Anyone who has blogged for any period of time knows what it is like to receive nasty, hostile, harassing, and threatening email comments. According to this piece in today's Washington Post, the problem appears to be worse for female bloggers:
A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."
Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it's been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."
I don't think anyone ever expected blogs to be saviors of democracy, but on the other hand it's depressing to have to come to grips with the possibility that blogs may actually succeed in decreasing public participation as a result of trollism and harassment.
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4 comments:
It would be interesting to see which gender is sending the harassing emails to women. I know from my experience on certain blog sites where I have posted with administrative priviledges that allowed posts to be traced, most insulting anonymous comments came from the same female posters who also posted with their names.
This sounds like an issue worthy of a workshop at the UN's IGF - (Internet Governance Forum) in Rio (Nov 07) where Access, Openness, Diversity, and Security forums are currently being drafted. See http://www.intgovforum.org/ Click on the programme outline for the details. Of specific relevance to this issue seems to be the Openness item, addressing Freedom of Expression and protection. For those who can't attend in Rio, there will be audio and video casts.
Considering that the article itself is somewhat narrow (and stereotypical in a Female-as-Sexual-Victim sense, almost worthy of the Lifetime Channel) in scope, it is doubly unfortunate that the comment by M.A. Monte serves to minimize, divert and/or miss the point entirely.
This does a disservice to both the issue introduced, and to the women bloggers interviewed. Women who were clearly facing something entirely different than catty girl's bathroom Beyotch-fests.
Talk and study are good things. Especially in this time period when there is an enormous gap between the early hype about and how they actually seem to function. Socially, I mean. A lot of the illusions live on, amongst bloggers epecially.
I think if a person/group were to take the widest view and to analyse the various things about power in our society that blogs (interactions amongst bloggers) have unwittingly revealed, then yes, that would be a good thing.But only in a sense that truth is always a good thing.
However, such an appraisal (for it to be worth a crap and not just busy-work and a waste of grant money or something) would require brutal honesty of a kind that such groups are likely incapable of. Blogs are a new form of interaction that has pretty much peeked up the skirts of existing interactions. Things we take so for granted that we do not really examine them have gotten revealed anew. So we could all learn a lot from harsh examination of blog culture, but not withthe goal of levelling the playing field. This cannot be done with voluntary social and interactive pursuits, they just are what they are. Attempts at cheeseball regulation would fall flat, be unworkable and are not even a proper response.
What basic "right" would be legislated? The right to be listened to deeply? The right to have one's efforts respected and validated by peers? The right to find a place and be treated by fellow travelers with compassion and humor? That is what those women were asking for, and that is what cannot be "protected" in any way but must be given freely by fellow beings. When those women began to blog they in effect said - "here I am, do you hear me?".
The answer in so many cases was clearly "no". In some cases an abusive "no". And so the women respond with a normal humanity and they leave.
After a point (and maybe this is just a sign that I am getting old) the point of realizing or learning anything at all ends with the realization itself. Not all things are "fixable", some things are "just the way it is". Getting hit in the head with reality is not always bad. If nothing else it stops you from wasting time on fruitless or destructive endeavors.
And gets at what I found valuable in the article, though it was a pretty deeply buried kernel. Under the socially accepted "woman is stalked" stories there are hints of the existance of a social/class/power structure that is pretty iron-clad. This author did not bother to go further into that, nor will any other I suspect.
Basically it's like this -
Politics is about power and nothing else. You can go on about "making a difference" and "loving humanity" or whatever, but - it's distribution of power, who has it and who doesn't. Women largely don't. (The poor don't, non-whites don't, and so on but this was about women as a sub-class) And that was what was buried in the article, the differnce in response when a woman walks into the Blog Room or a man. If a post is perceived to have been written by a woman or a man - huge difference. Vastly different responses.
This is backed up (it seems to me) by the similarites among "successful' women bloggers, or political figures like Ann Coulter regardless of ideology or persoan quirks. Malkin, Althouse, McBride any of them have this quality that I wish I could think of a word for, but there is a characaturish element to them, something that when adopted gets the individual a "pass".Sorry i cannot be more specific.
Anway, I have flirted with a few disjointed elements here that would take a least 347 pages to accurately describe so I will likely get the usual "you don't make sense" reaction.
Bottom line though - I don't think you can "do" anything about this sort of thing. it is all about the individual response to any aspect of reality that we find less-than-desirable. We tough it out or we can leave. Apparently lots of women are choosing to leave.
But behavioral distortions between, and power gaps in male-female relations are as old as males and females themselves. You cannot stop any of this as a social phenomenon anymore than war can be stopped, or the expolitation of the under classes by the elite can be stopped. Sometimes you just hit the "is-ness" of a thing, and that article, without meaning to, did that a little.
Pretty funky thing to happen to a journalist, they're probably taking steps right now to assure it never happens again.
There now, I'm done "not making any sense". and good media rant on the Cho thing - freakin' gross behavior.
And how about the blurring of the lines between the way "real" news is covered and "reality" programming. Becoming less and less different. Really clear with these sensational sotries and the 2008 presidential circus - creates an illusion of participation doesn't it?
Pretty clever shit goin' on these days....
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