Except when it does, of course, but that’s hardly ever, unless you’ve been around for more than a month or two. So there you go. When you get sexist abuse, just don’t say a word about it, and it will have never happened.
Having said all that, here are the reasons I see for Jones’s abuse that have little to do with her gender:
1. Prior misconduct, such as making a joke on a forum once;
2. Online attacks — which is a thing I would never do in a million years;
3. Attacks from the speaker’s platform — she disagreed with someone in the audience this one time;
4. Attacks from other feminists on her behalf;
5. Hypocrisy: for example, using female sexuality to get attention, then blaming others for noticing female sexuality once the goal is achieved;
6. A condescending attitude toward anyone who disagrees with her;
7. An inability to accept criticism and deal with it productively;
8. Use of abusive language and gendered slurs;
9. Mistakes in presentations and speeches, going off-topic;
10. Lack of expertise or experience in many of the areas she speaks about, poor fact-checking;
11. Celebrity that many deem to be undeserved;
12. Perceived dishonesty;
13. Inability to take on a true leadership role;
14. Failure to address topics of concern to the majority of the community;
15. Immaturity;
16. Sexism;
17. Consistent troll-feeding behavior;
18. Taking the last pizza roll;
19. Parking tickets;
20. Wearing glasses;
21. Jokes;
22. Breathing;
23. Being prominent and outspoken.
This is the short list. The long list numbers 47,581,329.
Hat tip: Maria Maltseva.
by Ernest W. Adams
This piece was originally written as part of the Designer’s Notebook series on the game developers’ web site Gamasutra. However, they declined to publish it in its current form, and I refused to rewrite it. My thanks for permission to reprint it here. Please feel free to share or republish it with attribution. Contains strong language.
Normally I write for everybody, but this month’s column is a call to arms, addressed to the reasonable, decent, but much too silent majority of male gamers and developers.
Guys, we have a problem. We are letting way too many boys get into adulthood without actually becoming men. We’re seeing more and more adult males around who are not men. They’re as old as men, but they have the mentality of nine-year-old boys. They’re causing a lot of trouble, both in general and for the game industry specifically. We need to deal with this.
Why us? Because it’s our job to see to it that a boy becomes a man, and we are failing.
When we were little boys we all went through a stage when we said we hated girls. Girls had “cooties.” They were silly and frilly and everything that a boy isn’t supposed to be. We got into this stage at about age seven, and we left it again at maybe 10 or 11.
Then puberty hit and, if we were straight, we actively wanted the company of girls. We wanted to “go with” them, date them, and eventually we wanted to fall in love and live with one, maybe for the rest of our lives. That’s the way heterosexual boys are supposed to mature, unless they become monks.
My point is, you’re supposed to leave that phase of hating girls behind. Straight or gay, you’re supposed to grow the hell up.
What might be temporarily tolerable in a boy when he’s nine is pretty damned ugly when he’s fifteen and it’s downright psychopathic when he’s twenty. Instead of maturing into a man’s role and a man’s responsibilities, a lot of boys are stuck at the phase of hating girls and women. The boys continue to treat them like diseased subhumans right through adolescence and into adulthood.
Men are more powerful than women: financially, politically, and physically. What distinguishes a real man from a boy is that a man takes responsibility for his actions and does not abuse this power. If you don’t treat women with courtesy and respect – if you’re still stuck in that “I hate girls” phase – then no matter what age you are, you are a boy and not entitled to the privileges of adulthood.
When this puerile mentality is combined with the physical strength and sexual aggressiveness of an older boy or an adult male, it goes beyond bad manners. It’s threatening and anti-social, and if those boys are permitted to congregate together and support each other, it becomes actively dangerous. Yes, even online.
Of course, I don’t mean all boys are like this. Most of them get out of the cootie phase quickly and grow up just fine. But far too many don’t. If we don’t do something about these permanent nine-year-olds pretty soon, they’re going to start having boys of their own who will be just as bad if not worse, and life will not be worth living. Life is already not worth living on Xbox Live Chat.
In addition to the harm they do to women – our mothers, our sisters, our daughters – these full-grown juveniles harm us, too. A boy who refuses to grow up has lousy social skills, a short attention span, and a poor attitude to work. Furthermore, all men – that’s you and me, bro – get the blame for theirbad behavior. And we deserve it, because we’ve been sitting on our butts for too long. We let them be bullies online and get away with it.
Some of you might think it’s sexist that I’m dumping this problem on us men. It isn’t; it’s just pragmatic.Women can not solve this problem. A boy who hates girls and women simply isn’t going to pay attention to a woman’s opinion. The only people who can ensure that boys are taught, or if necessary forced, to grow up into men are other men.
Let’s be clear about something else. This is not a political issue. This is not a subject for debate, any more than whether your son is allowed to swear at his mother or molest his sister is a subject for debate. There is no “other point of view.” The real-world analogy is not to social issues but to violent crime. Muggers don’t get to have a point of view.
So how do we change things?
First, we need to serve as positive examples. With the very little boys, we need to guide them gently but firmly out of the cootie phase. To the impressionable teenagers, we must demonstrate how a man behaves and how he doesn’t. Be the change you want to see. Use your real name and your real picture online, to show that you are a man who stands behind his words. Of course, you can’t prove your name is real, but it doesn’t matter. If you consistently behave with integrity online, the message will get across.
Secondly, we men need to stand up for courtesy and decency online. We can’t just treat this as a problem for women (or blacks, or gays, or anybody else the juvenile bullies have in their sights). Tell them and their friends that their behavior is not acceptable, that real men don’t agree with them, that they are in the minority. Say these words into your headset: “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were a man, not a whiny, insecure little boy.” Don’t argue or engage with them. Never answer their questions or remarks, just repeat your disgust and disapproval. Assume the absolute moral superiority to which you are entitled over a bully or a criminal.
Finally, we need to put a stop to this behavior. It’s time for us to force the permanent nine-year-olds to grow up or get out of our games and forums. It’s not enough just to mute them. We need to build the infrastructure that precludes this kind of behavior entirely – Club Penguin has already done it for children – or failing that, we have to make the bullies pay a price for their behavior.Appealing to their better nature won’t work; bullies have none. We do not request, we do not debate,we demand and we punish.
I have some specific suggestions, from the least to the most extreme.
Now I’m going to address some objections from the very juvenile delinquents I’ve been talking about – if any of them have read this far.
OK, back to the real men for a few final words.
This is not about “protecting women.” It’s about cleaning out the sewers that our games have become. This will not be easy and it will not be fun. Standing up to these little jerks will require the same courage from us that women like Anita Sarkeesian have already shown. We will become objects of hatred, ridicule, and contempt. Our manhood will be questioned. But if we remember who we are and stand strong together, we can beat them. In any case we won’t be threatened with sexual violence the way women are. We have it easier than they do.
It’s time to stand up. If you’re a writer, blogger, or forum moderator, please write your own piece spreading the message, or at least link to this one. I also encourage you to visit Gamers Against Bigotry (http://gamersagainstbigotry.org), sign the pledge, are share it.
Use your heavy man’s hand in the online spaces where you go – and especially the ones you control – to demand courtesy and punish abuse. Don’t just mute them. Report them, block them, ban them, use every weapon you have. (They may try to report us in return. That won’t work. If you always behave with integrity, it will be clear who’s in the right.)
Let’s stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the women we love, and work with, and game with, and say, “We’re with you. And we’re going to win.”
The author is a game design consultant, writer, and “freelance professor.” His professional web site is at www.designersnotebook.com.
