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Original poster

I didn't know the hate was SO bad

189 replies

laurawriter · 06/04/2012 12:38

Did everybody know about this?
I recently started a website for women (I don't know if I'm allowed to say what it is because of the advertising rules thing - am I allowed to say?) But basically it's a site where women can share very mundane, everyday instances of niggling sexism like being shouted at in the street or called 'babe' in the office etc etc. The idea was simply to give women a safe space to feel catharsis and talk about something that had been sexist and upsetting but which may well have been brushed off elsewhere or which they might not have been able to raise elsewhere because of the old 'overreacting' myth.

It doesn't mention men, isn't even overtly 'feminist' - so I've been completely blown away by the vitriol and hatred I've received for the past 3 days. Overnight, everynight, trolls post around 300 comments to the site (fortunately after the first horrible wave I've now managed to turn on moderation so at least only I can see them but still have to read them all to get to the genuine posts). Many of them are explicit descriptions of sexual assault, physical abuse and domestic violence. Many others use my name and 'pretend' to be me saying horrific things about myself. And several contain very explicit threats towards me, many including rape and some mentioning death.

I just wondered - is this normal? Is this a thing that people know about? I feel so horribly naive because I knew sexism was a problem but I had no idea there was such violent, blind hatred with no real reason or thought behind it just against women and their audacity in daring to speak out for themselves.

Sorry for the long post, I just wondered what people's thoughts were - I'm feeling pretty shaken up and don't know whether I should just be accepting this as 'normal' and par for the course with what I'm doing. I thought I was fine and being so strong the first day but then I woke up in the night terrified people were in my garden. Silly really!

OP posts:
Original poster
laurawriter · 06/04/2012 22:16

Eurgh. Just as I was starting to feel a bit stronger they've flooded me with hundreds of messages saying "you should publish the whole text next time and not just selected parts to make a sob story" - meaning they're now stalking my activity on other websites like this [busad] scary.

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margoandjerry · 06/04/2012 22:08

cool re Peter Tatchell. I have a lot of time for him. People who are brave enough to stand up to ridicule make it better for everyone who comes afterwards. That's what you are doing.

And there is evidence that this stuff works (eventually). I have two gay friends who've just moved to Paris and they are horrified by the attitudes (basically closeted). My friend said it was "like being gay in the 80s". He thinks the UK has moved on a long way since then because of legislation (civil partnerships) but also because of people like Peter Tatchell. You can get very annoyed with the PC nature of the anti-racist campaigns particularly but actually, over time, it shifts opinion as to what is acceptable.

I don't suppose you can ever get to the real idiots you are dealing with but they become the outliers.

Original poster
laurawriter · 06/04/2012 21:58

Really inspiring post has just been added to the site by a Pakistani lady - and I've just had an email from a 'white middle class man' saying thank you for opening my eyes- that he had no idea this was still such a problem and will approach daily life with refreshed awareness and care to ensure he does all he can to tackle a problem he was lucky enough to have been ignorant of - he says after having read some of the posts on the site he is so grateful to anyone doing anything to try to stop these being issues his two little girls will have to cope with as they grow up. And an email of support from Peter Tatchell!!!!
These things- forming a bond of solidarity with women from such different places and cultures and feeling like we're standing together - and realising that some people (and men) really are reading it and listening, not just abusing, are slowly restoring my faith - wanted to share them with you too, especially miloben - thank goodness men are as different from one another as we are - you don't have to lose faith in them all.

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garlicbunny · 06/04/2012 21:44

Oh dear, Laura, that did make me snicker.

I am very, very bad.

It might be a bit dense, or it might indeed have been ironic. Never mind.
Not sure half those blokes know what 'sexist' means - the 4chan forums I visited were liberally peppered with "sexism is not tolerated" and "I am against sexism" alongside - umm, sexist images and comments. Perhaps they (densely) think that denying what they're doing makes it invisible? Like Shaggy in "It Wasn't Me"??
Bless [buhmm]

EightiesEasterChick · 06/04/2012 21:38

I presume startail is off solving the problems of the developing world now. In fact it was pretty self-indulgent of them to take 3 minutes off from that to post on here, when you think about it.

Laura, do report this to the police. The process for dealing with it is far from what it should be, but if this stuff isn't reported it will not be addressed in any way.

Unbelievable cowards to post hateful stuff hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. And they think they're big men, no doubt. What pathetic idiots.

flippinada · 06/04/2012 21:37

You're welcome and yes, a lot of them do appear to be atrociously thick. Their obnoxious comments are generally peppered with appalling grammar and spelling. Doesn't make them any less hateful, unfortunately.

Original poster
laurawriter · 06/04/2012 21:32

miloben, if it makes you feel any better, the majority of the abusive messages I've received certainly seem to suggest the former - that these men are generally just hateful - because interestingly (by which I really mean awfully, horridly, shockingly) many of them include hugely homophobic and racist abuse as well, which seems pretty arbitrary as my site is purely about sexism - so yes I think they have a great deal of hate for very broad, generic 'threats' to their traditional, white male patriarchy and lash out at all of them blindly - rather than specifically hating women.

Having said that some of the more individual threats are veyr personal, vitriolic and sexist and certainly seem to conform more to InAnyOtherSoil's idea of women needing to be kept down 'where they belong' - there is a sense of absolute outrage that I have dared to 'stir up' women and give them ideas- they run along the lines of get back in the kitchen or else - and also are very explicitly sexually threatening, which suggests a drive for sexual domination too.
Thank you for the encouragement flippinada! This thread has given me so much more strength and determination not to let it scare me!

And if you want something to (sort of) make you (wanly, sadly a little bit) smile - you can't help laughing at the stupidity of their latest message - "YOU ARENT FIGHTING A WAR. NO ONE ATTACKING YOUR SITE IS SEXIST. WE DO IT BECAUSE ITS FUNNY. GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND CHANGE YOUR TAMPON." Oh the irony!

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margoandjerry · 06/04/2012 21:29

I'm sorry, it's awful. I am not at all surprised. I see it even on websites like the Times. When there's ever a topic that even tangentially covers women's issues, it attracts bile-filled comments from some utterly dreadful men.

All I can say is that most men are not like this. Just like most people are not vile racists but obviously people who have suffered vile racism are very conscious of the vile racists. Likewise women like us are very conscious of the vile men while the rest of society is oblivious.

It's partly about women for all the reasons we know about it but it's also partly about the weirdness of the internet which gives the freaks a special outlet for their bile. I don't know if you saw the Richard Bacon documentary about this but he suffered some awful trolling including death threats and made a doc about it. He found a sub-class of people who specialise in trolling tribute sites for dead loved ones - dead babies a particular favourite.

Original poster
laurawriter · 06/04/2012 21:25

Startail I have to second the thoughts of others that the fact that certain crimes and problems exist doesn't belittle or negate others - we wouldn't say we shouldn't bother about theft until we've concentrated on wiping out, say, arson!

I think you would argue that the small, everyday instances of sexism my website seeks to combat are insignificant and don't constitute crimes - of course they are not crimes- but I think it is naive not to draw a connection between the shocking prevalence of gender imbalance and sexism in society that they demonstrate and the high occurrence of crimes like domestic violence and rape. In a society in which women are told to put up and shut up about minor issues the precedent quickly escalates to apply to much more serious situations.

And your complaint that it is 'whining' to document or raise these issues is exactly the reason why I founded the site in the first place - it's exactly that attitude that has left us struggling against these prejudices for so long - that allows men to perpetuate sexism under the guise that it is so normalised and accepted that you are overreacting or being 'militant' if you dare to raise it. I wonder if you'd like to have a look at some of the whining, privileged women who have posted their stories to the site - the DJ who has come to dread the job she loved because of perpetual, aggressive abuse, both verbal and physical she suffers throughout her working hours, or the college undergraduate who was so terrified of a negative reaction that she begged me to take her post down again in case she was overreacting - in case it 'wasn't really sexism'. A group of men had pounded on her door in the middle of the night baying to be let in and the college authorities had blamed girls dressing 'sluttily' in her block for 'inviting' such behaviour. Because of attitudes like that you express, she was scared she didn't really have anything valid to complain about and should just get on with it. Now she goes to bed terrified.

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flippinada · 06/04/2012 21:18

What a wonderful idea for a site laurawriter.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is common. It's really frightening the level of anger and hatred there is out there towards women. I agree with posters who have advised you to report it.

Oh, and keep up the good work!

miloben · 06/04/2012 20:52

yip it's a hard one...I tried to get into their mindset when I first joined here and read through the posts of what some women have to face but I couldn't...it was chilling, how violent and out-of-control some men can be to women who have done NOTHING to them, so much so that I just couldn't think about them anymore as it was really changing the way I saw men in general. Part of me wants to think they are just downright evil bastards and that is that, rather than that they focus all their hatred on just girls and women and are decent to other people. It makes the world a very scary place when you think there are actually men out there who HATE you for being a woman.

swallowedAfly · 06/04/2012 20:42

because it's women they feel the most inadequate with? because with men they can banter and ra and bluff their way through but with women....

don't know.

think many of them are just outraged at feminism and women gaining more rights and freedom because they want to have rights over women and think rosily back on a time where you just had to get a girl pregnant and she was yours for life to rape, beat and use and abuse for life in the privacy of your own home.

don't know.

maybe they never get laid and get rejected and it's all our fault for making women so damned uppity and we all need pulling down to size - re: their size.

InAnyOtherSoil · 06/04/2012 20:38

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

miloben · 06/04/2012 20:37

I wonder if these men are just hate-filled, psychotic (or some other disorder), inadequate people in general, and they pick on women thinking they are an easy target and that they will have other men to back them up being the cowards they are. Or is it that they hate women and only women and are in fact ok people to everyone else. But why would they hate women - they only have to look around them to see it almost always MEN who cause problems in the world. sigh I am sorry to be so slow...I find it hard to understand these men.

TheFeministsWife · 06/04/2012 20:27

through not threw [bublush]

TheFeministsWife · 06/04/2012 20:25

Exactly garlicbutter, startail is right when my DSD was raped at the age of 15 should have just sucked it up and got on with, as of course it's not half as bad as what women in third world countries are going through is it. I mean she was so lucky to go threw that wasn't she.

Wow startail has cured us all of our little petty feminism woes. [bubiscuit]

InAnyOtherSoil · 06/04/2012 20:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TheFeministsWife · 06/04/2012 20:22

So startail are you saying that "white middle class women" never suffer from sexism or harassment? Are never raped, sexually assaulted, or suffer from domestic violence? All because they have "privileged" lives? [buhmm] I beg to differ on that, you've obviously led a very very sheltered life if you think that!

InAnyOtherSoil · 06/04/2012 18:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

garlicbutter · 06/04/2012 18:10

I must admit my first thought after being raped has always been "Lucky me! My mother could have cut out my clitoris, I'm so glad she didn't!" Then I skipped happily to work, tinkling with silvery laughter at men telling me to cheer up, love, it may never happen and accidentally grabbing my bum on the train.

There's always someone worse off than you, so be happy and suck it up. You're so right, startail, it's all about attitude Confused

FairPhyllis · 06/04/2012 18:05

Sady Doyle, a US blogger, started a twitter hashtag #mencallmethings a while ago to document sexist trolling. She gave a really good breakdown of this phenomenon in response to the usual whine of 'but the internet is mean to everyone.' here

In some ways I think it's a good thing to know exactly how how much so many men hate women. At least it's let us know what we're dealing with.

Nyac · 06/04/2012 18:00

The bunny ears add a certain something to that expression.

BasilFoulTea · 06/04/2012 17:43

Oh yes, we mustn't call men on their petty sexism, until we've solved their more horrendous violence.

Right.

[buhmm]

Nyac · 06/04/2012 17:41

You also didn't mention rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, domestic exploitation which "pampered white middle class" women can have inflicted on them, just like every other woman.

Nyac · 06/04/2012 17:39

what sort of a phrase is "pampered white middle class women". Who do you think is pampering them?

Women of all classes and races suffer from sexism. Why shouldn't women talk about it.