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Jake Swearingen writes at The Atlantic that the Internet can be a mean, hateful, and frightening place - especially for young women but human behavior and the limits placed on it by both law and society can change. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,849 Internet users, one out of every four women between 18 years old and 24 years old reports having been stalked or sexually harassed online. "Like banner ads and spam bots, online harassment is still routinely treated as part of the landscape of being online," writes Swearingen adding that "we are in the early days of online harassment being taken as a serious problem, and not simply a quirk of online life." Law professor Danielle Citron draws a parallel between how sexual harassment was treated in the workplace decades ago and our current standard. "Think about in the 1960s and 1970s, what we said to women in the workplace," says Citron. "'This is just flirting.' That a sexually hostile environment was just a perk for men to enjoy, it's just what the environment is like. If you don't like it, leave and get a new job." It took years of activism, court cases, and Title VII protection to change that. "Here we are today, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not normal," said Citron. "Our norms and how we understand it are different now."
According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by spamdog on Friday October 24 2014, @12:22AM
Oh dear, this moral panic seems to be reaching a crescendo. Thinking of the women is the new thinking of the children.
Yes, we should all give up our liberty online because of a few trolls. That'll turn out great.
No, the real solution is for shit companies like Facebook and Twitter to develop better systems and pay for more staff to handle this kind of behavior. And people should be educated about how to protect yourself online so that people can't easily find your address or whatever.
I also wish we'd get a little bit of perspective about "death threats" online. Every reactionary twit seems to be unaware that 14-year-old script kiddies can get Tails and Tor and make death threats on Twitter without getting caught (well probably). I understand how that's insidious because it means real death threats are more likely to escape notice online - but nonetheless, the whole "death threats" thing is being trumpeted in the media right now with minimum context and for maximum shock.
Personally I'm a little bit sore that a long-time favourite website I frequent is being consumed with this "gamergate" and related feminist nonsense, and right now everyone (led by the site staff) are busy talking as much smack about "gamers" and "dudebros" as possible, in a continuation of the vigilante behavior. There's a lot of ideological enforcement and self-flagellation over people's liberal guilt going on there right now, with a prominent moderator pushing inflammatory articles on the topic and leading the mob. There is very little self-awareness of the irony of leading a vigilante mob to attack gamers as a whole, in response to vigilante attacks by a few gamers.
I also can't help but notice just how little interest people have in the psychological reasons for some men behaving in this way towards women online. The discussion immediately veers off towards the judgemental: "well, they're just fucking losers". And that dismissal is a large part of it - these people are called losers by others, for being a gamer or fat or ugly or socially stunted - which is why they got into gaming in the first place. Do you really think these people are going to lay down and die; accepting that their social betters have labeled them as lesser beings? And yet, it is all these apparently "progressive" voices on the net slamming down on gamers as a group with such hate and vitriol. You would find they wouldn't be so angry if there weren't so many Gawker articles and Twitter demagogues trying to poke them in the eye all the time. A little bit of empathy (and self-awareness) from the social justice crowd and a bit of responsibility from media outlets would go a long way to defusing this. But alas, that would require displaying some respect, and too many people are getting too much of an ego boost from attacking an unpopular group.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @12:30AM
You are so right. Us SJWs really ought to be taking into account the feelings of people who don't give a damn about the feelings of others. We don't want to make them feel bad. I never really understood what a hypocrite I was for thinking that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Thank you so much!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @11:28AM
Shove it up your ugly ass.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday October 24 2014, @12:35AM
I also can't help but notice just how little interest people have in the psychological reasons for some men behaving in this way towards women online. The discussion immediately veers off towards the judgemental: "well, they're just fucking losers".
Was on line playing some first person shooter game the other day, just killing bots waiting for some opponents that were planning to meet there. Someone joins and immediately starts trash talking and boasting and calling names and making totally asinine threats. No real skill, just all mouth/keyboard. I used the jerk for target practice, for a while till they went elsewhere.
Long story short, found out a few days later it was really a 20 something girls. I had wandered onto another server where I promptly got my ass shot off by a whole bunch of them. It was a group of college gamer gals.
Don't assume everyone behaving badly on line are men.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @12:49AM
Ugh. This seems to be a standard conservative response to a variety of social ills - my personal anecdote disproves the existence of any systemic problems.
Obama is president, therefore racial inequality does not exist.
A girl trash-talked me online, therefore men get an equal share of harassment online.
There was a double-murder in my town, so crime-rates are going up and we need more cops.
My cousin got addicted to cocaine, so we need stronger drug laws!
etc
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 24 2014, @01:47AM
Fool AC comes in and posts silly non sequesters so therefore nothing any one else says counts.
You're your own worst enemy.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @04:00AM
And that my friend is a tremendous display of self-unawareness.
Congrats on cleaving to the stereotype.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @07:00PM
A man says something wrong, therefore every man is wrong.
See how easy this works?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @07:08PM
Clear as mud. But I'm sure inside your head it is 100% relevant and insightful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @02:22AM
So what you're saying is that it's all these maladjusted males that are causing the problem, and one female doesn't disprove it?
Are you one of these fools who believes that male-on-female violence is dominant, and female-on-male violence is justified?
Everyone knows one guy who was hit by a woman, but that doesn't really count because it's just anecdotal, male-on-female violence is clearly much more common. Except that the real mix is closer to 50/50, with women using weapons 86% (or thereabouts) of the time, most often against a male who's acting in a passive manner. Wiki has the appropriate supporting information, but my point isn't about intimate partner violence, it's about prejudice.
You are prejudiced against men.
Your prejudice is your assumption that males are the dominant "troll" force on the internet. It's interesting to note that your response to a suggestion otherwise is to troll in response.
Deal with your prejudice: women are humans, too. Women can be fat or thin, ugly or pretty, mean or nice, violent or passive. Women can make mistakes, drive cars, get degrees. They can leave the house and get jobs.
They can also be internet trolls.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday October 24 2014, @06:47AM
I had a girlfriend once who choked me, non-consensualy out of anger, to the point I started to get dizzy. At first I was just like "OK, this isn't amusing" and not struggling because you can't hit a woman but when I started to pass out, it was kind of too late to struggle and I was basically lucky she decided to stop on her own. I've been punched in the face exactly one single time in my 46 years, and I saw stars just like you hear in the cliche. Same chick, same thing -- she was violent and I just took it. This was over well 20 years and still I feel embarrassed by it rather than what I should have felt -- I'm not even sure what I should have felt. I do know that I wouldn't have been able to get any help.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/candacelowry/watch-how-people-react-when-they-see-a-woman-abuse-a-man-in [buzzfeed.com]
The video here is quite telling -- actors play out a scene in a park. In version 1, the man is abusing the woman and the intervention is swift, serious, and by many. In version 2, the woman is abusing the man, nobody does anything but many laugh.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday October 24 2014, @06:50AM
Lame -- serious typo"
the line:
"This was over well 20 years "
should be
"This was well over 20 years AGO"
Yes, we broke up, about 19 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @01:15PM
It is well known that men and women instigate domestic violence at roughly the same rates. [scientificamerican.com] However that fact is only half of the picture - it does not account for severity. Men tend to punch and choke while women tend to slap and scratch, thus women experience injury from domestic abuse at 2x the rate of men. That is what explains the reactions in the video you cited. In neither case is the victim injured, but the potential for escalation to injury is much greater when the man is the aggressor. The people who intervene are doing so not because of what has happened but what is likely to happen if it continues unchecked.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday October 24 2014, @02:50PM
How very dismissive of you. I guess because men usually choke and punch, it doesn't matter when women do it at all. Secondly, if you look at the video, she grabs the guy by the hair and literally throws him against a steel fence. That's merely amusing and OK because statistically, men punch and choke. One of the commentators on that page said this:
That's your logic.
(Score: 1) by jbruchon on Friday October 24 2014, @11:26AM
The logic you're attempting to use works against your agenda as well. A feminist's personal anecdote isn't sufficient evidence to prove there is a systemic problem. A bunch of feminists shrieking about theoretical systemic problems and working backwards from that conclusion to find supporting evidence does not provide evidence of a systemic problem.
I'm just here to listen to the latest song about butts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @12:49PM
> The logic you're attempting to use works against your agenda as well.
That would be true if there weren't plenty of evidence for the problems being systemic. Already cited elsewhere in this story's comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @12:05PM
Because most of us find the reason mundane and uninteresting. Bullies will always target individuals with perceived weakness. Sexual dimorphism means women, as a group, are physically weaker than men. 100,000 years of physical weakness has made women, as a group, socially submissive to men. Perceived weakness. Being a woman online is like being the skinny kid who can't run in the locker room.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday October 24 2014, @03:57PM
That is the danger of online SJWs*. When they take some minor event and blow it up to extreme proportions, they drown out people with real problems. It's like crying wolf.
I've read a lot about the gamergate (god I hate typing that. Such a stupid name) situation, in which one asshole makes an almost certainly toothless threat against a woman and then countless blogs breathlessly tell us how this means that men who play video games are, as a group, awful deranged misogynists. It's bullshit and it's much ado about nothing.
Well a few weeks back I was browsing reddit and there was an AMA (Ask Me Anything) from a woman, and the title was something like "I'm a victim of harassment and stalking that started online, AMA." And my first instinct was to roll my eyes. Here we go, another woman desperate for attention blowing something out of proportion. I clicked on the thread and, um, no. This lady was hounded by some woman for 3 years, constant phone calls, death threats, mailing packages filled with nasty things to her, driving by her house, hounding her family. All kinds of crazy shit. After much difficulty getting the police to do anything they finally responded and the perpetrator is convicted and awaiting sentencing. That's serious shit.
But thanks to Anita and crew, when they crow so loudly about nothing, it makes legitimate crimes less likely to be taken seriously. That's probably one of the reasons the police were slow to respond to the woman who had a real problem. Crying wolf.
*I'm not talking about those who actually fight for social justice in court rooms, on the streets, in prisons, and relief workers. I'm talking about the far more vocal group of professional victims, bloggers and tweeters who think starving kids in Africa can eat FaceBook likes and are more interested in being seen to help rather than actually help.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @06:39PM
> That's probably one of the reasons the police were slow to respond to the woman who had a real problem.
Right because in all the other cases of online harassment before "Anita and crew" the cops were right on it.
Except that the woman you are referring to has been stalked for 6 years, [reddit.com] long before "Anita and crew" were anybody's focus.
It is weird how you warped her story to suit your preconceived bias. I'm inclined to take that as sufficient evidence that your entire position on the topic is based on faulty logic, and that's the most charitable interpretation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @07:10PM
Meanwhile, as evidenced by her blog, the woman seems to be pretty firmly against gamertainters.
http://penbitten.com/post/100684247246/co-opting-the-language-and-posture-of-grievance-is [penbitten.com]
http://penbitten.com/post/100786314649/in-case-anyone-had-doubts-about-gamergates [penbitten.com]
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday October 24 2014, @07:48PM
I didn't mean that Anita was the cause of the police not helping the stalked woman. I meant people like Anita, who resort to ridiculous hyperbole.
Like I've heard radical feminists say things like "marriage is rape!" No, no it's not. Rape is rape. But when you blow such things out of proportion it drowns out other legitimate concerns.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.