"You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/comments-rape-abuse-women

by AndrewDucker • 15 years ago

17 13 15 years ago

jgrahamc2• 15 years ago

Sad, but not unexpected to anyone who's been online for a while. Back when Usenet was the place people discussed things it could get really nasty.

When I was working on the Turing petition I received all sorts of hate email. Apparently, I'm going to hell where I am going to spend eternity having 'bum sex' with Turing himself. If you have any questions for him I'll try to ask him.

rb2k_• 15 years ago

I think you make a good point. While I know that HN doesn't like meme's popping up in the comments, I think that these situations are really well described by one phrase: "haters gonna hate"

There are just people out that that are angry at something (life, job, ...) and they seem to like venting by writing stupid emails or comments to people the usually have never met in person.

I think that most of the sexism, racism, *-ism is just the easiest way of trying to hurt somebody emotionally. They're just going for a cheap shot. As long as it's not institutionalized by policies, I think the best thing to do is not even dignifying that with a response. You certainly can't have a discussion with those kinds of "fundamentalists" when their goal is not a discussion about gender/race/religion/... but rather to get people upset.

jgrahamc2• 15 years ago

but rather to get people upset

And they do that for their own pleasure.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

Wait, I thought this only happened to women?

Incidentally, to anyone who gets hate speech: take a lesson from ESR. Buy a gun, learn to shoot. These people seem to be all talk, but just in case.

count• 15 years ago

How is this Hacker News?

rsynnott2• 15 years ago

A common topic on here is "why aren't there more women in computers?" I'd say this sort of thing is highly relevant.

sellandb2• 15 years ago

I don't disagree with the general sentiment of the article, but judging from this quote it would appear to be a two way street:

"A lot of [commenters] seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting."

rsynnott2• 15 years ago

(a) She's quoting someone else (a MAN!)

(b) That's rather hard to equate with rape threats.

sellandb2• 15 years ago

Okay, like I said, I still agree with the sentiment of the article (Which is pretty much entirely quoting other people). I just think that it is a little hypocritical to pen an article calling out abusive comments in the blogger community and then present other abusive comments in a positive light. I am certainly not saying this equates, vindicates, or in anyway excuses rape threats, or really any other abusive comment. Just pointing out that perhaps that quote is inappropriate considering the point the article is trying to make.

theorique• 15 years ago

I find it hard - like, really hard - to put myself in the state of mind of someone who would write something like this at someone else. It's strange - I just really don't get it.

The danger is when people with mindsets like us extrapolate outward to assume that essentially everyone is people like us, and therefore "it's not that serious a problem".

It is a serious problem - if even 1% of internet users are behaving this way, then there's a lot of abuse going around every day.

No easy or obvious solutions - it's systemic.

thom2• 15 years ago

We expend huge amounts of time and computing power to track people's likes, dislikes and spending habits to show them better advertising. It would be interesting to see a service that uses the same expertise to pin online hate speech to someone, publicly and for all time.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

It would also be interesting to see a service which uses the same expertise to pin online speech to closeted gays, closeted conservative academics, occupiers who work on wall st and redditors with gimmick accounts (e.g. steamingpileofpoo).

And lets not forget, a service which pins anti-Islamic Republic speech to Iranians.

thom2• 15 years ago

Yup, those would be cool too.

"You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online

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