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When It Comes to Time Spent Online, Content Trumps Community - Advertising Age -…
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Mar 15, 3:50am
0 review
internet, social-networking
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=125623
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Jessica Valenti | How the Web Became a Sexists Paradise
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Sep 28, 2007 5:35am
9 reviews
feminism, internet, social-networking, cyberbullying, online-abuse
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/040607WB.shtml
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From the page (some content paraphrased):
On some online forums anonymity combined with misogyny can make for an almost gang-rape like mentality. While online harassment doesn't necessarily create the same immediate safety concerns as street harassment, the consequences are arguably more severe. If someone calls you a "slut" on the street, it stings - but you can move on. If someone calls you a "slut" online, there's a public record as long as the site exists.
For one woman, since she wrote about the abuse on her website, the harassment has increased. "People are posting all my private data online everywhere - social-security number, and home address - a retaliation for speaking out," she writes.
Another female victim states that "the harassment of women is far more sexualized - men may be told that they're idiots, but they aren't called 'whores.'... I think there's a tendency to put the blame on the victims of stalking, harassment or even sexual violence when the victim is a woman - and especially when she's a woman who has made herself public."
Online threats, even if they are coming from a small group of people, have tremendous potential to scare women from fully participating online. But even women who don't put their pictures or real names online are subject to virtual harassment. A recent study showed that when the gender of an online username appears female, they are 25 times more likely to experience harassment.
Most disturbing is how accepted this is. When women are harassed on the street, it is considered inappropriate. Online, though, 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.
From just the last paragraph here, I think it's obvious why these people attack others online under the safety of "anonymity" ~ to get attention and popularity they would not be able to get otherwise. If these people are continually encouraged to do/say these things, unprovoked, about others who are minding their own business online, where will it end? Who are they besides bitter people who only experience "popularity and acceptance" through bashing others? Please take time to read the full story on this site.
I have been attacked in the past (lasting several months) by cyber-bullies who hacked a private, unpublished photo directory and plastered personal photos of me on their SU blogs. Then when I publicly defended myself (same scenario as is happening now), I was vilified by these people's friends (many of whom are friends of my current attackers, some of whom even threatened me with innuendos of offline retaliation) until SU administrators took note and finally made them take their nasty slander off their pages. Offended (!!), these people then went on rants about how their "freedom of speech" was infringed upon.
It never ends unless someone takes action. The more of us that show we refuse to be victims and will not tolerate this abuse of other undeserving people online, the less inclined the hatemongers will be to instigate their cyber-bullying. Please stop rubbernecking and tacitly condoning such behavior here at SU by doing nothing. Please don't write and tell me to "ignore" them ~ I tried that and it doesn't work. They keep at it, especially the more popular a target becomes. Maybe if more of us targets and concerned users here spoke out, SU would not be such a minefield.
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