"A woman's opinion is the miniskirt of the internet"

[HedleyLamarr]

I posted this in Feminism [brave emoticon], and someone has suggested putting it in AIBU.

So, I was sent a link to this article in the Independent. Your thoughts/ideas are much appreciated .

I didn't know it AgentZigZag, that's why I had to check. It seemed unbelievable so I'm glad I did check and that I'd misinterpreted.

I think the aim of Laurie Penny here was to bring the behaviour out in to the open and start a discussion about it. Which she's succeeded in doing. Once people are aware it's a lot harder for harassers to get away with it.

"That means it's up to other, less focused (or extreme) routes to bring to two ends of the spectrum together."

We're back to clarification again. Are you saying that the women who object to rape threats or are even on the receiving end of them need to be brought together with the men making the threats. Because that's what you described the spectrum as being earlier - the feminists on one end and the rape threateners on the other. That's like talking about this situation as if it's just a matter of two opposing views. Rather than a group of poeple threatening violence and using harasssment against another group.

Surely the aim should be to stop the harassers harassing and threatening full stop. Not bringing people together? Why would anybody want to be brought together with a man who has threatened rape to her or anyone else? So difficult to follow this way of thinking.

Ayeda you cannot have read the whole thread. I have rarely seen a poster as muddled as thunder. She has constantly misquoted and mis-represented other posters and accused posters of making things up or lying about what has been said earlier on the thread.

If you want to widen the discussion, who are the ones doing the majority of the internet abuse, do you think?

Aha, I've just realised - some of you think that the abuse that the likes of LP get is akin to the "AIBU to want to throttle my SIL" posts, don't you?

AgentZigZag, I haven't said that people aren't listening to what Laurie Penny is saying. They are. People have taken a great deal of notice of this.

What I've said is that this subject is rarely talked about. Maybe I needed to be clearer - it's rarely talked about by the women on the receiving end of it. I don't know why they don't talk about it. Shame maybe, some fear - at Feministe Jill Filipovich said she'd become immune to the threats and just thought they were normal. So it's good they've brought it out into the open.

Now why on earth would you think that? No one has said anything like that...what a strange thing to conclude

Thunder I have no problem debating with anyone even if they disagree with me, provided they actually try and read what I say. You have interesting points at times but you turn people off, by not making more effort to understand other people. I have no wish to offend you, but its deeply frustrating and doesn't take the debate anywhere. Please, maybe try and take 5 mins longer to listen rather than just try and talk over everyone. It would make everyone enjoy the debate more, probably including you. You aren't unintelligent.

I find it some what bizarre that these journalists are taking this approach though given they are professionals in communication and should be aware of the principles of 'selling an idea'. Its the basics of what you are taught in media in school and university. If they are serious about actually tackling the problem then you would have thought they would take a line of trying to win as much support as possible and to marginalise those who would otherwise normally disagree with you.

Of course I have read the whole thread. I did it in one sitting

Thunders is as clear as clear can be to me. Some of you really want to get away from the fact that men are being abusive towards women online. Or even that men are neing abusive towards men. Why won't you stand up and say "Men, pack it in"? Or do you think it is women doing it in equal measure? Because in all my time on-line, I really couldn't say that was the case. Unless women weere conducting a huge undercover mission to get at men. Is that what you're saying?

You're still talking to me quietly. I thought a discussion with me was what you didn't want.

The author is just preaching to the converted though thunder, a generous audience, people who don't find her writing style isolating.

It's a niche readership, if feminists/feminism wants to act to stop it they have to talk to people other then other feminists, maybe even men who've had similar kinds of threats

And not get bogged down with the catagory the threats fit into, unless the reason for publicising them is only a political one aimed at having a point scoring dig and showing how crap men are?

If the aim is to stop it, then the author of the article isn't the right person for the job.

Now Joan Bakewell on the other hand, don't know whether she's a feminist, but a nice authoritative person with a friendly tone might be better suited... (I'm joking! )

Actually I think this polarisation of views might be peculiar to this thread or possibly this site. There has been some long overdue comment about this phenomenon in the press and on other forums over the past week and I've been discussing it with friends and work colleagues. Outside of this site, not one person I've spoken to (man or woman) has expressed anything other than disgust for the disgraceful gendered abuse women writers have exposed. No-one has said 'but men get it too' or 'what do they expect?' or any of the bizarre views I've seen expressed here.

I had the feeling shortly into this thread that a minority of posters have such a strong prejudice against feminism, feminist writers and the feminist posters on this site that regardless of the issue, they will take a contrary position. It puzzles me why that might be so, but I do think it's something very strange about this site.

She's writing in the Independent AZZ. It's a fairly general audience, as much as a newspaper can have a general audience. I'm pretty sure that it's not only feminists who read the Independent.

I didn't think there was anything in the article about how crap men are. She was talking about a specific experience some women writers are having on line of being threatened by certain men. I didn't get the impression that she was saying that it was men in general who behave this way.

Strange about this site Charbon, or strange about the way feminism comes across to provoke people to take that stance on this site?

14 years ago I was sat in one of my media and feminism lectures and we were asked the question "would you use your sexuality to advance your career?". There were 20 in the class. 19 were women. (and the man was my OH at the time). Out of the 20, 17 said they would. The three that didn't were me, my OH and my housemate. It was the thing that put me off a career in media...

... so when I see stuff like this, I'm very skeptical about the intentions of some of the journalists involved. For some it suits their purpose, and the creation of their 'persona' and their writing style. Its not necessarily about actually changing anything. I'm pretty damn sure a number of them are well aware of how they will come across as 'shouty feminists'. I'm sure others mean well and do genuinely want to stop all the sexual abuse they are getting, but by becoming involved with the subject which is being lead by that angle, they probably aren't doing themselves too many favours.

Hence why I have said, I find it poor journalism of a tabloid standard rather than a broadsheet, which is where this debate is coming from. These are not unintelligent women. They are women who have made a career in a very difficult and sexist industry. I'm not surprised some of them are pissed off. I think its clouding judgment to a degree here though.

By the way, with regards to tone Agent ZigZag, I can't stand Laurie Penny or the way she writes, or thinks for that matter, but I think she's right on this topic, even if her usual style has let her down again.

I'd say it was quite important not to let prejudice about style get in the way of paying attention to someone's arguments or the subject they are talking about.

It is horrific that women writers are being threatened with rape, no ifs nor buts. Even if it is Laurie Penny who is saying it.

Strange about this site, Agent. I don't have any problem with the way feminism is explained by feminists on this site, although I do get very perplexed when I see feminism mis-represented or misunderstood by posters who claim they aren't feminists.

Or just a handful of contrarians on MN looking for a way to back out of feminism altogether, ZigZag? There's certainly a pattern for some of the posters arguing the toss. That's OK, of course, if that's what suits. Would be great to see some positive arguments for their beliefs for once instead of just countering feminist arguments all the time. That's just lazy.

What I find really strange about this thread is how 'the feminists' (an apparently self-identified group) have come in with a certain viewpoint and that is apparently the correct and only way to respond. You can't talk about men receiving internet abuse, you can't talk about the wider context, you can't talk about motives other than 'to subjugate women and keep them in their place' without apparently crossing some line which means people keep asking you 'why are you happy for women to be abused like this? Why do you think it's not a problem? Why do you keep derailing the thread with your discussion about other types of abuse?'

I'm a feminist. And yet on this thread I feel like if I say that, I'll be told I'm not, because I'm not approaching this topic in 'the right way'.

I think the women who have been writing about what has been happening to them are very brave and taking a big risk. They know they are risking being called whiners or "asking for it" as we have seen demonstrated on this thread. They know they are risking having their motives called into question. They know the risk of even more attacks because of the mere fact of being public feminists but they do it anyway.

An easy career for a woman in the media is one spent attacking other women. Male editors are happy to employ women to do that. Challenging certain harmful male behaviours on the other hand - not such a great career move. But absolutely worth it, if it brings the abuse and threats out into the open and starts building a culture that won't tolerate them.

Why can't you address this issue as a subset of internet abuse directed only at women, noblegiraffe?

Do you think noblegiraffe, it's because it would be the same as going on to a thread about gay and lesbian people suffering homophobic abuse and saying "but women get attacked too you know".

It's just difficult to see how an interjection like that adds to the topic in hand or is supportive of the people getting hurt.

have read all of thread and it's v. informative. Am pretty sure there is total apathy in the wider public as they really couldn't care less - women writing/publishing on the web is a world away from themselves, and t'internet abuse is very small change.

for the site, this is probably the only time many people get to engage overtly with womens rights issues, rathe rthan in RL. It's a shame that so many posters do feel closed down here ( feminists and non-feminists) because they haven't towed the 'line' - to disagree has it's consequences. So many many posters really don't bother and leave it, largely, to the clique.

you toe a line, don't you? You aren't actually dragging it anywhere.

I thought you'd read the whole thread, Ayeda? I talked about that ages ago. By looking at this only through a narrow feminist lens you are missing parts of the bigger picture.

What prompts people to post death threats to footballers or ME research scientists? What prompts people to troll internet forums? What motivates people to type out carefully crafted abuse to people they don't know? What prompts people to spam facebook condolence groups with hate messages?

I imagine the behaviours are all connected. If you want to stop them, then trying to understand them might help. Is 'Don't feed the trolls' the best advice?

No, Thunder, I don't think that at all. And I didn't realise that this thread was 'post your support for women suffering misogynistic abuse on the internet, and only that'. It certainly didn't say that on the tin.

NG That was why I posted a different scenario upthread, this time involving a black writer complaining about racially motivated abuse. What was fascinating was that at least one respondent replied to that, using an entirely different tone, admitting that she might comment that other groups are vulnerable to intimidatory behaviour and that it was awful that such abuse existed. It was very different to the tone of some early posts on this thread, that amounted to 'she's an attention-seeking feminist, what did she expect and in any case, women aren't the only victims of abuse'.

I think in my first post on this thread, I said that in the normal course of events a thread about this on a site predominantly occupied by women, would have been over in a day, with 99.9% of posts agreeing that gendered abuse is disgusting and supporting the writer for exposing it. Whereas instead, it seemed to take a long time for some posters to distinguish between abuse and gendered abuse and there were peculiar misinterpretations of the writer's words and meaning.

Maybe it's just a case of a few people recognising eachother's names and bringing old battles on to this thread, which often happens in forum discussion. I just haven't seen this elsewhere about this particular issue, either on the net or in real-life.