Its Just Wrong

When someone recently asked me if I considered myself part of the “netroots,” my immediate answer was “No!” My emphatic reply has something to do with the fact that I don’t like to consider myself a joiner, but the real answer lies in this recent post by Markos on the big orange blog otherwise known as DailyKos. What I am mostly bothered by is the “netroots” easy dismissal of women’s reproductive rights as being less important than the election of a Democrat–any Democrat. And whether he means it or not, it seems like much of what he writes ends up being about him in one way or another. I mean really–what kind of person quotes themselves in a Washington Post op-ed anyway?

Predictably, Kos chimes in on something he knows almost nothing about–the online campaign of terror directed against prominent technology blogger Kathy Sierra as a way to argue against a bloggers’ code of conduct. What happens unsurprisingly is that his post ends up being about how poorly Sierra handled the threat rather than about why a bloggers’ code of conduct is a bad idea.

First, Kos acts is if Kathy Sierra is some kind of new kid on the blogging block because she is “crying” about the death threats she received. Does he not know that she has been blogging for years and is a prominent figure in the web programming community? Next, he minimizes her experience by insinuating that the death threats she received didn’t need to be taken so seriously. He even gives the impression that the threats aren’t real by referring to them as “said death threats.” Kos goes on to rationalize away Sierra’s concern for her safety by posting a threat he recently received to show how a big boy like him would handle such a threat. Needless to say, in his own mind, he does a much better job than Kathy Sierra:

It’s not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats. For better or for worse, this isn’t a country in which media figures — even hugely controversial ones — are routinely attacked by anything more dangerous than a cream pie.

Email makes it easy for stupid people to send stupid emails to public figures. If they can’t handle a little heat in their email inbox, then really, they should try another line of work.

Okay, if you say so, but why don’t we look at how the threats against Sierra differed from the one Kos holds up as an example? Thanks to Jessica Valenti for writing about all of this last week:

• The death threats Kathy Sierra received were accompanied by graphic photoshopped images of Sierra gagged, with a noose hanging beside her head.
• The death threats began appearing on other sites and forums. Someone even created a site just for the purpose of posting threats directed toward Sierra.
• They didn’t just threaten to murder her numerous times and in numerous places, the violent threats were sexualized to include rape and other vile actions.
• When Sierra went public with her complaints, someone posted her home address and social security number in the comments on her own blog.
• And then, some members of her own blogging community dismissed the seriousness and violence of the threats against her, isolating her, and dismissing her concerns by asserting that death threats are a First Amendment right.
• Sierra was so frightened that she called the police and they considered the threats serious enough to open an investigation that is still ongoing.

In short, Sierra’s attackers created visual images of her eminent death and knew where she lived. She was rightfully frightened. Wouldn’t you be too?

The problem is not with death threats, protected speech, or with “stupid people” who send “stupid emails,” the problem is with the proliferation of misogyny on the internet. Again from Valenti’s article:

When women are harassed on the street, it is considered inappropriate. Online, though, sexual harassment is not only tolerated - it’s often lauded. Blog threads or forums where women are attacked attract hundreds of comments, and their traffic rates rocket.

Is this what people are really like? Sexist and violent? Misogynist and racist? Alice Marwick, a postgraduate student in New York studying culture and communication, says: “There’s the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home.”

I have received rape and death threats online before and it is frightening. Several years ago, a man threated to “O.J. me,” referring to the stabbing death of O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Simpson. And this was someone that I had “known” online and chatted in a public chat room on CBS’ Sportsline website for over a year with a group of other people. He knew where I worked and he knew my first name–enough to come after me if he wanted to.

What Kos did was stupid. I think he would benefit from reading Joan Walsh’s recent essay on online misogyny:

I’m left with a lot of my initial reaction: Attitudes toward women have improved dramatically just in my lifetime, but still the world has too many misogynists, and the Web has given them a microphone that lets them turn up the volume on their quavering selves, their self-righteous fury, their self-loathing expressed as hatred of women. And yet, mostly, women on the Web just have to ignore it. If you show it bothers you, you’ve given them pleasure. Life is too short to think about Broadsheet trolls.

But it coarsens you to look away, and to tell others to do the same. I’ve grown a thicker skin. I didn’t want skin this thick. And what does it mean that women writers have to drag around this anchor every time they start to write — that we reflexively compose our own hate mail, and sometimes type and retype to try to avoid it? I can honestly say it’s probably made me more precise and less glib. That’s good. But it’s also, for now, made me too cautious. I write less than I would if I wasn’t thinking these thoughts. I think that’s bad. I think Web misogyny puts women writers at a disadvantage, and as someone who’s worked for women’s advancement in the workplace, and the world, that saddens me.

I truly believe misogynist trolls are only a tiny sliver of the Web population. But I can no longer say they don’t matter, or they do no real harm. We have them here at Salon in politics and relationship threads; Sierra has them in the world of tech marketing. They’re probably not the same guys. That’s disturbing. What’s unique to the Web is that they can easily collaborate: A vicious prankster who’d like to rattle Sierra can make threats or even find and publish her address, and he might only want to scare her, not do her real physical harm. But he can be joined by an unhinged person who takes the address and acts on it. And who’s to blame?

I don’t have an answer to that question, or a solution. All I can really do is promise to think and talk about it more, and not dismiss other women’s — and some men’s — complaints about what women suffer online as easily as I have in the past. I chide myself for cringing, at first, at Kathy Sierra’s response to her threats. I still wish she’d gone to ETech and given her tormentors the finger, but I can’t say with certainty I’d have done so in her shoes. I do know that in the Nick Denton/Chris Locke vs. Kathy Sierra/Robert Scoble smackdown, I am firmly on the side of Sierra and Scoble. As a woman writer friend e-mailed me after reading Denton’s fierce defense of Locke on Valleywag: “There is nothing like hysterical masculine self-pity posing as righteous indignation.” I couldn’t put it any better than that. Man up, fellas!

The comments to the Kos post are revealing as always. At one point, several people begin joking about their penis size. Yeah, nothing is funnier in the middle of a discussion about the rape and death threats made against Kathy Sierra than a conversation about penis size. Nice progressive blog community you people are creating there. These are the progressive men women need to rely upon to call for an end to such behavior online. Fabulous.

And while I’m on the subject of violent and offensive discourse, let’s talk about Bill Manders. JWH over at “No Gibbons” has recorded some choice comments Manders made about the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse rape case during an interview with Senator John Ensign:

“The freaking woman was a hooker!”

“She would of taken fifty bucks that night…”

“I relate a bit. First of all, my daughter is not a whore…”

“It’s pretty amazing. It’s amazing in this day after were talking about the Don Imus situation, and the phrase that he used, and all of a sudden, boom… There she is, there she is on Drudge, a real life one you can reach out and touch her apparently. But let’s use the term “exotic dancer” as opposed to the ebonic term… “Ho”.

First of all, what did the esteemed Senator Ensign have to say during this conversation? Perhaps Gibbons and Ensign, frequent guests of Manders should think about that before appearing on his show again because some of us might think they condone such speech. What strikes me about his comments is that for someone like Manders, it shouldn’t be all that “amazing” for him to see “nappy headed hos” everywhere he sees a black woman if he sympathizes with Don Imus. Don Imus saw “nappy headed hos” on an elite Division I university women’s college basketball team. Next, Manders equates an exotic dancer to a prostitute. Does everyone understand that a woman can dance and not participate in paid (or unpaid) sexual activity whether Crystal Mangum did or not that night? A dancer is not always a prostitute. Do you get that?

I think one point people like Manders should take away from the Imus outcome and Fox News Democrat debate cancellations is that the majority of people in this country are sick and tired of hearing such ignorant and hateful speech day in and day out and they are ready to do something about it. They are sick of hearing it from Imus and Manders and Limbaugh and Coulter and Malkin and Beck and O’Reilley and Hannity and Snoopdog and R Kelley and J.Z….the list goes on and on. It doesn’t matter who is responsible for the lastest racist, misogynistic or any other kind prejudice speech or action. Its just wrong. You can’t excuse it by saying: “But he did it too” like Imus and his defenders keep trying to do. Did that excuse work with your parents when you were seven years old? If Imus jumped of a bridge would you too? Misogyny is misogyny and racism is racism–no matter where or who it comes from. Its always wrong.

Its always wrong.

If you havent read DB’s and Gwen Ifill’s riffs on the subject, please do. Michael Wilbon’s is pretty damn good too.

From DB’s:

Those folks who prefer the comfort of “keeping score” to more uncomfortable, but more productive, discussions of race relations; who prefer to perpetuate their own sense of victimization instead of addressing the victimization of others might do well to remember these words:

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963 [QP]

Update: Here is a list of some great blog posts on Kos’ post about women and threats of violence on the internet kindly collected by Wampum:

brownfemipower at Woman of Color Blog
Zuzu at Feministe
Jessica at Feministing
Belledame at Fetch Me My Axe
Echnide of the Snakes
Mark at Norwegienty
Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast
Bitch PhD
Chris at Creek Running North and Pandagon
Kip at Long Story, Short Pier
Bruce at Crablaw
Melissa at Shakesville
Jeff at Blog of the Moderate Left
Interrobang
Stephen at The Thinkery
Amp at Alas, A Blog
Amanda at Pandagon
Lindsey at Majikthise
Dan at Fitness for the Occasion
Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican
Natasha, at Pacific Views
Kevin at Slant Truth
Aaron at Faithfully Liberal
Ntodd at Dohiyi Mir
Trifecta at New PairODimes
Steven D at Booman Tribune
Sheelzebub at Pinko Feminist Hellcat
Myrna at Reno and Its Discontents
twoluvcats at a wealth of semi-useless information!
Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money
PZ at Pharyngula
skippy the bush kangaroo
Mickle at The True Confessions of an Hourly Bookseller
WebWeaver’s World
Renee at the Independent Bloggers’ Alliance (Renee also provides links to politicians and activists who post on dKos.)

And I’ve added this one which I think is really good–Chris Clarke at Pandadona man talking to men.

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