"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 .

Why is it people get so defensive at the idea that yes, misogyny is real.

I've read the Tiger Beatdown piece and Laurie Penny's and it does sound worse then the other examples given in this thread. It's certainly worse then being called "shortarse" or "ginger". Also what Penny is talking about isn't just insults, they are threats. Why is it so outrageous to say that?

Why is it that whenever a women complains about anything, one of the most immediate responses is that she deserved it/was attention seeking/asked for it in some way?

Oh I dunno BB - there's probably an element of that, but I'd say it's more a 'I'm right, you're wrong, so you STFU' thing.
And It always amazes me why people read the posts/articles/tweets of people they clearly can't stand? - I stopped 'following' LP on twitter after a week because I found her a bit irritating - I wouldn't waste my time getting 'outraged' by her, I'd rather read people I like and have something in common with.

Personally, I keep away from the feminism board, and am not keen on the whole 'evil partriarchy' thing or when feminism turns into misandry. However on this issue I feel I must agree with the feminist posters. It's weird, the older I get the more I do notice sexism and misogyny, which 15 years ago I thought was just in people's imagination.

This thread is not about Laurie Penny or any of the other female bloggers who are examples of women having abuse directed at them which specifically incorporates their gender, so the fact whether you like her writing is neither here nor there. People who say 'I can't stand her, so she deserves it all' are spectacularly missing the point

To those who think the abuse these female bloggers receive: do you honestly believe that threats of rape are acceptable? If so, don't you find it a bit strange that women are willing violence against other women? To me, that is both sad and shocking.

Thank you Bossybritches

It reminds me of racist abuse directed at footballers by fans in the 1980s. Opposition players would all be at risk of vile chants and stuff thrown from the crowd, but only the black players had bananas thrown at them and monkey noises made. Even after that had been stamped out, the word 'black' preceded the insults shouted at them.

Anyone blogging online is likely to attract a degree of abuse but the abuse directed at women who blog is abuse specific to them being women and very different to the abuse targeted at men.

Threats of sexual violence - often very graphic and specific threats - are not something that should be considered acceptable. Yes, targeting general abuse online is important, but to try to pretend that this is not a separate issue is obtuse.

Threatening comments made to anyone are wrong,but the women who are in the public eye are getting similiar comments to those directed at men,but also they are getting threats of explicit sexual violence,and criticism which seems entirely based on their gender rather than on whatever they were posting about.
IMO these are more disturbing because if you are a woman they reveal a whole level of hatred directed at the group to which you belong ie women.The threats eg of rape,are things that women as a group are threatened with.The images of sexual violence reflect what is out there generally,and I think that does make a difference.
If you are on the receiving end of misogynistic threats,part of the impact is that they do reflect not only threat to you as an individual from the individual making the attack,but also attitudes some men have to women in your non-internet life.
That differs from the emails sent to Richard Dawkins who isn't the least worried about burning in hell,and is not very likely statistically to be run over by a church bus. Those are threats he can afford to laugh at.They don't tap into to a mass of material where atheists are hit by church buses.

YANBU - I expect that lots of people don't realise the gendered aspect internet abuse.

It is an extention of the violence against women and girls which has led to this home office initiative.

Another example:

Cruella Blog - page down to October 26 "My Atheist B*tchslap and the Internet"

Isn't the 'rape threat' just a stock-in-trade abusive threat that is often issued to women (moreso than men)? I mean, women are a force to be reckoned with, they have equality in every area now - or at least the potential for it - the last bastion of fear for women is physical threat of rape. That's why some men say it, it's because they fear the 'damage' that strong women can do with their views.

How do these same men threaten other men? Probably with the same unspeakable violence but without the sexual (power) overtone - or may with the same? But then homosexuality is a feared male 'attitude' meaning that a male rape scenario is undesireable as a threat by the threatener.

Nobody on this thread has said that the threats of rape and abuse are not real but I don't agree that focusing on the threats is the way to go - it just shows the threatener that they've won. Deal with the rape threats in the same way that they would deal with any other threat, not give the threat of rape 'special powers' to intimidate.

Totally agree with LyingWitch.

Richard Dawkins (and many other men in the public eye) get death threats - some of them very serious. Of course this is horrific and should be stopped and the perpertrators dealt with. It isn't any better or worse than the abuse given to women. Women might get different abuse but saying it is worse is very futile. It's wrong and it needs stopping but it's not a competition as to who get the "worst" abuse.

Ah. The don't give them attention and they'll go away theory.

I didn't say that, MildlyNarkyPuffin. Goodness, some of you are prickly about other women's views.

What would YOU do if you received a threat that you considered serious? I'll tell you what I would do - I would pass it to the agencies who are best-placed to deal with that threat. It wouldn't matter if it were a rape threat or a molatov-cocktail threat - if I considered myself at risk I would deal with the threat, not write about it.

Do men attack each other in the same way that some supposed feminists do with other women? I'm only mildly interested. I think these topics are posted in AIBU as 'sport' because the feminist board receives less traffic. Hopefully MNHQ will be along to 'do their stuff' very soon...

No, LeninGrad, of course not. I just think that swift and publicly visible intervention by the appropriate agencies has more of an impact than a journalist just writing about the threats they've received, without doing something about them. That's what I meant.

Either these are perceived as real threats... or they aren't. I do think this journalist is an attention-seeker who has no intention of prioritising her perceived safety over publicity.

This thread is initially about that woman, and her article though. As I said last night, she thrives on the drama she creates, and rather than go through the proper channels of complaint, she will earn money from writing about it, thus inviting even more abuse. Abuse of any kind is never nice, nor should it be seen as acceptable, but I do feel that LP knows exactly what she is doing and purposely goes out of her way to incite some of the comment she gets.

Rather akin to some of the posters who go actively seeking out offensive t-shirts to be offended by.

Do we know whether those women have actually reported the threats though? I think it's all too easy to receive a threat and shrug it off yet be irked enough about it to do a journalism piece on it.

It puts me in mind of something I seem to recall as being a 'Risky shift' whereby the more people who experience an event (and make it known), whether they do anything about it officially or not, it generates a feeling of 'security' that they're in 'good company' and it somehow reduces the feeling of a risk that may be very real.

I haven't explained that well - this is the explanation from Answers.com:

In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individual's initial tendency is to be risky and towards greater caution if individual's initial tendency is to be cautious.[1] The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individual's initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion.

I went to a Richard Dawkins lecture about evolution (not religion) and at the end when people were asking questions someone asked something like 'Don't you ever worry about all these death threats and threats of violence you get and perhaps consider toning down what you do?' and he said 'No, of course not. Next question'.

Obviously threats of rape and sexualised threats are horrible and it is undoubted that women receive more of these than men.

Are they more serious than the threats that men receive? As in, is it more likely that they'll actually be followed through?

Is Dawkins right not to be worried?

EleanorRathbone Sat 05-Nov-11 23:31:41
Men do not get the sort of abuse which makes it clear that the person doesn't just hate them for their opinions, they hate them for what they are.

God isn't this the truth of it.
The abuse women receive on the net has nothing to do with their opinions. It's about being women. An interesting experiment is to make a comment under a male-sounding name and compare how seriously you're taken compared to when you have a name that represents a female.

Noblegiraffe

Comparing the amount of women who are raped and killed (by men ) and the amount of men who are raped and killed (by men--who else!) then I'd say Richard Dwarkins is right not to be worried..
Women, on the other hand...

"Dawkins"!