Virtual Violence: Shining light on the dark side of the internet

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about how nothing says success in the blogosphere like hate mail, and thanks to all my nicey-poo-poo readers, my blog has a way to go.

Little did I know that just a short time later, the subject of my joke would be a serious news story, with a twist: hate specifically targeted at women bloggers, a la sexual harassment, stalking, and death threats.

Well, I take it back. Take Back The Blog, that is.

This post is a contribution to the TBTB blogswarm, a day in which bloggers everywhere speak out against the escalating online violence against women.

As Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com wrote,

While no one could deny that men experience abuse online, the sheer vitriol directed at women has become impossible to ignore. Extreme instances of stalking, death threats and hate speech are now prevalent, as well as all the everyday harassment that women have traditionally faced in the outside world… It’s all very far from the utopian ideals that greeted the dawn of the web - the idea of it as a new, egalitarian public space, where men and women from all races, and of all sexualities, could mix without prejudice.

I’m not sure who actually held those utopian ideals — at the dawn of the web, I was still fast asleep. But it seems obvious to me that anywhere human beings mix, there will be prejudice in all its ugly varieties. Where ever we go, there we are.

It’s sadly ironic that the web is, in fact, particularly attractive to a certain breed of fucked-up people. One can air their bloodiest fantasies and join gangs of other like-minded sadists in total anonymity. It’s a cowardly predator’s wet dream.

If I sound less than shocked about online assault, it’s because it happens to me every day. My job requires me to be the bearer of bad news, and certain percentage of the recipients are insane. For me, being called a “jiz-mopping cunt” or what-have-you is all in a day’s work. Unlike the aforementioned bloggers, however, it is I who has the safety and peace of mind of anonymity here. The psychos I hear from are spewing their hate at a faceless corporation; I know them, but they don’t know me.

Significantly, even though the psychos have no idea who is reading their email, their rage is almost always expressed in a highly sexualized, misogynist manner. I could be a 55-year-old man for all they know, but their email will inevitably be some version of “fuck you bitch I hope you are gang raped and your children die of aids and your cunt is cut off.”

The bloggers are being assaulted with the same savagery, only their genders and contact information happen to be common knowledge.

Thus we wake from our dream of Utopia to acknowledge that misogyny is alive and well on Earth, and the internet is far from being immune. But I’m not worried. We’ve come a long way, baby, and it’s unlikely that women will retreat now just because the old foe has a new battle ground.

Shutting up is not our default anymore. As we have for several waves now, women will continue to act uppity and call bullshit, and feminist men will join them. Like racism and homophobia, virtual assault will lose its acceptance in our society and with it, its impunity.

It will probably never disappear entirely, but the more we speak out against violence against women in cyberspace, the smaller and weaker its twisted orbit will be.

Technorati Tags: Take Back The Blog, sexual harassment, sexual assault, cyberspace, violence against women

Filed under Act Uppity, Gollum Lives, Gynophobia |