Online Threats

[lillibet]

I've been loosely following the discussion about threats against bloggers, specifically women, that's been taking place in the media. The fantastic Dahlia Lithwick has an article over on Slate that sums up a lot of the main points and concludes:

No woman should have to choose between writing—either personally or professionally—and being told that her family will be raped. Sadly, that appears to be the current choice. But the important inquiry isn't whether she should drop out or not. Nor is it whether she should stop whining or keep screaming. Those questions are personal and subjective, and the answers will be as different as the writers who consider them. The better questions are: Are these threats serious? Why do they feel so serious? How often do they result in something serious? And what might we do about it? Gender differences are only the beginning of the important discussions—not the end of them.

This coincides with a discussion about the wider topic of online civility in ozarque's journal that starts here.

My comment in that discussion is that I first encountered the freedom from civility that people feel when interaction is removed from the face-to-face arena while working at a call center for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I am also reminded of the many threats received by the Dixie Chicks in response to Natalie Maines' comments about Dubya. And all of this is tying in with the arrest of a suspect in connection with the five sexual assaults against women in the Tufts area over the past couple of weeks.

Several years ago there was a study in which they asked a couple thousand college-aged men about their atttitudes towards women. While "only" about 15% of the respondents answered yes to the question "Is it ever ok to rape a woman?", 50% answered yes to the question "Is it ever ok to force a woman to have sex with you?" As I once said to J. on the subject of trusting men--it's not that I don't trust men as individuals, I just don't know if it's you or the guy standing next to you who answered yes to that question. Many of the people who make violent comments online, or in letters or phone calls, will never take action on them. But some will. And many people seem to believe that because their violence is only words, or because the person they're talking to is just someone on a screen, it's not really violence.

When a person has to live not only with the vague knowledge that it could happen to her, but specific threats that it will if she doesn't shut up, it makes the world an even more frightening place. How can we ever know what will push someone from anonymous threat to personal action? How can we make ourselves safe? How can we live with the knowledge that having opinions can make us a target? How can we decide which spaces are safe for us to talk?

The answer is that we can't. We just keep talking and keep hoping that we're never faced with that kind of verbal, physical and sexual violence. We hope that we've chosen wisely and that the people in our lives are trustworthy. We hope that by inviting discussion, we are not also inviting violence. We hope.

Comments

[dpolicar]

(nods)

While not quite the ugliest face of this weird new "everybody in the world is your neighbor" universe that is the Internet (that title, to my mind, belongs to the folks who use the 'net to sexually predate children), it's pretty damn awful.

And as you say, there's not much we can really do in these cases beyond learning (and, in the case of children, teaching) how to choose as carefully as we can, how to respond when it goes wrong, how to get help.

And I can respect those who choose the relative safety of silence... but I agree with you (big surprise) that it's important to keep talking, and hope.

[billmarrs.livejournal.com]

I think we all just need to be tougher, braver and not ruled by our fears.

I think the harshness we're experiencing is good on a certain level because it implies that these people feel free to express themselves in a totally uncensored way. So, while it's awful that people are being harassed or attacked, it may also be good that we're finally getting the chance to talk about what's really on the mind of some people (violent as that may be).

If 50% of men feel it's OK to force women to have sex, then that's something we should really try to work on and at least understand and perhaps compensate for. Apparently, our culture has been repressing this, which is probably unhealthy and may result in more people being raped because they weren't expecting it. It's better for women to know and expect that (part of being tough) from 50% of men. It means acknowledging a harsher world. But, if that's the reality, then that's what should be done.

But, anyway, yeah, interesting topic and you made a good post about it.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

for the 15%, and even for the 50% from the surveys referenced, *something* in their nature or their environment made them come to the conclusion that threats of violence (and actual violence) towards women is ok. that is what we should be finding, confronting, rooting out, and working towards getting rid of.