Warning: graphic, hateful language is quoted below.
This is one of those diaries I begin to write and delete to start over and delete and start over again.
I know what I want to say, but I’m trying to swear off profanity laced tirades.
It’s about women.
Or rather, it’s about those who hate women.
I don’t understand it. I don’t know what to do about it. I know I’m very protective of my daughters. But how the hell are we going to end misogyny?
There’s women like Charlotte Allen who hate other women. Then there’s people like this:
COOKIE JILL IS A FAT CUNT. TIME TO RAODTRIP TO SANTA BARBARA & LET BITCH KNOW TO SHOW SOME RESPECT FOR THE DEAD
commented by Anonymous
Do you know what horrific thing jillian did to prompt such anger?
Already Diaried
by Carnacki.
That’s it?!? Someone wrote a repeat diary on the death of Gary Gygax, another points out it’s “already diaried” and that’s worth physical threats?!?
Except –
In this case, the commenter had the audacity to be a woman – a crime punishable by threatening language.
It occurs so often it even has a term: blogging while female.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Green Meal-mobile heading to Santa Barbara”:
Hey, thanks for posting that the Gygax diary was a repeat. Really important you did that. I hope you die cunt & we don’t post too many diaries about it. Fuck you bitch
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Green Meal-mobile heading to Santa Barbara”:
EXACTLY ANON, SHUTUP BITCH!
Harold has left a new comment on your post “Green Meal-mobile heading to Santa Barbara”:
Spot on, show some respect you cookie eating fuckwit. We should chase this whore around Kos so she learns to show some fucking respect for the dead & get a fucking life. What kind of sick loser plays diary police over this, fuck you
Harold has left a new comment on your post “Green Meal-mobile heading to Santa Barbara”:
Moreover it looks like there are other blogs & her AIM, let’s drive this cookie freak into a hole so she learns to show some fucking respect
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Green Meal-mobile heading to Santa Barbara”:
WHORE
You see, teacherken also pointed out it was already diaried. Different gender, different reaction.
Was it even “disrespect to the dead”? Of course not. Her comment was as innocuous as could be.
My diary on Gary Gygax’s death included the line “Unfortunately the cleric won’t be able to resurrect” which could be considered much more disrespectful. Yet did I receive any hate mail or comments? Of course not. The type of cowards who leave such comments only feel safe enough to do it to women and only then anonymously.
Cowards. Punk ass cowards that if they said something like that in my presence I’d go Billy Jack on them.
Those comments weren’t coming from rightwing misogynists. They apparently came from our side of the political spectrum.
To ignore such behavior will simply send the signal that it is condoned.
Too much of that behavior is condoned already. These are not isolated examples. Similar comments can be found here too often in the hidden comments and sometimes not even troll rated.
Digby recently turned the comments off on her blog because of such remarks.
Yeah, give the cunt some smelling salts and tell her to make you a sandwich.
Beatthebitch | 02.07.08 – 9:09 pm | #
I can’t even read the comments of YouTube any more without seeing dozens of examples.
I love The Pixies and while surfing around one night with my daughters, they wanted to watch this. It has since become one of their favorite videos.
And here’s a fairly typical comment:
i dont know so many peoples view this video … is so stupid and this video had no sence … lol FMM stupid girls and ugly …
and this
r those guys or girls this song sucks big peinis
I do not claim to know how we solve this, but I think it can be done. Long ago men thought nothing of sexually harrassing women at the work place either through their words or by physically groping them. Now such behavior appears to be rare – still too frequent, but from what women I work with say much less than in the past.
Shrugging it off as just the behavior of trolls is to bury our heads in the sand and to give them free reign.
As Gary Gygax, the co-founder of Dungeons and Dragons, would know, sometimes monsters must be dragged into the sunlight to slay them.
What is wrong with these people!?
I honestly don’t know. We need to figure out a way to change their behavior so they don’t think such thoughts or to think that their behavior is in any way acceptable. Clearly they think it is.
The real problem is anonymity. The supposed anonymity of the Internet emboldens some people to do and say things they probably would never do or say in real life. People who wouldn’t think of walking into your house uninvited, spitting on the carpet, calling your wife ugly, saying the cheese dip tastes like crap and why isn’t there more of it — people who would NEVER do this in real life seem to think that doing it on the Net is just fine.
Short of requiring every single communication on the Net to be signed with a digital signature verified by an impartial and trusted third party so you always know who says what, I don’t know how you could get stuff like this to stop. As we say in the biz, that sort of thing wasn’t built into the original specifications and it’s a bit late to bolt it on now, even if we knew how to implement it.
Most, but not all, harrassment has stopped in the workplace because a few women were brave enough to step up and make an issue of it through lawsuits which cost companies money. The net is so anonymous that bloggers who want to spew hate can get away with it. I’ve heard a theory that in stressful times that the pent up energy of negative emotions have to go somewhere whether it be putting others down or grabbing a gun.
Scary stuff. The racial comments have been just as bad in their own way. So, our two precedent-setting candidates have also stirred up a storm of hateful, vituperative language. Progress comes slowly, I guess, and with a lot of pain.
There is no getting rid of these folks, i am afraid. It’s about as fruitful a pursuit as trying to track down every ideot who carves crude penis drawings in basically every men’s room stall from Seattle to Sydney.
Guess what? Utter crap is one price we pay for freedom of speech. Turning of the comments? That’s no solution – it’s beyond censorship. Blocking IP addresses based on specific offenses might be a good start. Call your site hosting company to request this service. Done right it should be both cheap and easy. It prevents people just signing up under new account names, etc.
Blocking IP addresses is only partially useful. It’s not that hard to set up anonymous proxies in such a way that every time you post, you got a different IP address, maybe from a different country. This can be a good thing — it’s a way to get around things like the Great Firewall of China, for instance — but like many good things it’s possible to misuse it.
Still, it might be better than nothing.
Thankfully, the level of cognition/skillz required to do as you’ve described is rarely available to the rank misogynist.
Much, much worse. I keep a file. I was threatened last summer – so I got the police and FBI involved. Yes, the FBI (the situation warranted it). There really are laws against this sort of thing. So I forward all threats to the agent in charge of the investigation and to my local police. I don’t know if the authorities will ever actually do anything – but I feel better knowing whoever’s threatened me is now on someone’s ‘list’.
Funny thing about the Gygax harassment – I knew Gary – not well, but I knew him. He was anything but anti-female. In fact – I don’t remember him being anti anything except intolerance and hate. He stood for people’s rights – all kinds of people. Not a bigoted bone in that mans body. So all those fan boys sending you hate mail would have been shit-canned by Gary – and I think he would have appreciated your attention to detail.
What is behind this kind of hatred? Fear and insecurity. People who do not feel threatened by another person’s gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or what have you do not lash out in this way. People who are comfortable in their own skin, who have no unresolved issues of insecurity regarding their own station in life do not lash out in this way. Behind every bigot you will find someone who is emotionally and spiritually underdeveloped. Someone who is afraid.
What do cornered animals do, animals who feel threatened? They react in this same manner, expressing hostility and aggression. As human beings we verbalize that aggression and hostility, and we label it hatred, but the truth is it all arises from fear. Fear of the other. Fear of being dominated. Fear of humiliation. Even fear of our own psyche, our own emotional character. How do we handle that fear? Often by projecting it upon the person who has evoked the fearful response in us. In short, we act out of hatred, we act with hostility in order to engender fear in the person who makes us afraid.
Only when a person can get past his or her own irrational fears, can he or she overcome hatred, prejudice and bigotry. The first step is to learn why you hate. It has little to do with the other person in cases like this (where everyone is anonymous) and everything to do with what you find most frightening.