Markos doesn’t think death threats are real. Granted, they are a lot less common in my experience than rape threats, but I don’t imagine he thinks those are real, either.
Noteworthy: Markos is not a woman.
When I first started blogging here, I had a hell of a time running around deleting my home address out of the comments of the blog here. That is a death/rape threat. Very rarely do people threaten to kill you outright, but they simply imply it. Your address in your comments=”I know where you live.” My boyfriend at the time certainly picked up on the implied threat that other people would pretend they don’t get and talked about getting a large dog. He didn’t have an interest, I guess, in pushing the idea that women who complain about sexism online are just being hysterical.
But I suppose a woman’s word is not proof, of course, or even evidence. And hey, maybe it’s rare! Or it was just that one time.
I dunno, we deleted this one from comments yesterday, aimed at a blogger that isn’t me but is, as you can imagine, female:
I am a regular reader of this blog, and would like to float a question by you and your readers. We are toying with the Idea of offering rape insurance here at Allstate in Cananda. We offer home owners insuracnce that covers other crimes, we are thinking of exanding Our home owners along with indidual rape policies.
Do you think this would be something that might interest any of you?
He signed it Thomas J. Wilson, who is the president of All State, but that’s clearly not who he is. His IP is 199.158.161.187. I suppose that’s not “proof” or even evidence, since we deleted the comment, but what can I say? I don’t let dickwads threaten my friends in comments. I suppose you could say that it’s not a threat to suggest that someone get insured against rape. Which is basically why men like this threaten like this, through implication, with a coat of plausible deniability. But the message is there and it is received by its intended audience for what it is. Surely liberal bloggers who know all about dog whistles in politics can admit they are there in other communications. And sliding in, harassing a woman, and sliding out is SOP for sexist pigs—you pinch when no one’s looking, because you know she won’t be believed if she complains. You scream at the woman from the car driving by so that she can’t catch your face and know who you are. You make sure at all times to take advantage of the “bitches are crazy and flatter themselves” stereotype.
You could say that Kathy Sierra is overreacting, and you might have a case there. I tend to assume that the vast majority of asswipes won’t follow through on their unhinged emails that either are threatening or mostly just the clear products of the minds of men who probably would rape if they had a chance. No telling. I don’t know the whole story, but she may have reason to think the threats are real. She does work in a male-dominated industry, and attempts to harass and assault women until they give up is pretty standard in these situations. But she might be overreacting. If you’re under an onslaught of abuse from threatened men, it can sometimes be a tad overwhelming and makes it hard for you to see that most of them are basement dwellers too scared to leave the house to follow you.
Even assuming that 99% of the wacked-out misogynists spilling violent fantasies at real women online don’t have the wherewithal to follow through, there’s always that 1%. Once glance at the statistics involving terrorism against doctors who perform abortions should put to rest doubts that some men are so invested in preserving male dominance they’ll gladly resort to terrorism. It does well to remember that for a lot of men, hating women is all they have.
The truth of the matter is that law enforcement does have reason to believe that these kinds of guys can turn dangerous. It does well to remember that John Hinckley was obsessed like this and did manage to go so far as to shoot the President. Not that I blame Jodie Foster or anyone for that, but once in awhile men with these obsessions do go off the deep end and it isn’t always easy to tell who it’s going to be.
I and several feminists were harassed and threatened by a man from England a few years ago. This man had sent me a death threat via e-mail. He said he was going to “slit my fucking throat”. He also annoyed me with his repeated messages that he thought were anonymous, but I was able to track down his real identity with a few Google searches. I never felt threatened by him because I live in Massachusetts and he lived in London. Plus I get annoying and sometimes harassing comments on my blog and in e-mail all the time. I have a high tolerance for tripe. However, other feminists who were at the receiving end of his messages did feel threatened. He had also posted anonymously to comments on my blog and on other feminist’s blogs. Several feminists who felt threatened reported him to Scotland Yard. I was contacted by Scotland Yard to inform detectives of what this man had sent to me. It turned out that he was about 18 years old and lived with his mother. He had a history of mental problems. I know he was convicted of communications harassment, but I don’t remember how he was sentenced.
Not to say that the criticism about the blogger code of conduct is wrong, of course. I think that it’s naive to think that’s going to work, but again, the tech blogging crowd may be old hat at this. But you can engage in a criticism of that without trotting out the tired stereotype that women are hysterical and paranoid.
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Which, for those interested in this kind of thing, resolves to the USDA, office of the Chief Information Officer.
Huh. Weird.
I am amazed that Markos said that. Of course most threats are going to turn out to be bullshit. That does not mean that we just ignore them. C’mon, that’s fucking ridiculous.
Does Markos, or anyone else, really believe that if he was personally threatened, even in a way that wasn’t believeable, he would, could, or should just ignore the situation? Bull. Shit.
Noteworthy: Markos is not a woman.
Doesn’t even have anything to do with it. If I am threatened by someone, I am going to listen to it and on some level I will not be able to avoid taking it seriously. And I am a white man.
Seriously, what fucktard says that people should just ignore death threats? Has someone been saying that on this site? If so, could someone direct me to their comments so that I can explain to them that they are full of shit?
Don’t Bush’s political commissars in the USDA have better things to do than threaten bloggers with rape?
….
Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.
Considering that we now have a law in California that you can use a PO box as your permanent address because of what happened to a minor sitcom starlet named Rebecca Schaeffer, I think it’s pretty rank to claim that no internet “celebrities” could ever be credibly threatened.
Hell, some asshole traveled from Australia to San Francisco to attack Elie Wiesel, so you can’t even claim that people are safe because it’s too far for people to travel.
I really can’t help but think that Kos has been living in a cave if he’s so completely clueless about how stalkers actually work and what they’re capable of.
Ooops, sorry — the anti-Semitic website that the guy was posting on was registered in Australia, but the attacker flew from New Jersey to attack Weisel.
And who’s that guy that Buzz Aldrin punched out last year because he keeps stalking Aldrin and insisting that the moon landing was faked.
Oh, wait, sorry, those are important stalking stories because they happened to men. My bad.
Doesn’t even have anything to do with it.
Incorrect. Markos is, first of all, seemingly incapable of empathy here, and second of all, has not the foggiest notion of what it means to be a woman in this misogynist culture. His dismissive horseshit is indicative of this disconnect, most assuredly caused by the way male dominated society has treated him. And it is indicative that he is also a misogynist asshat. Therefore, his statements and opiinions on the suject are worth precisely dick.
Pun intended.
Only in America. Not just that some moon-landing denier stalked a former astronaut, but that the nearly eight year-old Aldrin finally just up and decked him.
[…] Frankly, I have nothing to say about the latest example of Kos being an idiot that others haven’t already said better; others like Shakespeare’s Sister, Echidne, Feministing, Aimai, Majikthise, and I’m sure many others. (Updated to add: Such as Kip, and Chris, and Stephen.) (And Pandagon). […]
And you just know that if any woman who received threats actually got attacked it would be her fault for not having taking proper protective measures. Markos is just spewing the same crap that other guys spew at women who dare to go out at night even though they have concerns about their safety.
I would’ve said “No, but if you’ve got “bugged by stupid jerks” insurance, I’d like to take out a policy.”
That is definitely a machine on the network at the USDA. How bizarre.
Amanda says:
Unfortunately, all it takes is the one who does follow through.
Doesn’t even have anything to do with it.
Incorrect. Markos is, first of all, seemingly incapable of empathy here, and second of all, has not the foggiest notion of what it means to be a woman in this misogynist culture.
For this limited situation, it doesn’t even matter what the position of women is in our culture. It really is simpler than that. A person who claims that death threats are not something to worry about is not to be taken seriously, they are not on the level. It is that fucking simple.
[…] April 13th, 2007 The so called blogger code of conduct is creating some interesting discussions over at DailyKos, Pandagon, and Feministe: Shorter Kos: She was asking for death threats, which she probably made up. […]
Markos is an idiot when it comes to things like this. And while I think that the blogger code of conduct is ridiculous [shifts the responsibility onto the bloggers instead of the crazy people behind the death/rape threats], it was asshatry of the highest order for Markos to go into the “bitches are crazy!” line of thought.
Can’t he spend more time with his newborn? The quality of Daily Kos seems to increase as Markos’ posting rate decreases…
I’m the woman Amanda quotes in her post about Scotland Yard coming down on an asshat. I never felt threatened mainly because the little gnat lived across the pond from me. However, what Amanda didn’t say is that Scotland Yard urged that I report the harassment and death threats to my local police. I did that. This is the first time the locals in my area had to deal with anything in England. One of the locals regularly vacations there (he has family in London), and he filed my paperwork in person. The harasser in question was found guilty of stalking and sentenced. I don’t remember the details anymore because it was so long ago.
Women online get harassed all the time. Not long ago I had read about a man who thought I deserved to be raped due to my feminist commentary on my blog. He wrote in a men’s rights forum that “I hope she dies and then her body is dug up from the graveyard the day after her burial by a necrophiliac and raped. After all, she clearly has NO sympathy for rape victims unless they are women.” That’s just lovely. Women , especially feminists, have to put up with this shit all the time. I’m tired of it.
I can see that, atheist, but the real point is that there are assholes who, without thinking twice, will nod their heads and agree with Kos, simply due to the fact that they also have not experienced societal hatred of their existence. Women do not get this luxury.
While it is definitely the case that anybody who makes light of death threats is a complete asshat, our society tends to inculcate men against caring about the real hatred directed towards women everyday. Pointing this out is necessary, I feel.
One small question: what does “SOP” mean?
One other thing: great freaking post.
The problem of course is that the IP was probably being spoofed — so it’s impossible to say for certain where the comment originated.
Markos really does think of himself as the stick against which all good progressives are measured: anyone more liberal than him must obviously be some sort of lunatic fringe. I don’t read his blog anymore because I just can’t stand it when a feminist tries to point out the importance of not marginalizing 50% of the population and they’re treated like people who split from the Weather Underground because they weren’t hardcore enough.
Quoted:
defenestrated:
SOP is Standard Operating Procedure
POS is Piece of Shit, in case you were wondering. :p
[…] Zuzu, Jessica, Belledame, Amp, BitchPhd, Shakes , Amanda, Chris and others call Kos out on more of his misogynistic shit. George Orwell turns in his grave. […]
While it is definitely the case that anybody who makes light of death threats is a complete asshat, our society tends to inculcate men against caring about the real hatred directed towards women everyday. Pointing this out is necessary, I feel.
There are men who are dumb enough to believe that death threats against women don’t mattter? Maybe, but that just doesn’t seem likely to me. I mean, what do even very misogynist males think about people who theaten ‘their womenfolk’? Seems to me such men commonly are expected to defend their women- not because their women are to be respected in an equal way, but becuase these men’s holdings are being threatened. I just don’t believe the concept of people who don’t take death threats seriously.
Look, I guess we are arguing about a very unimportant point. My point is just that anyone who says death threats are not to be taken seriously is either crazy, or lying, or naive. And this is the same across the entire political spectrum.
Amanda:
Given that we know there’s stuff about the threats that 1) we don’t know and 2) the police do know and have been pursuing, I think it’s best to assume that there’s something there worth reacting to in the way she did. You seem to be of the same mind generally, but that paragraph just kind of struck me as giving the “maybe she made it up” folks fuel [didn’t Joan Walsh say something about women “reflexively composing our own hate mail” in her article on Sierra? This might be just me doing that one-step-removed].
paul:
Yes. Thank you. I’m not calling you unoriginal by saying that the same thought has been stated by lots of feminists, myself included. Especially as a counterbalance to asswipes like Kos, we really do need more men calling out this specific line of attack for what it is. I mean, it’d be nice if us lady-feminists saying it were enough, but that not being the case is sort of the whole problem
And Mnemosyne - seriously, Elie freaking Wiesel? My first response to your comment was akin to what it would’ve been if informed that someone crossed an ocean to attack Mother Teresa…not because he’s that saintly (who is?), but as in, why the fucking fuck?
Then I remembered: oh yeah, peoples is bigots. Having that, the Buzz Aldrin thing, and the continuing Sierra kerfluffle all neatly lined up like this is a really great illustration of how unhinged and arbitrary this species of hatred is.
whuuuu??? Markos is a clueless putz when it comes to women? wow, never saw THAT coming!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/6/1125/10793
In fact, this is probably worse than the pie fight controversy, in terms of sheer putzliness.
Daughter or not, I don’t think he’s ever gonna learn.
Ah! Thank you, Mighty Ponygirl.
Now, POS I’m familiar with. Comes in handy, don’t it?
Further rambling: I’m starting to think of a lot (not all) of the criticisms of the idea of a blogger code of ethics as being similar to opposition to signing the Kyoto treaty. Sure, fine, it won’t automatically fix everything, relies on others’ similarly voluntary involvement, wasn’t written by you the complainer, etc., and requires a little more thinking and discipline than just stomping all over the world while absorbed in your own self-aggrandization. Oh noes!
It is always interesting how people with certain gender, race, or class privileges will belittle people who call out death threats, slurs, and other levelling insults as “overreacting” or “thin skinned” or “crazy bitch” or so on.
When I hear those commenting “but I’m not offended” or “it’s just a joke and you have no sense of humor” all I can think of is that they are very likely:
White
and/or Male
and/or Wealthy
and/or Never accomplished anything of note (see also: “but I’m this and that and I don’t see the problem”)
When a woman, and/or minority, and/or low socioeconomic status person displays excellence, it seems to result in somebody who classifies into one or more of the above categories attempting to put them in their place with a rude stereotypical slur, a character assassination, or an outright threat of violence. Why? Because excellence alone challenges privilege. As a high achieving white trash female, I’m all-too familiar with that.
Actual and direct challenge of privilege, such as Amanda and Kathy Sierra, brings out the reactions even more strongly. When those who challenge the privilege share some or all of the privilege, it is also seen as grounds for attack by reactionary minds. The belittling of those threats falls to those who are better spoken but no less defensive than the thugs who are more direct.
See also: “cornbread” and “kitchen” and how my husband was stereotyped by sports talk radio nationwide as “henpecked” because he had the anatomy to say “what the hell?!”
Interestingly, “bitches is crazy” ALSO shifts the burden onto the bloggers rather than the crazy people behind the death/rape threats!
Men are the most frequent stalking targets. I learned that from Hollywood, where 90% of movie stalking victims are male*.
So as Amanda has pointed out to us, it’s men who need protection and they’re not going to get it when we keep wasting time on the paranoid delusions of hysterical bitches.
*In the unlikely event that you are stalked while female, you should either be able to defend yourself from a man twice your size after a brief martial arts course, or find yourself a handsome detective who will do battle with your stalker in a climactic denouement.
Yeah, maybe I’m just a different kind of sexist, but I get all giggly when I meet tech-oriented women who are smarter or more talented than I am. To see one singled out for the kind of abuse Sierra got sickens me, and to see Kos dismiss it like a hysterical overreaction made we question how the hell someone that blind could build a successful movement.
I mean, if an A-List blogger put up a post linking to Kos’ post and just said “Typical Latino chauvinism” there’d be Imus comparisons in the comments section before RSS feeds filtered into my inbox. I don’t think a Blogger Ethics Code is going to help anything - I mean, is there any conceivable set of blogging rules that would stop the degenerate lawyers from internet gang-stalking their “hot” female counterparts?
Of course. On-Your-Ownership Society, Internet style.
This is the same Markos that invited his “tedious women’s studies” readers to leave when they were offended by certain ads run on his site (while he did nothing to curb the heaps of misogyny being flung around in the comments like so much monkey poo at a zoo). I can’t say that I’m shocked he’d say something like this.
Not that I want to derail this excellent conversation from its center, but if anyone is interested, here’s the Youtube video of Buzz Aldrin punching an idiot stalker.
As an experiment, I’ll try to embed the video in this page here:
Hadn’t thought of that, but also true! That earns a “heh, indeed”.
dmg, you take your art to a whole nother level.
This isn’t the first time I’ve not spotted the name on a comment of yours and taken the ensuing trollage seriously - you do a plausible-enough crazy to be hands-down the most illustrative fake-clone out there, imho
fake clone? that doesn’t make any sense. Fake troll, that should read.
The sad thing is that the Markos felt the need to bury the actual point (a blogger code of ethics won’t stop crazy people) under a load of pure, high grade herbivore manure (Sierra blogged about “controversial topics” and her response to threats was exaggerated). I didn’t even read the rest of that post after that point: he started off saying he didn’t know about the situation, and he proceeded to wax dickish on it anyway.
Now, there is a history of actual hysterical overreaction in the blogosphere (”OMG! We have to form a citizen’s bodyguard squad to protect Michelle Malkin because a LEFTY JOURNALIST got her AUTOGRAPH! on her BOOK! AT A BOOK SIGNING!!“* and “You photoshopped a picture of me into a satirical image–you’re threatening my family!”). But the ability to distinguish a plausible threat from random flotsam is a necessary survival skill, and the appropriate reaction to a plausible threat is really useful, too. Neither of those are linked to genitalia, either.
* To Malkin’s credit, that overreaction was her fans (most of them posturing, hyper-macho types), not her. (The second example was a posturing male, too. Hunh…)
I think Markos’s gender is significant because it’s symptomatic of a depressingly large number of men genuinely not getting the shadow of sexual violence that hangs over women every single day. They didn’t spend their college years being inundated with “don’t walk alone after dark!” They’ve never had to think when accepting a ride home from a friend of a friend, “Okay, this is the moment they bring up at the trial, when they ask me why I got into the car with him,” and then felt guilty for thinking that about someone who was probably a perfectly nice guy but knowing she couldn’t be sure even as she was somehow suspected to know (can you tell I dealt with that one a lot?). They just genuinely don’t know what it’s like to not have a single week go by that some decision wasn’t affected by the specter of sexual violence.
There are good men who get this, but it’s significant when it’s a man who blows off threats of violence to a woman as her overreacting because not enough men do get it, and it’s far too easy for them to say such comments shouldn’t be taken seriously.
A study done, oh I think 14/15 years ago about how men and women view security differently showed the vast gap between what women preceive and what men preceive. Women think about and act upon security a lot more than men do.
Men for instance, were astonished to learn that even during the hottest nights women living in ground floor apartments would not open their windows.
That sense of constant awareness of personal security even shows up in childhood. Recently here in Mass a plain clothed police officer, drove around some neighborhoods poising as a man looking for his dog/had something special in his trunk/etc.
The boys he approached all went toward him, all the girls stood back or found a reason to get home quickly.
Now I posted on the KOS thread this morning - I have received threats via email, including death threats do to the work I used to do. I took all of them seriously and even sent the worst on to the FBI.
This is not the first time KOS has had a major disconnect between being a man and being a woman, and the differnce of life and experience between them both. Now if you were to put these things in terms of the difference of daily life and experience between being white and being black chances are he’d understand immediately . . . why does he have such a disconnect here when it comes to gender?
ah one important point, is that Kathy, she was being attacked by those who were her fellow professionals in the same field. it must’ve been really creepy to go to those conferences, and wonder.. “what if it’s him? hiim? or that guy there?”
It’s a lot easier to ignore idle threats as a blogger who is removed from the circle of people in their field. Kathy blogged her field. She wrote books. She did conferences. The same people attacking her were close by, behind her, right next to her, and she couldn’t determine who it was.
I am a blogger in a small community as well, the deaf community. We all are closely linked to each other in realspace via our friends, workplaces and background. It’s one degree of separation - to the extreme. When deaf bloggers are attacked, it is also very difficult for them to respond to those threats, because they are so close by, in realspace. Anonymousity (sp?) is particularly difficult in the deaf community because if you’ve attended a school with other deaf students (either maintreamed, program, residental), you’ve got a link with other people there, who in turn, have their own network…
I was invited to speak at a conference about blogging/vlogging at Gallaudet university, and althogh the majority of posters knew my real identity via my moniker, it was still difficult for me to completely “come out”, because then I would become much more of a target.
I can completely understand her reaction…
atheist:
The men who are inclined to think of women as being “theirs” in any meaningful sense are not only not inclined to take death threats towards women seriously, but also to actively endorse them. You see, because defending “their” women is not about actually protecting the women in question, but rather about determining who has the biggest dick. The threats are just an invitation to whip it out and wave it around.
Of course, if those death threats happen to be aimed at women who aren’t “theirs,” all bets are off. You know they’re just exaggerating and being hysterical.
Bitches is crazy, after all.
Yes. I want to put that on a postcard and hand it to every person I ever hear say something along the lines of “why’re you being so paranoid? it’s just ____.”
Hmm. After some internal debate, I decided that no, it really wasn’t necessary to come up with something to put in for the ___. Minimizing fear is minimizing fear.
FWIW, not only does the Blogger Code of Ethics not address the very real problems faced by Kathy Sierra and plenty of other women on line, it appears to be just another bit of wingnut pearl-clutching (much like Josh Treviño’s late, unlamented “Online Integrity Pledge”). HTML Mencken has a good post up about the Blogger Code of Ethics at Sadly, No!
All of which is to underline the fact that in addition to being pigheaded, kos’s dismissal of Kathy Sierra was entirely gratuitous if his point was actually to argue against the Blogger Code of Ethics.
The men who are inclined to think of women as being “theirs� in any meaningful sense are not only not inclined to take death threats towards women seriously, but also to actively endorse them.
That simply isn’t true. You are using a straw-man argument. Lots of men are nonfeminist or even anti-feminist but would take a threat against a woman seriously.
No, I’m not taking the side of anti-feminist men. I’m pointing out that your statement is an oversimplification.
Anyone who says they don’t take death threats seriously is either naive, crazy, or lying.
I hope this isn’t too OT - but how do you check the IP of the commenter? Is it something that can be done from Blogger? or something you do becuase you host your own blog?
“My boyfriend at the time certainly picked up on the implied threat that other people would pretend they don’t get and talked about getting a large dog.”
are you sure he just didn’t want to see some hot doggy action?
Interesting:
from Aardvark
“All the kvetching about government intrusion THIS, and high taxation THAT…
What to DO about it?”
Dadoovark | Homepage | 01.04.06 - 2:39 pm | #
Interesting, that the comment page containing the above attracted the following visit:
Domain Name
usda.govUnited States Government)
IP Address
199.158.161.# (USDA Office of Operations)
199.158.161.183
ISP
USDA Office of Operations
Location
Continent : North America
Country : US
State : Colorado
City : Fort Collins
Lat/Long : 40.5876, -105.3243
Now, I’m not a black helicopter guy, and the visitor is probably one of the regular and rather neat denizens of Vox Day’s blog site, but I found the coincidence amusing.
IP Address
199.158.161.# (USDA Office of Operations)
199.158.161.183
ISP
USDA Office of Operations
Location
Continent : North America
Country : US
State : Colorado
City : Fort Collins
Lat/Long : 40.5876, -105.3243
And while I think that the blogger code of conduct is ridiculous [shifts the responsibility onto the bloggers instead of the crazy people behind the death/rape threats]
Actually, I think the point was directed at bloggers saying “Gosh, I can’t HELP it if crazy death-threat-makers post on my blog. Like, free speech, dude. Oh, you mean I encouraged them to post hateful screeds? You can’t blame me for that!”
Remember AutoAdmit and their “we just provide a forum blah blah small minority blah” crap? That.
IP Address
199.158.161.# (USDA Office of Operations)
199.158.161.183
ISP
USDA Office of Operations
Location
Continent : North America
Country : US
That is so crazy- some bored, mean office workers in the USDA, maybe?
An ex of mine was sending me harassing e-mails, which was bad enough, since there was nothing overtly threatening about them and he lives far enough away that I’m not too concerned about his showing up here and trying something, but I still very much take the point that Sierra was trying to make. It rattled me.
Not only that, but I’m female and work in IT. I’m a technical writer and QA tester, although unlike a lot of technical writers, I’m actually precisely where I want to be — I didn’t get streamed into this job when I wanted to be coding instead. The bastards tried to stream me into marketing writing instead, since my background is in communications and communications theory instead of computing (I have an MA in Rhetoric, essentially).
Lying for moneyMarketing writing makes me crazy. Screw that noise.I know damn well how tough it is out here for women. (Since I’m not a programmer, I get the opposite reaction to what Sierra would get — the misogynist geeks aren’t intimidated by me, but they sure as shit don’t take me seriously, and that chaps my butt.) Worse, I’m sort of on track to be the technical writing version of Kathy Sierra, in maybe five years. I can hardly wait until my heretical ideas about user interfaces and human-computer interaction piss off the wrong keyboard-wielding sack of protoplasm…
“In order to argue effectively against the blogger code of conduct, it’s imperative to say that bitches are crazy”
I hope I’m not making the wrong assumption here by taking this as sarcastic, the real meaning being it’s perfectly possible argue against a code of conduct without excusing misogyny. In fact, one can even mock a code of conduct without defending internet stalkers.
Because like most prudish overreactions, the blogger code is pretty much an ineffective tool which can easily be exploited to silence dissent while providing little protection against real threats. From my point of view, this blogger code is a way of shifting the discussion from abuse of women, rampant misogyny and racism to a safer generalized topic of civility.
With the help of a manners code pushed by wealthy white guys who are uncomfortable now that white male rage is being met with the occasionally effective angry response. It’s time to play nice before the fervor spreads from easy targets like Imus to questioning everything. Better to engage in a futile quest to eliminate all trolling because that’s easier than directly addressing the hatred of women.
I will admit that in between being horrified at Sierra’s treatment, disgusted at Markos’ stupidity, and irritated at the civility badge pledge thing, I’ve taken little breaks to be wryly amused at all the people who’ve said things like “She’s a user interface blogger! She doesn’t write about anything controversial!”
If only they knew.
Time to be contrary again:
Unfortunately, all it takes is the one who does follow through.
That would be an individual tragedy; it wouldn’t necessarily mean that “people following through on death threats” are a serious risk factor. Death threats should be squelched on their own merits as harassment, speech not tolerated by private individuals or organisations, or as attempts to intimidate - I’d be very uneasy to see them automatically used as a justification for a charge of stalking or some such accusation without being part of a larger pattern. The fuckwits making these sorts of comments should be punished for being fuckwits, not for planning assault.
Even assuming that 99% of the wacked-out misogynists spilling violent fantasies at real women online don’t have the wherewithal to follow through, there’s always that 1%. Once glance at the statistics involving terrorism against doctors who perform abortions should put to rest doubts that some men are so invested in preserving male dominance they’ll gladly resort to terrorism. It does well to remember that for a lot of men, hating women is all they have.
Yes, death threats are real. But AFAIK actual followthroughs are almost non existent; the harm is in intimidation. That’s a difference between these and anti-abortion activism - there’s plenty of examples of following up against doctors. Attempting to justify the one by reference to the other is simply sloppy.
Is there any evidence that actual violence against women proceeded by online harassment, in the absence of a more personal vendetta by the abuser (such as ex-boyfriend or the like), occurs to any serious degree? If so, present it and I’ll stand corrected.
And, for the record, I once had someone attempt to solict assault against me online. The idiot lost IP access immediately.
Is there any evidence that actual violence against women proceeded by online harassment, in the absence of a more personal vendetta by the abuser (such as ex-boyfriend or the like), occurs to any serious degree?
The reason it’s intimidation is because of the chance that the person making the threats IS serious. And playing the odds with somebody who is that hateful, and perhaps not at all rational, is much easier when you’re not the target.
By the way, “planning assault” is a crime. Threatening somebody with harm is itself assault (attacking somebody, technically, is “battery”, hence the phrase “assault and battery”).
The reason it’s intimidation is because of the chance that the person making the threats IS serious.
And what is that chance? Note, I am NOT condoning or excusing death threats; I am stating that they should be treated as unacceptable ontheir own merits rather than as precursers to actual violence - but I’m open to being corrected on that with actual evidence.
By the way, “planning assault� is a crime. Threatening somebody with harm is itself assault (attacking somebody, technically, is “battery�, hence the phrase “assault and battery�).
Whoops - there appears to be a difference in terms between jurisdictions. Can you supply a link to the US definition - I wasn’t able to find it in the Code online.
And what is that chance?
The unanswerability of that question is precisely what makes the threats intimidating. Because it’s not a matter of “Oh, only one percent of online threateners actually kill their victims.” The intent is to let the target know that there are people who hate her enough that they would like to see her dead, maybe enough to do something to kill her. Or maybe they’ll just stop at doing things like posting her home address and children’s names on the Internet so some other crazy will see them. Maybe they’ll just hack her e-mail, or have 500 magazine subscriptions sent to her house.
Whoops - there appears to be a difference in terms between jurisdictions.
The common-law difference between ‘assault’ and ‘battery’ is that if I say “I’m gonna kick your ass” and then do, the threat is ‘assault’ and the ass-kicking is ‘battery’. Colloquially people use those interchangeably, and obviously not every state uses the common-law phrasing for the crimes being different. The point, though, is that a credible threat to commit bodily harm is a crime.
Is there any evidence that actual violence against women proceeded by online harassment, in the absence of a more personal vendetta by the abuser (such as ex-boyfriend or the like), occurs to any serious degree? If so, present it and I’ll stand corrected.
Well, there is the Amy Boyer case, but that was more of a case of a stalker setting up a website dedicated to his obession (who he may have once met briefly in high school, but she didn’t know him from Adam).
Personally, I would call it “serious” since the guy murdered her and then killed himself, but maybe that’s not serious enough for you. And the case is one reason why it’s at least a little harder to buy information about people through internet brokers, which may be why there’s not a huge spate of cyberstalkings that lead to murder. A nasty case happens, and then the laws change … but not before. See, again, Rebecca Schaeffer above.
Okay, I was surfing the web looking for pictures of dog/cat hybrids, and I came across this story.
Still ready to claim that someone becoming enraged by someone else’s web posts and tracking the poster down to harm them never, ever happens?
OT, but I try to avoid buying “insuracnce” from people in “Cananda,” especially when they claim to have big-I “Ideas”. They’re slippery bastards up there.
I had someone threaten to sue me for libel in World of Warcraft today in the wake of my statement that they were smoking crack.
It was hilarity incarnate.
Kos’ point was that he gets this kind of nonsense all the time. He just ignores it.
“For my part, I’ve gotten my fair share of such vile emails. Some of them have threatened my children. One or two actually crossed the line into “death threat” territory. But so what? It’s not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats.”
And it’s not as if his wife and children are not vulnerable. Are you suggesting he doesn’t care about them? If so, I’ve just lost some respect for you.
As for “this must be taken seriously because it has happened!” line of thought.
Children are kidnapped and murdered every year. Because of this, parents become afraid and refuse to let their kids out. They then become obese. Result: more kids die earlier for the sake of a marginal threat whilst a larger one is neglected.
So it is for a “code of civility” which will ultimately serve only one purpose to any significant degree: a stick to beat people you disagree with.
Taking this sort of crap seriously is like refusing to cross the road due to the number of people killed that way.
And “Still ready to claim that someone becoming enraged by someone else’s web posts and tracking the poster down to harm them never, ever happens?”
I’m not sure who said that. Kos wasn’t specific, but it’s pretty clear to me from e.g. “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.” that he simply considers the probability to be low.
I just spent the last several days at the library dealing with what I had first thought to be nothing more than the usual disagreements between boy and girl teen cliques.
I eventually found out that the leader of the feud on the boys side was suspended earlier this year for sexually harassing the girl that most of the boys’ ire is aimed at. I was told this after the same kid did something using library property (with his friends helping him) that would have possibly gotten him suspended again at school if he’d done it there, considering his history with regards to this particular girl. These kids are fourteen and barely fifteen. Up until a few days ago, I would have been one of the one’s saying “but they’re such nice boys” and “they would never do that.”
So, at the moment, I think the the chance is far too great for comfort, and far greater than most people think. And that’s the only answer that really matters.
After all, the guy making the threats may live across the country. Or he could live the next town over. Didn’t one of Amanda’s scary stalker types claim to live in Austin or threaten to go there?
And, gee, I really hate to bring this up, but is this seriously coming from the guy whose not only pretty much said “safe words might have helped, she should have tried them” - but also continued to defend this idiotic stance?
What was it that paul was saying again? Oh yeah:
I’m very much expecting for the boys to complain, en masse, about their friend’s suspended privileges because, after all, she should have logged out before leaving the computer. The fact that they knowingly violated her privacy, library rules, and any normal sense of decency is obviously beside the fact. Because god forbid that a fourteen year old girl ever make the same mistake that countless adult patron make on a daily basis.
Seriously, the first one that tells me that it’s not fair that the one kid was singled out is going to be told quite clearly that I agree. I’d argued for them all to all be suspended from the library.
But hey, maybe they’ll all restore my faith in humanity by apologizing - without even being asked to do so.
Well, one can dream.
mythago said:
PiaToR said:
Heh, PiaToR, you
ignoredoh hell, I’ll be charitable and say “missed” a pretty essential part of mythago’s post. Because I’m so helpful, I went and put stars around it and shit.What did I say about anti-Kyoto defenses?
softdog sayeth:
[formatted into easy-to-digest bites of non-logic, with snark inserted for clarification]
ah fuck, I skipped one.
“me” - I would, in fact, suggest that a parent refusing to acknowledge a threat to his children - a viable, graphic threat such as those Ms Sierra has recieved - is a bad, uncaring parent. One’s job as a parent includes the responsibility of protecting one’s children from forseeable harm, and the fact that this man has failed to do so by not taking serious threats seriously tends to disprove your defense of him and his position.
He either utterly lacks parenting skills or he has never recieved threats of the nature that Ms. Sierra did and thus has no business devaluing her experience. And frankly, if you disrespect me because I place a high value on the lives of those whom I am responsible for protecting, yours is not the variety of “respect” I would ever desire to solicit.
“And “Still ready to claim that someone becoming enraged by someone else’s web posts and tracking the poster down to harm them never, ever happens?â€?”
I’m not sure who said that.
Neither am I. I know I didn’t.
**And playing the odds with somebody who is that hateful, and perhaps not at all rational, is much easier when you’re not the target.**
Heh, PiaToR, you ignored oh hell, I’ll be charitable and say “missed� a pretty essential part of mythago’s post. Because I’m so helpful, I went and put stars around it and shit.
Defenestrated, that’s what makes it intimidation. That’s the whole damned point of making it a personal threat - to scare someone. That’s why death threats are unacceptable.
But your subjective fear does not justify a reaction based on assuming that every particular death threat is objectively a serious risk. That doesn’t mean it “never, ever happens” - but what is the actual risk, assuming it’s not already part of an abusive or stalking relationship?
See this for example; if it can be trusted, 32 people in the US died from dog bites in 2003, 26 from contact with hot tap water, and 47 from lightening. How many died murdered by random strangers that got pissed off online?
NBarnes: you are smoking crack.
Mu-hah-hah-hah.
That’s kind of a big assumption right there, isn’t it? The randomness of it? Somehow I don’t really see the people threatening Sierra, Amanda, Shakes, Jill, etc. as random. Most especially not Jill’s harrassers. The fact that the harassment occurs online does not meant that the only connection is an online one. In Jill’s case they were fellow students. In Kathy’s case they were colleagues that go to the same conferences and know the same people. That’s hardly random.
And are our only options subjective fear or death? I was under the impression that there was plenty in between the two. And that the jackass lawyers in training that have been harassing their fellow students had already crossed the line into real life stuff. So did the guy that came knocking at Melissa’s door. So really, wtf?
How likely is it? Well, that depends on the situation, doesn’t it? And in the situations that prompted all this - from idea of the code of conduct to Kos’ idiotic post - it’s pretty damn likely, actually, if it goes unchecked. It’s not as if Tim O’Reilly sat down one day and suddenly decided “Well, gee, we’ve been at this for several decades now, but for no reason at all I really think we finally need a code of ethics for online debates. Just for the hell of it.”
The law mandates that dogs get rabies shots, right? McDonalds has a warning on its coffe cup? IIRC, people make a point of saying that you shouldn’t play golf/climb a hill to talk on your cell phone/etc during a thunderstorm. And funny you should mention stalking and abuse, both of which have been traditionally minimized, with the argument for at least the former being something about the odds of the stalker ever doing anybody any “real” harm (funny who gets to decide what’s real).
What the fuck harm is it for people to symbolically sign onto “We won’t put up with this shit?” Why the endless debate? Why the going on and on and on about how we shouldn’t care so much about this and let it intimidate us so much, when if it were actually about moving on to More Important Stuff, we could’ve just all said “Yeah, makes sense to me” and have been done with it?
What you keep not wanting to notice is that whatever the odds are that the rampant misogyny that fuels shit like Kathy Sierra’s experience will result in actual violence against someone, the odds are beyond-negligible that it will ever result in violence against you (and whether or not it does happen, it’ll still just be words on a screen to you).
What you (and Kos) need to do is take a step back and realize that you have no data upon which to base any assessment of how serious the threat is. Think of it as though the whole conversation were happening in Portugese (assuming that you don’t by coincidence speak Portugese). Both the person(s) making the threats and and person(s) being threatened are ‘talking’ to each other on a level you just plain haven’t had to deal with. You have no experience upon which to base an assessment of this.
In that context, it seems both callous and foolhardy to sit back in your seat and quibble over whether we all should just settle ourselves down a little.
I’ve noticed that many commenters who use AOL as their internet access can have the same IP address; it isn’t always solid evidence.
I’d note that Jeff Goldstein received posted comments by a lady by the name of Deborah Fritsch, at the time a non-tenure track instructor at either the University of Arizona or Arizona State (working from memory here) which sort of threatened his two year old son; this was about a year ago. Mr Goldstein took it seriously, Dr Fritsch wound up losing her job, and then wound up in trouble with the law for an unrelated incident.
Yeah, the vast majority of such threats are simply idiots spouting off, but the vast majority does not mean all.
An old IRC channel I opped on used to ban AOL for that very reason, as everybody used the same IP, you couldn’t ban one, and with the constant troubles coming from people from AOL, we were really forced to put up a wall, and suggest in the auto-kick message to change ISPs to a responsible one.
In any case, I’m going to disagree with most of you. I don’t think Markos’ comment had really anything to do with gender or sex. I think it was a comment coming from someone with extraordinary thick skin in that regard (again..I would guess he would get death threats on a daily basis), thinking that others should have a thick skin.
I don’t think he read up enough on the whole story, and I think that this whole thing is much worse than your run of the mill anon e-mail, but I think you’re putting motives there that don’t exist.
BTW. This “Blogger Code of Conduct” is stupid. It would make blog posts look like press releases.
What the fuck harm is it for people to symbolically sign onto “We won’t put up with this shit?�
Because beyond it being stupid and unenforceable, it sets up a false sense, and even a dangerous false sense of security.
We have had netiquette for over 20 years and you see how well that works.
Is there any evidence that actual violence against women proceeded by online harassment, in the absence of a more personal vendetta by the abuser (such as ex-boyfriend or the like), occurs to any serious degree? If so, present it and I’ll stand corrected.
Someone showed up to Melissa’s house during the Edwards dust-up, but she didn’t allow him inside to assault her. I suppose if she had, then you’d have your evidence.
Look, the point of the passage was that you can’t live your life in fear, but that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t there. Jodie Foster blew off Hinckley as a harmless nutball, but this time he wasn’t, and the consequences were terrible from Jim Brady and Ronald Reagan.
But mostly, I agree—harassment is about creating a hostile atmosphere that overwhelms women and drives them away. Which is why I don’t really distinguish too much between people that openly threaten to rape me and people who just make it really obvious that they’d love it if that happened.
And levels are important. One hate mail or two a day isn’t bad—the 15 or so I got generated by the Duke rape charges getting dropped was manageable. But when I was literally deleting a couple hundred a day a couple months ago, that became too much. When someone was publishing my address online, that was putting me in a very bad situation, and I had to take hours out of my day phoning and writing various organizations that made any information about me public and ask them to take it down.
Kathy’s problem wasn’t, from what I could tell, just the fear of getting assaulted. It was the fear of relentless harassment if a bunch of guys who had whipped themselves into a Hate Kathy frenzy were at a conference she was speaking at—and she had every reason to believe they would be.
What’s sad is Markos’s “analysis” actually is the exact opposite of why the code of conduct is stupid. It’s stupid because it ignores the problem. The problem isn’t abstract rudeness. It’s sexism, and men trying very hard to make it so hard for a woman to work in an environment that she leaves. It was a perfect storm of how the low-level fear of assault women live with is invoked by men who want to keep their spaces male-only. Markos has probably never received this specific kind of abuse, which I would characterize as sexual harassment from colleagues, in the larger industry sense.
“In that context, it seems both callous and foolhardy to sit back in your seat and quibble over whether we all should just settle ourselves down a little. ”
Defenestrated,
I name you official Destroyer-of-Jerks (with style)!
The difference, however, is that while the kidnapping of children by strangers is rare, rape isn’t. Just about every woman knows some other woman who has been raped, even if she hasn’t been raped herself.
The threat isn’t marginal.
Well, his comment is related to gender/sex via his own cluelessness and privilege. His example of online harassment, for example, was a mass-produced, non-specific comment about liberals dying of AIDS. No photoshopping of severed heads, no rape/death threats against him or his family. He had no idea when he wrote the post what Sierra had gone through - which is an astoundingly ignorant thing to do. (Kinda reminded me of Jonah Goldberg’s style, actually) If the example he gave was the worst threat he’s gotten, he frankly needs to thicken his skin up a bit more.
What I’ve learned this week…
1. If you want to be an incredibly racist and offensive radio host, make sure you have really good ratings. It took CBS an entire week to “think about the impact” Imus’s words have “on the children” and apparently “the……
defenestrated - I object to you using selective quotes and adding a bogus translation to put words in my mouth approving of stalking and murder.
Since I was unclear: I think web misogyny requires direct action and using legal and technical means and this code is a way to avoiding serious measures. It also shifts the question from holding misogynists responsible to a bogus free speech debate, because it’s a wealthy white guy imposing his own distracting solution on the conversation in a situation where the mass of feminist opinion was kicking ass.
Kathy Sierra proves the targets of bullying can use web social dynamics to turn the hostile environment back on the bullies. Chris Locke - one of the guys who enabled the death threats with TWO sites encouraging trolling - has used a pose of “bluntness” as a cover for their forays into misogyny. He has an entire parody site - Kat Herding - which is allegedly about shallow consultants but is almost entirely directed at women. Locke got his ass spanked by Kathy’s post and found himself on the defensive, plus one of the other people involved in the sites was driven offline. I’m betting they’ll think twice before supporting a forum which allows anonymous abuse without moderation.
It’s not a code which makes these guys shut up, it’s people taking it seriously and retaliation. It’s advertisers and service providers having an incentive not to support sites people deem offensive. It’s about not pretending people need a code to remind them to police their comments, and giving them real reasons to act.
What’s working is saying directly that misogyny is unacceptable, not hiding it behind the term “civility” which has often been used against those standing up for their rights. The code is like politicians who say high minded things about some issue then won’t pass real binding legislation.
Empty codes of honor does nothing and gives right wingers more fodder for red herring debates - don’t like someone’s ideas, say they’re breaking the code.
Note how Imus was going to stay on MSNBC until the staff of the network started to rebel and hold management accountable. It was mass protests and things which pretty much go against the usual notions of workplace civility.
I would urge you to report that insurance post to the USDA. If it was from a USDA employee, it constituted misconduct for which he will be disciplined. If the address was spoofed, then the spoofer committed a federal crime under… aw whatever I forget the statute.
Anyway, you should report it.
And let me add, Kos et. al. use the code not only to ignore the misogyny of the incident behind it, but also to perpetuate misogyny in the name of free speech and “it’s not so bad” and “it happens to men too” excuses. Which indicates to me that the code is a wrongheaded thing.
Finally, the code is an excuse not to call the cops and it’s time to call the cops in whenever possible.
Gavin de Becker, Gavin de Becker, Gavin de Becker. He ain’t perfect, but he’s at LEAST on the side of sense and statistics when it comes to the horrific rates at which women are harassed, attacked, raped, killed, etc.
Read The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift if you haven’t already, and then come back and talk about how death and rape threats hardly ever bear out, so shrug ‘em off and have thick skin, like a MAN.
And for what it’s worth, I fear a “blogger code of ethics” would protect women against assault nearly as effectively as Orders of Protection do.
In other words, not at all.
That said, Markos is an asshat, and I stopped reading him a long, long time ago. I can’t deal with his arrogance. Plus that site was apparently organized by someone with a thought disorder.
“Whoops - there appears to be a difference in terms between jurisdictions. Can you supply a link to the US definition - I wasn’t able to find it in the Code online. ”
Try “Terroristic Threatening”
““meâ€? - I would, in fact, suggest that a parent refusing to acknowledge a threat to his children - a viable, graphic threat such as those Ms Sierra has recieved - is a bad, uncaring parent.”
Indeed. Kos did no such thing.
“One’s job as a parent includes the responsibility of protecting one’s children from foreseeable harm, and the fact that this man has failed to do so by not taking serious threats seriously tends to disprove your defense of him and his position.”
Why do you think he doesn’t take it seriously? He said he gets on with his life. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t take it seriously.
“He either utterly lacks parenting skills or he has never recieved threats of the nature that Ms. Sierra did and thus has no business devaluing her experience.”
Rubbish. As I said, you don’t know how seriously he takes the matter. And your assumptions reveal your prejudice.
“And frankly, if you disrespect me because …”
Don’t twist my words. I don’t disrespect anyone.
“… I place a high value on the lives of those whom I am responsible for protecting, yours is not the variety of “respectâ€? I would ever desire to solicit.”
Good job that’s just a straw man then, huh? But I was talking about the respect Pandagon had earned from me by what she had written previously. She may or may not care about that. Probably not.
>>“She’s a user interface blogger! She doesn’t write about anything controversial!�
>>If only they knew.
Heh, agreed. As a software designer myself, I found many techheads still have this weird idea that only people who can build a computer from scratch and make their own software should be allowed near one. I read some feminist geek theorists refer to it as ‘alternate machismo’, i.e. these people were never able to fit within the mainstream concept of the alpha male (sport jocks, suave seducers, etc) so they built an alternative one and they protect it fiercely against women ‘invading’ their spaces. If you’re not enough of a rugged individualist, if you’re not ‘man’ enough, you shouldn’t be playing with their toys. Similar to video games, comics culture, etc etc…
So obviously in this context, the idea of designing user interfaces that open these tools to everyone can be seen as an attack on their ‘manhood’. I’m not surprised (disgusted but not surprised) by the reaction to Kathie.
Uh, yeah, he did. He basically said that Kathy Sierra overreacted to getting specific and graphic death threats that included her home address and came from websites run by people who were publicly opposed to her and were going to be attending the conference that she was scheduled at. By posting the specific “threatening” e-mail that he did, Kos implied that whatever she received was no more specific or harassing than his “all liberals should die of AIDS” monkey mail.
That’s minimizing what happened to her.
No one on this thread is defending the “blogger code of conduct,” which is a stupid idea, but a whole lot of people are invested in defending Kos despite what HE HIMSELF said.
Tinfoil Hattie, you took the words out of my mouth. In my work I encounter a lot of people who have been victimized, and de Becker’s book THE GIFT OF FEAR, is the only self-help book I would recommend. In fact, it’s the only self-help book I know of that is worth using for anything more ambitious than toilet paper.
Just as one example, de Becker’s idea for women who get harassing phone calls:
1. Resist the temptation to simply have the phone disconnected. Any capable harasser will learn the new number.
2. Instead, leave the phone in place with a recorded greeting in a female voice, but not the voice of the victim. A male voice would arouse jealously in the harasser, and maybe inspire him to do something escalatedly dangerous. Hearing the victim’s own voice would give him some kind of satisfaction.
3. Never answer this phone, which would give the harasser some satisfaction. instead, accumulate the messages from callers, in particular the harasser’s, which may become evidence.
4. Have a completely different phone, either with an unpublished number or under the name of a fictitious person, also installed in the dwelling. Use only it for ordinary purposes of communication, and give the number only to those the victim actually wants to talk to.
This is very clever because the harasser won’t really know that his harassment is gradually losing its effect. It separates the part of the victim’s general pattern of communication that includes the harasser, from the sound parts of the pattern. The harasser will only be communicating with the victim in a diminisshingly real way. The victim, if she finds the messages from the harasser painful or unpleasant, can delegate their retrieval to somebody else. After a while, of course, he will be the only person leaving messages, which will give him less and less response and correspondingly less pathological satisfaction.
I hadn’t looked at the DailyKos in a long time, so imagine my surprise the other day when I did take the time to look at it and found the post that Amanda is referring to was at the top of his blog. The comments above cover my thoughts with one exception.
I think the Blogger Code of Conduct is a good idea. It’s good marketing for blogs. It’s good ethics in general.
“What’s sad is Markos’s “analysisâ€? actually is the exact opposite … it ignores the problem. The problem is… sexism … and men trying very hard to make it so hard for a woman to work … she leaves.”
“It was a perfect storm of how the low-level fear of assault women live with”
Do all women live with this fear? None I know have said so. Or do you think they hide it from me? How can I know if they have this fear or not? Or that you aren’t exaggerating?
“is invoked by men who want to keep their spaces male-only. ”
Very few men I’ve met want this, though I accept those that do are less than honest about it.
“Markos has probably never received this specific kind of abuse, which I would characterize as sexual harassment …”
This is something I have never seen. Of all the women I know, none has told me they’ve been harassed at work, though they’ve told me plenty of other such things.
Of course, it is a real problem. But I’d like to see some evidence of the scale of it. The book mentioned above may be a start. But there do seem to be people who start from the assumption that there is abuse, and a lot of it. It reminds me of the satanic abuse cases in the 1990s, which were pushed very hard by a small group. The movement was eventually debunked. That’s not to say there was no child abuse, it’s just that none of it was “satanic” in the way the proponents claimed, and there was far less of it than claimed. This was a very small group (tens of people). The feminist movement is much bigger. I’m concerned there is a lesser form of exaggeration happening here, with an apparently unfalsifiable hypothesis of mass abuse in the workplace.
That’s my prejudice. But I should read on it and examine the evidence presented.
The other thing that irks me is the way feminist bloggers seem to put their arguments. I get a feeling that there are goodies and baddies, and the goodies are all good and the baddies are all bad. Further, motives seem to be misinterpreted and minor actions exaggerated. I feel I need to defend Kos as he seems to be being portrayed as a baddie and misinterpreted. This in itself is unhealthy. I should be examining the merit or otherwise of what he says.
What the fuck harm is it for people to symbolically sign onto “We won’t put up with this shit?� Why the endless debate?
Mostly because the code of ethics isn’t really about “don’t threaten people” or “if one of your commenters threatens people, take some appropriate action: cooperate with whatever investigation ensues, ban them, call them out on it, whatever.”
The code of ethics concerns itself more with “we have to be ‘nice’ and ‘civil’ and not use dirty words because ‘fucking idiot’ is just as hateful as ‘fucking cunt’.” It sets up false equivalences where Amanda’s “anti-Catholic hate speech” is just as bad as Donahue “encouraging” people to come over to her blog and make threatening statements.
It’s not about attacking the underlying hate or threats. All it does it push them underground, behind a thicker veil, where Coulter can say “I regret that McVeigh didn’t blow up the NYT building!” and Reynolds can say “You know, the Romans sure knew how to handle an insurgency–we should take a lesson from how they dealt with Carthage![i.e., by mass slaughter and complete destruction of the city]” because they didn’t use any cuss words doing it.
I’m sorry, but we’ve seen this at least twice before, where some “upstanding guardians of the discourse” take it upon themselves to decide what is and isn’t important, what is and isn’t allowed. So far each time these stalwart guardians have been among (or closely aligned with) those very folk who are guilty of the worst eliminationist rhetoric, who oppose hate crime legislation, who celebrate the deaths of thousands like they’re cheering on a video game. And each time, it’s been in response to the worst kind of hypocritical hysteria from the worst perpretators of hateful, threatening speech. And each time the worst offenders either just signed on and ignored it or dropped out when it no longer suited their purpose, all the while using it as a stick to flog their opponents who didn’t trust them.
Sorry, but I’m skeptical.
Maybe we should all just sign on to a pact that says we won’t put up with it anymore. But I don’t think this is that pact. Maybe it’s just as simple as a line in the header that says “Threatening comments will not be tolerated on this site. Repeat offenders will be reported to the proper authorites.”
Maybe we don’t actually need a pact. Maybe we just need to shut up and do the right thing, quietly and behind the scenes, instead of trumpeting to all the world how fucking righteous we are and all the while snickering behind our hands at the stupid hysterical bitches who deserve what they get.
(Sorry–any vitriol in this post should be understood to be directed at the situation as a whole and not any commenter in particular. I’m really, really frustrated at the hypocritical high-school cliches running our public discourse, and I have no clue what to do about it.)
Wow, “me,” have you ever talked to any women? No woman you know lives in fear, at least somewhere in the back of her mind? No woman you know has ever been harassed at work?
Give me the general geographic idea of where you work and live, then, because I want to move there too!
Maybe you haven’t asked? Or maybe you haven’t really listened when you have been told about these experiences?
Is that at all possible, or are you the only person in the world who knows only women who are 100% confident of their safety in every situation, and have never been harassed at work? I am serioulsy and honestly amazed.
Helen
Do all women live with this fear? None I know have said so.
Do your female friends take long walks after dark? If not, ask them why not.
Do they glance in the backseat of their car before they get in? If they do, ask them why they do it.
Do they walk through parking lots with their car keys in their hand? If so, ask them why they do that.
Have you ever been walking down the street with one of them, and she suddenly crosses to the other side, or stops to look at something that’s not very interesting, and then keeps walking? If so, ask her why she did that.
Do they go to bars by themselves, or do they always go with at least one female friend? Ask them why they can’t just go get a drink by themselves.
I have a feeling that you’re going to have a lot of illuminating conversations if you actually pay attention to the women in your life and all of the automatic actions that they take every minute of every day to make sure that they stay as alert as possible. Then ask yourself why they might feel they need to take those actions, and what they think might happen if they don’t.
“But you can engage in a criticism of [the blogger code of conduct] without trotting out the tired stereotype that women are hysterical and paranoid.”
For an example of such criticism, see Bitch PhD’s blog.
They aren’t intimidated by me either… until I point out errors in their SQL statements. Then they get all huffy and whisper together amongst themselves.
At least nobody’s made me do secretarial stuff recently - there are no secretaries in the IT world, but there’s a persistent longing for a female to do the inglorious shit-work, especially taking, typing and distributing meeting notes, especially among the old guys who remember the supreme glory days of the patriarchy.
Ah yes… takes me back to the incredible hatred spewed on Kos-pie-fight critics by his fanboys. How dare you challenge the mighty Kos man?
I can only speak for myself. but I have been harassed twice by male managers, once sexually. It was ongoing and it was deliberate. I’m wary now of male managers and probably always will be.
I know 5 women, out of my small number of friends/acquaintances who have been raped and/or molested. At one workplace, my female co-worker turned up shaken one day, and showed me her torn shirt and a big nasty red scratch on her belly. On the train, she had met a man who had once raped her, he recognised her and chased her down the platform (grabbing at her, thus the scratch) until she escaped onto the train carriage. Before the train left, he shouted to her that he knew where she worked and he and his mates would be coming round that evening (we worked late shift at a coffee shop) to “finish the job”. He never turned up, but we waited that night with one hand on the phone to call the police, and then got another staff member to walk her home, in case he was waiting for her somewhere en-route. I asked her to consider pressing charges, but she refused on the basis that it hadn’t worked the last time she did so, and I believe her to be honest.
Personally, I have been stuck in a hotel room with a man at night who I believe seriously considered rape, as he tried to blackmail me into sex with him. He tried to wear me down by alternately pleading and threatening. I got out as soon as I could, shaken but thankful that I had gotten away unhurt. And then there’s a few other instances on male acquaintances deciding in the middle of the night to ’share’ the mattress with me and attempt a grope, when sharing sleeping quarters with a group, and so on. I and my female friends have also been trailed by men, after leaving nightclubs, until we got to our car.
I’m fairly young (mid 20s) but I am always aware now of the risk. I can’t provide data beyond what is already available, but this is my experience. And most women I know have this ‘awareness’ too. Make of that what you will.
Me-
http://finallyfeminism101.blogspot.com/index.html
The stuff you’re talking about isn’t feminism; it’s the mischaracterization of feminism by patriarchy. Go to the link above and you’ll see what real feminism is, as it is practiced at this blog and others.
The truth is that your capacity to rationalize institutional sexism as a series of unconnected, non-malicious coincidences that have nothing on the surface to do with gender is how such sexism survives and persists. The truth is that it is you who is making molehills out of mountains to avoid having to deal with the reality of sexism around you.
Zuzu nails Kos on the bullseye…
Zuzu, over at Feminsite, just nailed the essence of an article on Daily Kos, by Kos, as to the commotion over the death threats and harassment aimed at a woman blogger who had a techie blog site up, until she closed the blog and cancelled her partici…..
And then there’s a few other instances on male acquaintances deciding in the middle of the night to ’share’ the mattress with me and attempt a grope, when sharing sleeping quarters with a group, and so on.
I was staying in Vegas with a group of three friends (four women) when one of the guys in our group decided that he didn’t want to sleep on the floor in a room with 7 other guys, so he wandered, drunk, down to our room. One other girl and I were sleeping in there (the other two were still at the Hard Rock) and she let him in (aargh). He then crawled into bed with her and groped her until she moved into the other bed with me.
Did I mention that she was six months pregnant at the time?
(He did end up sleeping on the floor when the other two got back under threat of us calling security to have him thrown out.)
No, he didn’t say any of that. The BBC News article upon which he based his post didn’t make any of those allegations. It cited a single vaguely threatening photoshop piece. It didn’t say anything about specific threats. It didn’t say anything about her home address. It didn’t say anything about the possible attendance of the senders at a conference.
If you wish to criticize him for posting with what you may consider an insufficiency of information, you might have a point, but I don’t see what’s to be gained by putting words into his mouth.
PS. He didn’t call anybody a “crazy bitch” either.
You could say that Kathy Sierra is overreacting, and you might have a case there. I tend to assume that the vast majority of asswipes won’t follow through on their unhinged emails that either are threatening or mostly just the clear products of the minds of men who probably would rape if they had a chance.
Or hack into her credit information and destroy her credit rating.
Or mail letterbombs to her house.
Kos is a stupid motherfucker if he doesn’t realize how EASY these things are. They could demolish any chance of that woman’s getting a bank loan again by shredding the shit out of her credit rating. I’ve had my card number stolen online — it’s quite simple to do if you have enough insane hacker babies out there trying.
Hmmm, Haloscan won’t accept the trackback address as valid. Anywho, I posted about this at mine own place:
Zuzu Nails KOS on the Bullseye
This is what I got for that IP address:
Geo-Location Information
Country United States
State/Region TX
City Fort Worth
Postal Code
Latitude 32.7551
Longitude -97.3332
Area Code 817
Source: http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-results
What IP Locator are you guys using?
Here’s what I got from WhatIsMyIPAddress.com:
Lookup IP Address: 199.158.161.187
Geo-Location Information
Country United States
State/Region TX
City Fort Worth
Postal Code
Latitude 32.7551
Longitude -97.3332
Area Code 817
I feel I need to defend Kos as he seems to be being portrayed as a baddie and misinterpreted. This in itself is unhealthy. I should be examining the merit or otherwise of what he says.
Odd, I thought the thread was basically portraying Kos as putting his foot in his mouth, which he did. Examine what he says there:
1) He admits he didn’t know anything about the Sierra case (since it all came down while he was out of pocket).
2) He read one article that mentioned it in passing, with very few details.
3) He basically declared the threat to Sierra implausible, comparing it to an incoherent, not-very-threatening email about all liberals dying of AIDs, and stated that Sierra was overreacting.
4) He insisted that Sierra should “get used to it” if she’s going to blog about “controversial subjects” without having a clue what Sierra blogs about.
5) None of this was necessary or relevant to his ultimate point, which was that the proposed code of ethics wouldn’t stop crazy people from making threats.
He may have only meant to say “Oh, geez, here’s another sensitive blogger freaking out over nothing” but he picked only one example–and the wrong example–to make that point. He assumed Sierra overreacted without having all the information, and he (probably unknowingly) invoked the “she’s too sensitive” and “she had it coming” arguments that women consistently face nearly every day in this society.
And honestly, isn’t that the whole point? It doesn’t matter whether Markos is a “goodie” or a “baddie”: doesn’t the fact that this assumption and these statements are so natural and obvious to even a lefty blogger indicate how thoroughly ingrained this “hysterial, overreacting female” stereotype is in our culture?
If Markos is otherwise a “goodie”, doesn’t this hoof-in-mouth episode shows that this dismissive sexism is an even bigger problem than we thought?
But your subjective fear does not justify a reaction based on assuming that every particular death threat is objectively a serious risk.
If an off-leash Rottweiler is snarling at me and baring its teeth, would it be smart of me to say “Oh, hell, less than a hundred people are killed by dog bites every year; I’ve got nothing to worry about from that dog”?
No, he didn’t say any of that. The BBC News article upon which he based his post didn’t make any of those allegations. It cited a single vaguely threatening photoshop piece.
Um, the BBC News article isn’t even close to being the only article about this situation in the past couple of weeks, which is why it’s a little sparse — they didn’t want to rehash everything that the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc. had already covered.
Why is Markos immune to being called out for relying on a single poorly-sourced piece when we complain about conservatives doing it?
He talked out of his ass about something that EVERYONE knew more details about and now he looks like an idiot. Are we not allowed to tell the Emperor that, hey, you kinda forgot to put your clothes on today?
Here’s the skinny on that IP, with all the phone numbers you could want:
04/13/07 12:15:21 IP block 199.158.161.187
Trying 199.158.161.187 at ARIN
Trying 199.158.161 at ARIN
OrgName: USDA Office of Operations
OrgID: UOO-2
Address: Suite 133, Building A
Address: 2150 Centre Ave
City: Fort Collins
StateProv: CO
PostalCode: 80526
Country: US
NetRange: 199.128.0.0 - 199.159.255.255
CIDR: 199.128.0.0/11
NetName: USDA-CBLK
NetHandle: NET-199-128-0-0-1
Parent: NET-199-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.USDA.GOV
NameServer: NS2.USDA.GOV
Comment:
RegDate: 1994-02-08
Updated: 2005-10-11
RTechHandle: ZU20-ARIN
RTechName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
RTechPhone: +1-866-873-2926
RTechEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgAbuseHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgAbusePhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgAbuseEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgNOCHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgNOCName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgNOCPhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgNOCEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgTechHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgTechName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgTechPhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgTechEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-04-12 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
04/13/07 12:16:19 dig 199.158.161.187 @ NS1.PNAP.NET
Dig 187.161.158.199.in-addr.arpa@NS1.PNAP.NET (206.253.194.65) …
Non-authoritative answer
Recursive queries supported by this server
Query for 187.161.158.199.in-addr.arpa type=255 class=1
161.158.199.in-addr.arpa SOA (Zone of Authority)
Primary NS: v100r4.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov
Responsible person: root@v100r4.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov
serial:2007021401
refresh:10800s (3 hours)
retry:3600s (60 minutes)
expire:604800s (7 days)
minimum-ttl:86400s (24 hours)
04/13/07 12:16:57 Blackhole check 199.158.161.187
nslookup 199.158.161.187
199.158.161.187 is not in the MAPS realtime blackhole list (rbl.maps.vix.com)
199.158.161.187 is not in the MAPS dialup user list (dul.maps.vix.com)
199.158.161.187 is not in the radparker relayed spam system (relays.mail-abuse.org)
04/13/07 12:17:19 IP block 199.158.161.187
Trying 199.158.161.187 at ARIN
Trying 199.158.161 at ARIN
OrgName: USDA Office of Operations
OrgID: UOO-2
Address: Suite 133, Building A
Address: 2150 Centre Ave
City: Fort Collins
StateProv: CO
PostalCode: 80526
Country: US
NetRange: 199.128.0.0 - 199.159.255.255
CIDR: 199.128.0.0/11
NetName: USDA-CBLK
NetHandle: NET-199-128-0-0-1
Parent: NET-199-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.USDA.GOV
NameServer: NS2.USDA.GOV
Comment:
RegDate: 1994-02-08
Updated: 2005-10-11
RTechHandle: ZU20-ARIN
RTechName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
RTechPhone: +1-866-873-2926
RTechEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgAbuseHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgAbusePhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgAbuseEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgNOCHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgNOCName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgNOCPhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgNOCEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
OrgTechHandle: ZU20-ARIN
OrgTechName: USDA - Office of the ChiefInformation Officer
OrgTechPhone: +1-866-873-2926
OrgTechEmail: duty.officer@usda.gov
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-04-12 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
You can tell the “emperor” whatever you damned well please Mnemosyne, but when you do it by attacking straw men and putting words in his mouth, I don’t find that very helpful. Do you seriously think you’re going to change anybody’s mind that way? You want to see somebody get defensive real fast? Just accuse them of something they didn’t do, or exaggerate what they did.
[…] 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 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 My dear friend, Natasha, at Pacific Views (N. and I have a history of dealing with this kind of cyber-crap.) Kevin at Slant Truth Aaron at Faithfully Liberal Ntodd at Dohiyi Mir Trifecta at PairOfDimes Steven D at Booman Tribune Sheelzebub at Pinko Feminist Hellcat Myra at Reno and Its Discontents twoluvcats at a wealth of semi-useless information! Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money […]
I guess I have to defend the technophiles for a second here. I think anyone who calls themselves a gamer or techhead who can’t build a PC from scratch should be laughed off of the server and sent back to the arcade to wow prepubescents with their mad MK3 skillz. I resent the sweaty jocks I knew in high school picking up Madden or Battlefield 2142 and shouting at their bluetooth earpieces in Gamestop about getting the “dawgs” together for a game this weekend, and talking about their “skillz.” There’s a lot of territory to mark in life, and this one’s mine.
None of that has anything to do with Kathy Sierra.
Taking the hardware the bleeding-edgers made look safe and the software the early-adopters built themselves and making it something everyone uses just frees up space on your desk for the new New. How does being a pioneer with new neighbors make you feel like your dick is smaller, unless you’re a fucking deranged lunatic - or, you know, you’re a dinosaur and unable to keep up with the times?
Not at all. You should run, hide, or shoot the thing.
Now, if, after that, you call for a Dog-Owner’s Code of Ethics, I might look at you funny, possibly even while I was helping you reload.
Markos is an asshole. I really don’t understand why people think he’s so goddamn important or why dKos gets so much attention. As far as I can tell he’s not particularily left-wing, nor a very good writer. He just knows a lot about how the Democrat party works, which is maybe useful in a way but doesn’t hold that much relevance for ordinary people.
Do you seriously think you’re going to change anybody’s mind that way? You want to see somebody get defensive real fast?
Ah yes, the time honored tradition of the concern troll.
libdevil, imagine if a white person told the black community that they shouldn’t get offended over Imus’ horseshit. It is, after all, only a series of words.
[libdevil]”Do you seriously think you’re going to change anyone’s mind? You want to see somebody get defensive real fast? Blame them for apologizing for racism!”[/libdevil]
You know, I think concern trolls are worse than honest-to-goodness trolls. At least the latter doesn’t act like it only wants the best for you and yours. Pathetic.
[…] I have just learned, via Amanda at Pandagon, there exists a category of writer called “user interface bloggers.” I don’t know what a user interface is, but apparently they’re wildly popular. […]
I’m annoyed at the people who are taking “me” seriously. Mr. Misogyny if fully aware of the extra risks and precautions women must deal with in a pro-rape culture; he’s just deploying Stupid Man Techniques 101: minimize, deny, distract.
Stop falling for it. Stop wasting your time - THAT is his goal. He’s some type of passive-aggresive freak who giggles at every bit of attention you give him.
That’s kind of a big assumption right there, isn’t it? The randomness of it?
Mmm - I’m trying to seperate it out from “normal” domestic abuse (where there’s a prior relationship), which may involve online comments by the abuser. I wasn’t aware that one of the fuckwits harassing Amanda had shown up at her house.
And are our only options subjective fear or death?
Not at all. There’s also the option of responding as if the death threat was unacceptable in itself.
What the fuck harm is it for people to symbolically sign onto “We won’t put up with this shit?�
Have I said anything other than that I don’t wanna put up with this shit? I thought I went out of my way to label the threats unacceptable - what do you want, that I should hire a circus elephant, paint it blue, and get it to jump up and down waving a sign saying “PiaToR doesn’t support this!!” every time the words “death threat” come up? Wouldn’t that be a little hard on your computer?
If an off-leash Rottweiler is snarling at me and baring its teeth, would it be smart of me to say “Oh, hell, less than a hundred people are killed by dog bites every year; I’ve got nothing to worry about from that dog�?
The key word is “off-leash”. If some fuckwit from online shows up at your house, he should be treated as a serious threat.
A barking snarling Rottweiler on the leash should be treated as harassment and there should be a mechanism to deal with it as such. You don’t go shooting the dog because there’s a very small chance that the leash may break, you call a noise control officer or whatever best suits your jurisidiction.
Hi Johanna,
You’re most likely correct. And usually I roll my eyes and ignore them, not wanting to fuel their energies. However I still respond sometimes because I like to think that someone else, whether a lurker or casual reader, might read my post and possibly have a lightbulb go off in their head. I know I got a lot out of reading people’s responses here when I started, even the responses given to trolls, and I’m thankful the responders wrote them. The troll(s) never really learnt but I did
Anyways, didn’t mean to go off on a tangent.
>>I think anyone who calls themselves a gamer or techhead who can’t build a PC from scratch should be laughed off of the server and sent back to the arcade to wow prepubescents with their mad MK3 skillz.
Exhibit A.
A minor technical nit:
Um… no. If the IP given is accurate (that is, there wasn’t a transcription error when Amanda wrote the post) then the submission of the post went through a machine at the USDA.You cannot, by the nature of TCP, spoof IP addresses in web comments. IP addresses can be spoofed in certain other protocols, but not anything built on top of TCP that requires a back-and-forth. (HTTP is built on top of TCP)
(Those of you bringing up TCP initial sequence number prediction at this point need to get a life - TCP isn attacks haven’t been practical against real TCP implementations in at least a decade)
Now, just because it went through a machine at the USDA does not mean that the person themselves was at the USDA - there could always be a machine that someone’s broken into being used as a web proxy. (But in that case, the sysadmins at the USDA would probably like to know about the machine for other reasons)
For what it’s worth, the GeoIP service at maxmind.com places that IP address as somewhere in Texas; the Fort Collins, CO address that others have is just the address of the technical contact for networking at the USDA.
Reading comprehension is good.
They showed up at Melissa’s door, not Amanda’s. And someone else had already mentioned that Kathy Sierra’s harassers included colleagues.
And, given the context of the question, how is “acknowledging that death threats are unacceptable!” an answer?
Connie Willis was groped, on stage, by a colleague during last years Hugo awards. The response varied from “jackass” to “well, it’s Harlan Ellison” to the most popular: utter silence. Did it ever frickin’ occur to you (what with all the mention of sexualized threats) that maybe Kathy Sierra - and the rest of us - are worried about more that just murder? And that, yeah, it seems to us that some vocal condemnation of threats of violence - as well as actual violence - might do some good? You think Ellison would have pulled that shit if he thought for a moment that there might be actual consequences?
Again, how is this a response to the question?
The fact that we are arguing with you does not make this about you.
[…] UPDATE: Amanda piles on. So do Kos’ commenters. Interesting to note that the original Kos post is not that inflammatory. . .but it certainly is dismissive and has the feminist blogosphere up in arms. […]
Yep, I think of it that way a lot, too. More often at this point, though, I think I partly just do it for sport; it’s kind of entertaining, and it’s usually a really good opportunity to get myself clear on my thoughts (and discover weaknesses and oversights and whatnot). There’s something to be said for taking the time to defend your views point-by-point; it sucks to have to do it all the time, but at the same time it isn’t something we always do when it’s easier to just sign onto “yeah, what she said!” Usually when I do/have done that, I find/found myself later disagreeing with said person and then second-guessing myself on it, rather than seeing opinions on topics independent of each other as such.
Having some jerkoff in your figurative face spittling all over the idea of me even having an opinion in the first place is usually a handy motivation.
Blogger Death Threats…
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is skeptical of the widespread claims of death threats aimed at blogging, thinking most are ploys for attention and the rest are “just the rantings of a lunatic.”
For my part, I’ve gotten my fair share of such…
PS. He didn’t call anybody a “crazy bitch� either.
No, but he was one of the first people to call Obama eloquent, which is truly special.
Look, I’m gonna string him up from a meat hook as a lesson to future generations about what “sic semper tyrannus” actually means, and to get across the point that no one has the right to give away the rights of others, when the revolution comes anyway, the only sensible thing to do in the mean time is to spread his home address and contact details all across far right forums and let nature take it’s course.
Because I’m reading that peice as Kos basically saying that he’d be okay if people kinda sent letters to his house that kinda hinted that it’d be a real shame if his child was to suddenly forget to keep practicing that whole breathing skill of hers.
He does appear to literally be asking for it, so where exactly in berkely, chicago, does he live now?
I’m not saying do anything seriously, just send a package that happens to include some explosives wired to a timer, that’ll go off if the case it’s in is opened, to the place where his wife and child live. Nothing serious though, an explosive device of fun and rainbows, don’t see what harm that could do or how making such threats might intimidate him into silence just because a sane person takes such threats seriously on the off chance they are serious because the lives of yourself and your family and freinds is actually worth vigilance like that.
Teeheehee.
and yes I’m joking in the hope that some people will attempt to engage their hugely atrophied empathy and basic common sense glands.
Meeting force with force leads to escalation, which is fine if you’ve got an infinite amount of force to weild and have no morals whatsoever. And families and pets are out of bounds if you have got morals, in all circumstances.
…and yes, acting as an apologist is enabling the people who do threaten people’s lives, you’re the bushes they jump out of and attack people from in the first place.
Good post. Hope blogtopia gets the message.
[…] I have never wanted to troll-rate so many comments in my life as I did on this post. Kos seriously does not get it, and his male lackeys don’t, either. Pandagon put it best: “In order to argue effectively against the blogger code of conduct, it’s imperative to say that bitches are crazy.” […]
[…] Hey dudes! Welcome to my online diary! I write this letter out of love for you of the Male Persuasion. It was inspired by the recent conversation threads on blogs addressing the Kathy Sierra death threats incident. […]
[…] People who have spoken out 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 Myra 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 Terrance at The Republic of T Vox Aemeliae […]