Here's a taster:
Big ups to the FemmoStroppo Awards, run by Hoyden About Town, for putting this in their top ten for 2007.Because online harassment is still a women’s issue.
It’s a women’s issue because those goals up there–making somebody feel afraid of speaking, making somebody feel powerless to stop what’s being done to them, making somebody feel like the only recourse is to shut up and hide out forever–are the goals a whole lot of men still hold dear and work towards for all women.
You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl shit concerns you:
- every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
- every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
- every time you call Ann Coulter a tranny cunt instead of a halfwit demagogue;
- every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
- every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
- every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
- every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
- every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…
You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.
2 comments:
WOW! This one goes right onto my "Top 10 articles I have ever read on the net" list!
Being a computer-obsessed kinda person, I tend to spend a lot of time hanging out on tech forums and am no stranger to some of the creepy personal experiences which Kathy Sierra shared about last year.
One of the hardest things struggling through the constant barrage of personal attacks I've received over the years for (apparently nothing more than) having the audacity to be a woman who likes to participate in tech talk is the dismal lack of validation from online male friends whom I regard as being "really decent guys".
This article sums up every single thing I have ever wanted to articulate about why I felt unsupported by them during those times. So I'm flicking a link to Kate's site to every geek guy I know!
Thanks for sharing this priceless gem with us Julie.
Glad you like it Z, it really struck a cord with me.
I haven't had to put up with too much crap online recently (touch wood), but I do vividly remember when I was getting a hard time from a couple of guys in my physics class, and all the other guys just chuckled along, despite the fact that some of them were really quite lovely outside of that context. They didn't know what to do so they went along with it, even when the harassment went on for several months and became quite gross.
Anyway, that's a long story for another time, but it's amazing how often people (men and women) will tag harassment as Someone Else's Problem (chocolate fish alert, for anyone who can share who I've snaffled that from).
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