Rather shocked that a woman sent these messages

[JacqueslePeacock]

I've just read that two people pleaded guilty to sending threatening, misogynistic messages to Caroline Criado-Perez in protest at her campaign to put a woman on our banknotes. (Guardian article here) I probably shouldn't be shocked, but couldn't help feeling a bit incredulous that one of the two was a young woman.

(It seems the Guardian couldn't quite get its head around it either, as the article refers to the woman's messages as "his" in paragraph 3!)

Unfortunate timing DWH

The Milly Tants were getting very eggy with other sisters - one could feel the restraint hurting. Your male intervention came just in the nick of time.

B

Happy new year, Beatrix. Haven't seen you for a while.

Minni The difference is being a woman is not a choice. Being a troll is. A straightforward substitution doesn't work. But I take your point about the 'othering'.

Thank you. Happy new year to you too

I wondered if this pointed to the fact that a lot of online abuse might be nothing to do with the issue it appears to be - i.e. maybe a lot of the abusers didn't care in the slightest about CCP's opinions, never mind actively disagree with them. Maybe it's just arseholes being arseholes, just trying to upset an easy target for the fun of it.

I genuinely don't understand the surprise.

What difference does it make that one of them was a woman ? Are we meant to be saints or constantly virtuous ?

Sometimes I want to rant and rave against the world. What stops me is that it's not an acceptable way to act but when I see men do it at work and vent their frustration, I get really pissed off that if I were to do it, I would be judged differently simply because I'm a woman.

Not that I necessarily think that ranting and raving is a good thing but I want the freedom to be judged on my rantings because they are irrational, not because they come from a woman.

Yes, what she did is worse than just ranting or raving but it's not more shocking just because it came from a woman and was against a woman. It's shocking because it's just a horrible crap thing to do to someone else.

Surprising because it was a death threat against someone trying to do something positive for women, the group of people she belongs to, I guess.

I know all that Buffy but that's not how the opening post came across.

I guess I'm just a little tired of it all. We see it all the time on here. Women are so invested in having to defend their position, their place in life, that they do go on the attack against other women. They are taught that it doesn't do to rock the boat and what do feminists do ? Well, we rock the boat and everyone gets a wee bit seasick.

Maybe it's a strategy that some women need to follow to get ahead, maybe it's purely selfish and looking at and protecting your own position. I don't think of myself as a handmaiden and quite happily pontificate on here and in life about women's liberation but honestly, there are times, even as a feminist, when I'm selfish about my life and position and don't always act in a woman friendly way. Why would I sabotage other women even subconsciously ? And yet I do. I'm not comfortable with the fact that I do it but I don't know if I do it because of it's just so ingrained or because sometimes, I'm just not nice and when I'm in one of those moods, someone's sex doesn't matter.

And I'm not a complete cunt - today's incident was simply calling another driver a typical bloody woman driver. Where the hell did that come from ? Why did I do it ? Minor but I did honestly think it at the time.

I'd love to be able to consider feminism with a detached, calm mind but can't separate the emotion. Which often leads to the aforementioned ranting.

Life was undoubtedly more peaceful for me and those around me when I was a sexist woman. And honestly, from a selfish perspective I was probably happier on a superficial level. Now I'm fairer to those around me but constantly angry.

Interesting thread. I don't think you should give, the woman involved, the benefit of the doubt. Speculating, stuff like, she wanted to be 'one of lads' or 'impress the guys'. She did something disgusting. Society doesn't matter, you just don't do this stuff. No one thanked me for not sending a disgusting tweet.
Society didn't make people send these tweets. If you think otherwise, then this man and woman become the victims.
I agree about a lot of the shock, earlier on the thread, seemed to come from a delusional strength of sisterhood.

I get your view on social constructs. Did you send a tweet? What percentage of society sent a tweet? I think this is a case for looking at the individuals.

I don't think society made her send the tweets. I think society put the misogyny there though.

But did the woman tweeting, consciously identify her as a woman or as a twitter user? Was she aware of the bank note campaign? Or was it threatening trolling?

Although there are enough of these arses around to think that in some social groups it is perfectly acceptable to send death threats/rape threats to women. Some socialisation definitely takes place to have that lack of empathy with the victim of your abuse.

Well she said rape was too good for her so I think she identified CCP as a woman (plus CCPs twitter account is very obviously female).

You need to know her reasons for tweeting to determine that. Some groups, I'm sure, would send death threats to anyone

Yes but did she tweet that because she happened to be trolling a woman or does she hate women, looked for a woman in the news to troll, then sent the abuse

Why would you need to know her reasons for tweeting? She still used misogynistic language and thought it was acceptable to threaten a woman in that way.