Gender Differences and Online Nastiness

[Some strong language ahead] Hi folks -- a couple
of weeks back, the Washington Post had an article
summarizing some of the challenges faced by women bloggers -- in
particular, sexually-oriented flames, threats and harassment (most
recently exemplified by the Kathy
Sierra incident): "Sexual
Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers."

I've
been sitting on this entry for two reasons:

1. It
brings up some really tricky issues.

2. There's
always something happening that brings up another angle on
this.

(This is going to be a long entry that
threatens to spiral out of control, just like many online arguments --
you are warned.)

This Is Not a New
Problem
***************************
Now,
online harassment is nothing new to online communities (or even offline
communities -- not many things get nastier than a spat between
neighbors), but the whole public nature of blog conversations makes
things a lot more accessible to others.

In any given
Internet discussion or comments thread, you're going to see a lot of
nastiness, especially when people do drive-by comments in front of
people they don't know on a site where they don't visit regularly. Why?
Lots of reasons, but here are a few:

1.
Some people are just mean. Maybe
they're mean offline, too, but there's also a phenomena defined in the
Penny Arcade comic that I will paraphrase
thusly:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience =
Total [Nasty Idiot].

(Here's the comic
-- Warning: Superstrong
language.)

2. Some people just get
off on causing trouble. It ranges from the
mildly-annoying people who feel the need to post "first
post!" [video, strong language warning] on everything, to
every other sort of troll and troublemaker who just wants attention,
and to get a rise out of other people.

3.
Some people are just insane. I
don't mean people who just can't let go of an argument or let someone
else get the last word in. They're kind of nutty, but I'm talking about
the truly deranged, sociopathic or psychopathic. There are always a few
out there.

It's a Problem for Everyone (But
It's Usually Worse for
Women)
*****************************
When
the gloves come off (if they were ever on in the first place),
everything is on the table. But some men are awfully quick to start in
on the woman-hating online, because:

4.
Some men reeeeaaally have a problem with
women. We know there's a stereotype of the shrill, man-hating
harpy out there (which is its own kind of a woman-hating putdown), but
if you look at any robust flamewar out there, just take a look at who's
calling whom what:

* Appearance
is usually first. The targets of your venom are just as ugly on the
outside as they are on the inside. Just look at how people judge Ann
Coulter, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh or Rosie
O'Donnell.

Women usually fare worse in this
department, since we as a society tend to be more focused on how they
look. Even during the height of Rathergate,
people weren't talking about Dan Rather's haircut or the cut of his
jacket, but when Katie Couric took over the CBS Evening News anchor
spot, people were focused on what she was wearing -- and she hadn't
even done anything yet.

Similarly, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin has said she's been dealing for some time with similar gender-based slams that you just don't see with male bloggers in the political blogosphere.

*
Name-calling is kind of a mixed bag, since the way
men and women are treated is a little bit the same, a little bit
different. Men tend to call out other men as being practictioners of
deviant sexual practices which may include relatives, animals and
corpses, though the most common opening gambit is calling a man a word
that starts with "f" and ends in "-aggot."

However,
when males get into it with females, it's usually along even more sexualized
lines, where the woman is defined by her anatomy and what she does with
it. Which gets into...

* Threats of
violence: You start off with mild forms of stuff like "DIAF"
(short for "Die in a Fire", basically an updated version of "Drop dead"
or "Take a long walk off a short pier" common on Fark and other sites -- you can
find the origin
of this turn of phrase here.)

Beyond that,
with males, there's a lot more chest-bumping, Internet Tough
Guy, "I'm gonna kick your ass" kind of stuff, though as it
develops (somewhat paradoxically), the same fellow who was calling you
a homo the sentence before now threatens to violate you in a manner
familiar to fans of the HBO prison series 'Oz.'

When
it comes to women, the violence is usually even more sexual. Some of it
is based in your garden-variety virulent misogyny from men who don't
like to see women expressing an opinion: ("Get back in the kitchen and
make me some pie.")

However, no matter how powerless
a man is, or how soundly thrashed he's getting in an argument, he
always has a trump card when it comes to women -- threats of rape and
sexual violence. Credible or not, it's pretty powerful
stuff.

Here's a somewhat personal anecdote -- my
friend Susie got featured on BoingBoing recently, for a particularly
disgusting
incident with a raw chicken breast sandwich; looking at the
comments in the originally-featured
blog entry included an anonymous flame with some really
graphic and sexualized terms.

No
Answers
***********************************
OK,
so until someone comes up with a way to punch someone else in the face
via the Internet (I'm eagerly awaiting the day that they implement the
IP protocol -- "Internet Punching"), and there's relative anonymity,
and you're arguing with some random stranger somewhere, and there's
little to no cost for you to unleash a barrage of incivility on that
person, what can we do about this?

Not sure, other
than to continue to talk about it and build tools, processes and
policies. Some additional analysis and thinking:

*
Salon had a pretty good take on it: Men
Who Hate Women on the Web, showing the difference they've
seen towards male and female columnists there.

*
Over at Villainous
Company, Cassandra talks about her own experiences and
theorizes that "Just as we expect men
to be more civil, we [women]may need to toughen up a bit," as well as
not only changing the rules of the game, but also changing the game
itself.

*
Journaler Ceilisundancer at Random
Threads shares some of her personal observations (she also
noted to me that "I've actually gotten more e-mail responses/comments
than public comments, which is interesting,
also.")

And if you want to help fight gender
inequality (so that we're all abused equally), consider going to a
charity screening
of the movie 'Serenity' in June, proceeds to benefit Equality
Now.

If you want to share your own
thoughts or experiences with online harassment (gender-based or not),
leave a comment or a link below (remember, no flamewars, posting
personal info, or slamming other people in my
comments.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: internet punching protocol, blogging, social media, online nastiness, community, gender differences, female bloggers, online harassment