Included in the mayhem are death threats, sexual slurs, and one obscene photoshopped picture of the blogger in question.
Jaysus.
This is silencing. For all of the whining about freedom! of! speech! what these morons in this case, what the sniveling twits over at AutoAdmit don’t get, is that harassing, stalking, and threatening someone silences them. When someone’s too afraid to speak at a conference thanks to some graphic and nasty threats she got, she’s been silenced. And for any jerkoff who wants to go on and on about how she’s “letting them win” (because I know the concern trolls out there folks) get it straight–you’re not the one dealing with this.
Oddly enough, men don’t get such sexualized threats and death threats. They aren’t treated to obscene photoshopped images of themselves. And unlike the women targeted by AutoAdmit, they don’t have to cope with sexual slander and people encouraging each other to stalk them and take surreptitious photos.
Do not give me the crap that this is free speech, that Kathy or other women should just develop a thicker skin, or that “it happens to men too.” Threats and harassment are not protected speech, there’s a difference between a flamewar and illegal and threatening behavior, and men don’t have to deal with the same amount of vitriol on nearly the same level as women do.
I hope the cops track these asshats down and make them cry for their mamas. I tend to be spooked by the feds, but in this case, yeah, I think it’s time we called Johnny Law on ‘em.
Update: I really should start a blog pool on when the usual smelly trope is hauled out. No, Kathy did not freak out because someone was “mean” to her (note how the threats were glossed over). This wasn’t snark–she was threatened. And while it’s all good and well to urge calm, it sure would have been nice to see some of that sentiment aimed towards the folks posting the threats.
Stop trivializing this.
This is not a free speech issue. This is not someone having a problem with a poster or fellow blogger slagging her off. This is someone fearful because she was threatened. When you threaten someone, you are crossing a line.
99 Responses to “Tech blog stalkers gone wild”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
You’re totally right that there is a difference between protected speech and threats/harassment. MOREOVER, what some of these people need to get through their thick fucking skulls is that even for the stuff that is protected speech, the fact that one is *allowed* to say something does not mean that one *should,* that it is a productive contribution, or that one shouldn’t be called an ignorant/sexist/racist/etc. asshole for saying it. When you say something repugnant, and someone says, “That’s repugnant and you shouldn’t say such things,” responding by whining that “It’s my riiiiight” dodges the point. The point is that while you may have the right to say such things, they’re odious and you should stop. Jeez.
None of which is to imply that what she has experienced is protected speech; I also hope the cops nail the fucker(s). But it’s a pet peeve of mine when people wave the 1st amendment around as if it justifies what they’re saying, rather than simply protecting their right to do so.
p.s. Great graphic, by the way.
It’s interesting that these websites where the threats occurred where supposedly established just to poke fun and let off steam among tech people, but the vast majority of the targets were prominent female bloggers (in a techworld that is still overwhelmingly male). How nice. Since I know women were involved in founding the sites, I would be very interested to hear their justification now.
hydropsche,
I think you hit it dead-on. Tech world is still male-dominated and as such, represents the “threatened” class, i.e., male dominance. Anything to marginalize the competition.
And Betsy, unfortunately, unless someone at the cop shop has a clue, even the law will probably be unsympathetic and just claim that it is the old “boys will be boys.”
I don’t wish to rush to judgment about people who may have been only peripherally involved, and of course responsibility for the threats lies with those who make tyhe threats.
But I will say that (Blogher’s!) Jeneane Sessum has some ’splaining to do about her involvement.
What’s interesting is that the folks who are whining about Kathy are making it seem like she can’t handle people being mean to her.
Christ. I get flamed regularly. There’s a difference between getting flamed and people going after you with such vitriol that some asshat(s) feel free to post obscene photoshopped pics of you and threaten your life.
I’m sorry that I disappointed people who wanted to rush out and lynch the four that Kathy mentioned. Is this the new justice? Or is there a way I’m supposed to respond that is acceptable to the feminist creed as it’s practiced here in weblogging.
Or do we want to forget what happened not long ago when people made comments about Catholics and a mob of Republicans tried to tear the people to bits?
No one condones the photoshopped image or what was said about Kathy in the post. But we don’t know who created that image, and we don’t know who said the words, but we do know that the actual death threat was in comments at Kathy’s weblog, not the others.
Condemn the threats, and rightfully so. Nothing I have written was meant to ‘weaken’ that. What I was trying to prevent was more harm being piled on harm. Evidentially, what you’re trying to do is demonstrated that the right isn’t the only capable of indulging in a pile on.
pointer: Lisa Stone weighs in on Sessum’s relation to the issue.
I’ve gotten death threats too due to postings at my blog which were actually postings from another blog.
America has changed. America has gotten meaner than I’ve ever seen in the past 10 years.
I’ve spent many hours contemplating what has caused this… Is it politics? Religion? Greed? Racism? Misogyny? Violent video games? Violent television and movies? Is it in the water? Is it Nutra-Sweet?
I now carry a concealed weapon. I now lock all the doors in my house all the time, I’ve even locked myself out of my own house and had to wait for the wife to get home to ‘let me in’…
BUT I have to realise that I made someone think about what they are doing and hopefully they, once they calm down, will contemplate my comments and find some truth in them.
I’ve said this from the time I moved out of my parent’s violently abusive home: People are for loving, not hitting. If you can’t stand a person just be glad you aren’t married to them… Hate is such a nasty word…
I suggested this over at Lindsay’s place, but I think it’s worth repeating - Logging threats in a public forum (similar to Hollaback) might have an impact on these assholes. Internet anonymity is nowhere near as robust as people tend to think, and there are ways for creative people to identify at least some of the abusers.
“I’ve spent many hours contemplating what has caused this… Is it politics? Religion? Greed? Racism? Misogyny? Violent video games? Violent television and movies? Is it in the water? Is it Nutra-Sweet?”
They’re humans. People suck, which is why misanthropy, cynicism, and a hermetic lifestyle is my public relations policy.
It’s always been like this. The internet just lets the bullies and dickheads expand their scope.
I hope they find the individuals responsbile and that Kathy can get on with her life.
Yes, Shelly. That’s exactly it. We’re participating in a fucking lynching by saying that it’s outrageous to post threats against someone online.
How about you drop the bullshit comparison between people who participated in a site that allowed threatening comments, and two bloggers who were targeted in much the same way Kathy was? You know what an apt comparison is? Kathy’s situation and Amanda and Melissa’s situation.
And you know what else? Kathy’s post didn’t say that the bloggers you speak of posted the threats. She said they participated in the sites that allowed them–one of the bloggers in question has expressed horror at it, she has accepted his apology. She’s hardly lynching them or slandering them. And neither are we–I’m not calling for anyone’s head. Why are you whipping up hysteria over the specter of a lynch mob? Why are calls for her to go to the cops (which she has done) somehow bad? How is it that it’s bad for her to raise the stakes (as you said in your blog post) by calling the cops when she was threatened? One would think that would be the quickest way for this to be resolved.
And when you start screeching about bloggers being angry about this and equating it to lynching, yes, you’re trivializing the threats.
You want to see some calm? Where were these calls for calm when the vitriol and threats flew thick and fast in Kathy’s direction? That’s not snark. I post snark. I’ve gotten flamed. I know the difference between a flamewar and harassment.
No, men do get these kinds of sexualized threats — but the approach is usually to feminize the target. Several years ago I was the subject of such an attack, with a photoshopped image taken from some gay porn with my face spliced in, and with threats of injury and murder…and a few people babbled about hiring somebody to carjack me and shoot me in the head, posting that along with my address and descriptions of my most likely routes to work.
It was usenet, though. These kinds of scum have been around for a long, long time.
This is the backlash. This is how patriarchy is maintained in a world where you can’t just say, “women don’t deserve to be in the public square”: you make it impossible for a woman to safely be in the public square.
And the wonderful thing about it is, no-one has to plan it. There’s no organized conspiracy to silence women, it’s so woven into the culture that all a woman has to do is stick her head up far enough for the loonies to start to froth. And then the non-loony men can click their tongues and say, “she shouldn’t be so *sensitive*” — while reaping the advantage of not having women to compete against.
The real question in my mind is, can women be safe online without men changing their culture? Can *we* protect ourselves and each other, or do we have to get men to help?
togolosh, you *may* have the right idea with a Hollaback kind of site. I don’t know if it won’t be just an easy way for the frothers to target more women. It definitely needs more discussion.
Someone said something about Catholics?! Where? Who? I know that someone criticized the church, but that’s a much different thing. Who on my blog threatened Catholics?!
Some days I am so damned ashamed of my gender.
It’s not gender neutral. It’s not women threatening men with death and rape. Keep that in mind.
PZ, it’s still directed at the feminine in their minds. That’s how much they hate women; they can’t attack a man without first turning him into a woman in their minds.
Crossing over the line…
Kathy my thoughts and those of my readers go out to you. Folks, if you are reading this, please stop by her site and show her some moral support….
[…] Lean Left, Winds of Change.NET, Scobleizer, protein wisdom, Pandagon, Polimom Says, Creative Think, Althouse, Tennessee Guerilla Women, NewsBusters.org, Feministing, Feministe and Majikthise […]
I work as a developer in silicon valley and the climate here is shockingly anti-woman. Just read valleywag for a week to get the idea of what I mean: women in tech are presented as sex objects or eye candy and the successful people are idolized for their “playboy” lifestyle (see Kevin Rose, Sergey Brin & Larry Page, etc). Its a world were success brings you hot chicks and successful women are hard to find. P
eople here really have a different attitude towards women that is hard to define…it just seems very old school, women-as-wives kind of thinking. At least that is how it is with the white male part of the population. The (largely asian) immigrant population seems completely different, with men and women equally represented in the software industry. But the supposedly progressive, american born population seems to think women belong at home or in marketing.
Read this MRA-influenced screed on valleywag: http://valleywag.com/tech/take-two/in-defense-of-chris-locke-247414.php. Yes that is right, hysterical women, blah blah blah. You can claim there is no misogynism in the valley when you stop doing “hot chicks at parties” photo series.
Would someone enlighten me.
I am assuming that a Tech Blog is a blog about technology.
I only read political blogs (I mostly lurk).
Now threatening someone with violence over an opinion is always wrong.
Politics and Religion can raise passions. I still think it is wrong to threaten someone who shares a different opinion than yourself.
But….
What the hell could someone say about Technology that makes someone that unhinged.
Do I not understand because I am sane?
From the “mean to her” link:
Of course! Why wouldn’t the people with the deepest feelings about this be the ones mainly concerned with not looking insensitive?.. Who will now for their next breath tear down the notion of even having sympathy, period.
People in tech can get insanely passionate about things normal people don’t care about. Especially any kind of standards, usability rules, things like that. I suspect that the online misogynists in the valley are older and younger men that have the MRA’s burning hatred of women, which they mix in with passion about software.
Tech people have some real issues that stem from the fact that they are mostly pretty intelligent, probably had the “geek” experience in high school, were largely from upper middle class upbringing (where they can have access to computers when they are young) and got high paying jobs right out of college. No hardships in life other than finding dates. People here refuse to accept that they are privileged because part of the myth of tech is that it is a meritocracy and everyone here is self-made. So here you have dorky guys who have had few dates (which seems to cause anti-woman resentment) in a place that demographically is skewed male. Its fertile grounds for misogynism.
Okay I just spent a couple of minutes at Valley Wag and a couple other Tech Blogs (I Think).
All i can say is “What the @%^&!”
It’s not so much anything she said about technology as that she was a she while saying it.
I fucking HATE valleywag, its the most insipid, place, dripping privilege and exceptionalism. We make fucking computer programs people,we are not changing the world. There is also nothing glamorous or sexy about web startups.
What the hell could someone say about Technology that makes someone that unhinged.
It has nothing to do with anything said about technology. It has a lot to do with men in the tech industry feeling threatened by the growing numbers of women entering the field. I work in the tech industry, and I do see guys who will make self-deprecating jokes about their lack of success with women, only to make some of the most mind-numbingly sexist comments in the same breath. I think there may be a correlation…
It has a lot to do with men in the tech industry feeling threatened by the growing numbers of women entering the field.
Pourquoi?
I have never felt threatened by a coworker’s abilities. When a coworkers abilities outshine my own it usually inspires me to increase my own abilities.
Over the last 20 some-odd years I have probably had more female than male supervisors. I actually prefer the female ones. Job expectations are pretty clear when you have a woman for a boss. It is my experience that it is the male supervisors who have moving expectations.
So you are telling me that the list of names which flash across the screen when I launch Photoshop or Quark are the names of a bunch of emotionally challenged loners who are seconds away from going insane by the mere presence of a woman?
No wonder geeks can’t get dates.
I’m sorry that I disappointed people who wanted to rush out and lynch the four that Kathy mentioned.
So you asked the four that Kathy mentioned and they told you …. ? Or have you not bothered to ask them yet, because it’s all “so ridiculous” that she would complain about receiving death threats credible enough to make her cancel a scheduled appearance?
It is my experience that it is the male supervisors who have moving expectations.
I hope I am not that kind of a boss myself….
Don’t forget, there is a HUGE amount of Venn overlap between tech-geeks and ‘The Nice Guy’(TM) … so this really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.
I originally went to college to get a Comp Sci degree, and ended up switching to Astrophysics. But in that transition, I retained social circles with the tech geeks that were my friends, and the friends of my friends.
I noticed a hell of a lot of ‘Othering’ of women, where women were positioned as something other than human; simultaneously scary and also the prize to be ‘gotten’. I saw a lot of typical ‘nice guy’ behaviour, bemoaning “‘Rugby-head’ guy behaviour and how women seemed to always go for that type, when didn’t they know that geeks would treat them wonderfully”. Just look at the women embodied in the avatars that a geek guy might play online if he went cross-gender.
Toss in a TON of homosocial gathering, lack of positive self-reflection, inferiority complexes, and ‘intellectual’ disdain, and you get some serious entitlement complexes happening. Issues regarding performances of masculinity get projected onto women.
Don’t get me wrong, some geeks really can be the sweetest guys on the planet, and if I weren’t gay, I probably would have ended up being with one (hell, I’m popping down to purchase the first ‘Buffy’ comic issue tomorrow, I have a scifi fiction collection to make people weep, and can quote ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Star Wars’, and ‘Star Trek’ dialogue, amongst others … I kinda HAVE to date a geek, lol). But I have to say, that even if I were straight, a lot of these guys really have some issues.
So those of you who are male and in the tech industry, what methods do you think would work to keep your peers from harrassing women online? Possibilities include:
1) a Hollaback sort of thing, where guys are exposed and mocked for such behavior.
2) a bunch of A-list male bloggers taking a pledge to toss anyone making this kind of comments
. . . ? I dunno, make some suggestions?
Well I just spoke with a female coworker about this dust up. This comes from the culture here, not from a few bad eggs. Sarah is right, there is a “Nice Guy” feedback loop here, reinforced by a tacit assumption that success in tech == access to sex with attractive women. How do you change that? Well I think the massive influx of immigrants is changing that. When you find yourself working with intelligent successful women who just happen to be not white that has to have an effect.
You type faster than me Sheelzebub, we both started from Lindsay’s post.
Will: I link to the only post I could find on Kathy’s site that even mention’s gender differences. There really is nothing offensive there to anyone who wasn’t already offended before they walked in.
She is, BTW, a great writer on technology and I hope when the dust settles, she has a bit more traffic for the right reasons. What I read there this morning will already influence what I code in the next few weeks.
I posted one additional thing that I hope people pick up on: We can’t cure all the sick things that internet anonymity makes possible but we can selectively avoid using or proping up the ad revenue of any service like AA that caters to misogynist subculture. I am not saying I have a post with the solution, just a laying out of directions to go and to avoid.
What this incident has taught me is how much more widespread in my own tech circles that subculture is.
Lots of commenting over at Lindsay’s place too.
The Nice Guy feedback loop is nothing but self-pity.
Instead of examining ones own behavior and habits and how that might affect your own attractiveness it is easier to the psyche to throw back the “Girls don’t like nice guys” meme.
In my experience the “Nice Guys” really only want women for sex and how nice is that really?
What counts as “Lindsay’s place”?
Dr. Science:
Majikthise.
Anyone know how to pronounce that, though? It’s been driving me nuts.
The Hollaback approach seems more effective. Always best to stand up to bullies.
defenestrated, I learned the other day (to my surprise) it’s pronounced “magic thighs”…
Er, no, actually.
I’m gonna have to take issue with that statement, because it’s not always best to stand up to bullies.
Sometimes the best fucking thing to do is to protect you and yours, and hunker down. I’m actually very impressed by Kathy’s courage to say not go all macho and confrontational, but to do what was safe and necessary.
Women learn really quick that often the best thing in our society to do is the safe thing, and often that has to simply to do with protecting yourself.
I think Kathy totally did the right thing here, and she has my props and support in it.
DR Science:
3. unplug. The abuse of freedom is really hard to curb without curbing the freedom. The hollaback would be a good thing, but if it really worked, assholes would cover up their real identies faster than they cover their nuts in street fight. and spawning pseudonyms is too cheap these days.
there are two scenes for this kind of crime:
[a] your own place. This like the threats left on Kathy’s own blog
[b] supposedly neutral space eg AA, myspace, or the opion/reccomendation services like DIGG
In both places, the mechanism is the asymmetry of identity: unknown assailant can say anything to/about named victim. The usual lo-grade shitferbrains just gets banned. The ones who have already gone postal at first sight get their comments deleted…it was only Kathy comming forth that lets any of us beside the police know what has been going on. [And what do you think the police will do with the potential avalanche of hate speech and misdemeanor sexual threats that could be sent to their inboxes?…I doubt they are eager to handle this] I am not enough of a criminal psychologist to figure whether the publicity is actually one of the goals of this gang of cum-on-the-keyboard losers.
The listing and ranking of which sites promote or tolerate anonymous attacks and threats and slandering should be compiled. A commenter over at Majikthise suggested a DataBase. I am so tempted to suggest a crawler with a semantic analyis backend…but I get paid to do such things…it could be done and take very little human bandwidth to provide its warning service.
It would cover crime scenes in category [b]. Users who are committed to a high level of civility in the exchanges on the web might just decide to forgo the worst of these services entirely. I don’t really know that DIGG was so bad but it was not doing me any good and if I knowledgible person like Scoble says it is a community with low standards, I unplug from it.
IF [its a big if for traffic dependent sites] you limit commenting to those who are willing to provide more than the casual identity of an email address.
IF[not quite so big but not free] you institute comment moderation and turn it over to a bot or do it by hand,
THEN you will be able to take control of crime scene [a] but you will lose some legitimate traffic.
Thats what I mean by unplug. it is a diminishing of the general connectedness that is the web’s greatest strength. And the prospect of that diminishing I feel personally, a freedom we all enjoy is under attack here though not directly. It is a sad trade off to have to make. But not as sad as cancelling your appointments because you don’t know how seriously some quivering little pus-shooter intends his threats.
Majikthise is a philosopher character in the science fiction novel, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. “The search for ultimate truth is the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers.”
I knew I’d seen it somewhere before! Still wouldn’t help me in knowing how to pronounce it, since I’ve never seen the Hitchhiker movie(s?). Then again, I’m the girl who pronounced “epi-to-me” “epi-tohm” until I was fifteen. I didn’t talk to people much as a kid, I mostly just hid under tables with a book.
Sarah in Chicago, I agree with you as far as standing up in terms of…well, literally standing up in front of a crowd after receiving death threats. But I think a network of people standing together with some sort of hollaback-type site really would do some good, and definitely wouldn’t incur the same kind of risks as going to that conference would have for Kathy.
Yecch. This makes me even more disgusted than the AutoAdmit thing, because it’s my own profession that’s doing it now. I didn’t read those particular blogs–I spend more time on Slashdot and Mark Pilgrim’s blog–but I’m still disgusted by the people I associate with professionally. Ugh.
An aside: Knock it off, Stephen. Handwaving away “the ‘geek’ experience in high school” as “no hardships in life”? Cheap stereotypes aren’t going to bother the asshats at ValleyWay, who aren’t going to be here anyway. Who are you targeting?
What I don’t get about all this whining about freedom of speech is, what part of saying, “Hey, this is not acceptable behaviour!” is infringing anyone’s freedom of speech? I mean, when my teachers were covering this back in early elementary school, I don’t recall anyone saying anything about freedom of speech. Maybe I was out sick or something…
As I said over at Feministe, this scares the crap out of me. I’m female, work in IT, and while I’m not high-profile yet, there’s a good chance that in five or ten years, I could be getting invited to give keynotes at conferences and so on. I could be her, someday. It’s intrinsically scary enough, but it packs a double wallop that way.
I find there is an awful lot of sexism in IT, even outside Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley as I am (I’m even outside the fabled Tech Triangle). I’ll start a new job and, despite the fact that I make my living documenting, testing, and sometimes redesigning (and hence deconstructing) software interfaces, the (inevitably male) tech will ask me if I need help configuring my computer, installing software, whatever. I think that if I were a male thirty-something technical writer, nobody would even ask, because they would assume I would already know. Even in the professional IT field (and I’m not talking about the horrible situation of men in IT versus women in the general public), women’s assumed standard of competence is lower.
Don’t even get me started on how I fought for five years to become a technical writer in the first place, despite being told over and over again how much “happier” I’d be in marketing writing. (Never mind that marketing writing makes me fwow up.)
Also, if you think this is bad, you should see the cesspool that is the front page of Slashdot these days. I started out there about a decade ago, and very, very carefully chose my gender-neutral handle. The most sexist thing that anyone on Slashdot who knows I’m female (a few people) has said to me, personally, is that I have a “seductively low UID” (user number), but that’s because I don’t give them the opportunity most of the time.
I agree on that defenestrated, I just wanted to make sure we didn’t degenerate into making some blanket statements. Because on Lindsey’s blog there were some horrible people that were victim blaming in saying Kathy did the wrong thing in cancelling as it somehow ‘emboldened’ the bullies.
I tend to think the bullies were pretty bloody well already ‘bold’
(Not that I am saying Justin was saying such, mind you)
But, that said, a group thing like Hollaback is a good thing, I am subscribed to the Chicago version myself.
Shelley:
An analogy:
A woman reports she was raped. Someone, speaking of her, says “She was raped.”
You respond “now, we don’t know the whole story here, let’s no throw around strong words like rape yet; I know her, and she can be a bit over-emotional sometimes, so let’s not be too hasty”.
Kathy Sierra reported being threatened, and having a reason to be afraid. You’re not willing to trust her enough to assume that the situation is pretty bad, because you haven’t had it proven to your satisfaction that it is that bad.
In short, you’re saying that maybe it’s nothing, maybe she just needs to grow a thicker skin, and if she wasn’t so oversensitive, she’d be able to deal with it. But you’ve already admitted you don’t know the whole truth, so how on earth can you speculate that maybe it’s her weakness, and not the level of the threats that caused the problem?
You don’t know how bad it is, but you’re willing to speculate that it’s not that bad, which is the very thing that helps people dismiss this kind of thing as no big deal. It helps people jump to that question first and foremost, “maybe this is a big deal about nothing”. It’s the type of thing that leads them to question real victims with an undeserved skepticism.
That kind of thing causes real damage to real people.
And sure, not being skeptical enough can cause problems, but why notwait until there’s evidence either way before starting to suggest that people are taking things too seriously?
There’s not much I could say in general about this shameful campaign of psychological terrorism against Ms. Sierra that hasn’t already been said. To condemn it seems inadequate, though I do so anyway.
Instead, I’ll address something from the comments above.
Pinky said, with regards to America becoming meaner:
I think it’s monkey see, monkey do behavior.
One of the things about humans, I’ve learned, is that we have a tendency to look to leaders, heroes, role models, and otherwise “higher-status” people for cues on how to behave. This isn’t really evolutionary psychology, although you could make the connection; any sociologist or psychologist would tell you that humans are social beings, and we tend to organize into hierarchies whe the groups get large. This also isn’t a bad thing, it’s actually crucial to how we learn (by watching our parents and other adults) and how we manage to get things done in society (by delegating decisions that we don’t have time to make ourselves). But it obviously has major potential drawbacks.
One of the big drawbacks is that leaders in any group influence the group with more than the decisions they actively make. It’s not just about their actions, it’s about their attitudes. If the leader has a certain attitude, it’s going to influence the rest of the group, to varying degrees, to likewise adopt that attitude. Not everyone will, but those who don’t may find themselves facing increasing pressure to conform or to leave the group.
Well, our current leadership in the US is a band of bigoted, sadistic, petty, tyrannical bullies. The right wing has spent the last 30 years polluting the national discourse with vitriol, personal attacks, and rampant hatred. They’ve built a power base out of bullying and what amounts to rhetorical terrorism. They’ve paved the way for a vicious, sadistic, spiteful, hateful, small-minded man to become President, and his administration’s top ranks are full of similar people, people who are stupid, evil, or both.
When you have those kind of people in charge, people with attitudes that are so hostile and virulent, people who go out of their way to try and find excuses to torture people, well, that’s going to have a disinhibiting effect all throughout the government and society at large. People who look up to Bush and company feel enabled, emboldened to commit the violent, terroristic acts against people they hate that they’ve wished to commit for a long time. They’ve been sent a message from the top which says to them, “It’s open season.” And they’re listening, and they’re obeying.
Okay, this got way too long. That’s my take on it, anyway.
Defenestrated:
Majic-thighs.
Lindsay said so herself in a little bio that she posted last week as part of her fund raiser.
and, yeah, she says she didn’t think much when she chose it, it was just HHGTTG coolness
but now she has to try not to wince when some one greets her at a blogging convention, knowing only that name.
Flewellyn’s
+ Dr. Science’s= my thoughts exactly.
Hi Doctor Science,
I’ve been in both tech (IT) and “real science” (quantum chemistry). Nice Guy Syndrome(TM) permeates them both but much worse in the IT field (most real science occurs in the university where there are plenty of women with position to smack down the worst sexism).
I would say that exposing them is the best remedy. Determine their real identity, their other online personas, and post summaries about them. Something like: “John Smith is a 34-year-old white male living in San Jose working for smallcorp.com. Online he calls himself ‘pistolman’ and makes threatening comments to both gay male and feminist female bloggers. John is unmarried with a clean criminal record but filed for bankruptcy in 2005. His most recent contact information is …”
Ripe for abuse? Absolutely. But why not? If a gallery was available with these people’s real names and pictures of them along with links to their threatening comments it could become a public hall of shame. They could find themselves unemployable if they keep it up for too long. For those who eventually see the light, their records can roll off after some time of clean behavior and their reputations can recover.
I’m leery of outing. While it appears to the bitch in me, I’ve seen cases where the outer got the wrong info and pointed the finger at the wrong person. Also, it’s easy to pose as someone else on the internet and use an anonymous IP address.
That’s not to say that if someone were to send me death threats that I wouldn’t post the email on my blog. But a) I wouldn’t go to any lengths to find their real names for publication (though I would call the cops if they were harassing/threatening me) and b) I wouldn’t post any personal information about them. I wouldn’t want to see that here.
Stomping down on abusive and bullying crap and deleting it from the comments section is what will eventually stop it. Holding people who encourage this sort of thing accountable will also discourage it. And sure, keeping each other apprised of a trolls user ids/psueds will be helpful.
No, men do get these kinds of sexualized threats — but the approach is usually to feminize the target. Several years ago I was the subject of such an attack, with a photoshopped image taken from some gay porn with my face spliced in, and with threats of injury and murder…and a few people babbled about hiring somebody to carjack me and shoot me in the head, posting that along with my address and descriptions of my most likely routes to work.
Oh yeah - I’ve found it fascinating in trolling in wingnut sites just how much the invective changes when they think I’m female as to when they think I’m male - and how much keeping it uncertain and unconfirmed *annoys* them.
I also had, in a previous incarnation, someone yelling that he would hire someone to assault me - not clever to do online. One good reason among many for keeping anonymous.
I originally went to college to get a Comp Sci degree, and ended up switching to Astrophysics. But in that transition, I retained social circles with the tech geeks that were my friends, and the friends of my friends. I noticed a hell of a lot of ‘Othering’ of women, where women were positioned as something other than human; simultaneously scary and also the prize to be ‘gotten’.
To be fair, Sarah, male college students are not particularly mature, even without the handicap of being techie types. For many, women *are* scary when you’re immersed in uni for the first time; it takes a while for some of us to realise that, what the hell, they’re human beings as well as Teh Sex Object.
Sheezelbub, those’re some great points, especially about the potential for outing the wrong person. I also think that linking to threats from a central list to their original sources (as opposed to just compiling pasted threats with email or other relevant info about the threatener, not the threat-ee) just provides more of a platform for the kind of visibility that these jerks want, and opens the door for continued harassment of the same targets.
PiaToR, that’s a big part of why I switched my handle back from the short-lived ‘trillian.’ I’m sure that ten seconds on my blog and/or 90% of my comments around the tubes easily remove any doubt about my sex, but I still prefer to not have it be the very first thing people know about me online. (I’d rather primarily identify myself as someone who gets thrown out of windows with some frequency, I guess)
Kinda like when I took out all my facial piercings. It didn’t make people’s assumptions about them any more or less true, but I got sick of giving assholes an excuse to feel like they knew something about me based off a couple pieces of metal.
They are complementary, I think. I just took a different snapshot of the same scene.
ok, but I do take issue with this:
I think that human/object is an either/or kind of thing, not both/and. You can’t see someone as a person and a thing, and you certainly can’t treat someone with actual respect if you equate their very being to sex.
And while it would be nice if it were only college guys who saw women as objects, a good number of ‘em never get around to realizing that we’re human. The notion that it’s ok to think women are objects as long as you mention in the same breath that they can also be seen as human beings is a good example of that.
Flewellyn - exactly, very much so. That was kind of my point; sorry if that wasn’t clear
Hi defenestrated,
I was thinking that linking back to the original threats would serve as a warning to everyone else. It would be a message to the stalkers: if you say this kind of stuff you will Be In Deep Shit. Because everyone else in the world but you can see how wrong it is, and we are not listening to you but rather we are laughing at you. Back when I was a card-carrying Nice Guy(tm) I was taken aback several times when I said something that I thought was OK was shown to be “creepy”; even if the trolls themselves are hopeless maybe the other Nice Guys(tm) will learn to see it differently.
But then I don’t blog so you probably know much more about the troll mentality than me.
Does make me wonder if such a gallery could even be put up without the admins of it becoming targets too…
PiatoR:
s/as well as/instead of/g
Does humanity need something to put down at every turn? Does religion have to involve the idea that someone is ‘lesser’ than you are?
I’ve often thought about this because I was always the one that was getting beaten and threatened in school. I always wondered what made someone better than someone else… I know part of it has to do with looks but what is it actually?
I knew a very bright woman that worked her way through college. She had a busy dating life but was nothing I’d call alarming. Hell, I dated 3 women and married the third, she dated a few but were log relationships. But anyway, Pinky, the point…
She joined the Greek Orthodox church after a few years of graduating. The church that says that women are to only speak when spoken to. She can’t cross the threshold of the church when she is having her period. Such depressing and vial shit… She, a female, rates lower than pets and farm animals according to a friend of mine who claims to know more about obscure religions… And I thought catholics treated women badly…
I just can’t understand… I get more confused by those self-rightous republican androids that squawk about ‘cutting taxes’, ‘cut social programs’, ‘cut the death tax’ and other cruel and nasty attacks on the ‘have nots’… The hatred is incredible. I am at a loss to understand why so many of those robots ARE the underclass that are the target of these class based attacks…
I just don’t understand…
I also thought originally that this involved Bill O’Reilly… Now there’s a misogynistic prig that definately feeds off the bottom…
Get lawyered up. Even if you don’t really have the money to wage a suit, you can get advice.
Death threats, first of all, are a matter for the police. Persistent and vicious harassment deserves legal action.
Unless the psycho woman-haters are trying really hard to cover their tracks, it should be possible to track down their ISPs and send a legal warning. Or send it to their employers.
Unless they own their companies . . . If these companies are not merely run out of their parents’ basements or a rolled-up newspaper, they have shareholders, who will not appreciate noises of a lawsuit for defamation.
It is possible, but unlikely, that some of them might take a lawsuit seriously. But 99 times out of 100, at the first sign of serious response to their frivolously vicious blathering, they will crawl back under their rocks where they belong.
Casual viciousness in the tech community isn’t confined to female victims. On bbc.co.uk’s tech forum, of all places (I was Googling for something else), I came across ads for a computer game mocking universal access standards in website design: from the ads, it looked as if in the game, you could blow away various types of cripples and disabled persons. I don’t even know if the game exists, or if the point was the ads.
I think that human/object is an either/or kind of thing, not both/and. You can’t see someone as a person and a thing, and you certainly can’t treat someone with actual respect if you equate their very being to sex.
Hmm. So how exactly do you react at a basic level to the presence of an attractive male (assuming you’re straight)?
I disagree that the human/object dichotomy is either/or in human interaction, because we have various levels of interaction and reaction to people. We are not integrated beings.
We can react with attraction or repulsion at a visceral level to a person’s body, to a person as an object, at the same time we deal with a person as a person, at a higher level (the problem here, of course, is that people, especially young males, and especially geek types, confuse these and are retarded in the latter). As a fat guy, that’s pretty obvious to me on the receiving end as well as on the giving end as a straight male.
The use of the term “Teh Sex Object” was moderately tongue in cheek. I’m trying to convey that males of a certain age do react to, well, just about any woman of a certain age; that this visceral reaction to women as objects can be intimidating (hellishly intimidating); and that it is a trial growing up enough to get past that - their reaction and the way it screws their ability to deal with women as people.
And while it would be nice if it were only college guys who saw women as objects, a good number of ‘em never get around to realizing that we’re human.
Oh, you can go further than that. A hell of a lot of misogyny comes from the retarded types dealing with hostility to their inability to successfully manipulate said “objects” because they’re making a fundamental mistake with their premises. You want a perfect example of this problem gone cancerous, try looking at this site.
I worked in a decent office in after moving to Seattle many years ago. Now I’m consulting for a new company, and they’re sending me back to the Midwest. And I’ve forgotten just how nasty it can be, and I hate it.
It reminds of some of the reasons I left Indy in the first place.
Huh? I was raised in the G.O. church, both my parents were Sunday School teachers, and I never heard any of that.The only misogynistic thing I ever heard associated with church was when my cousin got married and the priest chanted during the ceremony, “…And the woman shall be beholden to the man…” three times. (They say a lot of things three times. Holy Trinity, dontcha know, plus repetition always helps things sink in.)
Anyway, I later found out that as soon as my cousin got her new husband home, she looked him in the eye and said, “You can forget that ‘beholden’ shit right now.”
interrobang: I like pointing out that “freedom of speech” comes in the same amendment as “freedom of association.” Which is why I don’t feel bad about the idea of banning people for bad behavior. There is no reason why women and feminists have to pay for hate speech with their dime and bandwidth.
*nods* Phoenician, I agree, such is not restricted to merely tech geeks, having been in comp sci, physics and sociology departments … however (just in my experience admittedly) comp sci geeks seemed to particularly suffer from such.
CPP - I agree with what you’ve said, but I’d just be wary of essentially forming a database of women who’ve been threatened, alongside links to their sites. I’m sure there are sick fucks out there who don’t need any more instigation than knowing that their words will be particularly harmful given the target’s history. Posting the comments and whatever relevant context about the target, though, wouldn’t necessarily open itself up to abuse in the same way.
PiaToR, when I see someone I’m attracted to, it piques my interest in what kind of person they are. “That guy has lovely blond curls, and if the Amnesty shirt is any indication, he’s probably got some social awareness going on…” is the most recent example I can come up with.
What would you say that fundamentally mistaken premise is? To me, it’s that the women they’re trying to manipulate are objects, not any of the subsequent means of attempting that manipulation. Attractiveness does not make someone less of a person. Objectification is learned behavior, and as CPP’s and others’ remarks about Nice Guysâ„¢ suggest, it’s the kind of behavior that can also be un-learned.
You’re not doing any better than pretending to regard someone as a human being as long as you condone her being seen as an object and chalk it up to no more than an unfortunate glitch in human nature. The idea that women’s bodies are separate from their personhood, and that it’s ok to react to bodies in a way you wouldn’t to people, is a huge contributor to the culture that takes that dehumanization to its logical conclusion. There’s always going to be a person in there, and it’s never safe to forget that.
God damn, now I see why people throw the ‘rape apologist’ thing into seemingly unrelated conversations with you. I know that you don’t mean to, but in effect you’re defending the most basic idea behind the permissibility of rape in our society.
The subject of how best to deal with abuse trolls is interesting but I think it is missing the point.
We are not talking about an obnoxious troll or a schoolyard bully here. We are talking about a stalker. A stalker, cyber- or not, can be very dangerous.
Read Kathy Sierra’s post again. Look at this line.
There is a police (and likely FBI) investigation. It is likely the police or FBI advised her to cancel her appearances.
She wasn’t backing down she was being prudent.
The best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them and ban them when they get out-of-hand.
The best way to deal with a stalker is to contact law enforcement.
Don’t belittle what happened, I bet it is a lot more serious than we know.
The real answers lie in the real world.
Getting ALL police departments to take stalking and the enforcement of restraining orders seriously. Is a good place to start.
And have you seen this? Not a direct threat but a vile, racist, misogynist post from the same people or person at meankids.org. I just read this and I’m very upset. I don’t think you have to know Maryam and what a lovely person she is to be perturbed right down to your soul by this:
(And, warning, it could be very triggering to read, i hestitate to even link to it, but here goes; it’s too awful to ignore.)
http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2007/03/27/how-awful
For many, women *are* scary when you’re immersed in uni for the first time
Fercrissakes.
“How would YOU feel if somebody said that to YOU?” and “Other people have feelings too, you know” are not things men hear for the very first time at university. We’re not talking here about a guy saying something well-meaning but a little awkward, or a techie having to overcome his surprise that girls like computers too. We’re talking about a sexist attitude of entitlement that sees women as sexual receptacles, not people, and whose emotional reaction to a non-subservient woman is the same as to a disobedient pet.
And yes, a lot of these entitled fuckwads end up in Silicon Valley, whining about how there aren’t any single “girls” interested in them.
Is there a reason that one can’t trace IP addresses, instead of tracing individuals, and then notify human resource departments at companies where a fair amount of these threats and hate attacks are being conducted on company time? Would it be possible to publically disclose the amount of hate-traffic coming from corporate IPs as a means of saying “police your own” to places that are not enforcing policies about web use and hate/threats and electronic “web bludging” activities?
Less room for misclassification of people not deserving of contempt, but still puts some pressure on the owners of the gear and the payers of the time to counteract the problem.
PiaToR, when I see someone I’m attracted to, it piques my interest in what kind of person they are.
I think we may have a genuine difference in sexual response here. From conversations with other women, I assumed they also shared a visceral reaction to appropriate hotties. The “what kind of person are they” interest sorta fell after the “I’d like to eat him/her with icecream” response. I mean, Jesus, I can name two women who are considerably more oversexed than me.
What would you say that fundamentally mistaken premise is? To me, it’s that the women they’re trying to manipulate are objects,
Precisely. I thought that was clear from context; my mistake.
That’s why the subsequent means of attempting to manipulate the “objects” are so smelly.
You’re not doing any better than pretending to regard someone as a human being as long as you condone her being seen as an object
Not quite - I’m not condoning it so much as stating that it seems to be a common feature with humans. And, importantly, most especially, NOT limited to male/female interaction - The Other is always an object until you learn to grow a sense of, um, empathy? Sympathy? Maturity? Humanity? I’m also stating that it’s possible to have a perception of a person, male or female, simultaneously as both object and person (and other categories such as target or mark)
The idea that women’s bodies are separate from their personhood,
I’m not pushing that idea (see below). I am stating that the young male response to the female body, especially when that male is socially retarded, will get in the way of growing past that idea.
and that it’s ok to react to bodies in a way you wouldn’t to people,
False - I did not state that it was ok.
I’m stating that the reaction to bodies (to people-as-objects) will form part of our total reaction to people. The goal is to develop a mature response which emphasises people-as-people. Part of the problem with the typical male geek is that the sexual response to women will get in the way of this development - if you see the woman as Teh Sex Object so strongly, it can keep you seeing her just as Teh Sex Object.
I know that you don’t mean to, but in effect you’re defending the most basic idea behind the permissibility of rape in our society.
No, I’m not. But at least you’ve done me the courtesy of identifying where your interpretation differs from what I’m actually trying to say, for which I thank you.
We’re talking about a sexist attitude of entitlement that sees women as sexual receptacles, not people, and whose emotional reaction to a non-subservient woman is the same as to a disobedient pet.
Well, it started off as that. I’m trying to comment on whether such a rancid response might grow from hostility because of male frustration with an immature inability to get beyond dealing with women-as-objects. There’s a hell of a lot of fear in these people (as with many wingnut stances) and much of that fear, IMHO, comes from a blinkered vision of women as AlienCreaturesThatGiveMeAStiffie.
At the risk of being a total blog “sex-worker” I link here to my own post where I have put up a button supporting Kathy Sierra that bloggers can copy, steal, incorporate into their own blogs, etc., along with a link to Kathy Sierra’s blog.
I’m not surprised. I know from geeks. They can be as macho, juvenile and misogynistic as frat boys. Male bonding out the wazoo.
I feel for this woman. I got threatened in an AOL chat room once, it was a frightening experience. This woman is getting crap from all sides and she’s not posting anonymously. Hope she is taking some security measures like burglar alarms, having a dog, etc.
This is such bullshit. What kind of juvenile fucktards think it’s acceptable to subject this woman to such treatment? Along with the Jill Filopovic case, this really gets me insanely angry.
For anybody who’s trying to turn this into a free speech pulpit: My Rights End Where Yours Begin. Say it. Say it a few times. Get used to the sound of the words before you stop to think what they mean…
That sentence is the fallacy of the “free speech” argument in a nutshell. My right to free speech ends when it starts infringing upon someone else’s rights. I have every right to call someone names, rebut their points, slander their heritage, make unsupported assertions, grandstand and whatever else - unless and until that interferes with somebody else’s rights to free speech, safety, privacy, etc.
It’s not about someone getting her nose out of joint over a few tasteless jokes. It’s about somebody being afraid to leave her house or speak in public because other people are “exercising their right to free speech”. This is why hate speech isn’t (or shouldn’t be) covered by First Amendment protections.
That sentence is the fallacy of the “free speech� argument in a nutshell. My right to free speech ends when it starts infringing upon someone else’s rights. I have every right to call someone names, rebut their points, slander their heritage, make unsupported assertions, grandstand and whatever else - unless and until that interferes with somebody else’s rights to free speech, safety, privacy, etc.
At the risk of playing the Devil’s Advocate yet again, the situation is that these cretins have made comments on a blog - death threats and vile comments, but still comments. As a result, Kathy is now afraid to leave her house or speak in public.
You believe that this “exercise of the right to free speech” is beyond the pale, and I point out here for the Pinocchios in the crowd that I am not disagreeing with you per se - it would be unacceptable under the laws operating in my country, and I can cite the legislation on that. But before you want to get too self righteous, you might want to consider a parallel situation of someone claiming that online anti-religious statements violated their religious rights. What exact line would you draw between the two cases, given that the only tangible facts are (i) the offensiveness of the posts and (ii) the reactions of the targets?
And, again, to head off the inevitable - I’m not condoning the behaviour or stating that free speech covers it. I’m asking for consideration of an exact test that would place it out of bounds while still allowing, for example, someone to talk about God’s Holy Jism on a well-read blog.
I’m asking for consideration of an exact test that would place it out of bounds while still allowing, for example, someone to talk about God’s Holy Jism on a well-read blog.
This is not confusing. Making death threats to a specific person and encouraging others to stalk that person are utterly different from criticizing the beliefs of a large group of people. There are always going to be whiners who complain about their “religious rights” being violated, such “rights” including everything from jurisdiction over who has sex with whom to immunity from having their irrational beliefs challenged. No one who recognizes that the “War on Christmas” was a huge joke is going to have any trouble distinguishing criticism of religion from death threats.
[…] Finally, tech blogger Kathy Sierra has been forced to stay home from a conference because of threats that she’s received from the online stalkers at AutoAdmit. […]
But before you want to get too self righteous, you might want to consider a parallel situation of someone claiming that online anti-religious statements violated their religious rights. What exact line would you draw between the two cases, given that the only tangible facts are (i) the offensiveness of the posts and (ii) the reactions of the targets?
Offensiveness is not the issue here. If you can’t see the obvious qualitative difference between “I think your views are silly and offensive” (or even “I think you are silly and offensive”) and “I’m going to hunt you down and kill you”, well, there’s really no point in discussing the matter further, is there?
For the hard-of-understanding, the former expresses an opinion, whereas the latter is a concrete threat.
Ms Kate: holding corporate-owned IPs accountable is an excellent idea. At the megacorp I used to work at we would probably not have been able to identify the actual user right off, but we could certainly find his building and hence the handful of managers he must be working for. If an actual subpoena came through we could have implemented full logging and found the person. I think few companies would be happy with employees using company resources to make illegal threats.
The downside with this approach is that it would only work with companies large enough to have their own dedicated IP addresses — generally 50+ employees.
But before you want to get too self righteous, you might want to consider a parallel situation of someone claiming that online anti-religious statements violated their religious rights.
There is a difference between someone who doesn’t agree with a religion, or who even finds a religion distasteful, and someone who makes comments about mutilating, assaulting, and killing another person (a person who’s been on the receiving end of cyber-mobbing, incidentally).
Colorado Dave, that’s a good point. I missed that line–she can’t go spouting every single detail if it’s moved to law enforcement (and given this, I find the demands for more details from her to be ridiculous). Kathy is a public figure and a hiatus from blogging could hurt her professionally, I understand why she posted about the issue with as much detail as she could.
Sheelzebub, it’s interesting your support for women in tech. Why haven’t you been around in other instances where we’ve fought the battle for the last several years, and you and many others don’t do a damn thing in support.
Or is it that you only jump on board when the emotional level is high — or there’s enough participants?
Here are the facts: there was one comment put into Kathy Sierra’s post that was sexual and violent in nature. No one supports this and everyone is appalled. Supposedly the police are involved.
There were two websites that actually covered a lot of people. I would say that Hugh Macleod was featured more, as well as Tara Hunt, then Kathy Sierra. Most of the commentary was pretty juvenile, and no, neither represented the best in weblogging.
Weblog posts were made that were out of line, and appalling. Both sites were taken down because of such. No one is denying that. But the two became integrated in people’s minds: death threats and these web sites. The push then became to prosecute these four people because it was through their efforts that this death threats happened.
That’s what I was trying to put a halt on. No matter how appalling the sites were, they did not advocate people going out and issuing death threat comments in Kathy’s post.
As far as I know, two weblog posts, if that’s all there was, and Kathy’s husband says that’s all there was, does not constitute a pattern of harassment.
Am I defending the nature of the posts? Not at all. I’ve worked against this type of using our gender against us a good long time. At the same time, I also recognize the unthinking nature of the ‘mob’ and moved to get people to think for once.
And if you’re really concerned about the plight of women in technology, perhaps you’ll be just as enthusiastic in your responses about the other posts many of us write about these situations, rather than waiting until it hits the front page.
I didn’t say you were threatened, I was making a general statement for christsake.
Excuse me, Shelley, but I get into these things when I hear about them. You can fry up that red herring for lunch and eat your manufactured outrage at my supposed indifference for dessert, mmmmkay? You want someone to have your back about this stuff, it helps to send an email. I don’t read every blog out there.
Amusing, though, that you decide to cast aspersions on my character for not being vigilant enough, considering your own preaching about people doing the same to the four bloggers in question. Bloggers whom, might I add, I didn’t name in my original post.
But feel free to ignore that and yelp about how I just don’t care about tech bloggers when I don’t normally read tech blogs (yes, I was alerted via email by a fellow blogger) and how I am part of a mob mentality. Do you have anything of import to say, or would you rather continue the trend of doing the very things you preach against? Just curious.
I had no idea that saying that death threats and harassment are outrageous made me part of a mob mentality. Golly, thanks for schooling me.
The push then became to prosecute these four people because it was through their efforts that this death threats happened.
Actually, Kathy was clear in her post and in her following comments that she wasn’t accusing the four bloggers of harassing her or posting the death threats. She mentioned them because they started the sites in question. There is no push to prosecute them from my end, no have I seen any such push from any of the other blog posts I’ve read on the subject. So kindly throw that red herring back into the pond as well. Talk about whipping up hysteria.
Will, I don’t think Colorado Dave was taking it personally. JMHO.
[…] Kathy Sierra’s story, as discussed here, has generated a variety of blogospheric responses, such as this post at Pandagon, and this post at Mathewingram.com and this post at BlogHer, and this post at Odd Time Signatures. Tech blogger Robert Scoble went on hiatus in response not only to what happened to Kathy Sierra, but because his wife was targeted as well, with comments such as those described here. […]
OK, PiaToR, I think the juxtaposition of some of your various points sort of confused their meaning in my mind; I get what you’re saying now. I still don’t agree with all of it, but it makes more sense.
right? I ask because it was stuck in with a bunch of pieces from my comment. I agree, but mythago’s the one who said it.Just to make sure, you know that I didn’t say this:
Sheelzbub, thanks I was actually trying to make a point.
I simply and honestly do not understand why anyone would feel threatened by the presence of women in the workplace — any workplace.
Will, I know you weren’t saying I felt threatened, when I asked “why” it was because I cannot understand the motivations or fears of anyone who does.
I ask because it was stuck in with a bunch of pieces from my comment. I agree, but mythago’s the one who said it.
Not a problem. So far everyone has been keeping the heat simmering rather than bioling over.
“Sheelzebub, it’s interesting your support for women in tech. Why haven’t you been around in other instances where we’ve fought the battle for the last several years, and you and many others don’t do a damn thing in support.”
“Hey, you’re against rape? How come you didn’t do more to shut down saddam hussein’s rape rooms, then? Huh? Huh? Eiether you single handedly fight every battle on earth or stfu you phony”
Way back upthread, Sarah in Chicago said:
Tied in with these issues is the fact that the tech world is changing. My father has been a programmer (in a large global corporation) for over 30 years. The department he works in is “Corporate IT”. A few months ago, he was in a meeting with a bunch of his coworkers a vendor whose product they were thinking of buying, and they asked how to customize some certain feature. The vendor replied “oh, there’s a java API; you just have to write a class that implements this interface we have here and then mention it there, and that can do arbitrary custom processing at this point”. There was silence around the table, and then people turned to my dad as the only programmer in the room. Afterwards, he realized that very few of his coworkers anymore were people who could program, and almost none of them wrote any code as part of their job.
The tech. world has spawned a whole host of professions - web designers, network administrators, system architects, useability specialists, etc. - who are “techies” of some sort, but distinctly not programmers. In fact, programmers per se are assumed to be low-level employees (because you can supposedly pay someone a pittance in India to do the same thing). The tech world has changed, and there’s not a high premium for someone with the specialized ability of “write code”.
This change has coincided temporally with an increased number of women appearing in the tech. workplace. This provides able opportunity for projection - the programmer goes down in status at the same time as women become more visible.
Consider also that an individual geek - especially if coming from a CS or EE/CE academic background - goes through a similar personal transition. In such a college environment, the local respected hotshot is the geek who can do the really deep twisted code. However, in the corporate world no one really cares about how you can kick anyone’s ass at corewars or write a smaller program that generates the lyrics to “99 bottles of beer on the wall”. It’s exceedingly rare to even find someone who is willing to consider learning a programming language other than exactly what is needed for the job. The rules of the status game have changed, and at the same time there are suddenly more women around.
I didn’t have the time to read the whole thread, so forgive me if I repeat points that have already been made upthread. Obviously, sexism in the tech world played a big part here, but I noticed one major downside of the Internet: because of the (relative) anonymity (and also the feeling of hiding safely behind a computer), people’s behaviour tends to be worse than it would be in the real world. In real life, if you knock on someone’s door and punch them in the face, you know you’re gonna get your arse kicked. On the Internet, you can harrass or threaten people with a feeling of impunity by hiding behind a nickname.
Imagine picking a bunch of random strangers, giving them masks and dropping them in a foreign place where no-one knows who they are. That’s what the Internet feels like. Some people still behave in a decent manner, no matter what, but others feel like they can get away with slandering, harrassment, etc.
I really believe the main problem here is anonymity. I’m quite in favour of outing (at least posting email addresses). I also tend to think there should be better ways to track people down on the Net, but I’m aware this is a slippery slope and it could be used for nefarious purposes. I’m not a techie, so I have no idea how it could be achieved because it’s obviously a very sticky issue. But it certainly deserves to be considered.
The tech. world has spawned a whole host of professions - web designers, network administrators, system architects, useability specialists, etc. - who are “techies� of some sort, but distinctly not programmers. In fact, programmers per se are assumed to be low-level employees (because you can supposedly pay someone a pittance in India to do the same thing). The tech world has changed, and there’s not a high premium for someone with the specialized ability of “write code�.
This change has coincided temporally with an increased number of women appearing in the tech. workplace. This provides able opportunity for projection - the programmer goes down in status at the same time as women become more visible.
Which is interesting given the other perspective - there’s a trend towards some groups of librarians having well advanced IT skills - moving into Daniel’s “whole host of other professions” while still having a librarianship related take on information. One of the recurring problems is the low status of anyone who calls themselves a “librarian” while actually wielding computer-fu in their job.
[…] So here’s the integrity check, Ann. If you had been subjected to constant online harassment that frequently goes below the belt, so to speak, along with threats against both your life and your person, to the point where you have to bow out of a technical conference you’re scheduled to speak at out of fear for your own safety, wouldn’t you “get a little hysterical” and demand police protection? Judging from your reaction to Garance’s probe, I’d say the answer is yes. […]
MsKate said:
Just would like to point out that this may have hitches, particularly if the corporation has a gateway of some kind, as typically there will be an entire internal IP address structure and all the outside world would see is the IP ‘cloud’ for the gateway. Nonetheless, it could indeed be a means to let a company know that one or more employees were abusing their company-provided ‘Net access.