Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

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Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?

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  • Juha Saarinen,

    Interesting twisting there, but none of it particularly good. You can actually make your important points without resorting to race and gender-baiting because if you do that, well, it doesn't really move the discussion forward, does it?

    Doesn't matter what the context is, sorry.

    Since Nov 2006 • 529 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    [I]sn't turning a discussion about women's exclusion from online discussion through threats of violence into an argument about how unfair it is to denigrate "white boys" exactly an illustration of what Tze Ming is saying?

    Yes it is. As a guy, I've watched this thread with growing embarrassment. "deeply offended"? Get over yourself. Unfortunately girls & ladies have to realise that half the time guys just like the sparring that goes on with a good discussion, and a few here have clearly missed the wider context, and the obvious irony of their thread hijaks.

    Tze Ming, don't give up. I reckon you should start a new chicks-only thread & and get back to business. :)

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Finn Higgins,

    Well, after a long period of lurking this thread actually convinced me to register an account on PA.

    A few points.

    The internet is, by its nature, probably the most equal-opportunities system you could imagine. You get a choice as to how you present yourself, what gender or race you adopt etc etc. But without a doubt, the treatment you receive is modified by that presentation - if you present yourself as female you will be treated differently than if you present as male. So I'm not about to claim that there's no differential in treatment of men and women online, or that life as a whole is free of discrimination.

    But - and yes, there is a but - threats of violence and aggressive stand-over tactics are not something that is exclusively restricted to women online, or I'd argue something that is even directed more at women than men. In discussing the problem I think it's largely a nonsense to talk about it in the context of "making the internet safe for women", as that rather excludes all the other, non-female people for whom it is similarly unsafe. An acquaintance of mine in the US went through something similar in the last couple of years. He's in his mid teens. Through an activity he was involved in that had some degree of controversy in his field he got a lot of exposure, both online and in traditional media. As a result of that exposure he got to see both the good and the bad side of having a presence in the public eye: Firstly, he got offered a lot of opportunities not usually available to somebody in his age and situation. Secondly, he got subjected to violent personal abuse in a variety of internet forums, and acquired crazy (male) stalkers who started threatening him and his family with violence via the internet, phone and mail. This is not something that is exclusively targetted at women. Tze Ming's piece amused me a little when I got to the quote from Joan Walsh about "Men who hate women on the web". In all honesty, with the entire subject of gender removed it described exactly how this - male - acquaintance of mine was treated. It's not about men who hate women on the web, it's about assholes (who tend to be male) who hate people - anywhere. How that hatred is delivered tends to vary depending on the gender it's being targetted at - threatening to rape men tends to be less effective, so other threats are used that are intended to elicit the same response - but if you ask me the question "How do we make the internet safe for women" is really just a wider question of "How do you protect people with public visibility from the utter bastards out there"

    Trying to cast the problem in purely men-on-women terms seems to be ignoring the fact that the problem is not that narrow.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Tze Ming, don't give up. I reckon you should start a new chicks-only thread & and get back to business. :)

    Oh good grief, can we not? I assume I fit in the 'girls and ladies' category, and I like the sparring. What I don't like is abuse, no matter who's driving it or who it's directed at. I don't need a special little protected corner of the internet where I don't have to come in contact with the big nasty boys.

    So far I think what we've managed to establish is that girls who DO comment on pol blogs don't know why women who DON'T don't. Big surprise. And that the reasons some women don't like to hang out at Kiwiblog are curiously identical to the reasons some men don't. Ditto.

    If I do ever get picked out, mentioned, linked to, whatever, I want it to be because of the content of my writing, not the contents of my trousers.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    Yes, and treating the problem in purely people-vs-people terms misses the point that a lot of the threats take on a specifically gendered tone, when assholes go bad. If you're visibly female and on the internet, you're more likely to run into assholes. I can't remember the citation for it, but a study on AOL with a female, neutral and male-named created accounts on a chat board, found that female names attracted 10 times more nasty comments than male ones.

    That being said, there's a lot of overlap in the solutions for both. I'd like it to get harder for people to make anonymous threats on the internet, and easier for people to track down and prosecute people making those threats. It's all very well to talk of code of conduct, but they don't prevent people determined to transgress them.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Tze Ming Mok,

    Finn, you wrote:

    threats of violence and aggressive stand-over tactics are not something that is exclusively restricted to women online, or I'd argue something that is even directed more at women than men.

    A fair guess, but quickly disproven by research. Webweaver's post, among the many others on this topic, is a good summary and has reference links (thanks for outing yourself!):

    Michel Cukier, professor at the University of Maryland's Center for Risk and Reliability, authored a study last year where automated chat-bots and human researchers logged on to chat rooms under female, male and ambiguous screen names, such as Nightwolf, Orgoth and Stargazer.

    Bots using female names averaged 100 malicious messages a day, compared with about four for those using male names and about 25 for those with ambiguous names. Researchers logging on themselves produced similar results.

    SarfBank, Lunnin' • Since Nov 2006 • 154 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    That's the one I meant. 25 times, not 10 times. A quick google would have helped.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    good topic TMM and nice to see you posting again.

    i read your and Span's stuff often and will starting reading Maia.
    I agree that 1) there needs to be more women writing here and elsewhere and 2) women often get a harder time of it. i would like to see that change.

    i also tend to go along with the others who say they read and comment here because the tone is vastly civil compared to some. i look at kiwibog once in a while and i can understand why women and other sane people are put off. just commenting on there would give me the shits.

    i've also received death threats over the years and they totally suck in so many ways, regardless of gender (that very neato genie says i'm a girl). you are right to never respond to them publicly, but always report them, even if its only to help build a pattern against the person doing it. nobody should put up with that shit.

    anyway, please keep posting - you do great work.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Tze Ming Mok,

    3410 said:

    Tze Ming, don't give up. I reckon you should start a new chicks-only thread & and get back to business. :)

    Emma said:

    Oh good grief, can we not?

    I said: LOL. Although I very much appreciate the rest of 3140's original comment, I agree that a 'Women only-thread' in this context, would seem far less enlightening than watching what has actually happened here. I'm glad that the women posters are generally just saying what they want anyway.

    Like Emma, there is something about my personality and interests that means I get along well with guys, or have been mistaken by a guy online or out in the world of paper print readers. Like Emma, I think if stuck to certain topics, guys would tend to forget that I am a 'girl' given my gender-ambiguous name, and what I was once told by (again) Steve Braunias was a 'muscular prose style'. Like Emma, I am good at the sparring if it comes to that.

    Something happened along the way, however. For example, in my long-ago days of the university left, I found that it was alright to lampoon capitalist pigs and celebrate the glories of the working classes, with all the attending ironies considering how university political types are all bourgeois kids from the Shore etc, but when it came to arguing identity politics and feminism with the same passion and expected response of self-deprecating humour, the bourgeois kids (white, male) began to turn on you in a personal way. It actually became increasingly clear that, even if you 'argued like a boy', if you argued about feminism and race 'like a boy', or even if you were just a woman who disagreed with them, and once said you didn't like sexism, you would still be excluded like a girl. This is the expected, perhaps inevitable reaction to the politics of difference - even in this advanced forum (self-deprecating-irony alert), where putting forth those politics is always taken personally and defensively by certain members of the group being described as 'dominant'.

    Emma is at one extreme of liberal feminism (sorry if you don't count yourself as a feminist at all Emma! Everyone's on some kind of spectrum, unfortunately): she wants to be treated the same as anyone else, and no real attention paid to her gender, because it's not terribly important to her:

    If I do ever get picked out, mentioned, linked to, whatever, I want it to be because of the content of my writing, not the contents of my trousers.

    Good on her, each to their own. I could have been as happy as her to never let my gender affect the way I thought about myself and how I talk in the male world. However, because feminist analyses of power, exploitation, rights and justice made so much conceptual sense, even through hardcore Marxist lenses, it didn't make sense not to argue those points when I was a tender undergrad. Doing so marked me out as different and an outsider in the boy's world; being constructed as different made me realise that my experiences of difference were important to my identity and the way I wanted to develop my values. Ultimately I realised that even though I was good at it, maybe I didn't want to spar like a boy anymore, because it didn't seem as fun as it used to be, I didn't want to be that kind of person anymore, and it got kind of tiring repping your corner out there on your own. I want to be judged by the content of my writing also, not the colour of my skin or content of my trousers - but those two last elements are important to my identity, to my politics, and hence, to what I write about, and what I believe.

    Contrary to Emma's view, I think the contributions by women to this thread, including her own, have been revealing and important, but maybe that is the non-linear, contextual part of my brain talking, the bit that I have been working on developing since 1997. I particularly appreciate, in very simple terms, your presences at all - on a weekend no less! Thanks again.

    SarfBank, Lunnin' • Since Nov 2006 • 154 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Contrary to Emma's view, I think the contributions by women to this thread, including her own, have been revealing and important

    Never actually said I didn't think that, I don't think...

    Emma is at one extreme of liberal feminism (sorry if you don't count yourself as a feminist at all Emma! Everyone's on some kind of spectrum, unfortunately)

    Felt kind of ambiguous about the tag since run-ins at uni with a particular strain of loud, aggressive feminism. Example off the top of my head: a girl screaming abuse at a friend of mine for about ten minutes because he held open a door for a large (mixed-gender) group and she happened to be in it - she wasn't even first through the door. Prefer 'equalist', but also don't want to abandon 'feminist' to people like that. And believe me, in my life I've witnessed and personally experienced a power of the crap men can do to women, it's just not something I'm personally comfortable talking about in a public forum.

    But. For about five years now I've been an online admin, and in that time, I've seen some really appalling things said to people. Sorting that stuff out is part of my job, and sometimes it's utterly soul-destroying. The tie for most gut-wrenching crap I've had to deal with would be stuff from the comments back when I was working on Tim Barnett's blog, directed at gay men, and a horrible harrassment campaign at BW, directed at a woman - by two other women.

    I've copped it myself sometimes, but dealt with it okay because I was on sites with strong policing, and I had friends to help me out. But that's not to say I wouldn't absolutely freaking apeshit if it happened to my daughter.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Erm. Insert the word 'go' into above post so it actually makes sense...

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    What are you actually embarrassed about 3410?
    What did you do?

    I'm embarrassed by some of my brothers' childish expressions of outrage and their insensitive hijacking of this thread.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Finn Higgins,

    B Jones & Tze Ming,

    Thanks for the responses. I'm going to quote and reply to B rather than Tze, but I'm trying to engage both if you catch my drift...

    Yes, and treating the problem in purely people-vs-people terms misses the point that a lot of the threats take on a specifically gendered tone, when assholes go bad.

    That's true, when gender is available as an identifiable angle of attack. But when it isn't then the same threats take whatever form can be calculated to be the most damaging based on what is known about the victim, who they are and what they value. That gender is used as an angle of attack is reprehensible, but no less so than the use of known family, sexual orientation or painful personal history, for example. That gender is used is a reflection of wider society, but the use of gender as either a criteria for choice of victims or a weapon of attack is not the problem. The problem is that people are looking for victims and weapons, and that the systems exist which allow them to do so with impunity.

    If you're visibly female and on the internet, you're more likely to run into assholes. I can't remember the citation for it, but a study on AOL with a female, neutral and male-named created accounts on a chat board, found that female names attracted 10 times more nasty comments than male ones.

    While studies like this are interesting in relation to the environment and demographic studied, I think it's an obvious and serious error to consider "the internet" or "the web" a homogeneous mass to which such studies can be universally applied. AOL or any other chat service != The Web, which in turn has little direct linkage as a whole to the world of blogs and commenting. And indeed with respect to discussion of issues surrounding bloggers and writers it's arguably a bit like trying to apply a study on male/female behavior in nightclubs to a senior citizen's bridge club.

    I'm willing to accept that there are environments online where, as a woman, you're not going to feel particularly safe exposing your real-world contact details. But that should be rather obvious - there's plenty of environments online where I'm not comfortable exposing mine as a white male, musician, voter to the left of the political spectrum or non-Christian, for example. Society has never allowed any individual to enter every arbitrary grouping without discrimination, regardless of whether that individual is white, yellow, blue, green, male, female or both. It's a nice idea, but the world doesn't work like that for anybody.

    There are any number of reasons that people are targeted or victimised in different environments. I've spent time in a lot of different parts of the internet in a lot of different discussion contexts in the last decade or so, and they're frequently dramatically different in the way they manage dispute, allocate power and status and handle minority demographics. There are some communities I've been a part of where you'd be eaten alive for the slightest gender bias, yet where other points of contention release the most unbelievable abuse. Are they superior situations just because the abuse doesn't revolve around gender? If your answer there is yes then we've maybe found a fundamental point of difference.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Span .,

    Bear with me, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to say this right, but I do find it frustrating when the negative experiences some women have had in political engagement are explained away. It's like it didn't happen, when it did.

    I know there are some women who it doesn't happen to, online or in real life. That's great. That's how it should be. There are those who experience it but aren't phased and don't understand why other women are - and sometimes those women aren't very sympathetic to others who actually think politics shouldn't be about verbal and textual chinese burns. Some men clearly aren't sympathetic either.

    Yes politics is in some ways a game. But it doesn't mean that it isn't real. It doesn't mean that hurting someone doesn't count because then they just go back a level and get to have another bash at it. Many people don't get involved in politics to have fights and win. Many people don't start political blogging because they want to score points and tear other people to shreds. But that is the way on most other nz pol blogs (apart from PA and a few others).

    I'm glad Emma raised the issue of Tim Barnett's blog. Those commenters are still largely around, infesting Tony Milne's blog (I See Red) in particular, and also Jordan's (Just Left) to the point where's he's turned off comments while he's out of the country. Jordan and Tony aren't female bloggers, but they're not hetero or right wing and so they challenge the dominant discourse and get the internet bash for being those appointed the online representatives of the Labour party by those who hate Clark and Labour. The comments they get are incredibly nasty, and Tony in particular posts very thoughtfully in a manner you wouldn't think would attract such vile taunts.

    Anyway - is that the kind of blogosphere we want, one where bullies are mainly in the ascendant? I don't.

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 112 posts Report Reply

  • Juha Saarinen,

    To chime in with Span's post, yeah... you don't get any protection from being male and ang mo whitey on the 'Net. Hatred and bigotry are colour-blind and gender-neutral.

    Since Nov 2006 • 529 posts Report Reply

  • Megan Clayton,

    Tze Ming, you mention Steve Braunias' praise of your "muscular prose style". There has been quite a bit of critical work done in the last twenty to twenty-five years of the gendering of language in New Zealand writing, particularly, but not limited to, poetry and criticism. John Newton puts this at the door of Allen Curnow, whose 1945 and 1960 poetry anthologies, as well we know, were so influential on ideas about what "good" writing was in this country.

    To those poets whom Curnow admired, he gave almost stereotypically masculine adjectives to praise their work: strong, robust and (yep) muscular. To those poets whom he disparaged, he applied the feminine opposites of these terms. (Newton's actual counting of the adjectives is in an article in, from memory, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, from about seven years ago).

    Now this in itself is not necessarily problematic, but Curnow's critical evaluations also divided fairly neatly along gendered lines when it came to the gender of the poets themselves. Only Robin Hyde, Ruth Dallas and a few others made the cut in terms of their poetry meeting Curnow's standards, and then only in part. Curnow's other technique was to conflate appropriate poetic technique with appropriate psychological development: thus, the best poems are not only masculinised but also mature, and the worse immature and feminised (and mostly written by women). Calling for the reevaluation of writers excluded, over time, by these means, has been a long project for critics of a variety of persuasions, as many readers no doubt know.

    This rhetoric has, to my mind, been tremendously influential in how we think about writing in this country, so when Braunias praises what I take to be the blend of economy of style with political argument/polemic in your own prose, he describes it in Curnovian terms: muscular=good. Of course, muscular is a desirable attribute for many women in our own time, but this is perhaps coincidental.

    This is not by way of much contribution to the wider argument save to talk about something in which I feel confident, but also to raise the idea that our contexts are gendered not only individually but at the level of our language, our critical and evaluative vocabulary. It doesn't necessarily lock us into that gender but it can constrain us if we wish to write/talk/debate ideas in a manner outside the prevailing gendered style. This is often said to be one of the reasons Curnow's language was so strongly gendered in the first place--he was responding to the way in which the poetry of his youth was celebrated in feminine terms. (And still today: who would want to be told they had a soft and tender prose style?)

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Grant McDougall,

    Again, as an aside, great to see Goo refered to in the thread's title. The 2cd deluxe edition is a cracker. According to SY's website there's a - drooooool - 2cd deluxe edition of Daydream Nation coming out soonish. It's a classic of course, but I gotta say that EVOL is pretty under-rated...

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2006 • 760 posts Report Reply

  • Deborah,

    So much for a quiet peaceful Sunday, having lunch with friends, doing some baking for the school lunches this week, washing and mending some clothes, supervising homework, generally just pottering around doing home things. I have spent most of the day thinking abut feminist political theory, and about whether I could make a useful contribution to this discussion. I had almost decided not to, but then there was a long, thoughtful, and somehow vulnerable sounding post from Finn Higgins, and this from Juha:

    Hatred and bigotry are colour-blind and gender-neutral.

    Well, yes, they are, but their objects are not. There's some evidence that being female, or gay, or black, or yellow, or disabled, or mentally iss, or an immigrant, invites hatred and biogotry in a way that being able, white and male does not. Not necessarily compelling evidence, yet, but nevertheless, something to take note of.

    Having said that, PA and a number of other NZ blogs are bigotry and hatred free. If ever there was a site where women and gays and other non white-able-males could take part without fear, then this is it.

    I think however, that it is futile to deny that e-women (meaning women who are active on the interweb) are targetted in a way that e-men are not. The whole Kathy Sierra story, and the follow-up stories in Salon and other places are testament to that.

    But here's the rub. It seems that by calling the perpetrators on it, as they deserve to be called, ODMs (or ordinary decent men) feel as though they have been called on it too. Hence the vulnerable note in Finn's post above. Finn seems to want to sound a "me too" idea in his story about his friend, and "it wasn't me" in response to the whole discussion that Tze Ming has raised. Finn, everyone here knows it wasn't you, and I suspect that most people here, like me, were saddened, even appalled, by the account you gave us of what happened to your friend. Here's the thing - making it clear that you don't support what is happening, doesn't stop it happening.

    Let me give an analogy. This is going to really upset some people, so let me make it very, very clear, that this is an analogy only, and I am only using it as a way into the point I am making. So take a deep breath, particularly if you are an XY type, and bear with me.

    Remember the 'All men are rapists' slogan from the 1970s? Possibly not... and in fact, I don't actually remember it either, but I do know about it.

    Right. Take a deep breath. Keep on reading. Please.

    As it turns out, the slogan is a misrepresentation of the original claim.

    The original claim was more like this. To the extent that ODMs benefit from the fear of rape that most women live with, then even ODMs are rapists.

    Silly idea.

    I don't think that ODMs either think or act like this. But there is another thought in here, that women will continue to live in fear of rape, and to regulate their behaviour accordingly, until ODMs stand up against it too.

    Here's the analogy bit. We need the ODMs to make it very clear that they simply will not tolerate the abuse of women (and gays and blacks and mentally ill and disabled people) on-line. In other words, blokes, stand up and be counted.

    Having said all that, as far as I can tell, the ODMs who populate this site have stood up to be counted. I first became aware of the Kathy Sierra story through Russell Brown's post on the topic. No one has dismissed the problem. More pertinently, the way this site operates is testament to ODMs and ODWs simply wanting to have a good discussion, without the bigotry and hatred that infest other sites. I love hanging out here. I have had some full-on disagreements with other people through PA, but not once has someone addressed my gender rather than my arguments. Maybe this is why some of the ODMs here feel just a little affronted and vulnerable given the Kathy Sierra story. It's because they know damn well that they are not, and would not be, parties to such behaviour.

    But gentle men, you need to do more than just not participate in the behaviour. You also need to condemn it when you see it. As would I, I hope, when I see homophobia, or racism, or sexism, dressed up as 'free speech' on the web.

    Some other thoughts:

    I don't ever want to be treated as a man. I am a woman, and my experience of being female colours my whole perception of the world. I don't go the whole feminist epistemology route, and claim that women have different ways of knowing, but I do think that women can construct their worlds differently from men. So when I participate in the discussion here, it is as a woman, who is embedded in social networks and family concerns. Hence, Juha, my immediate rejection of simply saying that hatred and bigotry are colour-blind and gender-neutral, and my equally immediate grounding of hatred and bigotry in those who experience them.

    And... ouch! In response to Megan's fascinating post, and having found out that Gender Genie thinks I am a man, I dug out my examiners' reports on my thesis. They both used words like 'clear, forceful, careful, direct' to describe my writing, and I took that as high praise. Maybe I will have to rethink that.

    New Lynn • Since Nov 2006 • 1447 posts Report Reply

  • Rich of Observationz,

    Out of interest, has anyone *ever* been physically attacked or even approached by anyone in NZ as a result of Internet discussion?

    I've never heard of a case. The nearest would be the NF with their blacklists, but I don't think even they actually take it to physical confrontation with the people they *target*.

    If I'm right, it's reasonable to assume that anyone who threatens you is no more likely to take on physical form than the characters in a video game. So treat the nasty people as a string of bits, delete their outpourings and move on. (Report them to the cops if you want, it'll give them harmless indoor activity pouring over lists of IP addresses).

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell,

    What a conference-worth of great ideas!
    I wish I had some insight into the bad behaviour of men in cyberspace. I don't. I've certainly seen it, and I've mostly not called it- gutless perhaps. But it hasn't happened in places I wanted to be. The on-line communities worth being in have all maintained at least minimal levels of civility.
    It's a diversion, but there are male NZ poets- Alistair Cambell and Bill Mahire spring to mind- who you could describe as tender- and soft too...
    But it's hard to make "soft" seem like praise! Why? Isn't there something underlying the "muscular prose" idea that's gender-neutrally about our conception of good writing? (I'm just teasing this out and not sure how I feel about it. Male standards are so pervasive, it's possible this is just another case.)
    Strunk and White prefer active over passive verbs etc etc- mostly (I think?) pretty good advice for any writer. I'd guess we all prefer writing that is direct and honest. We don't like vague and waffly. Forceful is usually good- though it can grate in the wrong context. As much as anything, that's about being sensitive, too. I'm hard-pressed to think of a great writer who's not, on some level, sensitive. I don't know what Curnow would say, but "strong and sensitive" seems like a good ideal- for writing and perhaps for life! (?) </rise of tone at end of sentence as if to question own statement in very (gender neutral?) kiwi way> Anyway, I am surrounded by women who write far better than I do- more forcefully for sure. That can't be simply about gender.

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • Finn Higgins,

    Hence the vulnerable note in Finn's post above. Finn seems to want to sound a "me too" idea in his story about his friend, and "it wasn't me" in response to the whole discussion that Tze Ming has raised. Finn, everyone here knows it wasn't you, and I suspect that most people here, like me, were saddened, even appalled, by the account you gave us of what happened to your friend. Here's the thing - making it clear that you don't support what is happening, doesn't stop it happening.

    Good god. On the one hand we have long posts about how the use of masculine adjectives to describe prose is all tied into gender politics, on the other hand sounding a "vulnerable note" somehow provides a world of subtext for you to read all manner of conclusions from.

    You know, I don't really put enough time into the posts I write to justify reading between the lines to quite such a depth. I'm a pretty shallow guy. If I was sounding "vulnerable" perhaps that was just an attempt at being polite given I'm a) new here and b) commenting in a thread where gender politics is seemingly being forcibly inserted into anything in sight, whether it fits particularly well or not?

    If I raised an example it was not to demonstrate that I'm a jolly nice fellow, it was to demonstrate that abuse is abuse, regardless of gender - if you put your opinions and your real-world credentials on public display and the wrong people take a disliking to you they can be very, very nasty to you.

    My point being: The actions are the same, the situation the same, the results the same. So why treat the problem differently just because the recipients of the abuse are female? Why talk of "Taking back" blogs for female audiences? I don't get that, sorry. Either you're interested in the problem of online abuse/stalking regardless of the victim (and viable social and technological solutions to the issue) or you're not - I don't see that being specifically and exclusively interested in the problem for a particular group of victims is a very practically useful position, sloganeering aside.

    Shorter: What Juha said.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell,

    With regard to death threats- or any such direct threats against one's person: It'd creep me out completely. I'd report it, too. Lying awake at night listening for creaks and scuffles is a crap life. And for all that you can reassure yourself it's not likely anything will really happen, knowing someone out there there has thought these thoughts about you is creepy too.
    There's a connection, we all know it- not direct or simple or linear, necessarily, but a connection- between thinking thoughts and doing deeds.
    In that respect, it might be good if some of the fabled "anonymity" of the net were exploded. Most people probably know deep-down that pretty well anything you do on the net- any e-mail you send, comment you post- can, unless you're making efforts- be traced back to you. And they also know it won't be. A lot of the worst behaviour (and some of the fun!:-) would disappear overnight if the perps knew their real names would magically (techno-magically!) appear next to their comment/blog post next day.

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie,

    A lot of the worst behaviour (and some of the fun!:-) would disappear overnight if the perps knew their real names would magically (techno-magically!) appear next to their comment/blog post next day.

    Amen to that - which is pretty much the 'crap life' visited on Kathy Sierra by those 'perps' who published her home address and social security number. As so many here have said, I'd be devastated/ballistic/whatever if it happened to me/someone close to me. Thanks for a marvellous Sunday's worth of thoughtful and generous posts, but it still creeps me out to think about what was done to Sierra.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • nanoplanet,

    OK Tze you have convinced me. Time to start commenting and not just watching from the wings.

    Here • Since Apr 2007 • 15 posts Report Reply

  • anjum rahman,

    aaagh!! i hate that i came to this thread so late... been busy all weekend. and i can't believe i turned off "sleeping dogs" to read it, but it seems to be just too important, and have too many wonderful contributions. thanx tze ming for your post that started this great discussion.

    i'm not sure that i have a lot to add. i don't ever log on to kiwiblog anymore, though i did go through a period of reading it. but i can't do it any more. it's too depressing, and the bigotry does hurt. rich, it's easy to tell us to ignore the words, but i can't. not only because the words hurt personally but also because i feel powerless against them.

    that's part of the reason why i never get involved in threads about muslims. they are so many negative and really harsh voices, yes even on pa, and i feel like a lone battler who can't possibly take them all on. i watched manakura (sp?) doing it last year around maori issues, watched him singlehandedly take on heaps of people and win. win in the sense that he managed to change opinions and make others see things in a new light. and he won respect - well, mine definitely. but he must have spent hours and hours doing it.

    for myself, i just don't have the time and energy to do the same thing. i have 2 kids to bring up, a home to take care of, a job, 3 trusts i'm a trustee of, and a nascent political career that may or may not go anywhere. i have to be mindful that anything i ever say or write can and will be used by political opponents to attack me, now or years later. or by ian wishart wannabe's to make out i'm some kind of terrorist sympathiser or straight-out terrorist (or whatever other nasty label they can throw at me).

    mostly though, i'm just tired. i spend most of my days feeling exhausted, so i only post when the topic excites me enough to overcome the tiredness! but the kind of research and hours it would take to get into an indepth debate around, say muslim issues, is just beyond my capacity. so i leave it, and try to make a difference in other ways - like interfaith forums, public speaking etc. yes, these also take a lot of time and energy, but the fact is that people say things on the web that they would never have the guts to say face-to-face, which is why these other activities seem less threatening.

    in terms of misogyny, i've never been attacked for my gender. i also haven't yet received hate mail (alhamdolillah). but i have to agree with you tze ming, that gender abuse is an issue and a serious one. whether or not the threats are real, they are frightening, and we shouldn't have to put up with them.

    so, i'd love to contribute more. but it's down to time, and to not being tough enough to take a lot of negativity.

    hamilton • Since Nov 2006 • 130 posts Report Reply

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