Being a woman on the internet: Pharyngula
It’s like an avalanche. I’ve heard women speaking out about the online abuse they receive for years, but suddenly, it’s as if it has media traction, and more and more women are coming out to denounce the anti-woman hate speech that seems to be common currency on the internet. Laurie Penny, Helen Lewis Hasteley, Kate Smurthwaite, and now a profile of multiple female online writers all tell the same story: there’s a misogyny epidemic on the net. Ophelia Benson, who gets her share of the abuse too, highlights their stories.
I’m a guy who also gets a fair number of abusive emails — I even have a hobby of posting some of them now and then on the web — but there’s a qualitative difference to what I see. I get death threats regularly, but they’re usually of the form “you should get [violent fate] for [hating god, violating crackers, being liberal]”; I don’t get threats of the form, “[Man], I need to [crude sexual assault] you”. As a man, I can get threats for speaking against some cherished dogma, which I can sort of halfway understand, but I don’t get the threats for just being of my sex and speaking out, period.
I also don’t get much in the way of sexual threats, except for one telling class of insults: the ones that accuse me of being a woman. Vox Day is one of the milder practitioners of this habit: he refers to me as “Pharyngurl”, because after all, it’s demeaning to just reference me as a woman. I’ve had other, nastier messages where I’ve been called a “bitch” and threatened with anal rape, for instance; it’s as if they are first metaphorically translating me into a female so they can then really degrade me thoroughly.
So I get a faint echo of the female experience, and it’s utterly repulsive. As we’re beginning to see as more and more women speak out, the wretchedness is being more thoroughly exposed.
More at the link for those who still don’t get why or how misogyny on the internet is different from internet abuse generally. PZ is as ever enlightening.