Trigger warning
I’ve been mulling over whether or not to post about this for a while now, just over a month in fact, but a discussion on Comment is Free yesterday finally persuaded me to go ahead with it.
The discussion was under Sunny Hundal’s piece about TubeCrush – The dubious joys of perving over fellow passengers online, where I questioned someone who claimed to find it odd that anyone would object to being photographed and having their photo uploaded to the Internet without their prior knowledge. I asked:
“Do you not think there’s an enormous difference between being looked at/appraised as you go about your business, and being photographed and that photo then being uploaded to the Internet for goodness knows how many people to perv over?”
To which the commenter then replied:
“Not really, no. I’m just as unaware of the attention so it impinges not one iota on my life. I mean, that’s your real picture as your avatar isn’t it? As is Ally’s and quite a few (primarily BTL) Ciffers and you suffer no angst from knowing x million people see it every day do you?”
It was my subsequent response that then got me thinking about this post, and that also got me questioning how and why I appear to have quietly accepted the heinous online abuse I was subjected to last month. I guess this post is me finally fighting back, as well as challenging my own sudden, entirely out of character submission to online misogyny.
Because I replied to the comment about me suffering no angst from having my photo online for anyone to look at with:
“Actually I have done, specifically when a website full of shits decided to reproduce it and discuss at length what a “munter” I am. But I (kind of) accept that as an occupational hazard, and I don’t agree that people who choose not to put themselves ‘out there’ should have to tolerate the same.”
I spent the rest of the evening thinking “really? Is that really what I think? That I should learn to suck this crap up as an occupational hazard?” And then I started to wonder when I’d started thinking like that, and why.
Is it for instance that I’ve become immune to the abuse after all this time? (the answer to that is a resounding ‘no’, as the rest of this post will make clear) Or is it that I’ve simply given up shouting about it and objecting to it because there’s just so much of it out there it now seems pointless trying to do anything about it?
Or is it, and I think this is closer to the truth, that I was more shaken by what happened in March than I’d realised, and that I actually let ‘them’ get to me this time?
So anyway, here without any further ado is what happened.
On March 15th I was alerted to a discussion that had been taking place about me on a site called ‘Don’t Start Me Off!’ (I’m not linking). So I went over there and had a look.
At the top of the page was my profile photo from CiF, with this posted underneath it:
“Reason it’s Annoying:
Stricly speaking – maybe this idiot should be posted on the Guardian RIA. But I feel this Tucker Jenkins look-a-like derserves her own nom. Where do I start? Nothing i could say could beat the Guardians mini-bio of her: “Cath Elliott is a feminist and a trade union activist. She is currently working in local government. She posts on Cif as Mswoman.”
And then came the comments:
“Today’s rant about the TUC march is particularly pathetic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/08/26-march… What an absolutely depressingly thick bell-end she is”
“Good nom. Another ugly, sex-is-negative, skater-arounder of Islam and lover of diversity whilst living in Norwich, puritanical feminist, who’s wormed her way onto the Grun’s commentariat payroll after bombarding its message board for years with stupid fucking comments. Biatch!”
“until i read your comment on the main page I honestly thought it was a chap. ffs”
“I know fuck all about this person. but one thing just jumps out at you with that picture! DEFINITE LESBIAN!”
“What a horrible looking cunt.”
“‘women,women,women’ that’s the only word she seems to use in that vid, another feminist who knows alot about nothing, only that she hates men so much she’s making every effort to look like one.” (this comment came after someone had posted a link to the video of me speaking at the Million Women Rise rally in Trafalgar Square last year).
Someone then put up the photo of me in hospital that was posted on this blog a couple of years ago when I had my hysterectomy, and commented:
“can someone put her back in hospital please”
Someone else asked:
“Is that picture in hospital after it had the Penis Grafting Surgery?”
And on and on it went:
“This cunt is needed in Holland, the fucking Dyke!”
“With a face like that, it looks like it needs milking!”
“Look at the pose in that photo. Either she’s stroking her goatee or she’s desperately trying to look intellectual. Or maybe both. Bastard.”
“I’m sick of seeing her ugly boy dyke butch spot beneath her right eye shit earinged face”
“Cath? Strange name for a Russian weightlifter”
“Stupid lefto-cunt bitch. She’s marching on the 26th : ‘protesting on the day and voicing our opposition to the government’s swingeing cuts.” When are these dumbass liberal fuckers going to realise a simple fact – we have spending cuts because Gordon the moron spent all the money, and what he didn’t spend he simply gave away to the banks, why can’t the lentil farting likes of this silly bitch and Laurie Penny get it through their thick dykey heads? Repeat after me… There.Is.No.Fucking.Money.Left.”
There were more comments in that vein, but I think by now you’ve probably got the picture. (I copied the entire thread to a word doc, which if you really want to you can see by clicking here)
Quite understandably I was pretty upset by the time I’d finished reading all that hate, so I went on to Twitter and put out these two tweets:
Which in retrospect was probably my first mistake.
Some lovely people then went on to the site and posted in my defence (a belated thank you to those that did), but unfortunately that then alerted the bastards to the fact that I was reading the comments, and that they’d managed to upset me:
“We made her actually cry! This is a fucking great day for DSMO, Ricardo you should add it to the calendar and we can celebrate Bawling-Day on the 15th of March every year.”
“At least your blog is accurately named: https://toomuchtosayformyself.com/ I usually find that stuffing her mouth full of cock usually shuts women like you up.”
“Hello Tucker! I always wondered what happened to you after the Grange Hill gates closed! What a shame you didn’t learn anything while you were there. When I say anything, I really mean it. You literally know nothing about anything. You think you do, but you’re so misguided it’s quite extraordinary. There’s nothing wrong, per se, with being a feminist, but taking it to extremes simply damages the cause. I for one am delighted that women (those that are stupid enough to want to) have to fight on the front line and are about to end up paying more for their car insurance; this is what equality is all about. To pretend though, that the male of the species is somehow surplus to requirements is just stupid and looks like a terrible case of sour grapes on your part. If it weren’t for men, there would be almost nothing of the world you see around you. Now, I know you’re mentally protesting at this point, but really, deep down, you know it’s true. If men hadn’t existed (apart from the obvious procreation problems), there would be no housing as we know it, no aircraft, no space craft, no synthetic materials, no glasses or contact lenses, no finance, no discernible art, no cars, no science, no finance, no real economy and no Cath Elliott, spouting her anal seepage from your man invented Internet. Isn’t it about time you just said thank you and shut the fuck up for 5 minutes?”
I had quite a few responses on Twitter from people telling me that the comments on that site constituted hate speech, and that I should do something about it. I also had a couple of direct messages from people advising me to report the site to the company that hosts its servers.
So in the end, mea culpa, that’s what I did. And that was mistake number 2.
Here’s what I emailed to Rapid Switch, whose servers host the site in question:
“I would like to report the following website, which I believe is being hosted on your servers, for abusive content:
http ://www .dont -start-me-off .com /
This site was drawn to my attention today after the site owner posted a piece about me. The comments that have been published under that piece are not only hugely offensive, but they also constitute hate speech:
<Link to the thread>
Is it within the terms and conditions of your hosting policy that such blatant hate speech and homophobia are permitted?
I look forward to your response
Best wishes
Cath Elliott”
An email which I naively thought would land in a real life person’s inbox. But which didn’t, it ended up instead in some online Abuse Ticket automated system hell, which after a bit of toing and froing with me trying to identify the specific IP address of the site, was eventually sent to the site owner, Richard White. Who on being alerted to the complaint responded with:
“We have deleted the whole thread in question”
The abuse ticket is still online, you can see it here.
He then tweeted me this message:
http://twitter.com/RicardoDSMO/status/47672437596356608
and obviously then went back on to the site’s members only discussion forum to tell them all about what an anti free-speech fascist I am. (although please note that I never actually called for the thread to be removed, I simply questioned whether such hate speech fell within Rapid Switch’s hosting policy. It was Richard White who took the immediate decision to take the thread down, no doubt because he realised that if I chose to escalate things and an actual human being from Rapid Switch took a look at his nasty hate-filled site he was in danger of losing the whole lot).
I had a snivelling email from the site’s moderator (who is probably also the site owner Richard White), saying:
“We have removed the whole thread on yourself rather than just removing individual comments. We get hundreds of comments a day so it is impossible to police the site totally until we receive a complaint. The thread was removed within minutes of us being made aware of the nature of some of the comments, and I trust that resolves the issue.”
And then Richard White or one of his acolytes set up another page about me, called ‘The “We Love Cath Elliott” Page’, with instructions that people were only to post nice comments about me.
Here’s a selection of some of them:
“she’s just so lovely in her objective and fair prose about men. Frankly it’s a damn shame she’s attracted to members of the same sex – by golly, if only she fancied men! Here’s still hoping… xxx”
“I had a wank thinking about her this morning, not over her looks or anything, that would be sexist and discriminatory against women and stuff, but a wank over her writings, opinions and politics. It was great.”
“I’ve booked myself into a Harley Street clinic to have some plastic surgery so I can look just like my idol. I hope it doesn’t come over as blasphemous to do something like this, but I must do something to make myself more Cath-like. I’ll be undergoing a bicep reduction operation and having a course of testosterone injections too. It’s expensive but I just know it’ll be worth it.”
“Funnily enough, I paid to see a consultant gender-alignment specialist recently for the same reason. A little squeamish, I asked the specialist what he would need to do to my cock to make me more like Cath, and he said lengthen it.”
“Cathy, baby: I’ve had some time to reflect on the deeply offensive comments posted – and thereafter rightfully removed – on this site earlier this week. I’ve also had time to research your unprejudiced journalism… and frankly I’ve been weeping in retrospect (well, my Jap’s eye has, anyway!). I am so sorry. The truth is, you know, I am a man, but sometimes I wish I was a dungaree-clad female who fancied the same sex (I didn’t want to be belligerent and use the term hirsute butch femme), because I would gobble you up like a starving tramp with an M&S food voucher – and I’m not even into anthropophagy, nudge-nudge, wink-wink! Quite simply, I’m falling head over heels in love with you, girl! Raymond Blanc once said he could “make a woman orgasm through his food”; your non-discrimonatory writing prose has exactly the same effect on me. I’m listening to Baz White’s Greatest Hits as I’m writing this… If there’s any hope for us, pleeeeeease let me know. xxx. ”
“There are some who say that Cath Elliott does fuck all, writes about having done fuck all, and Tweets about having done fuck all, too. They believe that she is a lefty gobshite who has floated through life on the wind of vacuous, piss-all, never-done-a-hand’s-turn, never-will-do-a-hand’s-turn bollocks, and that she is just another twat who makes a living by spouting complete crap and acting like she’s actually contributed something worthwhile to the world. Whereas I love our Cath, and support her in all her lovely, Lefty, Lesbian activities.”
“Oh fuck! Not fucking her would be sacrilegious. Why one earth would she want to keep herself from the ravages of men, I’d love to pillage and rifle through her sexy apple gatherers.”
“I cracked one off thinking of our Cath’s devotion to left wing politics and minges today. God bless her.”
And on and on and on….
That page is still up and running, because to be honest it was at this point that I caved. Because I realised that it didn’t matter what I did next, the Internet is too fucking big for me to take on. And also because I’ve been around long enough to know that bullies like Richard ‘Ricardo’ White will always be able to find a way to make people like me feel like shit.
Of course I realise that by posting this piece I’m no doubt giving them enough ammunition to start the whole sick cycle off again, but so be it. Because while there’s probably sweet fuck all I can do about that site, I’m not prepared to just sit here and quietly take that kind of crap either. I’ve done that for a month now, and that’s long efuckingnuff for me to keep quiet about anything.
So, back to the question I posed myself at the beginning of this post. No, I don’t think I should have to put up with abuse like this and accept it as simply an “occupational hazard”. I *shouldn’t* have to, but I *do* have to, because I don’t see that I actually have any other option.
Unless of course any of you lot have got any suggestions?
Too Much To Say For Myself 
I don’t have any suggestions, but I do think you are amazing and I’m frequently inspired by your writing.
They say it doesn’t matter if people clap or boo, as long as it’s the right people clapping and the right people booing. On that front, I think you’re doing just fine – if you don’t mind a wee bairn like myself saying so.
Well technically, it’s all illegal homophobic abuse, (whether the subject is a lesbian or not) and harassment and the original thread could have been reported to the police. But they probably wouldn’t have done anything anyway.
I don’t have any constructive suggestions I’m afraid. There’s probably bugger all you can do, unless it continues enough for the police to take it seriously as actual harassment threats.
I read the Sunny Hundal ‘tube crush’ piece in the grauniad, and I just thought, what fucking saddoes do that kind of thing. And the same applies here really. They’re probably only typing it until their mum tells them to come and switch their computer off, let’s face it. Yes, it’s depressing that there are such lesbophobic knobheads in existence, but fortunately there’s probably scant chance of them reproducing…
It’s such a frustrating issue as it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer force and numbers of these commenters.
Not sure if it helps but it reminds me of the recent ‘Turn your back on page 3’ campaign on facebook. As soon as it launched they were completely inundated with hate speech and misogyny, including links to videos on how to slap your girlfriend and rape ‘jokes’. It was pretty shocking. The offensive comments are gone now but I don’t think the administrators knew how to deal with it at first.
In the end, they did get the police involved and they actually did take it pretty seriously. It might be worth getting in touch with the Page 3 facebook page admins and seeing what happened? https://www.facebook.com/turnyourbackonpage3
Hi Cath
Really sorry to hear about this and no you shouldn’t have to put up with dumb-ass, half wit, in-breeds with nothing more in their pathetic lives to do. No doubt it is these same so called purveyors of free speech who troll around the Cif pages looking for anything remotely related to equality or women’s rights issues to spew their bile. I actually couldn’t read through all the horrible things they wrote about you because it offends me. It offends me on many levels as i’m sure it does many others. We were targeted by a particular website some time ago in response to a campaign we led against rape games in Japan. Again the comments and emails called for us to be raped, murdered, talked about how we’re all lesbians and against freedom of speech- whilst they were telling us to shut up! In our case we reproduced some of the ‘less’ hateful comments in the campaign update as it perfectly made our point about glorifying violence against women. This seemed to stop the regular onslaught. Not suggesting that would work in this context however please don’t let these insignificant people stop you from doing what you do best! These ‘people’ are exactly why we need more women to speak up!
hi cath
first up, solidarity for you and a big thank you for always being an amazing writer, and a great person from knowing you online and meeting you briefly once. i always enjoy reading your blog and have always been glad to hear your voice online.
A “similar” thing happened to me last year, although i put that in speech marks because it wasn’t anywhere near as horrendous as the abuse you have posted. But over the whole Bristol Dita Von Teese and Hoooters debacle i was subject to some horrible abuse online. The worst was ‘well we all know what she’s like, Sian ‘two mums’ Norris’ and ‘you’ve gone too far you fucking bitch’, as well as the usual fat and ugly nonsense, and someone posting a picture of what they imagined i look like. i cried.
but the most intense thing was the sheer volume of abuse that was directed at me, personally. it was overwhelming! it seemed that some people had endless resources of hate that didn’t have a better object than me! And that was waht left me feeling upset and shattered, was the huge amount of abuse, both ‘polite’ and ‘rude’ that people thought it was ok to say.
people tell you to ignore it, to not worry, they’re ‘stupid’ etc, but until it’s happened to you it is hard to understand how hard it is to deal with.
however, like you, it hasn’t stopped me. even though it was/is exhausting when you get hassle, violent language and just generally stupid insults. It shouldn’t be an occupational hazard, but right now it is, and until we overthrow patriarchy, people (mainly men but women too) will throw ugly language at us to intimidate us to shut up. and the best thing we can do is to keep talking, and also sharing these stories because i don’t think people know how bad it is until you mention it. like street harassment in that respect!
thanks cath for all you do xx
Thank you, thank you for this. I thought it was just me. This is a brave and necessary post. I may do my own in response if you don’t mind?
Sorry to hear about all this. I love your writing and you are an inspiration. Thanks for being brave enough to voice what you have had to put up with.
that’s why we need to talk about it laurie, so that we know it isn’t just us, because i know what you mean, you can feel very alone when you’re reading the nonsense that is being thrown at you xx
First rule of the internet: Don’t feed the trolls. Reacting like you did is a 12 course banquet to these people. Just ignore them, damnit. That site is chock full of social inadequates, it’s not like you’re going to win them over whatever you say. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Rise above.
Thanks for speaking out and revealing the awful details. We learn to numb ourselves because justice isn’t an option, a fact learned the hard way.
When my anti-prostitution forum was targeted the “officials” I reported it to blamed me. They told me the most likely scenario was that the hackers and hate blog starters probably mistakenly thought Genderberg was pro-prostitution, so I should make the site’s anti-prostitution stance more clear to prevent future attacks.
Victims of pornography fail to have images of what is unquestionably their rapes removed from the internet. I’m at a loss about what to do beyond challenging sexual capitalism’s corrosive, dominant influence with every tool within my grasp.
Good for you for posting this. There’s an odd taboo on suggesting that personal, vitriolic abuse on the internet might upset you.
Hi Cath,
I don’t have any sugestions sadly. I hade no idea you had been subjected to this abuse. I am so sorry that this has happened. There are some very brave people behind their anonymous internet handles. You inspire so many people, but these individuals have no reason and so can’t be reasoned with.
Kate
I’ve been around the ‘net for quite a few years now, and frankly I have no advice – good or bad – to give. For all its wonders, the Internet is particularly fertile grounds for, well, nutcases. They grow well here.
They are also, to a large extent, non-existant. There’s nothing to fight; there’s nothing to actually hit back at, if you will. I have, myself, been subject to the same. It’s a morass, and every time I see it it makes me sad – then angry.
In particular since we’ll have the mandatory “thicker skin” and “exaggeration” and so forth piping in from the peanut gallery.
Don’t give up. Life’s better than this. That’s about it. Good luck, Cathy. Don’t fold. Never, EVER fold.
As others have said, absolutely vital, brave and inspirational to actually speak up about the torrent of disgusting abuse many (mainly women/queer/trans) writers receive online.
Vapid, disgraceful excuses of human beings that they are, such commenters thrive on knowing the damage they can cause. It is the refuge of fools incapable of engaging with actual arguments. No-one should suffer from this in silence. I hope folk on the receiving end realise the chorus of support they can rely on and keep writing.
Solidarity.
I saw the site when you first posted the link on twitter and thought it was really terrible. I am always astounded that people can even be bothered to make the effort to be so hateful. And in a twisted way even though it is no consolation it is still a kind of compliment to you that your writing (and it is because of the content and style and nationally published nature of your work that you got that ‘attention’) has been deemed worthy of such a personal attack.
I don’t have any advice except maybe try not to click when you know something is going to be really hurtful. Maybe get a friend to look at it to see if there is anything legal that comes up-or particularly vile.
I will though say, that I know you congratulated Steven Baxter on how he was quite nasty to me online, in a much milder form but it still set off some ‘abuse’ that related to my sexuality, not by him but by others, on twitter, the other week.
And that maybe it is worth thinking about how we all may at times encourage certain forms of language/personal comments online?
QRG
I’d just like to say that I am truly sorry that you have to go through this kind of abuse; it makes me feel sick as a human being, but especially ashamed to be a man, that you are subjected to such sexually violent language.
I wish you all the best in your future writing. I know it’s easy to say, but don’t let them get you down. If you keep fighting they will, one day, be extinct like the dinosaurs they already are.
I’m pretty well speechless. I mean, I knew such people existed but hadn’t quite twigged the extent of it. One has to wonder whether things have really improved at all since my grandparents’ day, when if a man spoke thus about a particular woman or women in general, he’d have had a swift lesson in basic manners outside in the car park. Such attitudes would never be tolerated, not for a second.
Wow, that’s really vile stuff and no, you shouldn’t have to take it, but god knows how it can be stopped, until, as She-Ra said, we no longer live under patriarchy. It was CiF that woke me up to the vast wells of hatred that some (OK, loads) of men still have for women and the licence they get from the anonymity of the internet to express it. It’s true and ironic that this bile usually comes from people who deny the need for a feminist project, when by their own words they prove its necessity. Thank you for writing it down and sharing it, despite your understandable misgivings: the full extent of the online abuse that goes on does need to be recognised.
(Here’s my blog on the subject, written a couple of months ago, and not from anything like the horrific personal experience that you have had. I think I’d have had different and probably less brave things to say if I had been subjected to that…
http://somethingtocryfor.blogspot.com/2011/01/dialogue-with-cunts.html
Hi Cath. I think you’re rubbish at this journalism lark, and I tend to snigger while reading you. I mention this, though to point out that in my book, though, that’s me making fair comment. It’s entirely different from the misogynistic, homophobic, hate-fueled crap you’ve had to put up with from the wankers you are writing about here. This stuff is not acceptable. Good on you for fighting it.
We live in a world where sometimes it seems that anything, everything and everyone is fair game at any time, from comments on websites, to ordinary members of the public on the street, to the interplay between the two. I find the whole misuse of camera technology to be particularly obnoxious, which is what motivated me to write this. If people choose give up their rights, that’s fine. Anything else is assault. I have been assaulted in this way. People think it’s fine, because of the way I choose to dress and what I represent. I’m not a puppet to be used and abused as people see fit. Freedom of speech is always a problematic area; that’s why the law is there to interject (or fail to).
“Feminist” covers a wide range of different experiences and intellectual positions. I believe that the people who would write such terrible and vicious things, and personalise their attacks on feminism do so out of fear; often men with many of the same vulnerabilities I share, but, perhaps, with far less empathy and diplomacy. If “feminist” is a label that people feel uncomfortable with, then the solution to this is to engage in constructive dialogue. I say this because although various labels about my sexuality could be applied to me, I choose not to adopt them. What I do NOT choose to do is denigrate an entire groups of people for their choice.
Incidentally, when it comes to women, I think that too much store is placed by a “Hollywood” image of beauty in a way that is less prevalent in relation to men. Smartness, symmetry and general confidence are all a woman really needs to be classically attractive: that, and men with more imagination and love in their general demenour.
If you have the time, listen to “Upload” by Sway DaCypha. You’ll like it.
Ultimately, you’re right. U can’t beat the legion. This ain’t Orson Scott Card where the blogosphere can assume sufficient gravitas to take over the world by sheer ideational force. Dem trolls don’t play to defeat your arguments, but to distress the arguer until you lose the plot. I posted some things before, and been flamed. It hurts only until you shrug.
In a strange parody of both religious martyrdom and the silly claims that provocatively dressed women deserve sexual predation, your horde of harriers prove your impact. Else you would hear no peep.
Don’t try and defeat hate speech through moderation though. If you need to follow it up, track posters around fora until you come to a real identity, then write to their mum.
That’s all I got for you. Other than “chin up”.
Just for me, I would like to state that my health and happiness indicators are improved if the fates provide me eye candy. Scoping leads to hoping. Candid snaps are wrong, unless you on a beach or nightclub, in which case fair game.
That is quite shocking. However as Sian says, some people (probably pimply teenagers whose alternate displacement activity is frotting themselves to a bloody stump whilst weeping with self-loathing) seem to have endless reserves of bile which needs an outlet. In many ways, although it feels very personal to you, it’s really nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own misery.
It is however a prime example of how any critique of a woman very quickly descends into mere abuse about her looks/sexuality/desirability and is soon mired in the basest gynaecological insults; little or no attempt is made to engage with a woman on the issues which initially so offend the frothing onanists. So for example, many commentators are unable simply to say that they don’t like Amy Winehouse’s music or that they disapprove of her drug-taking, they must spiral into a shitstorm of abuse about her appearance/sexuality etc. in a way that a figure such as, say, Pete Docherty would never attract in a million years, despite the fact that ostensibly the initial objections to both are exactly the same.
Yep, good old-fashioned misogyny is still alive and well. Thanks for being strong enough to write about it so honestly. Because, yes it fucking hurts. It hurts you personally, and it hurts all women. We should be more supportive of each other in the face of this form of oppression.
I know this goes on, I have seen it a million times, but I still can’t help getting fucking outraged and incredibly upset by this kind of thing. And I also can’t stand the “oh come on love, its just a joke, get over” type responses. I, shockingly, want to live in a society where women do not run the risk of getting vile abuse for the mere fact that they are women and dare to say something out loud. I don’t want to be shouted at and touched in the street and I don’t want to be told to just put up with it.
This is obviously very personally upsetting for you, but as you know this impacts on all women. I am personally upset when I read sexist and misogynistic comments under EVERY piece written by a woman on CiF because I’m reminded that this is what that commenter thinks about women generally and indirectly, they think about me.
This is just so depressing, because you’re right to ask the question “what should I do?”. Because I don’t know. I just really wish it would stop.
“It’s true and ironic that this bile usually comes from people who deny the need for a feminist project, when by their own words they prove its necessity.”
Very good point well made, Lucy.
There’s worse to be had if you dare to complain to certain site owners who host this kind of thing without complaint because it earns them page-loads (and then have the audacity to go on to portray valid criticism as abuse). I’m sure I don’t need to name names.
You’ll have to console yourself with my respect, Cath.
Given what some of these people believe in, I hardly think you want their respect or anything approaching it. In fact, the abuse not only shows that you’re getting to them, but that they have no argument.
Cath, you are an inspiration and a force. I have a post of yours about not giving in to the backlash in my bookmarks, and it literally kick started my return to active and engaged feminism.
Even if these bastards stopped you or slowed you down for a while, they have no control over the seeds of conciousness and bravery you’ve sown, and that’s probably what is driving them crazy: targeting you is the best they can come up with by way of targeting feminism, female empowerment, and the strength and awesomeness of the women they fear and hate.
I have very little to offer by way of advice; I’ve not faced the same abuse so can only sympathise. I do think however – and I’ve been posting on other feminists’ blogs with the same idea at every opportunity – that, like street harassment, online hate speech is something that is enabled by the fact that we keep quiet about it.
Laurie, Sian, Sadie Doyle, and others have posted before about the terrible, shocking abuse they find in their inboxes on a regular basis, and one thing is clear: everyone thinks it’s just them. Everyone has internalised victim blaming just enough to fleetingly consider that maybe they deserve it, or should expect it, merely for raising their voice.
Well, bullshit to that. People – men and women both – need to know what women get for merely speaking out. They need to understand that their casual joke about feminists and cats / dungarees / hairy armpits has this pedigree of violent hatred. By speaking out, by copying and pasting this oozing, sulphurous pus onto other blogs and other fora, we can expose these low lives and eventually isolate and de-legitimise them, making the world a slightly better place in the process.
Solidarity, and love. xx
Best advice I can give is don’t engage with these fuckwits on any level – unless it’s to sue for libel. Then, I suppose they’re too gutless to use their own names – psycho trolls always are. They’re only brave because they know nobody can go round and punch their lights out, or serve them with a writ.
But, Lucy Cage, this is not uniquely a male problem – I experienced similar (though somewhat less vicious), harassment from a group of women about 3 years ago, simply for observing that the moderation of their forum left something to be desired. Psycho trolls are not gender-specific.
Sorry you have been subjected to this.
Keep writing, thinking and publishing thats the thing the barbarians cannot stand and post your columns link to their website
I think Anonymous and their like are very useful
Socialism or Barbarism
Solidarity
(Sorry, it was Sianushka, not She-Ra who said that about patriarchy… )
I find it very hard to stick to the “don’t feed the trolls” line… I know that all they are capable of is using vile words to hurt, and words on the screen are just words on the screen so why should some idiot’s idiotic opinion about you make any difference because it bears no relation to the truth, but, but… I want to counter it somehow. I want to argue back. Ignoring hate doesn’t change anything. I think we’re just at the very start of using the internet like this and it is all so new and so strange and sometimes so scary that it’s really difficult to find a sound path to tread.
I arrived at your posting by accident (which happens to me a lot on the internet hence my name) so maybe am a bit more dispassionate than others who regularly read this blog.
I am a bit surprised you take it so personally. By that I’m not saying what is being said isn’t hateful but it is a prime example of woman hating.
The question is why does the internet expose this hatred. Because it exists and the men who say these things think it is okay or “normal”.
How is it in the 21st century that so many men are so consumed with hatred towards women? Any casual reader of the CiF web site will see this every time they post an article about women’s groups or feminist. And truly bizarrely the Guardian lets them stand.
What it says it taht outside of what used to be called the “socialising” presence of women men descend into neanderthals.
If a site or forum was publicly posting remarks similar to this about Black people or people with disabilities there would be outrage.
But because the media has distorted what was Women’s Liberation into “feminism” and pushed an agenda that has said all women want is to be like men, the net result is that men are now free of the “socialising” influence.
Worse still young women now subscribe to this view of the world. The ladettes have become the violent female children in many schools.
So without wishing to undermine your sense of personal hurt it is the apolitical isolation of an individual blogger responding to a political and social culture that allows denigrating women.
So its back to basics, and restarting a radical Women’s Liberation Movement, only this time we need to make sure that men taken equal steps to liberate themselves.
Because what happened whilst we changed ourselves through consciousness raising was that the existing power structure, ie male supremacy, took the opportunity to warp it to their unreconstructed and determined right to retain power.
So not withstanding your sense of personal hurt, actually it isn’t about you really, you are just the current convenient symbol they can vent their hate on.
One way to start would be for all female contributors to CiF to refuse to write for it again unless and until the moderators exercise consistent and vigorous blocking of anti woman hate speech.
This is political Cath. The answer if group action.
My view is that anybody on the receiving end of this sort of thing would be best advised to get the police involved. The more the police’s attention is drawn to hate speech on the internet and the more pressure they are put under to take action then hopefully they are more likely to do so.
Those who casually post such stuff need to learn that there are consequences for their actions.
I want to make some awful comment about these people not being brought up properly, but I’m sure it would go wrong…
Humanity is shocking, but bravo for carrying on in the face of it all. It’s so easy, when in a heated discussion, to go too far. I’ve raised my voice and sworn more times than I would like to admit to. However I am utterly horrified at the abuse that was poured out in those comments. The homophobia, transphobia and misogyny is sickening.
Congratulations on getting through it. I second a lot of the advice in the comments so far about trolls and getting a friend to look if you’re worried about people abusing you. From my experiences of being bullied in the past, the best way of dealing with it is spending quality time with people who really think you’re ace.
As for everyone else, as QRG says, we should all think about how we behave online.
“For all its wonders, the Internet is particularly fertile grounds for, well, nutcases. They grow well here.”
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/ is my favourite comment on this fact.
First up, Cath you are a brilliant writer/ blogger & activist. I really appreciate reading your writing & reading about what you do.
Secondly, I’d be fine with a world without space travel, finance & “discernible art”, if it meant a world free of those hate-filled bullying blokes holed up in their gender-confined little minds. Am sure women would improvise and innovate just fine.
Suggestions? I think that one is to act with the expectation of action being warranted against such hate speech, as you have tried to do. Even though a lot of the time the reaction will be dismissive, it’s worth holding webhosts & publishers to their terms & conditions against threats and hate speech where applicable. Also to the letter of the law where applicable. And to more generally insist that comments like these are unacceptable, that they are threats and hate speech. To challenge the idea that freedom of speech must mean we must put up with anyone saying anything, and instead to assert both that threats and hate speech are antithetical to freedom of speech because they silence and intimidate, and that it is good for private individuals and publishers, webhosts and other organisations to lay down the standards of speech that they expect within the space they are responsible for.
I’m not saying that you personally have to do all this Cath, but that feminists and others who are targeted in this way need to doggedly insist on and be supported in insisting on these things. This is the frame of argument that is being fought over, and which we need to be versed in, the real harms of hate speech versus free speech absolutism. That it is a terrible failure of discourse if bullies are allowed free rein to dehumanise, denigrate and intimidate both individuals and classes of people. No one should be expected to have to deal with an onslaught like that, and the psychological and emotional toll of experiencing that should be acknowledged.
My other suggestion is to not be silenced. To keep speaking and writing. Because that is what the bullies’ aim is, for us to shut up and go away. (or shut up and take it rather). Slurs about looks and lesbophobic and transphobic slurs aren’t the deadly blows they think they are, for one thing. And while the vileness of their threats might be dismissed and minimised by some, many others will see them for what they are and be appalled.
Again, not a suggestion solely for Cath of course. Individual women subjected to these kind of attacks need to take whatever time out and self-care they need to. But it needs enough of the rest of us, and allies, who feel up to it to step in and support them, and to also insist on not being silenced, precisely because of the strength of the backlash. The need to dismiss and belittle a woman’s words is a sign that they are powerful words.
MariaS – the problems are not simply ‘misogynist’. The worst language I have had used against me including of a sexual nature has been from feminist women.
I support people’s attempts to maintain their rights to freedom of speech and to speak out even when they are getting attacked. But these ‘attacks’ happen from within ‘feminism’ (take some of the nastiness between pro and anti-porn feminists for example) as well as from without. So the problems are complex!
Hey Cath
it honestly aint worth reacting to this stuff: it makes the tossers feel important and powerful
…which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what in fact they are, which is insignificant, inadequate, impotent. Same old story: alienated humanity trying to feel a bit bigger
You can’t win any these jerk-offs over anyway. Don’t sink down to the sewer to even try. Ignore and move on.
They are NOTHING, and not worth it.
Naomi – it strikes me that guys who use the “It’s just a joke, get over it” response are just bullies. If they expect to get away with that attitude towards women, why not go to a bad part of town, roll up to some street gang members & start making the same jokes about the gang-members’ mothers. See if the same defence holds there. These guys only come out with this abuse because they think they will get away with it, because they think they are so much stronger than the people they abuse.
It is so disgusting to be subject to abuse like that. The only suggestion I would put forward probably doesn’t seem very helpful I’m afraid is not to read any more of those comments (although I appreciate this is easier said than done). People who have no respect for you on the most basic level, simply as another human being, will not regret the prejudiced and cruel things they say unless something really fundamental changes in the way they think – and if someone isn’t willing to engage in an intelligent, thoughtful discussion about whatever political or social view they support (instead of just plainly stating it in between various insults) it’s impossible to encourage that change in them. There are always people who are willing to listen, however, who will be open to hearing about what you advocate even if they’ve never really had a proper understanding of feminism before they hear you speak or read your blog. There are a lot of misconceptions about feminism, but it is still needed – now more than ever in our society – and I feel the issues you write about are SO significant. On a personal note I’m really glad sites like the F-word exist as I don’t know that anyone else would be addressing certain problems with our culture in the same way otherwise. I’d much rather read one of your discussions than hate comments like the ones you shared. Stay strong and thank you for everything you do! 🙂
Wow. That’s really nasty. How upsetting. If I may, I think there are a few things to separate out here.
Firstly, that’s their opinion of you. It’s no more true that the opinion of someone who says you’re a beautiful goddess. It’s just their opinion and that they say says far more about them and their fears than it does about you. You should recognise that it’s upsetting and then move along as soon as you can manage it.
Second part is, do you want to be the internet’s policeman? That’s entirely your choice. If you want to be brave and strong, you should go after them legally. But you will accept that that will have its own cost and no one will think less of you if you don’t. Just make a choice.
Thirdly, don’t ever stop writing about what you believe just because some people disagree with you and aren’t articulate enough to argue properly with you. That would be a shame.
Drat.
‘… and *what* they say …’
As much as I hate to say it, I feel ignoring it is the only way to go. I would love it if we lived in a world where everyone’s opinion is respected but unfortunately we don’t. The internet is supposed to be free and the price we pay for that is that we have to put up with people disagreeing with us. Again, it doesn’t make this sort of abuse ok but it is something we have to put up with. For instance, if this sort of behaviour happened in a school then the culprits would be punished, however that would not necessarily stop the abuse and the only way to deal with it becomes ignore it. We’re all adults here and surely the opinion of a few idiots with computers don’t really matter. You won’t lose friends over it, you won’t lose your job or reputation so leave these trolls to their opinions. You can’t change them so don’t let them change you…
Cath
I love you. That’s all.
Julie Bindel
How the hell can someone think, it is “just me” (see above) when the daily abuse of feminist journalists, writers and campaigners can be seen on t’internet all over the show by the way?
Girls,
It’s not personal about any of you when people like that make those remarks. Sadly, it’s all too predictable and obvious exactly the kids of things that they are going to write. You don’t have to do ANYTHING to get some people to talk like this about you, but obviously there are some people on here who do write for papers and engage in activism – which really just makes you that bit more of a target for people like that than the average woman they meet (who they no doubt abuse also). I know it wasn’t me this time, but I’ve had those kind of things said to me, although not as conspicously, and it’s the same bloody phrases each time. Therefore, and not to put any of your upset or anger down, I actually got a bit bored reading through what they said. I’m sorry that you felt upset to the point of crying, but life is really too short to waste tears or thought on arsewipes like this.
I think it was good that you reported the page Cath, you need to be assertive, but no, there’s not that much else you can do. Just forget about them – they said those things once, don’t carry them around saying them to yourself forever.
TO be honest I think it needs challenging by proprietors as well as writers. It isnt acceptable. The words rape, women, poverty, benefits etc bring out the same tired bunch of misogynist arseholes, and we have to pretend that their bullshit is somehow mainstream political debate. It is a useful tool with Cif if you want to illustrate a point, but largely unpleasant and you need skin like a rhinocerous hide if you are to withstand it. We should treat it as what it is, and not dignify it- but the responsibility cant all be placed on those writing.
I can’t get over how awful this is. I mean, you see feminists getting abuse every day and I’ve been subjected to it myself but not on this level. Kind of reminds me of what went on with Biting Beaver. Anyway, echoing others, you are such a fantastic inspiration as a blogger and activist and you don’t deserve this. Nobody does. You have to wonder what sad lives these people must lead. I think the only thing you can do is try not to read this crap and keep on calling it out so that people become more aware of the abuse perpetrated by people online. Hope you are okay xx
DOn’t forget, they were the only ones who really cared to pay any attention to this ordure of theirs, anyway.
Just a shame you (understandably) rose to their infantile baiting as it showed you cared too. But at least you’ll know better from now on!
…And just remember, they’ve made it clear:
no-one gives a FF about their dull little lives, but they themselves.
That’s what hurts them: Obscurity.
While I understand your initial response I actually think the “Love Cath” thread is quite amusing and a rather clever way of defusing the whole thing. If you have extreme views you will have extreme critics . Take it all with a pinch of salt and a large vodka.
Cath – I’m a regular reader de-lurking. For what it’s worth, I think you’re a bloody inspiration, and I follow your work with great interest and appreciation. I’m truly sorry you’ve had such a dreadful encounter with the dark side of the internet and I’m pleased to see so many comments here demonstrating that I’m far from alone in these thoughts.
I would say that, however impossible it seeems, don’t take this personally. These people know almost nothing about you. They’ve never seen you in person and they never will, lacking the bravery for such face-to-face encounters. They don’t engage with your writing or offer any kind of challenge to your arguments. They take tiny little signifiers – a byline photo, a few words in a headline – and then project all kinds of vile stuff onto it that speaks frightening volumes about them but has no meaningful connection with you.
Their words are tired, banal and vacuous – bizarre identikit abuse that they can wheel out whenever required. They try to make you believe it *is* personal, because that would be more effective and far more threatening. But in reality they are ridiculous, powerless, and increasingly irrelevant, and that is what fuels their hatred.
Also, there are probably far fewer of them than appearances would suggest because they are bound to have endless multiple identities and be busily posting under all of them in the absence of having anything more meaningful to do with their lives. Shining a bright light on them by making this post will hopefully reveal them for the insects that they are (with apologies to insects).
You are making a difference by saying unpopular things that badly need to be said, especially at this point in time. I think you’ve done a brave and powerful thing by acknowledging that this is so hurtful, and another brave and powerful thing by writing this post. Hopefully these have been two major steps in moving on from it and regaining your equilibrium.
All power to your elbow, sister 😀
And I thought some of the threads I read on CiF are psycho-toxic, that stuff is beyond nasty. I’ll be honest — I couldn’t bring myself to read it all. There’s only so much curdled bile I can bring myself to swallow, so I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end. I am sorry you have had to experience this awful mindless abuse, but — and I know it’s easy for me to say — don’t let them grind you down.
hannah M
I don’t know if bringing Biting Beaver into this discussion is such a wise move.
I am not going to respond but really there is a lot of context there.
Some feminists write some really really nasty stuff too. If you all want to play the ‘innocent victims of misogyny’ card here overall, (and I think what was written about Cath was awful and I support her in trying to find a way to counteract that kind of shit), then go ahead. But this problem is widespread and it is not just your ‘opponents’ who are at fault (in a wide sense, not in this specific incident).
Appalling and misogynistic bile, Cath. Solidarity with you.
I’d like to echo what others have said about feminists getting this vile stuff every bloody day. One b’stard said once in the comments on my blog, and this really did my head in even if it was anonymous, that my “cunt should be nailed to a wall and that you should be gang raped because you’re a commie bitch”…. (sorry it is upsetting and nasty).
But what Cath is experiencing is at an organised level of vile misogyny. What do you do? Ignore it? Delete the comments if they appear on your blog? How do you cope with a blog site set up primarily to trash you? I have comment moderation on my blog now as I was getting a high level of misogyny and racism. But it does cause problems as it impacts on the flow of debate. It isn’t a case of “stick and stones”…. this is vile, it impacts on your wellbeing and also illustrates the need for some men to have control and power by bullying and harassing. Something has to be done.
Firstly, I think you’re really brave for writing this, it’s difficult to take it all out in the open – which is partly how such abuse manages not just to continue to be so damn widespread. It’s shocking how common it is, and yet I think few people really flag up the horrendous abuse they’ve received online, even when as extreme as in your case. I’m really sorry you went through that; you’re a wonderful writer and I’ve been really engaged by what you’ve put online (via the Guardian, your blog, or Twitter).
I absolutely don’t think that it should be taken as an occupational hazard, although I can see the impulse; but it’s part of a wider problem that affects so many women who dare to speak online, even on innocuous things (and woe betide them if there’s a picture anywhere). The worst abuse I’ve had online included rape threats and was in response to nothing – no overt feminism (in that particular space of the internet), nothing ‘out there’ at all. I just dared to be a woman online.
So, in a roundabout way, what I’m saying is: speaking out is really powerful. Otherwise those who seek to silence and marginalise women in any arena just get their own way. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into their space on their own level to keep speaking; just maintaining your own space and own voice is pretty amazing. I hope you will always keep blogging!
I’m not sure why you’re keen to downplay the misogyny element here, QuietRiotGirl. The issue of unrestrained online abuse is of course not limited to horrible things being said by misogynists to women, but we need to also see this case for what it is here: misogyny, plain and simple. If it were racist abuse we would be confronting it in those terms as unacceptable, not trying to minimise it and say it’s “part of something more complicated” or accuse the abused of “playing the race card” to gain sympathy.
To quote “WarGames”, that classic bit of 80’s apocalypse, “An interesting game. The only winning move is not to play.” Trolls will always be trolls. Some people will always find rudeness, hatred, abuse and hypocrisy to be “fun” and we can’t change that. Some people will always be cowards, hiding on the internet to throw insults, hurt others, make life difficult for them and then run away squeaking like bunnies about “freedom of speech”, and we can’t change that. Some people will always be flat-out dicks, and we can’t change that. Let them. Don’t even read their garbage, because it’s not worth reading, let alone spend a minute thinking about. Just let them roll around in their angry ignorance if that’s their idea of a good time.
I am not downplaying it Dizzy.
I have offered my support to Cath in this situation. I think that website is vile and when I first saw it I really felt for Cath. But feminists also need to look in the mirror sometimes- we all do.
If you think hatred only belongs to and is expressed by misogynists or racists or homophobes or men or white people you are sorely misguided.
It would be perverse of me or anyone to claim that abuse is restricted to misogynists and racists etc. But let’s not pretend this is anything other than what it is and deal with it as such. Now is not the time to start listing the shortcomings of feminism or we risk crumbling under the divide and rule principle. I stick by what I said earlier: I think we need to offer support and solidarity in this situation, that’s what feminism is about.
I just checked on that website don’t start me off about an hour ago. The page was still there – but obviously getting lots of hits today. The moderator was not happy and trying to encourage his misogynists to be nice. And now the page has gone. All trace of it has disappeared. Excellent news – I hope the moderator is drowning in complaints.
Well done everyone who went there and complained.
And well done Cath, keep doing what you are doing. You are inspirational.
Dizzy – Like I said. Context is everything.
I support Cath totally on this in sisterhood. But sisterhood also has context!
That’s good news the post/page has been taken down!
I am genuinely saddened to read of this, and to be writing suggestions in commentary, in a similar vein to Athene Donald’s post “I can hear you’re getting emotional”
So, you asked for advice. I applaud your willingness to engage with your enemies, as it goes against the ‘don’t feed the trolls’ motto which only gives these people a sense of freedom.
It’s always better to fight back than to walk away from, to be frank, evil
(As a matter of practice, if you haven’t already, read Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘The Art of Always Being Right’. )
As a matter of principle, bear in mind that these arguments are won by staying rational and making the other person emotional. In other words, you must keep a level head while winding them up. You must find the logical route to their emotional buttons.
There are only two basic factors which you can deduce from this particular context but they are enough to give you reasonably effective weaponry. (Please bait them with these suggestions! and let us know what the reaction is!)
One, your detractors are largely anonymous, but they need this to do what they do.
Two, the only other thing you can assume is that most of them are male, but you can also use this to push certain buttons.
Putting them together, you can ‘win’ these arguments – which will effectively mean that no-one will reply and the thread will go dead and this should be your aim with this strategy.
Put the two together, you get a very simple strategy. In the case of the first, you call them out. Simply asking them to state what their real name should be reasonably effective in shutting many of them up.
But, if they reply and decline to do so (NB denying anything in an argument is losing) then add the other factor – ask them if they are ‘man enough’ to admit who they are. This should make them angry, which is exactly where you want them to be – as they will then be typing in rage and making mistakes. You need them to give you something identifying material at this stage. Goad them into it, and keep dragging it out – ignore everything else in the conversation – keep repeating ‘You aren’t man enough to admit who you are’.
Once you have some information with which you could reasonably find out who they are, then you can go for the pièce de résistance, which is tricky, but very effective. There are a number of female archetypes which most (hetero?) males can’t deal with well, one of which is the most obvious – the mother (another would be the ‘crazy girlfriend’, wouldn’t work here).
So what do you do? Ask them, best once you have some identifying material, what would their mothers think if they heard their sons were writing this type of thing (‘about a lady’) on the internet. See how they react to that – perhaps claim to be writing a letter to their Mum – and then sign off, as condescendingly as possible.
You could always drop this line in at the start, but, like most acts of patronisation, it’s most effective when dragged out.
Good luck, and keep fighting the good fight!
Anil MC “Don’t try and defeat hate speech through moderation though. If you need to follow it up, track posters around fora until you come to a real identity, then write to their mum.”
I say hell yes defeat it with moderation, and ignore the “free speech” & “you’re oppressing me” guilt trip attempts that always ensue. Asserting your right not to let abusive words stand in your own blogspace is important for women bloggers, it has a great deal to do with setting and protecting boundaries and one’s personal space and not having to put up with unwanted intrusion and disrespectful or downright abusive behaviour in that space. I don’t care if I agree or not with a blogger’s comment policy, but I’ll defend to the hilt their right to have a policy and to expect it to be abided by. Also their right to delete and ban however the hell they please.
Feminist blogs and other feminist spaces are places where women’s voices can take centre-stage for once, and where women can find their voice, whereas in the rest of society women’s voices are silenced or marginalised and are not granted credibility. Without good moderation policies commenters can be shouted down, and intimidated or exhausted into silence. That’s not free speech.
It would be nice to think that trolls are younger men with too much time on their hads, but I don’t think we can take that for granted.
I don’t agree with you Marina S as these ‘safe spaces’ you advocate are only safe for some women. Others get treated with very similar nastiness and abuse that the people on that website use.
The culture of the ‘safe space’ is part of the problem in my view.
Ms Elliott, it’s probably easier for me to say but you should treat these people with utter contempt. Other than their glaring short coming’s it primarily shows that your getting under their skin which is nothing but a good thing.
It’s obviously the easiest thing in the world to be abusive over the internet and those who spit poison like the stuff above are usually those that wouldn’t say boo to a goose in real life.
Look down your nose at them, it’ll upset them even more.
Yes it’s in the safe spaces where calls are made for women to have their cunts nailed to the wall and be gang-raped. How could we have missed that before?
Cath, I salute you. You are a brave woman blogging under your own name as a feminist, putting yourself in the public space where we know that feminists get seriously abused. Good for you for not remaining silent about this but pointing the finger back at the haters and the misogynists who would like nothing better than for every feminist woman to STFU permanently. The free speech fetishists never seem to have to much to say about how feminist speech is shut down, marginalised, attacked and disappeared. Obviously it isn’t the kind of free speech they are interested in.
What’s been done to you is why so many women don’t call themselves feminists or want nothing to do with feminism: they don’t want the punishment and attacks that being a feminist and standing up for women involves. This is just another aspect of men’s oppression of us that we need to fight.
‘What’s been done to you is why so many women don’t call themselves feminists or want nothing to do with feminism: they don’t want the punishment and attacks that being a feminist and standing up for women involves. This is just another aspect of men’s oppression of us that we need to fight.’
sarah- that’s what I mean!
You think non-feminists don’t get attacked (eg by feminists) or punished and when they stand up for people (eg oh I don’t know sex workers porn actors male rape survivors etc)!
That is just laughable.
Thanks for all the tips and comments everyone, I really appreciate it.
To be honest I’ve been quite overwhelmed by the response this post has had, both here and on Twitter and Facebook. And I’m gratified to hear that the page has now been taken down (although as you can see from my twitter stream, Richard ‘Ricardo’ White is continuing to harass me).
I still don’t know what the solution is, but the response and support I’ve had so far affirms what some are you are saying: that only by speaking out about this shit can we ever hope to deal with it, even if ‘deal with it’ amounts to nothing much more than making people aware that this stuff goes on.
And I agree that this is something no-one should have to go through on their own. In fact I wish I’d posted this sooner now, because I’ve realised that there is support out there, albeit virtual support, for those going through this.
Anyway, thanks again.
QRG, I certainly believe that women using gendered and sexualised slurs against other women is as bad as men doing so – oppression is woven into our language and criticising and unpicking it and transforming our use of language is an important part of feminist struggle and thought. Resorting to using someone’s personal attributes to denigrate their arguments is never ok.
Pro-porn and anti-porn feminism – or more broadly feminists holding different positions on the politics of the sex industry as a whole – are not arguments that can be reconciled easily if at all, and I think that it is best to accept that neither “side” will persuade or shift the other. Getting drawn into personalised conflict, feuds and drama between women is never productive. I’d rather accept that I’m not going to agree with them politically and get on with my own thing.
You could always break it to them that you’re not a lesbian, of course, Cath.
@ QRG – with regard to safer spaces did you mean my comment? MarinaS and I are different people.
I think that actively trying to create safer spaces is a way to practise different ways of communicating and to insist that we do not have to listen to people who only want to abuse and harangue us. Some bloggers have quite strong safer space policies and others aren’t bothered, but I think that those who do are doing some interesting experimental work.
And yes, it’s not just feminist women that get attacked – any woman who speaks up, is mouthy and articulate and acts out of line will get a backlash reaction.
MariaS:
‘QRG, I certainly believe that women using gendered and sexualised slurs against other women is as bad as men doing so’
Indeed. But when do feminists stand up against feminist women doing that to other women? I have only seen it in a very few individuals.
This kind of thing has to be seen in a broader context of how gender politics are very often personalised. It really is up to feminists as well as everyone else to pay attention to their own use of language and their own ‘group mentality’ .
Enough is enough. Why don’t we start a group for the specific purpose of dealing with misogynist, homophobic, racist, etc, abuse online? Seriously, all we need is a bunch of committed feminists who are willing to put up a fight, whether by commenting and supporting other feminist authors or by reporting to the authorities about the content of the website. There’s strength in numbers!
Cath, you are fantastic, you are loved, and your work is badly needed. Please remember that if you need support, we are all here for you. You don’t have to fight on your own.
QRG – it would be nice if this thread could stay on topic.
Cath asked:
‘Unless of course any of you lot have got any suggestions? ‘
My suggestion is: look to yourselves as well as your ‘opponents’ or ‘oppressors’ when trying to solve conflicts/make change/eradicate abuse.
That’s on topic polly. It’s also quite basic.
@ Ciaran
“As a matter of principle, bear in mind that these arguments are won by staying rational and making the other person emotional. In other words, you must keep a level head while winding them up. You must find the logical route to their emotional buttons.”
The people on that site weren’t arguing with Cath, they were just laying into her.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t want to play into the idea that emotional is the opposite of rational, because it isn’t and because it is an idea that is used to attack the credibility of women’s arguments (that they are too “emotional”). Similarly, I wouldn’t want to challenge them to be “man enough”, because that’s playing into the idea that masculinity is inherently associated with qualities like bravery or resoluteness, rather than my political and philosophical feminist position that masculinity and femininity are social constructs and that particular good and bad human qualities can be expressed by both male and female people alike, not one or the other.
I do think that their restrictive thinking about gender and gender roles could be used against them, but chiefly by demonstrating the illogicality of their thinking and their narrowmindedness, not by playing into those normative ideas about gender. Perhaps pointing out to them that calling someone a lesbian isn’t actually a devastating insult might be an example of this – or that telling a woman that men don’t find her attractive isn’t hurtful as many women aren’t actually basing their sense of self on men’s opinion of them, and that there are women who aren’t attracted to men at all.
The rationality of an egalitarian and anti-oppressive position tends to speak for itself I think – trying to deliberately “win” an argument as you describe isn’t necessary. It won’t win over the trolls, or if it does win any of them over you’ll never know, because the peer pressure for them not to give in is too strong. But putting your arguments is still worth it because there’ll nearly always be some lurkers who will read them and see sense in them.
I do want to read the Schopenhauer book though.
Just coming out of hibernation to say, Excellent post Cath. I was always shocked and profoundly disturbed by the level of aggression and misogyny pitched at feminist women on the internet. I always think I’ve seen the worst… and then there’s more. It has chased a fair few excellent voices off the internet. I’ve always got off fairly lightly (in the scheme of things), but I can’t pretend that the hatred didn’t get to me in the ways you describe so well in this post.
I’m always a little suspicious when people tell women to ignore abuse on the ‘net – it’s the sort of thing that is said to children in school by teachers and parents who don’t know how to combat bullying themselves, and it sometimes leans towards victim-blaming (but by no means always, and I’m sure ignoring stuff is sometimes good advice).
QRG – I know what happened; I was just making the comparison because I saw some similarities in the responses from those who criticised her. That’s all.
I know what you mean Hannah. I won’t mention BB again. It’s a can of worms!
QRG
And that’s an understatement.
Ms Elliott, I just wanted to add my voice in support of your post. The internet is a wonderful invention, but it does do strange things to some people, particularly with anonymity. It makes them spew hateful abuse which actually demeans themselves, the internet, and frankly their own species.
Deleting threads does them – and the world – the power of good. It is an act of wanting better things from others. What they need is an iota of self-awareness, that’s all. How best to get it to them is the problem.
It would be great if you could meet one in person (maybe the site owner you mentioned) for a gentle chat, to ask them just why they said such things and whether they really, truly mean it. I’m certain they’ll look at their shoes and mumble something about it seeming funny at the time, and how it doesn’t FEEL like anyone reads their comments anyway, let alone the subject of their hatred.
And if they don’t want to meet you in person, that’s proof that they don’t take their own comments seriously. In which case, the need to have such threads deleted is the best thing for all parties. Onwards and upwards!
Gosh Cath, when you mentioned the troubles, I had no idea of the depth of misogyny. It almost makes CiF look like a woman-friendly environment.
I am with the comments that suggest to fight it in some way. First port of call would be CiF, to insist that they have a much stricter moderation policy on feminist posts, and one that would result in that user’s ID being deleted for repeat offences, which would at least causes them the inconvenience of re-registering and hopefully having to get another email address as well if the addy is banned (recommended).
For other sites with such obvious hate-speech, agreed that the personal one-on-one method is useless for sorting it out. Gather evidence (like you did on this one) and either take it to the police or if possible some legal action against them. Perhaps we need to put together a feminist fund for taking this stuff on.
Because it will not go away by itself, and always ignoring it will not help, it actually enables the problem to continue and worsen (just like domestic abusers and rapists if they continually get away with it). These online misogynists are of exactly the same ilk as the wife beaters and rapists.
Just thought of this!
Let’s replace the adage ‘don’t feed the troll’ with ‘hold up a mirror to the troll’s own face .’
Quick cartoon to illustrate: http://xkcd.com/481/
Thanks so much for being so open about this.
I get a lot of very vicious attacks through my works on the net.
I do not believe that the net is a safe and/free place for women who have radical beliefs, for as so many haters of feminism or even women having opinions that are not tamed will and do close down women’s voices.
I find it quite naive when I read or hear that the net is about free speech.
As an exited prostituted woman who believes in fighting for abolition o the sex trade – and wants to speak out about getting basis human rights and dignity for the prostituted. I find the attacks on me are an organised and determined way to shut me up.
I do not stop – but it very hard because it increases my PTSD – but it may slow me down, but not make me stop.
I have little advice of what to do with these hater. I think ignoring as much as possible -but telling friends and or colleagues what is written, so it does not turn into self-doubt or trigger too much. Ignoring them is important, for they often very egotistical, so will stop if not getting enough attention or feeling they have power over you. In the end they are pathetic bullies mostly.
Good luck.
I have not much more to add to everyone else’s comments, and no bright ideas on how to crush these idiots. But I wanted to pipe up to say how incredibly brave you are for dealing with all this and all the other crap.
“These online misogynists are of exactly the same ilk as the wife beaters and rapists.”
Um, no, I don’t think they are, actually. Words are just marks on a page and how people react to them varies enormously. They can be deleted or ignored or not read or not reacted to (which is not to deny the extreme distress or trauma that those words might trigger, some people can laugh off threats as hot air while others take them entirely to heart). Physical violence is a different thing altogether, and unless we’re talking about specific incidents that have spilled out into the offline world (and I don’t think anyone is), there needs to be a distinction made, because saying nasty things about people you don’t know from behind the safety of a keyboard is not the same as beating someone up. It might stem from the same deep-rooted impulse, but I’d lay bets that none of those cowardly idiots would act on their vile threats. It’s just something that the internet facilitates and which we as a massive online community don’t know exactly how to deal with yet. (Maybe this out-pouring of support for Cath goes some way towards neutralising the hate?)
Hate-filled, personal, online attacks which lay into someone on the grounds of their gender or race or sexuality, not on the grounds of their argument, can/should be challenged, vigorously and en masse, but I’d be really careful about conflating words with deeds and saying that trolls are of the same ilk as rapists.
Here’s a very interesting article you might not have seen. A CNN sports blogger tracks down one of his online haters and has a personal chat with them: http://bit.ly/ePs7I2
So sorry you had to go through that. What disgusting, terrible, cruel bullshit.
I can’t believe QRG turned this into the QRG show. Aren’t you wasting precious time you could be spending typing “misandry” into a textfield somewhere.
Let me translate from Misogynese for you, Cath:
Errr! Oh my God, Cath Elliott! With her fucking voice and fucking brain! Dammit, she got a Cif column because she SHOWED PERSISTENCE AND COMMITMENT to a set of beliefs! WAAAH! WAAAAH! Not fair! I should be invited to write for a national newspaper because I can masturbate in my own mental sewage among a group of throwback pub bores that think I’m right!
I must just ask this to you, and other feminist bloggers: why on Earth did you carry on reading? I would have read a couple and stopped right there. You unwittingly buy into the seepingly toxic sense of entitlement of these failures-of-humanity by doing so. They do not ‘engage’ with you or your writing in any real sense – any pro-female writer enrages them just by existing. Ergo in no imaginable sense whatsoever should you ‘engage’ with them. They have congregated into a handy little turd-pile so that we can MIND THE CRAP.
These gobshites are so fucking witty that they can’t even give it away on the Internet for free, without being utterly indistinguishable from each other. I have met you once, and I still find you inspiring and – shock! – beautiful. If that makes me a lesbian in Discardo-world, then bring it, numbskulls.
Cath, I confess I had not heard of you until someone retweeted the link showing what you have had to put up with. As a man, I felt physically sick reading some of what had been written – I can’t imagine what it must be like for a woman to read them, least of all yourself as the direct target. It’s too trite to try and apologise for these people (as if I had something in common with them other than being male) but I hope that defiantly sharing what happened online has proved cathartic in some way (and you have done the world a service by showing this website up for what it is). If I have any insight at all, I’d suggest that men like this are burdened with numerous unfortunate things all at once: stupidity and arrogance of course (always a frightening combo and one that occurs much too frequently), very strong feelings of inadequacy (feeling rejected by society, which (some would say quite justifiably) they are) but above all, fear. These people are absolutely petrified that the world they think they would like, or think they deserve, is getting away from them. They see people like yourself, with whom they believe they share nothing whatsoever in common, having a voice. They can’t recognise any meaning in what you say, other than it somehow threatens their ultra-selfish, narrow-minded, pleasure-seeking existence still further. They mis-use the language of ‘opinion’ to propagate garbage as unpleasant as it is meaningless. They are simply not strong enough ever to turn the mirror on themselves. Words like ‘vile’ ‘evil’ ‘hatred’ are almost wasted on these people, because they flatter them with genuine beliefs, opinions, ideas – but they’re just dogs barking and babies crying, unconscious, meaningless noise. The more you can displace the world you live in (with sentient beings, logical debate, human contact, a hope of fulfilment) from the world they live in (just the internet and the absolute nuclear winter of their inadequate lives) the easier you will find it to rise above it.
A final, more flippant comment – and without going down to their level – in reading the above piece, I was put under the impression that you are ugly. Not that it matters, but you are absolutely not. They don’t even seem to possess eyes that work either.
You’re absolutely right QRG, I’ll stop being a lesbian immediately, then nobody will shout homophobic abuse at me – no wait – it didn’t work for Cath, did it?
Or maybe I won’t try to make every thread on someone else’s blog about me, me, me.
Dickon – a good suggestion, but the point is they wouldn’t dare meet Cath in person. Just as you’re more likely to get abuse shouted at you by somebody in a car than somebody walking up to your face and saying it.
Lucy, it isn’t the exact same thing writing abuse online (or shouting it in the street) as beating somebody up, of course it isn’t. But don’t you think the impulse to do the latter starts with the sentiments expressed by the former?
It doesn’t neutralise hate at all unfortunately. It just makes it fester
“These people are absolutely petrified that the world they think they would like, or think they deserve, is getting away from them. They see people like yourself, with whom they believe they share nothing whatsoever in common, having a voice. They can’t recognise any meaning in what you say, other than it somehow threatens their ultra-selfish, narrow-minded, pleasure-seeking existence still further. ”
Word, Jules. However I think there is one thing that’s very relevant here, they feel in some way that they have been ‘cheated’, but that is because they had a false sense of entitlement in the first place.
This type of anger at lesbians – and women generally – is always directed at the fact that the ragers feel entitled to women – not just women’s bodies, women, they think they own whole human beings, mind, body and soul. Hey presto, it’s the 21st century in England, women have got a bit uppity, and their greatest rage is directed at those women they see as refusing them altogether.
Hi, just read this and am physically sickened. I can empathise a bit because I and my comrades in Scotland have come in for mysoginist abuse from Sheridan and his fans but I have to say NOTHING as disgusting and awful as what’s happened to you. I understand how It’s not easy to just stop reading it. And it is designed to silence and dehumanise us. I have no advice – I’ve not bothered reporting my own abuse!! I just wanted to add my voice to your supporters and friends xxxxx
The writer of this comment spent a decade or so as a target in somewhat similar conversations. That discourse doesn’t map precisely onto yours, but what she learned during that time may.
It doesn’t matter what you say, positive or negative, no matter how carefully you craft it, because the people you’re saying it to or about always can, and will, use it against you. So ignore them. Like any bully, they like nothing better than to get a rise out of you, and the internet gives bullies lots of opportunity to mouth off. In that sense it’s a microcosm of the physical world, and I agree with Lucy Cage that we don’t yet know how to deal with it. But eventually we will, just as in the physical world we’re just beginning to craft effective anti-bullying laws.
In the meanwhile the sort of endless adolescent noise one finds on some forums isn’t worth your time, so don’t get distracted. Stay on task and do your work. It does get better. I don’t say this lightly.
Julie Bindel – sorry wasn’t making myself clear. Obviously i think on one level we all know that when abuse is thrown at you online, you are not the only one, as we see it all the time on CIF and things. But it can feel isolating and upsetting when it happens to you and you can feel very alone, because you are one person who is having a lot of hate directed at you. But yes, i know it happens to us all!
This is really shocking. You could take the legal route to get the site shut down – but as you’ve already found out, it doesn’t stop people being vile. But I’m guessing that as you’ve posted about your experience, that leaving well alone doesn’t really cut it. Have you tried contacting the Internet Watch Foundation – http://www.iwf.org.uk/? Don’t know if this is strictly its remit, but you might get some good advice from them, or they might even intervene on your behalf. If only to cause some damage to the site, and stop this kind of abuse happening to someone else.
“You think non-feminists don’t get attacked (eg by feminists) or punished and when they stand up for people (eg oh I don’t know sex workers porn actors male rape survivors etc)!”
I don’t just think it, I know for a fact that non-feminists are not attacked by “e.g. feminists” with the kind of hateful misogyny that is used against feminist women, especially those who stand against male violence and sexual violence against women QRG. Feminists do not launch death threats, rape threats, post porn, make the kind of attacks that have been made on Cath, designed to silence women and put us in fear.
You’re even twisting it to make it look like feminists attack prostituted people, porn performers and male rape victims, so the “non-feminists” have to stand up for them. That’s a lie.
Just the mere fact that you say that Biting Beaver might *not* be a good example when she’s the best example of a feminist woman who was driven off the internet, driven into hiding and had her life put in danger because of male haters on the internet and their female supporters, shows where your loyalties lie, and it’s not with the women being attacked. You talking about what happened to her as a “can of worms” as if somehow she deserved the atttacks on her is out and out disgusting. It became very clear at the time who were the women who would actually stand with other women and who you could trust – as opposed to those who gave the terrorists a platform and made underhand digs at BB as if it was her fault that a crazed woman-hating section of the internet were going after her.
“My suggestion is: look to yourselves as well as your ‘opponents’ or ‘oppressors’ when trying to solve conflicts/make change/eradicate abuse.”
If you’ve got examples go for it. Otherwise stop pretending to be our conscience because you have no credibility whatsoever in that department.
Dickon that article is really interesting. But this line troubled me a bit:
‘So, going deep, deep, deep undercover, I tracked him down and, shortly after our exchange, gave him a call.’
If the solution to internet haterz is to go undercover and track them down to talk to them, I think we have a slightly weird world that we live in!
sarah I don’t want to give you examples about how I have been treated by feminists as you will just say I am making it all about me again.
But the examples are there online
e.g. the Sheila Jeffries/sex workers conflicts
Julie Bindel/trans women conflicts
anti-sex work feminists/pro-sex work feminists
And e.g. Melissa McEwan saying we live in a world where women are so objectified that ‘consent is irrelevant’ which is the equivalent of saying all heterosexual men are rapists.
I am sorry but feminists DO deal in the language of hate and violence.
Some of the discourse used by feminists is a red rag to a bull. If you treat men like they are no-good dirty dogs who are likely to rape and assault you at any moment, there will be a backlash. I am not putting this particular case in that category but it is still worth thinking about.
P.s. Dickon- the ‘troll’ word is just not useful I don’t think. I get called a troll all the time. I don’t believe I am one. There is no objective judge and jury who decides who is the real troll and who isn’t. It is a free-for-all out there!
Do you really not understand the difference between having a political point of view to someone QRG, and making violent, abusive attacks on someone? They are worlds apart.
Julie Bindel, Shiela Jeffreys and any other radical feminist have not used the tactics of these woman-haters, and you are *lying* if you say they have. Why would you want to lie? Also, small point – Sheila Jeffreys is not in conflict with people being used in prostitution, she is in conflict with pimps and punters. Everything you say is twisted around to create a completely false picture of what is going on.
Radical feminist discourse is about analysing male violence by men as a class against women as a class. If you’re saying that we women should shut up about the rapes, abuse and even murders against us because it will antagonise the bullies even more then you’re in the wrong place. Blaming victims for standing up for ourselves is not part of feminist discourse.
Although the sensible advice is certainly to ignore this sort of bile, the instinctive reaction is of course to try to address the terrible injustice of it. Like being verbally assaulted on the street, this has a damaging effect whether we want it to or not, and whether we respect the perpetratoror not.
Cath, I don’t know whether this helps but I think the only positive to glean from the situation is that what happened to you is such a clear demonstration of the misogyny and hatred that exists against women, particularly feminists with the courage to speak out. So many people seem to think the (western) world is a now benign place for women and girls. Sadly, what happened to you is irrefutable evidence of what we are fighting against.
Furthermore, it is evidence that you have got these wankers rattled. How DARE you expose and criticise the male sense of superiority. 🙂
Keep writing. We need your voice. X
Anyone who resorts to demeaning someone using their gender, race, religion, sexuality or appearance takes themselves outside of rational debate. These people have already lost the argument because they are irrational and cannot be reasoned with. You see the same blinkered rhetoric from those on the far right. You should not take it personally because what they are doing is posturing, giving voice to their irrational hatred and trying to out do each other in the offensive stakes. What is really sad is that these are not pimply teenagers but fully grown adults who for some reason feel so inadequate that they get their kicks being offensive to people anonymously on the internet. The internet does amplify their views – they group together on their fora and feed each other because their views get short shrift elsewhere.
You upset them for some reason (gender, race, sexuality etc) and you were targeted. Of course you should not ignore it, yes expose them for the sad individuals that they are but do not expect it to stop anytime soon.
Sarah thanks yes I know the difference.
why not take a look on Feministe and see the language feminists use to talk to people they disagree with there? And Julie Bindel basically says trans women should not exist. That’s pretty grim.
I got called ‘a rapist by proxy’ – by someone on Libcon for example. This is hateful language.
But you keep telling yourself feminists are the virtuous ones here if you must.
QRG – Wikipedia states “in Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion” – If some many have accused you of trolling – maybe you could take some personal reflection time and consider your contributions before posting?
Apparently you don’t know the difference between misogynistic hateful violent threats and attacks and getting slagged off on the internet, QRG. You’re demonstrating that lack of understanding over and over again.
So sorry to hear about what you’ve been through Cath. I just wanted to echo what the majority of people have been saying on here and offer my support. I’m afraid that, like physical and sexual violence directed at women, verbal abuse and threats are about power and silencing women. Please remind yourself that the abuse you’ve received comes from just a few small minded bullies, and is not representative of the majority of people who (I hope) would never stoop so low as to treat another human being in such a manner.
Has a group of feminists started up a thread just to discuss you, and make personal attacks on your looks, personality and being? Have they said you should be in hospital (underlying threat of violence)? Have you had 4ch an coming after you attacking your website, hacking your users’ passwords and breaking into their emails and private forums? Have you had a group of people online trying every trick in the book to find out your real identity so they can track down your incredibly violent ex to encourage him to attack you? Have you had your forum hijacked with porn pictures? Have you had written child porn posted on your blog? Have you had your blog/forum subject to DOS attacks so it crashes?
By feminists?
No?
Stop lying.
Had a brief look at that site, of course Laurie Penny is way higher on their most hated list than Ian Huntley is, of course.
This blog was pretty upsetting, but I feel your pain, I know what it’s like to be the target of hundreds of misogynists, I’ve had so much said about me at facebook and the university I’m at just for being a known feminist, it’s got to the point where I’m scared one of them is going to assault me just to ‘teach me a lesson’. And there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’ve reposted this aimed at my male friends, so that they can maybe get a sliver of the picture of what it’s like to face this crap simply because of your gender, which is something they won’t experience, and so that they hopefully stop telling me not to get upset, “it’s just the internet”, and maybe realise that saying “ignore it/report it” doesn’t mean it’s over or that those things are possible. The only helpful response they can really give is “I’ll help you smash patriarchy”
Jules, I just wanted to say “word” to your analysis of what these people are afraid of; and to add, that much of the conservative agenda as expressed in the English speaking West these days rests on the same pillars of disappointed entitlement and an anti-pleasure, anti-people aesthetic.
So much of what the current UK government and the ascending US conservative forces are doing is about denying pleasure, joy, and fulfilment to people they see as unworthy of it: the poor, the non-white, the non-Christian, foreigners, the young, LGBT people, the disabled, liberals & progressives…
The bile is spouted at different pitches (anti-woman being among them most, if not the most, hysterical) and takes different routes to expression, from simple sneering to hate speech and from tabloid “campaigns” to outright anti-pleasure legislation. But the narrative is a narrative of the decline of the white Atlantic civilisation, and the struggle between progressives, who will use this post-colonial moment as an opportunity to make the world better, and conservatives/culture warriors, who will go back to the Dark Ages in grim misery, dragging the rest of their society with them for comfort.
***
PS Elly, links or STFU please. This is the Google age – no excuses for unsupported assertions.
@QRG: I can see that individuals, whether they are women or men, feminists or not, are be capable of using personal attack instead of rational discourse when arguing passionately. I don’t doubt that you have been personally insulted from time to time in the course of arguing against strongly-held opinions. But I do think that that is a different phenomenon to the sustained, wide-spread, extremely graphic verbal attacks that happen, regularly, when feminists express their opinions online, whether it’s on their own personal blogs or on CiF or other forums. Mass online misogyny of this kind is something new and distressing out there in the world: it needs to be discussed as such. There’s still room to acknowledge that other people, whatever their views, even if feminist, are not perfectly dispassionate in their communications and might make ad hominem attacks. I haven’t seen this in action, mind, whereas I have often witnessed and sometimes been the target of personally-directed online misogyny.
“Some of the discourse used by feminists is a red rag to a bull. If you treat men like they are no-good dirty dogs who are likely to rape and assault you at any moment, there will be a backlash”
Erm, that would include writing ANYTHING ‘controversial’ on the internet at all… like the fact that misogyny still exists or that the feminist project still has a way to go before it achieves its aims of equality and justice? Because stuff that obvious and benign gets pounced on and reacted to as if it were totally equivalent to saying all men should be castrated. It is not.
And if you’re going to paint men as bulls, dumb, brute, violent beasts moved to fury by the red rags of online feminism, then you’re in the same misandrist boat as those who you say treat all men as rapists. The bully bulls of the online world are not representative of all men by a very long chalk, but they are a significant sub-section of online men and they work in such a way that what they do is worth discussing as a specific and genuine expression of misogyny in the internet world.
“I haven’t seen this in action, mind, whereas I have often witnessed and sometimes been the target of personally-directed online misogyny.” Sorry, I should clarify: I haven’t seen feminist women make a personal attack on someone rather than trying to argue their points. Despite, it must be said, extreme provocation. But maybe it happens…
I am supporting Cath in this. Her treatment by that site has been awful.
I am not equating my ‘bullying’ with hers. Only saying bullying from feminists exists too and IS misogynistic at times. eg alluding to women’s sexuality and gender identities. And threatening violence too.
I also think the way feminists cariacature men online as a whole, is inflammatory at times. I think sites like Shakesville are full of hatred. here are some links as requested to show how feminists fuel the fires of hatred in their language:
http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/draft/
http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/a-letter-to-the-editor/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/01/julie-bindel-transphobia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/03/sexist-language-bidisha
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/02/08/i-know-youre-smarter-than-me-clarisse-thorns-feminist-ideology/
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
No, dear. Links to instances of, specifically, self identified feminists bullying you, personally. Not just “links that I like and will incidentally increase traffic to my blog, on the handy pretext that Marina asked for them so I can’t be accused of derailing again”.
You made a very specific and serious claim upthread, Elly; that feminist safe spaces harbour and exacerbate bullying, and are in fact a contributing factor to hatred and silencing on the internet. You are in effect saying that feminists make the world a worse place for women.
Please support this – not on your own blog, but here, where you thought fit to make this allegation in direct response to an instance of proven & documented misogynist bullying of a feminist – with well-researched evidence, or retract it immediately.
and http://feministhate.tripod.com/id118.htm
Please don’t call me dear, MarinaS. I am not your dear. Thanks.
The links are to my blogpost about bullying of me. Also articles in which I think feminists use hatred in their language.
I think Cath’s bullying by this website has been more extreme than mine. But I was not involved in that whereas Cath did endorse the bullying of me!
LucyCage said:
‘And if you’re going to paint men as bulls, dumb, brute, violent beasts moved to fury by the red rags of online feminism, then you’re in the same misandrist boat as those who you say treat all men as rapists. The bully bulls of the online world are not representative of all men by a very long chalk, but they are a significant sub-section of online men and they work in such a way that what they do is worth discussing as a specific and genuine expression of misogyny in the internet world.’
I think you are taking my ‘red rag to a bull’ metaphor a bit literally there Lucy. Idont think men are bulls who are prone to attack if they get challenged. I just meant that feminist discourse is inflammatory.
Sorry I will be more careful with my use of language in future!
as for the examples of attacks from feminists I will find more examples and I am sure you will all dismiss them as isolated incidents. In my view the problem is widespread.
I cannot believe how accepted and easily swept under the carpet this kind of internet bullying is!
When I was in high school, i suffered a similar experience where by I fought with someone who was an out and out misogynist. I got sent home from school that day and then the next thing i know, all my friends tell me that something is happening on facebook. There was a thread of well over a thousand comments about me with comments very similar to the ones you received. (I actually couldn’t read yours because they were so strikingly the same that i began to get triggers back to that time. It may seem a little extreme, but I’ve been horribly traumatised by it.)
I’m not recovered at all from it, i’m on the waiting list for counselling in which this will feature. I do not trust myself to go back to the place i went to school with these people because I know that I will harm them – and out of not control of my own.
With feminism seems to come the idea that we’re best insulted and defeated by told we need “a cock in” us. I find it deeply disturbing how casually sexual abuse is accepted. I did tell the head teacher, but her answer was “Pull the plug on facebook,”
What?
I’ve had a good look at that website and I notice there is only one woman in their top 10 annoyances. Needless to say it’s our beloved laurie Penny, which suggests to me political mischief rather than a website based on misogynism.
“I think you are taking my ‘red rag to a bull’ metaphor a bit literally there Lucy. Idont think men are bulls who are prone to attack if they get challenged. I just meant that feminist discourse is inflammatory.”
But of course it is! It’s all about threatening the status quo, even the mildest form of feminism that doesn’t see men as the rapingpillaging enemy is caricatured as doing just that. We’re just at a situation now where women who engage in feminist discourse on the internet have to decide whether or not to light the touch paper by speaking out or switch off the plug and stay silent. This applies to anyone questioning the status quo, but the attacks on women in terms of violent, graphic, sexual imagery is essentially misogynist in character. It’s not a small thing. The tide of virtual shit that women get swamped works to silence dissenting voices. (I read your NS blog – those stupid tweets were exactly that. Out of order, personal, sexualised and silencing. Shame on them and, yes, shame on anyone who cheered them on.)
“Sorry I will be more careful with my use of language in future!”
Lol.
“as for the examples of attacks from feminists I will find more examples and I am sure you will all dismiss them as isolated incidents. In my view the problem is widespread.”
Well, don’t be too sure about anything. Silencing voices online with personal attacks is part of the internet deal, whoever is is doing the attacking. But, I repeat, there is a real, widespread phenomenon going on that is specifically misogynist in nature. I think it needs to be challenged on those grounds, not just as netiquette gone awry.
Do they support your allegation that feminist safe spaces make the internet less safe for women? If not, will you retract that statement please. Right now.
Thanks for making the effort to read my post Lucy.
Julie Bindel basically says trans women should not exist.
What utter claptrap. She’s never said anything of the sort. She HAS said that she doesn’t think gender reassignment surgery is beneficial. ( A point I personally don’t agree with). But she hasn’t advocated killing anyone who identifies as a ‘trans woman’.
Marina S
no I won’t. Soz. And I do think Safe Spaces are ‘unsafe’ for many women yes. Though I am not quite sure what ‘safety’ means online. If it means freedom from bullying and personal attacks then definitely they are unsafe places.
Also QRG, for the umpteenth time. This is not Melissa McEwen’s blog. Please take your fight with Melissa McEwen to Melissa McEwen. If she refuses to listen, tough.
oh and yes the Shakesville and the Feministe links are examples of ‘Safe Spaces’ being unsafe for many women. And my post on Safe Spaces on my blog provides further examples. But I won’t link to it you know where to find me!
Mayflower – can I suggest that if you reported bullying to your school and they refused to act, and you need counselling as a result, you consult a personal injury solicitor about taking action? They have a duty of care towards you – the fact that bullying was taking place outside school doesn’t negate it. A legal letter may concentrate their mind wonderfully.
This is a blog belonging Cath Elliott QRG. It’s a piece by Cath Elliott, about abuse she suffered. That’s what I mean by keeping on topic. Not ‘1000 really bad things that have happened to QRG by mean feminists but especially Melissa McEwen’. Do try to keep up.
Ok, I’m getting as bad now, I’ll STFU.
Yes polly thanks. I think Cath can speak for herself and moderate her own blog. She is a strong woman as is indicated by her willingness to stand up to her bullies.
Melissa McEwan hasn’t done anything to me personally though I think she does all women, everywhere, a disservice with her hateful bile. I consider her to be an internet bully.
Actually, I do think QRG’s comments are entirely on-topic. This is about the wider implications of the extreme misogynist abuse suffered recently by Cath Elliott; QRG is saying (correct me if I am wrong) it’s not an exclusively feminist problem, that feminists engage in this sort of things themselves. I disagree to some extent, in that I think the scale of the abuse that women expressing feminist views is out of all proportion to other abuse the internet allows and that it is specifically misogynist behaviour that groups of men indulge in with this kind of personal, sexualised, graphic online bullying. They say those things because the subjects of their hatred are women. BUT I do also think that the way the internet works at the moment means that anonymous bullies can work to silence and abuse ANYONE they disagree with, regardless of gender politics. There’s no point in denying that it happens to men/non-feminists as well; there’s something about the safety of text that enables extreme behaviour, a kind of one-up-manship of vileness.
The question remains, what can be done about it?
Since you refuse to either substantiate or retract your allegation, and let me just repeat it for the removal of doubt, that the existence of feminist safe spaces makes the internet less safe for all women, then the only thing for me to do is dismiss that out of hand as the mean spirited, vindictive claptrap it is.
You have spent a substantial amount of time and energy on this thread and others making repeated claims of being silenced and persecuted. When given a clear and unambiguous invitation (an invitation that I have extended to you elsewhere in the past) to substantiate and expand your views, you have refused to do so.
Please understand that this refusal can and will serve in future as an statement of intent on your part, to the effect that you are not interested in real debate; that you refuse to have the integrity to engage people on intellectually credible terms; and that you are indeed the provocateur that people have called you out as being, not the brave iconoclast you claim to be.
Mayflower – that’s awful. it is not acceptable for your school to tell you to close down facebook as a response to bullies at all. it is v symptomatic of them not understanding social media or sexual bullying and the form it takes. that;s like saying, if the bullying is in the playground, don’t go to school! i hope you are able to get counselling soon and hopefully your counsellor can advise you on how to tackle this with your school. In the meantime, stay strong and stay feminist. never let the bullies shut you up – that’s what they want. I got so close to shutting my blog down last year, but i didn’t because then the people threatening me would have won.
MayFlower I’d like to echo what everyone else here is saying – it’s appalling that you were subjected to that, and your Head Teacher’s response is utterly ridiculous. As sianushka says, it shows a complete lack of understanding of the importance of social media to young people, as well as a complete ignorance of sexual bullying and the devastating impact it can have.
I wish you all the best for your future, and thank you so much for being prepared to share your story with us.
Cath
x
“And threatening violence too.”
Chapter and verse please. Cath provided quotes. A list of random posts that you don’t like isn’t evidence of miosgynistic bullying of the kind that Cath has described and that anti-porn, anti sexual violence feminists are routinely subjected to.
If you had any proof of this kind of organised misogynistic bullying supposedly undertaken by feminists then you’d be displaying it here. As you don’t you use hints and allusions to try and make people believe what you’re saying is true when it patently isn’t QRG.
I have provided evidence. Lucy for example has treated it as such.
Sarah, Polly MarinaS we will never see eye to eye on this. I am just including my perspective in this discussion.
And I don’t want to turn what has been a place offering Cath support into another fight. I will write more about this and you can refuse to read it and the cycle of lack of understanding will continue. Yay.
Quiet Riot Girl | April 21, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Quiet Riot Girl | April 21, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Please reconcile these two statement or admit that you are lying.
You have posted 23 comments in this thread, 15 of them after very politely asked you to keep on topic.
Please explain how this behaviour can be interpreted as you not wanting to start a fight, or admit that you are lying.
Beg pardon, after polly asked you to keep on topic.
You haven’t provided any evidence QRG. For example that Bidisha article is about how misogyny and contempt are used to keep women in our place, Melissa McEwan’s peice is about the rape culture we live in. They are not organised misogynistic attacks on anybody, they aren’t examples of bullying and they don’t back up your argument, except in the sense that it seems that you think that anybody who has a point of view you disagree with strongly must be being abusive.
You absolutely used this place to attack feminists and turned it into a fight. You’ve claimed that feminists have threatened violence. Where have they done that? That is a heinous claim and you need to back it up, or withdraw it.
What you have done is the old version of “women do it too” – when the extent and the evil of male violence againt women is pointed out, there is always someone there to attempt a distraction by claiming, with no evidence that women are just as violent to men. Cath has pointed out heinous misogynistic abuse directed at herself and at other feminists, and all you can do is claim – with *no* evidence – that feminists do it too. It’s not true.
Like I said. I can’t force you to accept my evidence.
I think your hammering home of your points in a double-header fashion is rather aggressive MarinaS and Sarah.
And it is not trying to reach a point of understanding you are just trying to make me submit and agree I am wrong. Which I never will. So keep blowing that hot air out of your ears. I am going for a cup of tea. Maybe you should too.
By the bye. I’d like to apologise to everyone still reading this thread, and most especially to Cath, for participating in what might seem like pointless derailing & troll-feeding.
I am a believer in confronting lies rather than ignoring them; and confronting false equivalence claims about the evils of strawfeminists seems to me more important here than maybe anywhere, because a failure to do so might seem like legitimising the implied symmetry between what Cath has experienced (and between women’s experience of patriarchal oppression, by extention) and mostly made up “feminist abuses”. It is a type of argument much beloved of MRAs and antifeminists, as sarah points out above, and to my mind it should not be allowed to stand unchallenged, most especially in the current context.
Having said that, Cath, if you would prefer for me to stop and let the thing wind itself down already, I’m happy to do so.
Woooo, I seem to have stepped into something with major history. I apologise therefore if I am not getting some nuances here, but as a newcomer I am feeling very uncomfortable about the way QRG is being treated.
“Quiet Riot Girl | April 21, 2011 at 4:42 pm
I have provided evidence.
Quiet Riot Girl | April 21, 2011 at 2:16 pm
no I won’t. Soz.
Please reconcile these two statement or admit that you are lying.”
I read the “no I won’t” as “no, I won’t retract my statement”, not as “no, I won’t provide evidence”. She did provide evidence. I read through some of the links she provided and, yes, there’s evidence, not of the large scale graphic bullying that feminists are dealing with, but certainly of unpleasant cyber-sniping and ad hominem attacks on QRG and others because of the controversial position she/they take.
I also think that the on-topic request, however politely put, is unfair, because internet threads do meander naturally, and, as I said before, I think that cyber-bullying IS the topic. The only person who really has the right to police her own thread is Cath.
(Incidently, I found the way Melissa McEwan dealt with a couple of her commenters to be unnecessarily heavy-handed; the woman who said she thought jokes shouldn’t be censored (no, I don’t think they should be either) and the man who questioned whether there were other reasons than bad luck for getting raped, ie political circumstances, who was banned and scorned as a victim-blamer, when clearly he wasn’t, and had said so several times.)
Controversial intellectual positions, however uncomfortable, are part of any healthy debate: the only way they can be faced down is by being argued against, not by making ad hominem attacks. This surely holds true whoever the the arguer is, and calling someone you disagree with a troll because they are persistent with their disagreement is not fair.
I’ve read with great interest a lot of the debate on this thread about how to defeat/whether to confront the ‘haters’ and moral relativity in bullying, upon which I don’t feel qualified to comment with any credibility, save to say that it’s encouraging that rational debate is showing up the childish invective that started this discussion off. As a man spending a lot of awkward time socially with other men, I can only offer a subjective insight into how some people’s minds seem to work. Unfortunately it seems a lot of men have grown up thinking it is acceptable to be indolent and inadequate because society will always throw them a pass, which is far too often true. By contrast, men expect women to be a) gorgeous b) available and c) subjugated. Society continues to put up with these rather ludicrous assumptions, but as they are being slowly diluted (thanks in part to the efforts of people including those on this thread) then you can be sure that the more fearful misogynists will rage more and more violently against the dying of the light. They will have nothing left if the assumption of their superiority disappears – many will be exposed and all that will remain will be their noticeable inferiority. Men have traditionally not really had to make much of an effort to better themselves in order to achieve wealth, power and sex, but women have had to work extremely hard just to be treated with an acceptable level of respect – the results are there for all to see. This colossal injustice is one without which many men would simply not be able to get on in life. Hence these most irrational levels of hatred. Hope that makes some sense.
I’ve read with great interest a lot of the debate on this thread about how to defeat/whether to confront the ‘haters’ and moral relativity in bullying, upon which I don’t feel qualified to comment with any credibility, save to say that it’s encouraging that rational debate is showing up the childish invective that started this discussion off. As a man spending a lot of awkward time socially with other men, I can only offer a subjective insight into how some people’s minds seem to work. Unfortunately it seems a lot of men have grown up thinking it is acceptable to be indolent and inadequate because society will always throw them a pass, which is far too often true. By contrast, men expect women to be a) gorgeous b) available and c) subjugated. Society continues to put up with these rather ludicrous assumptions, but as they are being slowly diluted (thanks in part to the efforts of people including those on this thread) then you can be sure that the more fearful misogynists will rage more and more violently against the dying of the light. They will have nothing left if the assumption of their superiority disappears – many will be exposed and all that will remain will be their noticeable inferiority. Men have traditionally not really had to make much of an effort to better themselves in order to achieve wealth, power and sex, but women have had to work extremely hard just to be treated with an acceptable level of respect – the results are there for all to see. This colossal injustice is one without which many men would simply not be able to get on in life. Hence these most. irrational levels of hatred. Hope that makes some sense.
For the record, and I know a lot of people who post here don’t necessarily agree with this policy, but I try to police the comments on this blog as little as possible.
I don’t have a problem with a thread taking a turn in another direction, as long as the discussion still pertains in some (albeit sometimes vague) way to the original post. I think that’s just the nature of discussions, both online and off: you start in one place and often find yourself by the end somewhere completely different, and often that different place can be just as interesting as where you began.
I also don’t agree with not allowing comments that don’t toe some kind of party line. As long as everyone involved stays respectful and doesn’t engage in abuse/name calling etc then everyone’s contributions are welcome.
“Like I said. I can’t force you to accept my evidence.”
You haven’t provided any evidence for us to accept QRG. Random links that have nothing to do with what you claim has happened aren’t evidence.
“I think your hammering home of your points in a double-header fashion is rather aggressive MarinaS and Sarah.”
Don’t know what a double header fashion is. Marina seems to be irked by the same things as me i.e. the fact that you are making unsubstantiated accusations against feminists and claiming that we behave like the worst bullying violence-threatening misogynists on the internet. It’s a coincidence we’re both responding to the same thing to you, if that’s what you mean. Some of the posts I’ve made have actually been cross posted with Marina’s before I saw hers.
If you don’t mind the discussion veering off Cath, I’d like to know how many people here think that what was done to Biting Beaver was in any way justified. I’m shocked that it’s been described as a “can of worms” as if she’d done something wrong and had brought the attacks on herself.
The message that is being sent to feminist women particularly those who stand against male sexual violence against women, is that they should shut up and if they don’t, they will receive severe bullying and misogynistic attacks – right up to and including threats of violence and rape and in BB’s case real life threats and stalking. This is how men keep us subjugated, by using violence and the threat of violence to keep us in line and silent. BB’s voice was silenced. That was unforgivable.
I just wanted to juxtapose those two statements, because I think they can be taken to be contradictory. Or to say one of a number of things that I think you don’t mean: that bloggers have the right to police their threads only as long as one approves of how they do it, for example; or that they can police their own threads sure enough, but then it’s OK for us to go on another blog and trash-talk them for it (“Melissa McEwan […] does all women, everywhere, a disservice with her hateful bile”); or that the communities that develop on some of the more successful blogs don’t have their own distinct cultures, characters and standards of discourse.
I would not agree with any of these statements, were you to advance them. I think it can be true that bloggers are the final arbiters of commenting policy on their blogs, and that talking trash behind people’s backs when they refuse to indulge one’s opinions is a low tactic, and that the people who contribute to the success of a blog and the richness of the internet can and do naturally develop their own local cultures, modes of discourse, in-jokes, scales of relevance/importance and so on.
You criticise people for confronting someone merely for disagreeing with them. And if that were the case, if this was a completely random collection of individuals who just happen to hold Opinion A, and only one to hold Opinion B, then you’d be right to decry the tyranny of the majority.
But this is a community – of people who often work together, draw on each other’s writing and activism for inspiration and source materials and so on. It cannot be demanded that people who reject and decry our culture are given a wide platform within it. Not unless you hold feminists to a higher standard of conduct than you would other communities.
I’ve never learnt to drive, for reasons of environmental conviction. How much would you stick up for me if I got some dirty looks, and maybe even a heated argument, for turning up at a car enthusiasts’ weekend club and proceeding to lecture them all about the evils of the car industry, motorway building and CO2 emissions? We’re not talking violence or threats of violence, just the kind of pointed, even heated, and persistent debate/disagreement seen in this thread.
Personally, I think everyone deserves a safe space to exercise their right to free speech on the internet – even people I vehemently disagree with. I don’t wish to see MRA forums shut down, even if they make my skin crawl. I don’t wish extreme right wing, Neo-Nazi websites shut down, even though they potentially represent a threat to me. I don’t want the Top Gear website taken down, even though it’s a cesspit of toxic masculinity, environmental irresponsibility and infantile casual misogyny (I admit this last one causes me the greatest struggle with my better nature… 😉 ).
The opposing view being advanced in this thread is that feminist safe spaces, specifically, should not be allowed; that they are actively harmful to all women; that our safe spaces with their cultures and modes of discourse should be re-engineered to be safe not for us, but for a minority that wishes to vocally disagree with us and criticise us (kind of like the rest of the internet).
With such graphic illustration as the OP provides that the rest of the internet can be extremely unsafe for women, that is an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary proof; and if the claim was mistakenly made by implication, then the implication should be retracted. You seem to be defending the right to make such extraordinary, knowingly inflammatory claims, and be immune from criticism and debate. That, in context, is a strange thing to argue for, don’t you think?
For the record, I don’t know sarah, but she sounds like someone I wouldn’t mind having a drink with 🙂 (an invitation that I’ve previously extended to QRG, too).
Hi Sarah
I took the phrase “can of worms” to mean that whenever the Biting Beaver issue comes up it usually leads to a big row re who did what to who and such like, not that Biting Beaver had done anything wrong, so apologies if you read it as anything else.
To be honest I don’t know enough about what actually happened to feel I can contribute much to the discussion, except to say that no-one deserves to be hounded off the net, to have their personal details made publicly available, to have rape threats or/and threats of physical violence made against them. There is no justification that I can think of for such behaviour.
Firstly, my sympathy. I can’t read through the comments so sorry if I repeat some of what’s been said. I couldn’t wade through all that crap flying at you. I think it would get to anyone. One might ask, though, what the cause of the underlying anger is that brought it about. These are highly personal slurs, but I think you’re seen as a symbol.
The trouble – or one of the troubles – with this crap is that it only further polarises people.
It’s easy, I suppose, to say ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’ and I know you’ve been there a million times.
I wouldn’t normally admit this but I’ve been smarting, actually, at the comment from ‘parallel’ on the last post (or two?) asserting that I’m an “infestation of scum rapist-johns and their apologists” and wondering quite where the “personal abuse” and “hate speech” aspects of the comments policy kicks in. What you’ve been through puts my tiny grump in some sort of context.
But I get this all the time, many magnitudes lower than what you‘ve been through, but all the time nonetheless. Because I try to study and write something informative about the sex industry from time to time on my blog and because I don’t happen to take a rad-fem position and I’m male, opponents jump to conclusions and pile on the hyperbole elsewhere on the net. It’s frequently libellous but it comes with the territory.
In the end, I think all that can be done is to plough on putting points across that one hopes, perhaps forlornly, will lead to an improvement in the standard of debate, and as for scum sites like DSMO – and there’s likely a rad-fem equivalent – I shouldn’t waste my time.
@MarinaS: thanks for taking the time to address my concerns.
I don’t see any contradiction between thinking that a blogger is the only person with the right to police their own site and disagreeing with the way some people do it. Of course, everyone has to make their own decision about moderation, and while I happen to agree pretty much exactly with what Cath stated about her policy, I can still take issue with the way that the other blogger I mentioned handled it – while conceding that it was entirely her right to do so. My approval of their choice is really neither here nor there, but I hope I could be allowed to express it – in a reasoned and civil way, of course!
I didn’t make any “demands” on anyone, by the way: I expressed my discomfort about what I perceived to be persistent demands being made of QRG to play the game or “STFU”. And I really hope you haven’t read anything I’ve said as “trash-talking” anyone.
As to your final point, I don’t take what QRG has said on this particular thread to mean that “feminist safe spaces, specifically, should not be allowed; that they are actively harmful to all women.” If I’ve read her wrong, and you are correct in your reading, then I disagree strongly with the statement: people do, of course, have every right to have closed groups or moderated spaces on the internet. With the proviso that “safe” is an awkward word; I’m not entirely sure how to define it in this context. And that dissent can easily be taken as abuse, however calmly it is put, and met with varying degrees of invective, even from people who have experienced it themselves elsewhere.
Cath, Thank you for publishing this incident. We should all be aware of the incredible abuse you and other feminist and/or trade union activist writers have to put up with when they write the kind material we want to read.
I hope you will feel our (mostly unspoken) appreciation for what you do will always supersede the trolls. Please keep up the excellent work.
Thanks
stephen m
“varying degrees of invective, even from people who have experienced it themselves elsewhere”
“there’s likely a rad-fem equivalent”
Is there a reason why people are so keen to cling to this false equivalence idea – that because MRAs and misogynists publish hateful, bullying attacks against feminists, that therefore feminists/radical feminists somehow somewhere must be attacking people they disagree with in the exact same way?
Because none of you have any evidence for this. It’s all supposition. It’s all false supposition.
Once again we get to the point where instead of discussing the hateful tactics misogynists use to shut women up, we are instead being treated to sanctimonious tut-tutting about a problem that doesn’t even exist, an invented problem used to malign feminists, in particular radical feminists. Anybody would think that there was an attempt being made to distract from actual misogyny – the kind that drives political women off the internet, the kind that makes women too afraid to speak up on our own behalf, because of the punishment and unfair treatment we receive. Who would benefit from that?
Stephen Paterson- I haven’t seen the posts that include the comments you quote.
But they are hateful comments. And feminism, particularly ‘radical feminism’ whatever that is these days, do encourage that kind of hatred towards – men, non-feminists, men who are clients of sex workers, sex workers themselves, trans women, trans men, etc etc.
I agree with you that the worst of the misogynist websites/comments do have feminist equivalents. I think Shakesville is one such equivalent.
Feministe is not so obvious but has some very nasty ways of ‘shutting down’ and ridiculing anyone who goes against the dogma of the site.
If we are going to discuss this issue in a meaningful way, we need to do it in a way that acknowledges all sides of the situation.
If you want to see the quotes Stephen is referring to QRG, can I suggest you read other recent posts on the blog?
Of course they’re about stuff like immigration, so I don’t think you’d be very interested as they provide little opportunity to go on about how evil feminists are.
No, no, no! I did not say it was equivalent. I’ve said in each of my replies – really clearly, I’d hoped – that there is a difference in type and scale between typical internet nastiness that dissenters are often treated to (which, by the way, I do think QRG has illustrated well) and the barrage of sustained, graphic, sexualised, misogynist horror that feminists in particular are subject to. Please don’t conflate my discomfort at the way QRG was being addressed here and my clear acknowledgement that sniping/bullying can happen to anyone and from people of all political standpoints with the idea that misogyny is no different to bad manners. It is not the same.
How feminists /activists deal with dissent is really important: it’s not a side-issue.
stephenpaterson Believe it or not that was one of the few times my finger has hovered over the edit button, but I saw you come back on to the thread and engage the commenter, so stepped away assuming all was ok.
I do tend to err on the side of ‘edit/delete as little as possible and let the ‘community’ moderate itself’. Blimey, I wish this moderation lark could be an exact science or something.
Lucy -some information. QRG is something of a regular on this and other blogs (that she hasn’t been banned from) but only on posts like this which afford an opportunity to bash feminists. Which may explain why some people are getting a bit bored.
@QRG: I’d really take issue with ‘feminism’ encouraging hate. Feminism is a project that strives towards equality; no hate mentioned. It’s about societal structures, not individuals. If some sub-sections of women who called themselves feminists actively fostered indiscriminate hatred towards all men, and couched it in graphic, sexualised, violent terms, I’d want to stand up and counter it. It is not any part of my feminism.
This has been said before, but it bears repeating. I’ve had run ins with people who describe themselves as feminists. I think a few of them are lesbophobic. Some are also racist or ablist, (etc etc etc) which being white and not currently disabled (etc etc etc) I’m less qualified to comment on or feel personaly offended by.
I don’t feel threatened by them, that’s the difference. You said before Lucy that the remarks Cath has quoted aren’t the same as actual violence. Well obviously not, they’re on the internet, but bubbling under them IS the threat of violence, that’s the difference.
I get lesbophobic remarks of the type thrown at Cath shouted at me in the street, I tend to shrug them off, otherwise I’d go insane. The chances of them translating into physical violence is low, I know. But it is there.
I don’t understand your reasoning Lucy. Why is “how feminists deal with dissent” (whatever that means) an important issue on a thread about misogynistic abuse designed to drive feminist women off the internet?
It’s a diversion designed to take the focus off misogyny and intended to put feminists on the back foot defending ourselves. Its’ victim-blaming. If someone gets mugged you don’t go “oh but you were rude to one of your colleagues last week”. Well not unless you are completely unempathetic, or on the side of the mugger for some reason.
polly- some information. Lucy is capable of making her own mind up about comments/commenters/discussions online.
I think the main thing is providing a range of information/perspectives.
I comment on posts that interest me. This one did. I wanted to show Cath that I do not condone this kind of hateful online bullying that has been directed at her. And open up the discussion to include some of the nastiness that goes on, on the feminist blogosphere too.
Thnx
@Polly: thank you. I appreciate the explanation. Although I still wonder how much of what QRG is saying is being misread/caricatured because of the boredom/irritation factor.
As for the cyber/real violence: yes, I agree, there isn’t a clear line. Maybe the more that people feel that they are licensed to say literally anything in the safe anonymity of the cyberworld, the more a minority of them will act it out in the physical world. But that is an assumption, I don’t know for certain the relationship of cause and effect that is at work there. There definitely seems to be a group-mentality culture of people daring each other to be more and more offensive online, because there is no effective come-back and the laws against cyberbullying are still in their infancy.
QRG is being responded to directly. She is neither being caricatured or misread.
She has made some extremely serious allegations about feminists and has yet to provide any evidence to back any of them up. It’s a reasonable request to ask her to support her claims.
Its only victim blaming, sarah, if you assume feminist women are always the victims in discourse/life.
I don’t.
“And open up the discussion to include some of the nastiness that goes on, on the feminist blogosphere too…”
Only oddly enough, no-one else seems to have found any very compelling evidence to show that this kind of thing is in any way comparable with the astonishing vitriol and hatred reserved for women, and feminists in particular, by men (and non-feminists).
Conversely, as a feminist of many years (I’m 39, and have actively identified as feminist for about 22 of those years), my overwhelming experience of feminism has been that it’s an incredibly supportive and empowering movement. Which is why I continue to adhere to it, and see it as a bulwark against the tide of misogyny which clearly still rages, as painfully evidenced by Cath’s recent experience.
The key here is “providing a range of perspectives”. You’re simply providing your own rather peculiar perspective, ad nauseam. Which is not the same thing. You can stop now. We get the message.
@Sarah: do you think I’m victim-blaming because I acknowledge that sniping goes on amongst women/feminists? Have I misunderstood you?
The reason why the topic of how feminists deal with dissent is an important part of a discussion about online misogynist verbal invective is because dissent is sometimes taken to be anti-woman abuse. Even well-reasoned, civilly-articulated dissent. Words are tricky things.
I really don’t think that acknowledging that sniping/general internet nastiness can sometimes be perpetrated by people who identify themselves as radical feminists is victim-blaming. Neither am I equating it with underlying structural misogyny. I’m not up for feminists having to be perfect and I am all for dissent. But not abuse.
I can beat that Dizzy, I am 40 and was born into the women’s lib movement.
It’s victim blaming when you falsely claim that feminists who are serially attacked by these misogynistic haters, behave as badly and abusively as they do.
The claim isn’t true. You have no evidence, because there isn’t any. I’ll keep repeating that whilst you keep repeating your anti-feminist propaganda.
I know in many circles it is seen as completely acceptable to lie about feminists and to accuse them of what their attackers do, and liberals will sit round and accept those accusations because they hate feminists too, but where I see it, I’m going to challenge it. Calling Shakesville a hate site is laughable, utterly laughable.
Well, I disagree about the being misread, as I explained earlier; I think she has been. And she was explicitly told she was a troll, which I take as caricature, because trolling is a whole different game to disagreeing strongly and persistently.
I think I explained pretty clearly why you’re victim blaming Lucy. You’re justifying taking the attention off serious damaging abuse that feminists are being subjected to, in favour of whining about how “feminists are evil too” with zero evidence to back that up.
“The reason why the topic of how feminists deal with dissent is an important part of a discussion about online misogynist verbal invective is because dissent is sometimes taken to be anti-woman abuse. Even well-reasoned,
civilly-articulated dissent.”
That isn’t what Cath has been describing on this thread. She has been subjected to hideous verbal abuse. I know feminists who have been subject to death threats and rape threats. I was there when Biting Beaver was driven off the internet. Stop trying to pretend that “dissent” is what is being discussed here.
“Words are tricky things.”
Yes they are. Liars unfortunately use them to tell all sorts of lies.
” in favour of whining about how “feminists are evil too”
No, I am not doing that. I would not do that, because I am feminist and proud of it. *SOME* women who identify as feminists *MIGHT* indulge in sniping, even cyber-bullying, sometimes. Acknowledging that doesn’t make the world fall apart. But as I’ve said – oh god I’ve said it – that is not the same as the deep cultural misogyny that results in the kind of grotesque cyber-bulling Cath was subjected to.
And it is not the same as saying “feminists are evil”. That, I’m afraid, IS both a caricature and a misreading of my arguments.
As for creating a diversion: no, I’m not. I find the subject interesting and relevant to the thread and I’ve explained why. If you disagree, that’s fine. I am happy to discuss ways of protecting women who write about feminism from violently-expressed invective.
Polly – can’t remember it being about immigration. It was a quite understandable post by Cath at Govt cuts affecting women, in which all I had merely said was that I’d keep my powder dry over her promised post on Eaves/Poppy. Which I’m looking forward to as I keep hearing more on both Eaves/Poppy and the Sally Army.
Cath & Quiet Girl – thanx.
I resorted to caricature because your arguments and QRG’s are utterly tiresome. Which is probably why I’m the last one standing here, because no-one else can be bothered with yours and QRG’s two-headed drive to take the focus off the vicious misogynistic bullying designed to silence feminists and on to “feminists are meeeeannn too” (although QRG is actually arguing that feminist indulge in exactly the same vile vicious behaviour as these miosgynists attacking Cath have been undertaking).
But why should the two of you be able to derail the thread? Why should QRG’s lies about feminist’s behaviour be allowed to stand? They shouldn’t.
Lucy,
Here are some of the statements made by QRG in this thread:
at 9:16 pm
Puzzling in the extreme – safe spaces are part of the problem Cath is describing? Surely this is either irrelevant or extraordinary.
at 10:21 pm
Putting the word oppressors in scare quotes is not a polite move in a feminist space. As is othering feminists (“yourselves”). And again, it’s not clear how this statement is relevant to the type of abuse described in the OP. It’s not as if those guys were defending women offended by heated remarks on feminist blogs, so why bring it up?
at 2:16 pm
This is another cryptic statement; safe spaces are designed to protect women from the bubbling undercurrent of implied violence that’s out there on the big bad internet. they’re not designed to be love-fests where everybody agrees with everybody all the time (mind you, QRG implies that in fact they are when she talks about groupthink, which is contradictory as well as implausible).
So unsafe how, and for whom? There is an implication here (which I have met with elsewhere, from other people, also disguised as a “general comment”) that feminists threaten murder and/or rape to people they don’t approve of. Surely, if this were the case, some direct evidence would be producible?
at 2:19 pm
Again with the scare quotes. And again, unsafe how, and to whom? If the meaning is “you’ll get an argument from members of the community if you challenge and criticise their culture”, this seems unremarkable to the point of meaninglesness (vide my weekend motorist’s club analogy). If not, then a demand for evidence is not just “playing the game”. It’s a reasonable response to such a serious, serious accusation.
at 7:53 pm
Here’s it gets interesting – we have a direct comparison between misogynist hate fora like Cath was talking about and feminist websites. Feminists are accused of encouraging hatred, and a specific popular feminist blog is being held up as an example.
This doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory factual examination – I don’t read Shakesville myself, but I have in the past, and I have never seen, there or anywhere else in the feminist blogosphere, a post dedicated to flinging hate speech at a particular individual, ridiculing their appearance, calling their sanity or sexuality into question and so forth in the way that the forum mentioned in the OP, and many other MRM & misogynist websites are explicitly dedicated to doing.
We’re constantly told that these pockets of extreme Valerie Solanas-worshipping, bile spitting, castration fantasising, child eating fire breathing armpit non-shaving feminists exist. The false equivalence, the “both sides do it”, argument is so laughably not controversial that it’s just silly. And it never gets proven. It’s like the cousin who was abducted by aliens: everybody knows about one, nobody can produce him for questioning.
I admire your sense of fair play, but just because someone is in a minority position in a given space doesn’t make them a minority or a victim of persecution. QRG’s caricature of feminism is the mainstream media view. She has the entire internet and most of the MSM to back her up, her and others like her who for some reason get their jollies popping up on feminist blogs to expound on their antifeminist views and then complain when people react in the predictable way.
It’s a living, I guess. And I dare say it drives traffic to her blog. But it’s not a good faith argument, in fact it’s no argument at all; it’s a technique for drawing attention to herself that is distinguishable from classic trolling only in the quality of the spelling.
Oh good, I’m not the last person standing.
I’ll have that drink with you Marina – as long as it’s on a night when QRG isn’t out with you.
Oh no, I’m a meanie feminist exclusionary bully!
It was about the Cameron immigration speech as well though Stephen. Well it’s only 2 posts down, it’s easy enough for anyone to see for themselves…
Lucy, I feel personally offended by what QRG said because (although Cath is not a lesbian) a lot of the abuse directed at Cath is very nasty AND lesbophobic. Which QRG has chosen to ignore completely, and say it’s all about feminists upsetting men. Of course it isn’t.
I do think this is derailing par excellence, and deliberate derailing at that.
Lucy, judge for yourself.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/03/the_tyranny_of_
@MarinaS: Thank you, I appreciate your points and the fact that you have made a distinction between mine and QRG’s arguments. (And that you’re not accusing me of anti-feminism or victim-blaming!)
I’m interested in the whole concept of safe spaces; I acknowledge that “safe” is difficult to define completely and I agree that strongly-expressed disagreements and passionate debate are not the same as misogynist abuse and part of a healthy culture of activism. (Which is just as well, since I’m not going to bother getting offended about being told that my arguments are “tiresome” and whiney and ripe for caricature.) Safe spaces ARE, as far as I can see, relevant to the main topic, so I’m glad they’re being debated, although it’s fair enough if other people are bored or want to concentrate on other strands of the debate.
I took issue with QRG over her assertion that “feminism, particularly ‘radical feminism’ whatever that is these days, do encourage that kind of hatred” and I have no evidence that there are any sites run by radical feminists that are anything like as vitriolic and vile as the ones mentioned in the OP, or even the usual, run-of-the-mill nastiness of the anti-woman sentiments expressed every bloody day on CiF.
(I don’t think QRG is mirroring a mainstream view of feminism, though, however much I’d disagree with any sweeping statements about what all feminists are like or think or say. I would guess that her intention is to point out uncomfortable discrepancies in the way feminists view themselves and I’d want to measure each of those discrepancies up individually before making a decision about them myself.)
“Safe spaces ARE, as far as I can see, relevant to the main topic”
As far as I can see everything is now relevant on this thread (safe spaces, “how feminists deal with dissent”, QRG pointing out her invented discrepancies, blah, blah, blah) except the main topic itself – which was men ganging together to subject feminists to vicious misogynistic and lesbophobic abuse designed to hurt and silence women, so we don’t speak up on behalf of ourselves.
Because since you and QRG have been working the thread Lucy, that subject has fallen away almost completely, apart from a little lip service to it.
sarah- don’t fret, I won’t be out drinking with MarinaS any time soon. She’s all yours!
as for the remainder of this thread…. Big LOLZ here.
also… I am fine with being called an ‘anti-feminist’ if that is what people need to call me to distinguish me from their particular brand of… er… politics.
XXQRG
I don’t post at Misogyny is Free any more for example because the misogynistic abuse that women are subject to, and the contempt with which feminist arguments are treated, are just too painful to deal with. The men who make those posts want it to be that way too. It’s deliberate. I don’t know how any feminist writers who write for CiF overcome that barrier to writing – maybe they just don’t read the comments.
I’m not sure what argument you’ve been advancing to be honest Lucy, so you can safely assume that any substantive criticism is aimed at QRG or other named agents.
“working the thread”: nice.
Disagreement is not derailment. Everyone else here has as much right and ability to discuss anything that they want to, even while I am disagreeing with your portrayal of QRG. And even, I should add, while I was also discussing the experience of misogyny in the form of graphic sexualised personal attacks on feminist writers on the internet.
I still comment on CiF from time to time: I spend my time there countering misogyny and standing up to the bullies and getting flamed as a man-hating bitch in return. The idiots there who scorn women probably think I’m whiney and tiresome and derailing too and they certainly caricature my arguments, but they’d hate me for being anti-man not anti-feminist.
Such are the challenges of internet debate.
Lest we forget, QRG’s own blog response to the TubeCrush debate is as follows:
“I never heard a feminist stand up for men as a group before. I don’t think they have been galvanised into action by TubeCrush. No, I think the real reason this has pissed off feminists, is they feel left out…
I can’t prove it. But I get the distinct impression that there is some kind of weird correlation, between the increased feminist campaigns against ‘street harassment’ and ‘objectification’ of women, and the ‘pornification’ of culture, and the fact that actually, it is men, not women, who are the chief objectified commodities these days. If feminism were a woman, I think she’d be a slightly dowdy lady in her middle age, complaining, as some older women do, of how she has now been rendered ‘invisible’ in society.”
All sounds very much like the sophisticated ‘feminists hate page 3 because they are all ugly and sexually frustrated’ argument of yore. Yawn.
You weren’t simply disagreeing. QRG was making womanful efforts to change the subject and you were supporting her, Lucy. Changing the subject is definitely derailing.
Also I didn’t call you anti-feminist. That post was directed at a post made by QRG. Defending her is one thing but you don’t need to feel you need to take on board criticisms made to her about her.
Polly
Yep. And just as you predicted, the thread has now become almost entirely about QRG.
I was taking issue with what I felt was misrepresentation and I was debating the points that I agreed with and calling her out on the stuff I disagreed with. (And I disagree with that statement about TubeCrush (thanks Dizzy); to equate the objectification of men with the objectification, oppression and abuse of women betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the societal power-relationship between men and women.)
I wasn’t “changing the subject”: I was participating in a debate that I was interested in; it’s not the same as consciously and maliciously derailing a thread, which is what you very much seem to be accusing me of, sarah.
But this is all too meta for words now.
Cath- that’s because people go on and on about me and keep quoting me and referring to my posts. Even when I am not participating in the discussion.
What can I say? I’m interesting.
To clarify, my comment about derailing was directed at QRG.
Sorry Cath.
What can I say? I’m interesting
Well I could say I’m going to marry Prince William next week..
Dodgy formatting..
It’s easy to stop being meta. Let’s talk about men attacking feminist bloggers, viciously and en masse, in order to make it too painful for them to continue blogging. Let’s talk about how women are silenced *all the time* and people don’t even notice it. For example how many male voices are there on the Misogyny is Free pages compared to female ones, either as commentators or responding to posts. How many women never even find their voice because misogynistic men have created so many *unsafe* spaces for women in the public arena that women are just too scared to speak up in the first place? Let’s look at how very often the only female voices that are heard, particularly in the mainstream are those who support male domination and ignore male hatred of women. Those are good concrete questions, which can be backed up by solid facts. None of which is true about what QRG was saying about feminists.
Fixed it for you Polly.
Here’s an example from ‘RL’ of a woman noticing how feminist women bully each other. I am not comparing it to Cath’s experience which was awful, but hopefully shortlived. This is from someone’s work in a women’s co-op:
http://www.salon.com/jan97/women970113.html
Let’s not forget the very real punishments that are meted out to women who speak up for women. Bidisha says she’s lost her career for speaking out against sexism in the arts:
http://bidisha-online.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-hit-glass-ceiling-it-really-hurts.html
That’s what men in power do to you when you highlight the unfair system they have created and their systematic discrimination against and marginalisation of women.
It’s simply terrible the crap Cath Elliott, a really great writer, has to endure, and other than strategies such as the collective boycott of CIF suggested above it seems that the best response is only to remind her of how great the work she does is, though I did go on the hateful site to write a message of support at the time, simply as some sort of marker and protest against bullying, though it’s clear that the people using the site are sadly beyond rational dialogue. Sad that so many people are writing off the topic and also that Laurie Penny seemed to react by seeing it as promising article material – I am not trying to be nasty to another outspoken woman – who endures similar horrendous misogynistic bile – but somehow her response depressed me as it seemed to be on a utilitarian rather than human level, and very self-focused, and there is a time for true solidarity that speaks in simple human terms, and also respects the journalistic achievement and integrity of this post and doesn’t see it as rich pickings.
My ex husband used to do this, you know. The whole “well I can’t help it if you keep going on about it” and the “this is just too meta now” thing. When we went to couples counselling right at the end of our relationship, he opened the session by telling the Relate counsellor “it all started when Marina decided to leave me”. Like there were simply no reasons for me to leave him – it was just an arbitrary decision on my part designed to hurt him for a sadistic reason of my own, and he actually deserved sympathy for how crazy irrational I was.
It’s a good way of shutting down debate: pretending that the reaction is the problem, rather than the thing being reacted to. that’s why QRG does what she does the way she does it: she knows that if she stays just within the limits of common civility, she can cry bullying when people duly react with fury to her trying to get under their skin for a couple hundred comments, and there will always be someone around who hasn’t seen through her schtick and will defend her, or at least say that “she makes some interesting points” that “we should consider”.
It’s also why those assholes bullying Cath were so delighted when they got a rise out of her. Because they know they can use her reaction to de-legitimise both her work and her anger at the abuse they’ve been hurling at her. There’s a whole structure within our discourse, in what is considered “polite society”, that works such as to make the person who reacts strongly lose the argument, seem weak, irrational, emotional, and their argument invalid. It’s a classic gambit of the system of domination we know and, well, know, as the patriarchy: de-legitimising the outrage of the oppressed from the get go means that their voices can always be ignored.
It’s what’s at the bottom of so called “tone arguments”, too: you know those people who tell you “well I was prepared to listen to you, but if you’re going to be like that about it…”? Or calling women shrill, black people angry, disabled people whiny? Yep, just another silencing and de-legitimisation tactic. They’re all connected.
Personally, I operate a kind of scorched earth policy when it comes to shit like that: I call people out and then I call people names. I reckon anyone who is trying to shut me up, however subtly they’re going about it, is not much of an audience to begin with. In which case why should I bother doing the heavy lifting of getting upset so they can dismiss me for being rude or emotional or whatever, right?
But this ain’t my cabbage patch, and I’m gonna play nice for the sake of not giving anyone any more ammunition (unless I come back from holiday and find that Elly has snuck a late comment onto the thread just to have the last word, and still hadn’t admitted she was flat out lying about feminist “hatred” and “abuse” online). On which note, goodnight, good luck, enjoy the bank holiday, and remember: wear sunscreen.
@QRG that article you linked to isn’t actually about bullying, though it is titled as such, it’s about the pitfalls of collective, working. I couldn’t find any description of bullying behaviour in it. The writer clearly didn’t have much time or enthusiasm for collective working, but her colleagues clearly did, and aimed to create a non-hierarchical, supportive, anti-oppressive workplace, which I think is always a brave experiment because it is diametrically opposed to the hierarchical, competitive structures that we are used to. The pitfalls, such as failures of decision-making and conflict resolution, are common to such experiments but me I believe that it’s well worth practicing this way of working and working through the problems. There is lots of useful advice out there about effective collective working and consensus decision making.
The writer wasn’t bullied, she was asked to participate in activities such as diversity training and support processes such as mediation that she thought weren’t useful, and it’s fair enough that that wasn’t for her.
@ Sarah @ Lucy, I do think that safer spaces are very relevant to this discussion, because they are about a community or organisation agreeing what kind of behaviour they will not stand for and acting to assert that. Safer spaces are dismissed as antithetical to free speech and so on, but I think it is important to assert that they facilitate free speech because safer spaces should work to ensure that those whose voices are marginalised, dismissed and silenced get to speak freely and without fear of intimidation – and that if they are attacked they will have a community of support behind them, instead of being isolated.
So, ideally, instead of Cath having to struggle to get anyone to do anything about the abusive postings, in an ideal world the webhost of the site that attacked would assert to the site owner that it was having no truck with misogynist bullying and threats.
Cath,
I had a meeting with the Guardian Readers’ Editor, Chris Elliott, today about misogyny on CiF. Here is the article I wrote about it on Women’s Views on News.
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/wvon/2011/04
That website is truly vile. The Guardian has an vastly bigger audience and you can stop them accounting the rights of misogynists more valuable than the rights of the great majority of women. Unlike you, they find Comment is Free uninhabitable, and so are silenced and excluded from the only part of the mainstream media that used to be committed to making their voices heard.
@ MarinaS great breakdown of “tone” arguments and the “getting a rise” out of your opponent tactics!
It’s so important to see these for what they are, and to not get sucked in to countering them at face value – e.g. to not try and sound “nicer” and more “reasonable” in the hope that they’ll listen to you now. Playing their game puts you on the defensive, trying to justify yourself to someone who actually doesn’t care. The great thing about the range of comment and debate on the web is that over time we can come to see the repetitiveness and flimsiness of a lot of arguments, and learn not to waste time on them.
I had a comment deleted on CiF t’other day that said the ‘gay kiss’ men were tedious self publicists. Meanwhile loads of really vile homophobic comments were allowed to stand.
I have been zapped many times for challenging sexist fuckery on CiF while the fuckery sails right on by because comments are offtopic but sexism is not sexism when it brings in an advertising penny. And there are legions of inadequates that only feel really alive pushing that little abuse link and bringing the rest of us just an inch closer to their own pit of misery.
@MarinaS re: “My ex husband used to do this, you know. The whole “well I can’t help it if you keep going on about it” and the “this is just too meta now” thing.”
Oh dear, I’m a bit dismayed you used that meta comment of mine to illustrate silencing techniques. I said that as an admission that that corner of the debate was going round in circles, disputing who said what to whom, an argument about the argument about the argument. It could have gone on for ages and people were getting annoyed about it. My responsibility too. I was bowing out.
I’ve been told both that I’m deliberately derailing a debate and silencing the voices of the oppressed by talking about safe spaces/dissent within the feminist community (although I appreciate MariaS’s comment that safe spaces *are* on topic), and now I’ve apparently used silencing techniques to shut down debate on the topic that I was derailing the main thread to talk about…
It seems to me that this whole discussion is about how we debate, both amongst ourselves and with the wider – and sometimes incredibly hostile – online community. It’s fascinating, challenging stuff. Jane: I can’t find your piece about the meeting with the CiF editor: can you repost the link? I’d like to hear the reasons behind their moderation policy.
I just wanted to thank Sarah and MarinaS for continuing to hold ground and counter the (incredibly boring) QRG, who has quite the trolling reputation (other feminists have noted it, that link Polly provided to the F-Word a number of commenters said the same).
Diverting the thread off QRG (horrors!) and back onto the barrage of misogynist attacks particularly directed at feminists, CiF (or Misogyny is Free as Sarah calls it) is an excellent example of how these tactics work into silencing women to speak online. I gave up even reading the comments on feminist articles because it seemed to be that one had to wade through about two or three misogynist comments to get to the real comments. The level of hostility to women over there is unbelievable, and needs to be addressed – a campaign by feminists to get this stopped.
In the article Jane linked to (here is the link directly):
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/wvon/2011/04/comment-is-anything-but-%E2%80%9Cfree%E2%80%9D-at-the-guardian/
Quote from the Reader’s Editor, Chris Elliott (my emphasis):
“ Natalie Hanman, who edits Cif, has worked hard to encourage women to battle through any perceived misogyny on the site to bring about a site that more women want to visit. I think she believes it is important to get into the debate, no matter how tough, to create a different atmosphere.
The Guardian has excellent moderators who work hard to ensure posters stay within our community guidelines and in time if women will stick with it that atmosphere will change.”
Totally unbelievable. ‘Perceived’ misogyny? It could not be more obvious and hostile towards women.
Expecting women to “battle it out” and “stick with it” is putting all the responsibility onto women to hold or gain ground in the hostile environment, it blames women if it ‘does not work out’ and expects women to do all the work in ‘changing the atmosphere’. The misogynists are not held accountable, nor are the moderators, who are contrary to the claim of doing their job, are not. If the same level of hatred was directed at a racial minority instead of women, it would be obvious what is going on, and regarded as a hate crime. But misogyny seems to be invisible.
Thank you for posting the link, FAB Libber.
Thanks for the link, FAB Libber. Five years of experience says Natalie Hanman’s strategy bears no relation to what actually happens on Comment is Free, which is the effective exclusion of women. It seems an almost gratuitously thin account. Where is this ‘hard work’ to engage women? staff writers are a rarer sight BTL than in former years. Writers are encouraged to engage BTL more, but what has changed? For five years the hostile culture has driven women away. The Guardian doesn’t even acknowledge this. The editor says the moderators keep the comments within the community standards. It takes no time at all to disprove this. There is abuse on every thread.
Every rape article is derailed with scare stories about false allegations, even the recent ones on the serial rapist and his octogenarian victims. What feelings about women can this group have who work so tirelessly to shout down attempts to end prevent more victims of police incompetence? They despise women.
And you are right, Lucy, about the gentleness of the feminism that fires up the crown. So tame is it, the outraged have to warm themselves up. It is rarely a woman that bring the reliable “infamous RadFem quote 3,.3,.3,7” onto a thread, but then it gets batted back and forth right down the page upping the temperature.
“The editor says the moderators keep the comments within the community standards.”
The community standards are misogyny. So the editor is correct sadly.
The Guardian’s website has always been a haven for misogyny. Back in the day I got banned twice for arguing against pornography on their talkboards. The misogynists who attacked me were allowed to stay however. They do not want feminism to have any kind of a voice there, or if they do allow it, they allow such incredible verbal punishment to the writers that every woman gets the message that feminism is marginal and that it’s open season on feminists.
“It seems to me that this whole discussion is about how we debate, both amongst ourselves and with the wider – and sometimes incredibly hostile – online community.”
That’s not what Cath’s post was about. Her post was about vile attacks she’s faced from misogynists because she’s a woman speaking up for women. The *only* people here who want to widen this debate out to “feminists do it too” are you and QRG. The two of you don’t constitute “this debate”, no matter how much you’d like to set yourself up as final arbiter.
‘I just wanted to thank Sarah and MarinaS for continuing to hold ground and counter the (incredibly boring) QRG, who has quite the trolling reputation (other feminists have noted it, that link Polly provided to the F-Word a number of commenters said the same).’
– and this is part of the issue I have with feminist online fora. Anyone who challenges the dogma becomes labelled as a ‘troll’ and ‘boring’. I know it is tedious being questioned and critiqued. But if feminism can’t handle critique it has BIG problems. Bigger than any ‘troll’ who may get in the way of its train.
You didn’t challenge anything QRG. You made accusations which you were totally unable back up with anything substantial. Your latest effort is to link to a 14 year old article about events that happened back in the 1980s – oh yes that proves how evil feminists are.
In fact if anybody was spouting dogma, it was you, with your claims that feminists are as bad as the worst misogynists on the internet. That’s typical antifeminist dogma, which is one of the reasons it’s so irritating to see it here – even in actual feminist spaces with feminists discussing actual events, we aren’t able to talk about sexism and hate directed against us, without someone coming in to make false accusations against us.
Sarah- my original reason for making the point that feminists are also involved in nasty bullying, was that whilst I support Cath in this incident, which I have said a number of times I agree involved awful behaviour and bullying, she herself cheerfully endorsed bullying of me, by ‘feminist’ men from the New Statesman and on twitter, which used my sexuality against me.
Cath knows that. Everyone who followed the debarcle knows it. It is not a ‘false accusation’ it has all been documented and acknowledged publicly.
That’s just one example. But it is key to why I contributed to this discussion in a critical way, instead of just going, oh, poor Cath, poor feminists, nasty men.
sexism is not sexism when it brings in an advertising penny.
The bottom line.
she herself cheerfully endorsed bullying of me, by ‘feminist’ men from the New Statesman and on twitter, which used my sexuality against me.
Links?
Oh right, so all of this has been about you making accuastions against Cath. That flew right by me.
If Cath did something as awful as that to you why whould you even want to post on her blog and offer her support. You’re a bigger woman than me.
Anyone who challenges the dogma becomes labelled as a ‘troll’ and ‘boring
well boring is as boring does. However a ‘troll’ on the internet, according to wikipedia a troll is “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages” And I think that’s a fair description of you QRG. You don’t engage with the substantive topic, and if points are put to you you don’t respond. Your intention is to derail. Which is boring after the first few times.
How you equate that – an accurate description of what you do – with vile abuse of the type directed at Cath is beyond me.
I’ve started using the “report abuse” option on CiF comments and have found that the comments in question often do get removed, even those where I feared the mods would not understand why my point in objecting to them. It’s been very interesting to start thinking about and spotting which comments I regard as harmful and objectionable, and articulating that succinctly in the report form. So I’ve reported things that make blanket and derogatory statements about whole groups of people, and things that are inaccurate and blatant misrepresentations, for example.
The general sexism problem with CiF is harder to call out directly and instead requires a lot of time spent in the discussion in disputing comments and offering better analysis; it is the tendency by straight white cis men to opine confidently and dismissively on things they really have no insight into or experience of. The bulk of CiF discussions are comments of that ilk, expressing a sense of entitlement to be the voice of authority on anything and everything, and blustering over their own sense of insecurity at finding people not like them are speaking and expressing a more diverse view of the world. It takes a lot of patience and persistence (more than any of us really have to spare) to not be shouted down or riled up by them. One useful thing is to start noticing the illogicality and superficiality of what they say – I’m constantly suprised to notice when men’s arguments are illogical because I still have it in my head that men are supposed to be super-logical and reasonable. In fact they often just act as if they will be assumed to be expressing things logically without actually bothering to check that they are. (For example, I’ve noticed recently that they are very bad at understanding and making analogies, and their understanding of the politics and workings of language is often lacking.) I find it very encouraging when I realise that I have good counter-arguments and feel more confident in expressing them – having confidence in the value of my own contributions. Good feeling.
Of course pointing out the flaws in their arguments doesn’t win them round, but is worth doing because other people reading will get to read what you say too and might agree with you not them. You might be articulating things that they felt but hadn’t quite worked out, and next time they’re talking about the subject they might feel better able to put those points across.
(Technical point about the WVON link – it is a really good discussion, but the formatting of the URL has made it hard to share it. I think it has quote marks in the title, hence in the URL too, and when I tried to automatically link-shorten it in my Twitter app, for example, that didn’t work properly because of that. Don’t know a way around it, I would have expected that the blogging software would have taken out the incompatible characters when generating the page URL from the post title.)
QRG For the record, I didn’t endorse any bullying of you. I tweeted to Steve that I thought his comment was funny, or tweet of the year or whatever it was I said, because at the time, in the context of Steve being renowned for being one of the calmest most laid back people on the Internet, it was. He then responded to me almost immediately saying he felt bad about having said it, and I said something along the lines of “I know, but sometimes you’ve just got to let it out.”
That was the extent of my participation in that episode, and I had no idea until days later that others had then gone on to comment on your sexuality etc etc. When I did realise what had happened I was quite naturally horrified, because anyone who knows me will know that that shit is not my style, and I would never knowingly take part in any kind of sexual bullying. However, by that time it was too late, that boat had sailed so to speak, my name was being bandied about on your blog and on Twitter in the same breath as those who had made those kinds of comments, I was getting messages from your supporters telling me what a shit I was, and after giving it quite considerable thought I decided that yes, in the context of everything that came after, my tweet to Steve, seen as part of the wider whole, could well be seen as part of the ‘ganging up’ and so I had no option but to ‘suck it up’, learn from it, and think more carefully in future about my own online behaviour.
So yes, I do apologise for the part I played in that, but I would just like to reiterate that I in no way endorsed what happened to you.
I have to say though, in light of your experience, I was surprised to then see you shortly afterwards tweeting that Julie Bindel could “Suck. My. Cock”, and I wonder how you reconcile that with your own outrage at and understandable objection to having sexualised insults aimed at you, and how you reconcile it with your comments here re everyone needing to have a rethink about the way they behave online.
Wherein many points are put to QRG and she fails to respond:
https://toomuchtosayformyself.com/2011/02/12/ohhh-helena/#comments
I DON’T ‘report abuse’ on CiF because I’d rather the comments stood and people could see them. What bothers me is the complete bloody inconsistency, when perfectly harmless comments are removed and others are allowed to stand.
Thanks Cath. I accept your apology.
Not sure I totally accept your whole argument as you said on twitter that you’d been ‘catching up’ with what had gone on that day so you would have seen the context of Steve’s tweet. Also as far as I can see he is not ‘mild mannered’. One of the comments by him on his Enemies of Reason Blog to a commenter is and I quote ‘fuck off and die, painfully’.
I think Julie Bindel can suck my dick. Which is not a comment on her sexuality it is a phrase using a sexual member as a metaphor. That is very different. I am not against all references to sexual organs in language! Julie Bindel’s attitude to transgender people and the way she speaks to and about them online as a group and particularly individual trans women is another example of ‘misogyny’ that goes unchallenged by other feminist women.
[The Guardian] do not want feminism to have any kind of a voice there, or if they do allow it, they allow such incredible verbal punishment to the writers that every woman gets the message that feminism is marginal and that it’s open season on feminists.
Very true, and how places like CiF do it is to pretend to adhere to some kind of fairness policy (only removing the most blatant death/rape threats) and allowing the rest to stand – it is the ‘civil’ method, pretending to care but in reality not giving a fuck. It also uses the ‘equality’ and ‘post feminism’ methods against women, by effectively maintaining that we live in a post-feminist era (no more need for feminism) and that women have now achieved equality and are therefore equal to men. Hence they think they can get away with putting an onus onto women/feminists to stop misogyny and hostile environments to women/feminists, to fix the problem. In many ways this method is harder to fight or complain against, because it is sneakier.
I finally found the CiF’s “Community standards and participation guidelines” page, it is buried as a link on the TOS page.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/community-standards
In looking at point 1, it is rubbish to say that CiF police the policies:
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated.
Because every feminist article that Julie Bindel has ever written has loads of comments from the regular misogynists that go along the lines of “yet another feminazi* article about …” (*whilst rarely using the word feminazi, but a variety of synonyms), which is a personal attack and smear against the author. CiF mods let these attacks stand.
Point 3:
We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but we will consider removing any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening.
Here is their get-out-of-jail-free card, that they will “CONSIDER” (it does not actually say they will remove, but only to consider removing). Here they pretend to care about offensive or threatening material (but obviously do not).
Point 5:
We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such.
And it is here that ‘hostility’ is actually allowed towards a group (feminists) but is made invisible as long as the misogynist dresses up the hate in polite-sounding language. Point 4 covers trolling (which is the derailing of threads) and every feminist thread on CiF is derailed by anti-feminist trolls.
At the very least Point 3 could be tightened up to show a definite stance against hatespeech: we will consider removing should be changed to we will remove. Pretty damn simple. Followed by the mods actually putting this into practise.
Finally, without feeding the troll directly, a general comment on trolling: I do find anti-feminist, anti-woman comments extremely boring and plentiful in most places on the internet. Trolls never contribute to the substance of the thread and always derail it. And no, a few token suck-ups to Cath is not considered substance. Derailing feminist discourse is a known tactic of anti-feminists, it stops the progression of the discussion.
Since you’ve now explained your behaviour on THIS thread QRG, can you explain your behaviour on that F word thread? How had that blogger ‘endorsed’ you being ‘bullied’?
Oh polly you’re so diligent but I am not answerable to you as my judge and jury. I don’t even know what you’re talking about!
I hope you have a lovely day.
It is an occupational hazard? Yes, I suppose it is, if by “occupation” you mean “being female”. This sort of shit happens more often in online spaces because it’s easier for them to hide their identity- they don’t have to take responsibility for what they say or how it affects people. That said, if you make your phone number available, you’ll get it down the phone instead (that happens to me as a sex worker- if I say no to a booking, I open up myself to a flood of abuse, up to and including death threats). And as you noted yourself in your article about Lisa Robinson (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/11/lisa-robinson-sexism-women) it also happens just walking around on the street. Sexism is fucking everywhere. I suspect as individuals we end up picking our battles because loudly and clearly fighting it all the time is exhausting. Solidarity.
I think Julie Bindel can suck my dick. Which is not a comment on her sexuality it is a phrase using a sexual member as a metaphor.
No, that is actually misogyny-101 in style, and also outs you as male-born. Not to mention a (claimed to be) 40yo using the handle “girl”.
Directing such a sexist insult to a specific feminist, I actually hope, is the thing that gets QRG banned here. Particularly since this entire post is about the sexist insults that feminists receive on a regular basis.
From QRG’s twitter
“lesbians like cats so are at more risk of catching flea”
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/03/the_tyranny_of_
in case you’ve forgotten QRG. A piece about silencing. Your immediate response is to troll it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/steven-baxter/2011/04/sunday-sport-goodbye-news-crap-2
This is Baxter’s response to me on twitter: ‘No, you dozy piece of shit, of course sex isn’t dirty. Rape porn is, though. Clear? No, of course not. You trolling fuckwit.’
I can’t see any comments about QRG’s sexuality. But she’s quite happy to make lesbophobic remarks herself.
FabLibber – I can’t believe you have ‘outed’ me as ‘male born’!
That is just hilarious! And also totally awesomely ignorant.
“Apparently even David Mitchell, 1950s lesbian chemistry teacher, now uses product. Masculinity is finished”
Another gem from QRG
I love gay porn. I think many lesbians like a bit of cock at least to look at. Even Julie Bindel!
sorry another piece of QRG wit and wisdom>.
So you got sexually bullied by men at the New Statesman (that famous bastion of feminism) and decided to claim they were feminists in order to be able to say that feminists bullied you, QRG. That’s a heck of a stretch.
Dave Allen Green describes himself: “@DavidAllenGreen London
Lawyer, writer, liberal. Legal correspondent of @NewStatesman and media lawyer at @Preiskel. Formerly @jackofkent.”
Steven Baxter’s website http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/about/ – doestn’ claim to be a femnist
“Alex J. Thomas
@AlexJThomas N16, London
VERIFIED A CUNT Also I’m the black guy from @Show_and_prove”
No mention of feminism on Boriswatch’s site either – http://www.boriswatch.co.uk/about/
I’m sorry they did that to you, but you wern’t bullied by feminists, you were bullied by a gang of men who are all well versed in these tactics because that’s how men are taught to treat women.
ok that’s enough QRG lesbophobia, Ed.
QuietRiotGirl’s
“I think Julie Bindel can suck my dick.”
comes from the same place and mentality that this comment did:
“I usually find that stuffing her mouth full of cock usually shuts women like you up.”
If you don’t like what a feminist is saying – threaten her with dick.
QRG is the only person who has used sexually abusive language to another poster on this thread. Is that why she wants to pretend that all the feminists are doing it too?
I politiely request that Cath put a banning policy in place, that will ban ANYONE using sexualised insults rooted in female subordination directed against any individual feminist or group of feminists. The policy should also be extended to those known to use such directed insults in other forums.
Particularly comments that refer to rape, [forced] fellatio as an insult, any other sexual act as an insult (eg anal sex or ATM), reference to the person as a sexualised (female) body part, death/murder, etc. This list is not extensive, but it is a start.
Primarily because this is the crap we get on a daily basis, either as women or as feminists. Such a moderation policy is an important step, particularly for a feminist blog, otherwise, how else can we criticise places like CiF for letting such insults through on their blog, when ‘our’ blogs allow it?
QRG has done such a derogatory sexualised insult towards a well known feminist. I vote for a banning.
If you don’t like what a feminist is saying – threaten her with dick.
That is exactly it Sarah. Both comments are rooted from the same place.
Jane I note from your comment that you said you had a meeting with Chris Elliott yesterday. Any chance you could report back on how that went? (I understand if you can’t, but I’d be interested to hear if possible if you felt you made any progress with him)
Also
How? How can I, as an individual, do that? I’m not a Guardian employee, I’m a freelance writer. I have no contract with the Guardian, so I don’t see, beyond refusing to write for them any more, what exactly it is you think I can do.
I’ve seen a couple of comments like this now, as well as comments suggesting that CiF be somehow held responsible for the way its writers are treated in other fora, and I’m genuinely baffled as to how people think that works. For instance, how can I hold CiF or the Guardian responsible for the comments I quoted above that come from an entirely different website?
I understand that by allowing misogynist comments to stand on CiF the Guardian could be said to be contributing to the hostile environment that exists for women writers across the Internet, but at the same time they can’t surely be expected to police the Internet and protect their writers wherever they get a mention?
Or am I completely misunderstanding what people are saying?
“That’s not what Cath’s post was about. Her post was about vile attacks she’s faced from misogynists because she’s a woman speaking up for women. The *only* people here who want to widen this debate out to “feminists do it too” are you and QRG. The two of you don’t constitute “this debate”, no matter how much you’d like to set yourself up as final arbiter.”
@sarah: I do think this is about debate. And silencing techniques. And dissent. It clearly is: CiF culture, for example, does not have the same standards of moderation/tolerance as some spaces and here we are, discussing what can be done to change that. I don’t think it’s acceptable that sweeping generalisations are regularly used to demean and belittle women (and other groups) on that site, without moderators pointing out (ad nauseam if necessary) that whoever is doing that is guilty of sexism. Warnings given. Temporary bans put in place if warnings are ignored. That, in my opinion anyway, would demonstrate that CiF does not tolerate sexism/racism/homophobia etc. Better than deleting a comment mysteriously.
sarah, this is the internet: me mentioning the way debate and dissent is handled within and without the feminist online community does not preclude anyone else making their points. It is not silencing or working the thread or setting myself up as anything, whatever you say. (And, by the by, maybe the way you’ve portrayed me as some kind of malicious derailer of feminist debate relates to what I’ve been talking about re dissent: disagreement doesn’t have to be responded to with insults/caricature. But it often is.)
FAB Libber I’m already ahead of you. I was hoping QRG would offer some kind of apology or something for that tweet, not some mealy mouthed justification for why it’s ok for her to use misogynist abuse against someone but not ok when others do it to her.
But no, instead all we got was a repetition of the abuse. Well sorry QRG, but fucking shit like
has no place on this blog.
You’ve got what you wanted: you’re banned. Now you can add me to your list of “high profile feminists and writers who have banned me from their blogs.”
Lucy, I agree there’s a legitimate discussion to be had, but I don’t think QRG was interested in having it. She hasn’t (as usual) responded to any of the many points put to her. As Cath says, her aim is to say big meanie feminists have banned here.
Her misogyny and lesbophobia speaks for itself.
as well as comments suggesting that CiF be somehow held responsible for the way its writers are treated in other fora, and I’m genuinely baffled as to how people think that works. For instance, how can I hold CiF or the Guardian responsible for the comments I quoted above that come from an entirely different website?
I was not talking about CiF trying to do a policy like that, specifically feminist blogs having a policy like that. For example, if a regular ‘problem’ commenter here, who sort of toes the line (here) but does not do the outrageous misogynist comments, goes elsewhere like twitter or their own blogs and says stuff like “X can suck my cock” or “X needs a good raping”, then you know what they are about, they deliberately troll these threads to disrupt them for the anti-feminist agenda.
The “free speech” policy is something that is a one way system, they want all the free speech, but wish to silence feminists in one way or another. It’s a tactic.
Polly, I wasn’t talking about QRG: I was talking about the way sarah addressed me and dismissed the points I was making.
Hi Sarah, completely off topic but is there any chance you could email me. My email address can be found by clicking on the ‘contact me’ section at the top of the page.
Thanks.
@ Polly – re preferring to let CiF comments stand, fair enough, but I think life is short and CiF discussions are long and can take a while to load, so clearing out the ones that don’t meet CiF’s own commenting policy and don’t contribute anything useful to the debate would for me make it easier to keep up with the discussion and contribute to it. Plus, I like to help CiF enforce its own stated commenting policy – thanks @ FABLibber for reminding me that “personal attacks” and derailing are also against the policy, exactly, those kind of comments are let slide by the mods.
I head the moderating in DSMO and I’ve been reading this with interest. Firstly I wish to apologise to Cath if some of the comments did offend her, I have no idea why there should be so much vitriol thrown at one person who to be honest I hadn’t even heard of until last week. I would like to point out that the site wasn’t set up to attack women, far from it, there are 2000 odd ” annoyances” or topics that are discussed. David Cameron, for example, gets a lot of criticism as well so I can assure you it’s not a political or sex thing. Granted he doesn’t come in for gender assasination that Cath endured. As we explained to Cath earlier it is impossible to moderate every comment especially when there are hundreds a day. As Cath herself says in this blog above, moderation is difficult and a bit of a dark art. Somebody’s hate speech is someone elses honest opinion and we try to be as fair as possible in discussions allowing things through that perhaps we totally disagree with. I note some critisism of the Guardian’s moderation as well in some of the above comments proving that these things are harder to balance than it might appear. As for our moderation policy we will remove any comment if requested to do so. Many sites like Youtube operate a simlar system and I doubt they would have responded within the 15 minutes that we did. I, for one, will try to watch out for the comments that upset Cath so much, but such is the nature of some people on the internet I feel we can only do our small part to stop the maliciously intent.
Hold on, what’s David Allen Green said?
I, for one, will try to watch out for the comments that upset Cath so much
You completely miss the point when you state ‘the problem’ in such terms. You phrase it as one individual being ‘upset’ by nasty comments. The point you miss is that this type of behaviour and continual attacking is triggering to the majority of women and feminists who read it, because at one time or another, we have all been subject to the sexualised insults. And that is the ‘beauty’ of how the sexualised insults directed at females works. It is exactly the same as hate speech directed at any other group, and a form of revictimisation because it not only affects the individual it was directed at, but members of the same marginalised group.
Please also take a more pro-active approach rather than only relying on reported comments. It must be obvious that certain topics or persons attract this kind of response, so moderate those threads accordingly.
I would like to be proved wrong in my opinion that most males are happy for misogynist attacks to go on, and that it is “too hard” to police such behaviour. My opinion of males would be greatly improved if they would back up their talk with action in such matters. This is the one thing I would be extremely happy to be proven wrong about… really.
Cath, with regards to CiF, what people are saying is that the misogyny there shouldn’t be allowed to stand and that repeat offenders should be banned. If they don’t do that, they are creating a safe space for misogynists and a hostile environment for women.
It’s not that hard to moderate when you hactually have paid moderators. If the Guardian found time to ban me twice on their tiny Talkboards, they certainly must have the resources to police the cesspool of misogyny they’ve created at CiF.
Lucy you said you felt uncomfortable with the way QRG was being treated. You’ve seen, in her own words, her lesbophobia and misogyny on a thread about lesbophobic and misgoynistic abuse. But yet you don’t think it worthy of comment?
I’m not getting aboard the QRG train; me and her have our own tiffs and I don’t feel like unpicking precisely where she’s right or wrong or rude or whatever in this thread, particularly since she is now banned from the thread.
However, I’m inclined to think that some commenters here, sarah particularly, have indulged in quite a bit of guilt by association and treated Lucy Cage quite badly. Past histories over other comment threads are one thing, but jumping on someone who is quite clearly extending a conciliatory tone and attempting to find a middle ground is something else entirely. I think that if Lucy came here to have a conversation and found herself in the middle of a scrap then that’s hardly her fault, and that some people owe her an apology.
What’s key is to gain more acceptance of the radical idea that consistent moderation, no tolerance of hate speech and a safer space ethos are all things that can actually enhance the quality of online discussion much more so than letting the trolls and the inconsiderate run riot. Also, it takes community action to cultivate a good discussion space, to assert the community standards, not solely the designated moderators.
@DMSO it sounds as it was much longer than 15 mins that Cath had to wait to get someone to realise that the comments attacking her were so vicious and unacceptable. If your site is specifically for venting about people, then while it’s good that you aim to keep hate speech and the like out I think you must have your work cut out!
Sorry, DSMO not DMSO
but jumping on someone who is quite clearly extending a conciliatory tone and attempting to find a middle ground is something else entirely.
Good grief McDuff. You say this shit after the troll has been banned, and the person who was continually (and annoyingly) defending said troll was dealt with fairly civilly, given the annoyance factor and who further emboldened the troll, and the people who called this out should apologise? Stop trying to guilt-trip feminists one way or another, because that is what you are doing.
some people owe her an apology
For what? Expecting her to behave consistently?
Lucy said she felt uncomfortable with the way people were treating QRG, but has not commented on QRG’s own behaviour as far as I can see.
I am not trying to “guilt trip feminists.” Looking upwards, the population of this comment thread appears to be made of several individuals, with the majority identifying as some flavour of feminist. If I were out to crash that party, I wouldn’t have picked a side against the other.
My point, to reiterate, was that Lucy was not “continually and annoyingly emboldening the troll,” she was having a conversation. It happened to be that she was picking up points from QRG while other people were carrying on the QRG Show Episode 3623 scene 4. I think it’s neither fair nor polite to expect someone new to your personal troubles to a) understand entirely the depth of your frustrations with a person or b) immediately go “oh OK, so she’s a troll, therefore I will discard the point that I gleaned from her writing and immediately join your side of the conversation.”
Reading Lucy’s posts, I really don’t see any justification for the accusations of “siding with trolls” or any of that. And there’s a wealth of meaning buried in the “fairly” of “fairly civilly.” People have been far ruder to her than her posts merit, and I cannot help but wonder if it is because they have placed her into the “QRG’s side” box rather than treating her as an individual.
People have been far ruder to her than her posts merit, and I cannot help but wonder if it is because they have placed her into the “QRG’s side
Well maybe that’s because she showed bias towards QRG?
McDuff what is your response to the substance of Cath’s post?
This derailment is *tiresome*
What “bias” there was seemed to me more down to being a newcomer to an ongoing argy-bargy and witnessing a pile-on than in being biased towards any views that were particularly offensive or unjustifiable. If someone takes steps to say “I don’t agree with everything that’s been said but I think there are some points worth extracting” it’s plainly ridiculous to say “you are on the troll’s side unless you join us in denouncing her entirely.” Not only is it pointlessly purist, it’s purist about something totally inconsequential.
If she is a troll seeking to sow discord she’s done a remarkably good job at setting people who would otherwise agree and have civil conversations against one another.
Sarah,
My response to the substance of Cath’s post is to say “yes, that is awful.” I have nothing much more to add that wouldn’t be repetitive or too long for a comment thread.
However, one of the things about threads is that they move on and go places. I’m not continuing the argument about whether feminist fights about transgender issues or sex work are “the same as” misogynistic threats of violence because I think it is a silly argument to be having in the first place, from both sides. Of course they are not “the same,” even if there are aspects of one which cannot be said to be totally dissimilar to aspects of the other.
But while QRG has a tendency to overblow things, but what she overblows have their roots in real issues, and I think comparing the response to Bindel’s comments on transgendered individuals to similar responses to sexism is informative for pointing out that there is still a lot of privilege within the mainstream of leftwing feminism. It’s not of the same order of magnitude as the impact of a gender-normative culture which normalises violence as a positive masculine trait, but nor is it something to be easily dismissed. Particularly, I think, it is entirely inappropriate for a straight cis woman to tell a transwoman or a sex worker that if she feels embattled by the discourse of certain feminists that she’s mistaken about her own feelings, just as it it inappropriate for men to tell women that they should just “suck it up” and learn to live with misogyny in our culture. That’s the very definition of a privileged response, and now that the particular Pandora’s box is open and other people have been discussing it I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have an opinion on it without it being “derailing.” Particularly since Cath Elliott herself has already come in once to explicitly state that posts following a train of discussion that may not directly pertain to the OP but move off in response to some tangent are OK. Since it is her blog, I shall take it as read that until she comes and says otherwise that her opinion as to what is or is not “derailing” counts for something.
Further, whether other people in a thread are being aggressive and rude towards someone is one of those posts which is always appropriate, in my opinion. Since you’re one of the ones who I felt was particularly snide towards Lucy for especially unjustified reasons I can understand why you’d wish to dig your heels in on this, but that doesn’t bother me none. What I saw was an ongoing fight between people with a history, and someone who came in and tried to pick through a middle ground, at which point one side turned on her. That side was not QRG. Of those who turned on her, I found your tone the most dismissive. You may not have wanted to broaden the conversation, but the way you explained this to Lucy was unjustifiably rude and personal.
You may, of course, feel that my opinion counts for exactly fuck-all, and of course it presents no obligation upon you whatsoever to act and to change. I am, however, calling it just as I see it.
Cath,
I’m going to write an update on Women’s Views on News about the meeting shortly. I will mail you my notes.
I hold Comment is Free responsible for its own standards, and for making a big contribution to the acceptability of misogyny on the net. As Sarah says, whether the comment it considers appropriate is in or outside the community standards is irrelevant. The word used to describe it is irrelevant also, it is used to distract – misogynist, sexist, offensive.
The comment is consciously hostile to women and men who are not of a partisan view. It creates an unwelcome environment and, the doors not being locked, it is sufficient to ensure those women and men are elsewhere.
The Guardian knows this and does nothing. It has handed its powerful online voice over to ‘anti-women’* opinion. I don’t know why it considers the rights of the small group of individuals that are responsible for this more important than their commitment to the marginalised voices – not just women but they are the biggest targets – that are now under attack on CiF. Natalie talks about encouraging women whilst ignoring five years of reality on the site. I am not able to make her speak candidly but you can.
(* For want of another descriptive word that does not distract.)
You have the power of your audience, it is female and the Guardian needs it. All the time you are legitimizing Comment is Free, they can call it “perceived” misogyny and we are all still hysterical.
Oh, and to reiterate, this is nothing to do with whether QRG was right to say that Julie Bindel should suck her dick and nothing to do with any defense of other points she may or may not have made in other comment threads in the past. I am sure that the both of us would like to have as little of the other’s collection of online opinions attributed to the other as possible. I’ll extend my defense to points I have made, not to points someone else made at some point in another thread.
tl;dr McDuff.
If you aren’t intereted in commenting on some males’ sexually violent bullying towards women on the internet and feminists in particular, there’s nothing for me to address.
And if you’re not interested in justifying why you were so rude to another commenter on this thread then I can only leave with my opinion of you confirmed. Which is unfortunate, since I do not like to think ill of people.
Jane
Okay, I’m beginning to get where you’re coming from now. I need to give this some thought, but thanks for clarifying.
If you aren’t interested in commenting on some males’ sexually violent bullying towards women on the internet and feminists in particular, there’s nothing for me to address.
Let’s also talk about sexual politics and how it manifests itself in some random bloke coming to a blog and demanding that a woman justifies her behaviour to him, lest he think ill of her. Men who do that know that for quite a few woman, given how important male approval is to our survival, their instinct will be to back down and apologise, desperate to be back in the male’s good books. And of course if she doesn’t back down he can be secure in the knowledge that there are plenty of other men out there happy to mete out the punishment for being an uppity woman.
“misogyny there shouldn’t be allowed to stand and that repeat offenders should be banned. If they don’t do that, they are creating a safe space for misogynists and a hostile environment for women.”
That’s it, in a nutshell. And you are right,it isn’t hard to police.
It will empty the threads for a while. They have to do it eventually, they should bite the bullet while online advertising revenue isn’t critical.
It isn’t that hard to police.
McDuff, the “play nicely” and “be laydeelike” thing is something feminists have been hearing for decades/centuries. Somehow, because we are female we are expected to behave in an exemplary manner at all times, no matter what crap and violence comes our way. Generally, women have been “playing nicely” for centuries, and that strategy just allows things to continue as they always have.
So your advice, and your opinion on the matter, highly irrelevant, and bordering on the offensive.
Particularly as you describe yourself:
I, personally, am a white, cisgendered, straight male. I, personally, am a feminist.
I already knew you were a male, probably a white male, by the entitlement you had coming here and telling feminists to “be nice and apologise”. I just wanted to confirm my suspicions by visiting your LJ. If you seriously are “a feminist” (you can only be a pro-feminist btw) then you should actually know that as a member of the oppressors, whether you choose to oppress or not, it is highly offensive to the oppressed to throw your weight around and tell them what to do. I suspect you are just another lefty dude, who thinks he can call himself a feminist, and business-as-usual.
And, you have also succeeded in derailing the thread once again. Congrats.
Sarah
I am not trying to shame you for being a woman, I am not trying to shame you for being uppity, I am not telling you you cannot have an opinion or that you should get back in the kitchen.
I am saying that, without any obligation for you to take my words as being from anyone except another person, that you were rude to another woman – another feminist – whose crime was to try to hoe a middle row in a conversation and to be unjustifiably lumped in with one side by the other, even after she expressly made it clear that is not what she was trying to do.
Some women, despite being feminists, can be rude. Some men, despite being men, can notice that. I don’t expect you to crave my approval. My approval is not the point. I would hope that you wouldn’t jump down a fellow feminist’s throat because she happens to say that she sees some merit in part of an argument when you have a beef with the author of said argument. That is the point. If you don’t think you were rude to her then there is very little I can do about it. I don’t think that my gender has an impact on how rude you were, though.
Cross-posted with Sarah (3:37), that’s it exactly Sarah. Covert threat for male approval.
Goodness, I can “only” be a pro-feminist? Glad you pointed that out. I’ll be sure to tell all my female friends who bought their boyfriends those “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts to take them back.
Also, I have male privilege, but that makes me at best a member of an oppressing class, not “a member of the oppressors”. It’s a little grammatical thing but it does make a world of difference. I can’t change my gender and I can’t change the cultural construction of my race or masculinity. You, however, can not be rude to people. The one has little connection to the other.
Also, since people didn’t seem that keen on listening to Lucy herself when she was in the thread, I’m not really taking the whole “you should not criticise us because you are a man” thing very seriously. Had the words I written come from a black, Swedish lesbian, would that be “throwing weight around”? I have no weight. I am a new guy, an outside lurker who just happened to read a comment thread and offer my opinion. You don’t have to listen to me because I am a man. You don’t have to listen to me at all. My opinion is that some people were unjustifiably rude to someone else. My gender doesn’t make me right. Nor, though, does it make me wrong. It is irrelevant to the point.
If, as Polly has said, the fact that Lucy was in some sense “biased” towards QRG justifies how everyone in the thread ganged up on her, then so be it. Doesn’t seem so to me. But then, I am a man, so I might not be able to wrap my head around the concepts, do you think?
“covert threat”?
Well. That’s interesting.
To make it absolutely clear, I did not intend to threaten anyone either openly or covertly, neither explicitly nor implicitly. I am not entirely sure how I managed it, to be honest. If you were rude, that’s not anything I can do anything about. I’m just saying what my opinion is.
whatevs McDuff.
You obviously read or had read at QRG more than you did here, so your creds are a little light.
Anyway, I am busy with other stuff at the moment, so do not take that as I have backed down on my position.
I think there are a lot of men who like to shut down women’s discussions, either by overt hostility, nitpicking and criticism and just plain pestering and getting in the way.
General question (NOT directed at McDuff, let me make that clear):
Is there some general internet theory that when one troll goes, another will take its place? Like some sort of troll vacuum?
Firstly I’ve come to the party late but just wanted to offer sympathy and support to you Cath for the awful harassment you’ve been subjected too. I frequently report abuse on CIF but I could honestly spend all day doing it and I do have a life to live. I think CIF is indicative of real life in general regarding sexism and misogyny. And it’s not hard to police if that’s the position one is assigned too.
I noticed in my brief couple of hours outing yesterday to a country park and the local town park several incidents of sexism and misogyny that shocked me. I was in charge of three lovely children, all boys, and my heart sank that they too will grow up in a peer group that treats women with such contempt. There is just so little lack of respect and decency now. I’m a socialist but for me manners maketh the person – which is one quote I discussed with the children on the way home.
I know many middle aged woman (I’m one) who are very visible and well liked in their community.
Keep up the excellent work Cath.
FAB Libber
You are more than welcome to ask QRG her opinion of me. As far as credentials go, I have none. Why is that relevant? What part of “I am an outsider and my opinion is that you were rude to another outsider” requires credentials?
Sarah
There are indeed a lot of men like that. In my case, I saw one woman trying to start a conversation and being shut down by some other women. Not that it was much to do with gender in any case, but my criticism would have been entirely unfounded had you not been rude to Lucy and pretty much made it clear that unless she agreed with you about QRG that she was not welcome.
People have shut down conversations in this thread, but you can rest assured that I have no desire to be one of them.
I’d still like to talk about sexual politics and men’s concerted efforts to keep women silent and out of the public sphere except in very limited ways.
I’d like to add my support for Cath’s writing and activism: I always look forward to your blog posts and articles. The only silver lining that I can see from the relentless internet misogyny you and other feminists are subjected to online is that more women (who are not willfully blind to patriarchy) realise that Germaine Greer was right: “women have no idea how much men hate them”.
What were we saying about trolls? Over at QRG’s whinefest about how she got banned from here:
“mcduff says:
April 22, 2011 at 3:29 pm
There are certainly aspects of mainstream feminism that I think need to be disrupted”
I was too polite before McDuff – if you had a good opinion of me I’d know absolutely I was doing feminism wrong. Men like you are the reason why I became a feminist, after all.
Sarah, thanks for the head’s up on that, I just knew there was something fishy about McDuff (on his LJ he had prior to this linked to QRG).
He is over at QRG making nice. Frankly, she is welcome to have him.
Actually, McDuff sort of proved the case of someone being disruptive (threadwise) on a feminist blog, but playing nicey. Then lo and behold, you see them cozy up with the trolls and enemies. This is one reason I do not take ‘requests’ to ‘play nice’ terribly seriously, esp when coming from a male.
I could not have produced such a perfect example of this type of behaviour. So a backhanded thanks to McDuff.
quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/when-the-going-gets-tough/
“Lucy you said you felt uncomfortable with the way QRG was being treated. You’ve seen, in her own words, her lesbophobia and misogyny on a thread about lesbophobic and misgoynistic abuse. But yet you don’t think it worthy of comment?”
“Lucy said she felt uncomfortable with the way people were treating QRG, but has not commented on QRG’s own behaviour as far as I can see.”
@Polly: I have been quite clear about where and when I disagreed with QRG. I still don’t consider her a troll (the music boards where I usually comment should be so lucky to have such a relatively measured troll), even though I can see her persistence annoys people considerably, and I do still think that her arguments have been misrepresented to some extent. That’s just my opinion.
She has been clearly anti-feminist and I took issue to that strongly at the time and I would again. Any personal abuse is not OK with me either, as I have also stated before: it doesn’t help anyone’s case.
“Well maybe that’s because she showed bias towards QRG?”
Bias? I’d never heard of QRG before reading this post: how can I be biased? Is any disagreement going to be called bias from now on? I don’t agree with the main thrust of QRG’s anti-feminist argument but I expressed by discomfort about how I felt she was being portrayed. Is that bias? Should I have joined in the chorus of disapproval instead? Is that really derailment not to do that? Does that make me” the enemy”, if McDuff is apparently “cozy(ing) up with the trolls and enemies” by suggesting that I was being treated rather harshly? Wow.
By the way, I’m pretty horrified that a man A. can’t be a feminist (never heard that before: I thought a feminist was anyone who supported and worked towards achieving the goals of feminism) and B. could be accused of covert threat for suggesting some people on this threat were being rude.
“We disagree on the major issue of whether or not women are structurally at a disadvantage in society. So all our arguments are in the context of that major disagreement. I don’t expect to agree with you often, due to that major difference in our viewpoints. I don’t expect to persuade you of my point of view either.”
Quiet Riot Girl, re: Me, on the thread you guys linked to.
“p.s. you are MUCH MUCH more whiny than me you really are. I can’t bear your whining but I don’t block you because I am not a WANKER.”
Quiet Riot Girl, re: Me, on a thread last week.
So, y’know, “cozying up”, perhaps not so much. As for things in mainstream feminism needing disruption, damn fucking right there are: as long as cis-privilege (like Bindel’s) can be dismissed easily by those within the feminist mainstream as not something to worry about, there are absolutely things that need altering, and radically. I consider myself a feminist (since it’s not a treehouse and I use Lucy’s definition rather than FAB’s) but I know plenty of women who cannot tolerate the thought of being considered one – not because they want women to go back into the kitchen but because figuring out who is a “bad” woman and who can be let into the club makes them want to poke their own eyes out with spoons. Now, apparently, I can’t even be one either.
But all this reiterates what I was saying over the other side. This kind of “you can’t join our equality club, you’re not pure enough in your hatred of those we disapprove of” stuff is rubbish, but it’s also not what “feminism” is about for me or for a lot of other people. You’re welcome to it, but it’s not going to keep me up of a night or send me over to the QRG “all feminists are bitches and wankers” side of the fence – I’ve got too many feminist friends (not *one* of whom has ever said that I’m not allowed to be one) to let something like this affect my judgement of the movement as a whole. It’s just a little bit of cliqueiness in an otherwise pretty open and accepting movement.
I’m so not interested.
Ooh, the b/s alarm on my laptop just went off. That usually means someone on my blog’s used the term ‘cis-privilege’…..
Lucy by bias I mean you said you were uncomfortable with the way QRG was being treated but not critical of her treatment of others. Specifically Julie Bindel who she told an outright lie about – a lie I challenged her on.
But then, I am a man, so I might not be able to wrap my head around the concepts, do you think?
Are you saying men are intellectually inferior McDuff? If not, I don’t see why you couldn’t understand the concepts.
@Polly: I see, thanks for the explanation, although I’d certainly dispute that my discomfort about the behaviour of QRG’s critics would lead to my being uncritical of her own behaviour or biased in favour of her arguments, especially since I said many times where I disagreed with her.
I am also uncomfortable, by the way, about McDuff’s treatment on this thread. I’m kind of staggered that his point was utterly turned against him and he was told that he was offensive, throwing his weight around, trolling and being disruptive. I don’t think he was ! Is there no-one else on here who agrees about that? I’m genuinely interested to know because he seemed to me to be being reasonable.
Cath,
Now I’m genuinely curious. Privilege as I understand the concept is the circumstance, and resultant behaviour, that a majority or favoured minority get purely on the basis of their cultural status. One can have privilege from wealth or race or gender or sexual orientation or surname. One of the hallmarks of the behaviours that accompany it, generally, is that you don’t know you’re doing it, and thus find it easy to blunder into it.
Nothing about that suggests to me that those who are not transgendered can’t be considered privileged in comparison to those who are. Particularly given that transsexuals are a particularly maligned and criticised, and easily misunderstood, minority, and one at a particularly high risk of physical and emotional violence at that. As I’ve said before, non-transgendered people telling those who are that they are wrong to feel threatened, insulted or simply put out by the environment created by a particular kind of discourse seems broadly equivalent with the process of men telling women to “lighten up” about misogyny or whites telling PoCs that they’re taking this “casual racism” thing way too seriously. It fits into the category of privileged behaviours pretty neatly, by my reckoning.
So, I’m curious. Is the objection to the term based on the notion that transsexuals are not the kind of minority for whom the normal constructions of privilege apply, such that it’s plainly impossible for non-transgendered people to be considered relatively privileged, or on some other criteria which I have not thought of?
(FWIW, I actually think the prefix “cis” is stupid-looking, but it appears to be here to stay and there’s little else in the language which can do the job. If the objection is one of aesthetics I shall understand completely, but I don’t believe it affects the underlying point a very great deal.)
The idea that men can identify as pro-feminist rather than feminist is a perfectly valid political idea and has nothing to do with cliqueiness, but about keeping a critical perspective about what men’s role and contribution should be in women’s struggle against a system that functions to benefit men. The nature of male privilege, like any societal privilege, is that those with it are the least able to perceive it. That fact alone means that it behooves pro-feminist men to be mindful of how they participate in women’s struggle, when part of women’s struggle is to fight for themselves out from under the shadow of male societal power.
Macduff coming in & lecturing commenters here about not being polite enough & telling them how they should & shouldn’t react was damn patronising and unwarranted – and unwarranted. As a feminist or feminist ally the best thing you can do in situations like this is stay out of it. Yes, the conflict and tensions in this thread are messy and people are angry and hurt. But replicating the pattern of a man stepping in to sort out some women, however well intentioned, just cannot help but be a sexist act – the dynamics of that are inherently sexist.
How you identify politically is solely up to you MacDuff. No one here can stop you feeling and acting like you are a feminist. Being an ally to women against a system stacked against them is not something that hinges on how you label yourself – it’s how you support women when they come up against the system and come up against oppressive treatment, and the actions you take to undermine the system,
QRG winds people up, gets a rise out of them and leaves this kind of friction and tension in her wake. It’s near impossible to actually discuss anything with her in a feminist space because she strongly disagrees with the most fundamental premises of feminism (generally the very fact that gender oppression and inequality exist s or that it is a problem to be taken on, and that women can & should resist it and strive for equality and liberation), and just turns up to dispute those premises, and be anti-feminist. Which makes it hard for a discussion to get anywhere once it gets diverted on to countering her arguments. And while intersectionality, the politics of the sex industry, and trans* inclusiveness are all important, necessary and ongoing discussions to have within feminism, they won’t actually be constructively furthered much in a debate with QRG – from what I’ve
seen so far at least of discussion threads that she has participated in..
I think I meant that repetition of “unwarranted” to be be “unasked” or “unwanted”. Blame it being 1am & typing on a phone.
(This is nothing to do with QRG now, btw.)
“Macduff coming in & lecturing commenters here about not being polite enough & telling them how they should & shouldn’t react was damn patronising and unwarranted – and unwarranted. As a feminist or feminist ally the best thing you can do in situations like this is stay out of it.”
He didn’t lecture, nor was he patronising: he was respectful and measured.
How would a woman writing exactly the post, word for word, have been responded to?
The message I am getting from you is that men can neither criticise nor support women in online debates: either will see them dismissed as replicating sexist dynamics. It’s pretty bloody sad. I’m genuinely shocked no-one else here thinks so.
(Just in case, this isn’t a whataboutthemen whine. Nor does it equate societal misogyny with either internet bad manners or the understandable wariness of radical feminists when men enter a feminist debate. Or suggest anywhere that the dismissal of another poster’s opinions – or right to comment at all – is either the slightest bit unusual on internet forums or similar in scale or nature to the graphic and sustained misogynist attacks that women writing about feminism on the internet can experience.)
Cis* is a great little word – it simply decentres the experience of never feeling a need to change one’s physical sex, so that we do not fall back on the idea that there are trans* people and then there are “normal” people, it gives us equal, related terms with which to label our relationship with our sexed bodies. Trans* people have made or are on a journey, cis people have stayed where they are.(Of course the journey is social as well as embodied, or may not be both, and there is trans* as an umbrella term that encompasses a wider group of people than those that change from living in one sex to living in another, not to mention the inevitable falling down the whole sex/gender rabbithole of language and meaning, and situating and intesersecting all this in relation to feminism and the fact that gender is a power relationship not just a binary, is a complicated challenge)
I’m well aware of QRG’s tactics in comment threads. Her and I have butted heads on more than one occasion. My beef was not with people’s response to her conduct or to her banning – she’s been banned from more places than this and often with what I consider pretty decent cause. Indeed one of the reasons I check out threads like this is because she tweets “Oh no another group of feminists has banned me the fascist wankers” and I’m always curious to see what she’s missing out of her story.
My cause for jumping in here was that I could see someone getting clobbered for standing too near to QRG. Even though Lucy spent several posts upthread criticising her positions, some posters still decided that Lucy was insufficiently anti-QRG and this made her effectively biased towards her; a kind of “if you don’t support the invasion of Iraq that makes you Pro-Saddam” kind of snideness. It wasn’t fair, and it wouldn’t have been fair in any combination of genders. It wasn’t an attempt to lecture anyone, more expressing shock at what seemed to me to be just plain rudeness.
Given QRG’s track record, it was actually kind of weird to read the responses to Lucy and think “you know, for once Elly’s *not* the most unreasonable person in the thread.” Especially given as I came here genuinely expecting the opposite to be true. It takes some doing.
I can certainly understand how dealing with frustrating characters online can give one a kind of tunnel-vision when it comes to dealing with them, but I don’t think it’s fair to apply the same level of aggression towards anyone who might become tangentially entangled with them, and I think it’s valid for people to point out that taking out trolls is not something that needs to inflict collateral damage.
If you think that’s the kind of thing that I shouldn’t point out because I’m a man and as a “feminist ally” it’s my job to shut up and agree with feminists whatever’s happening or whatever, I can’t help but disagree. Those facts are incidental. I could be a zebra and you could all be polar bears for all the difference it would make. If the kind of feminism you subscribe to puts inter-gender politics above considerations of basic fairness I’d suggest, politely, that you might have it backwards.
I also agree that “cis” is a perfectly good, useful and functional piece of terminology. I just have a purely irrational aesthetic dislike of those three characters in that order. “cis”. Meh. My only complaint about it is that it’s not pretty.
Given the damn fine description of the necessary job done by the word in establishing an alternative to the othering of trans-identified people, would you agree that the concept of “cis-privilege” (see? what a terrible way to have to go about writing such a perfectly useful term) is bullshit, as Cath seemed to suggest? It seems to me that if you have as axiomatic that a) trans people should not be othered in our society and b) that they very often are, on a deep cultural level, the process by which this othering takes place seems to align very closely with whatever would be reasonably covered by a common sense understanding of the term “cis-privilege”.
I’m not saying that you have to defend or agree with everything Cath says. Just wondering if you can enlighten me as to what I might have missed about the politics of that particular phrase.
@ Lucy – yes, he was condescending from the get go
From McDuff’s first comment on this thread:
“I think that if Lucy came here to have a conversation and found herself in the middle of a scrap then that’s hardly her fault, and that some people owe her an apology.”
and the fourth or so
“if you’re not interested in justifying why you were so rude to another commenter on this thread then I can only leave with my opinion of you confirmed. Which is unfortunate, since I do not like to think ill of people.”
His pointing out that your perceptions of and reactions to how people were responding to QRG were understandable from anyone coming brand new into “the QRG Show Episode 3623 scene 4”, is something I entirely agree with and on its own would have been a useful contribution. Him from the get go issuing commands to in effect “apologise and play nicely” is why he got angry and impatient reactions. The parent/teacher-to-children overtones of this are breathtaking. A woman saying the same thing to fellow women is still employing the “tone” argument and all that’s problematic about that (focussing on the way that the angry person is expressing themselves and away from the reasons for their anger, thereby minimising those reasons), but the dynamics are a great deal different.
sarah and FABLibber also explained some of why this was, on the same lines that I have, e.g. “Let’s also talk about sexual politics and how it manifests itself in some random bloke coming to a blog and demanding that a woman justifies her behaviour to him, lest he think ill of her.”
McDuff got huffy at being asked to consider this and kept digging and mansplaining, and trying to use his feminist credentials as a back up for why he was entirely right. Which is not a great use of one’s feminist principles, especially by a man.
Yes, men wishing to be supportive of womens struggles need to be especially mindful of their privilege and their socialisation and in general take a backseat. Any person who has privilege in relation to another group of people who are oppressed in relation to them cannot help but be stomping around in ginormous boots of privilege and socialised sense of entitlement, however unintentional, when they come into the spaces and struggles of the oppressed group, so are especially prone to getting in the way and treading on toes. This isn’t saying McDuff should “shut up and agree with feminists whatever” but to let women get on with things themselves and have some kind of clue about the dynamics of a man telling women what to do, or to react with some consideration when it’s pointed out to him.
Again, the problem wasn’t him trying to stand up for you as someone unaware of the context of some of the conflicts arising in this thread, it was the way he threw his male privilege weight around in doing so. Men are used to being listened to and let speak (and also tend to interrupt) simply because they are men, because most figures of authority in our society are male, and that plays into how individual men interact with women and with people who are “other” than them in other respects too. This is a big problem with spaces like CiF of course.
@ McDuff, cis privilege is certainly an essential and useful concept. As cis people we do not have the perspective or experiences that trans people have over their own struggle for rights and fair treatment, and should take a back seat in that respect and take care in how we talk to, for and about them in order not to be massively clueless, oppressive and obstructive.
However, the idea of cis privilege is often one of a bunch of things deployed a kind of effort to undermine and dismiss feminism, whereby feminism is portrayed as centering on white, middle-class cis women, and therefore it is implied that it’s flawed and less worth paying heed to. So we lose sight of the fundamental oppression of women as women. No woman as a woman has privilege – class woman is inherently the oppressed class in the gender hierarchy. Individual people who are women will also however have societal privilege in other ways, thanks to being white, straight, cis, temporarily able-bodied, neurotypical, and so on. Of course its a problem that white cis middle class straight people in the feminist movement are those that get most attention and more of a voice, will be used to being heard and paid attention to and can often assume leader-type roles, and it’s fundamental that feminism works to destabilise these social hierarchies too, but white straight cis middle class people dominate this way in most social justice movements, by virtue of the advantages their privileges have given them and the social biases in their favour.
There’s nothing wrong with and plenty necessary for a movement that focusses on the liberation of women.
Just wanted to wade in…
mcduff has in the past repeatedly challenged and been repeatedly insulted by qrg so i dont think it is fair to accuse him of cozying up to her, becauseit isnt true in my opinion. i think it is important that we understand how some of us (me for example!) have had seemingly endless experience of qrg derailing and trolling and making the story about her, but not everyone has that context and perhaps this has caused some of the debate?
like cath, i was embroiled in that new statesman row, we both laughed at steves tweet and neither of us realised that sexual insults were being thrown at qrg, but found ourselves grouped with those who were making sexual insults. i apologised for my part in that row. i was shocked then by the ‘suck my cock’ comment and qrg’s 101 wankers list, both using sexual insults to degrade/silence those she disagrees with. its online bullying, p re and simple, and the comments on the 101 thread also used ugly sexual insults against women.
in terms of cif, i was horrifed by the attitude that women should push on through the barrage of misogyny as if we are somehow the ones responsible, i cant imagine that being said to another group. i barely read cif now. but this is common across all left leaning websites in my experience, inc new statesman and liberal conspiracy. the sexism of commenters on the latter site is awful. why is certain parts of the left leaning media so frightened of looking qt or thinking about, for eg, violence against women?
Women as a class includes trans women (but not trans people who aren’t women of course).
Another factor at play in the quite subtle anti-feminism I’m trying to describe is a presumption that women should be directing their energy into and taking care of all anti-oppression movements, making social justice work into another kind of “women’s work”. Processing and overcoming the dynamics and tensions thrown up intersectionality should of course be central to any social justice movement, because fighting one kind of oppression while reinforcing another is self-defeating. But sometimes there’s an overtone of guilt-tripping feminist women for concentrating their energy on women’s oppression.
Do you what is unfair? Derailing a thread about organised online male abuse of women/feminists, in order to complain “You’re being unfair to McDuff”, “you’re being unfair to Lucy”, “you’re being unfair to QRG” . It’s ridiculous. It does work however to keep the focus off organised online male abuse of women/feminists. I said already – who benefits from that?
sarah, not sure if yr last comment was directed at me? in case it was, i was trying to say that i didnt think it was accurate to say mcduff was cozying up to qrg, as he has often challenged her, as we have here ,on other threads. it wasnt intended to derail, which is why i talked about the issues of online bullying and the frequent, overwhelming misogyny i have experienced on lefty websites. often find that on lefty websites you get a lot of arrogant and concern trolls. they wrgue over semantics and stat sources, derailing with what aboutry, or flat out denying a problem exists, eg fgm and trafficking. it is less overtly aggresive, but just as misogynist.
i would never deny or try to derail a discussion about organised misogynistic bullying. i think it is vital we talk about it and share our experiences of it, because just like street harassment, if we dont talk about it and talk about it loudly, ppl can ignore it, or tell you ‘its just meanies’ and not recognise that this is something widespread, destructive and something many women deal with every day. as you say, this is organised and fairly accepted, and i hope by speaking out about it, together we can expose and fight it.
It’s directed at this whole ridiculous dynamic Sianuska – QRG using the attacks on Cath as her own vehicle to have a pop at feminists (even though it wasn’t feminists who were attacking her, it was lefty blokes, who are normally right up there in the misogyny stakes), Lucy insisting that QRG was making fair points and that QRG was being “unfairly” treated, then McDuff showing up and acknowledging almost immediately that he had nothing to add to the substance of the conversation but instead demanding apologies and saying Lucy was being unfairly treated, Lucy then returning the favour for McDuff. Then you adding your commentary on the “unfairness”, although yes you did add to the actual conversation too.
There are a myriad of ways to keep the focus off male oppression of women. Outright vicious attacks are one. Liberal whining and refusing to stick to the point turns out to be another.
Also any feminist who thinks it’s OK for a man to break into a conversation, which he plans to add nothing to, and start demanding apologies from women, because he’s set himself up as a judge of their behaviour, does need to think harder about sexual politics and how they operate.
You’re one of the best writers around, Cath. Really hope you’re okay.
@sarah: this is the internet; it’s not a meeting room or a parliamentary debate or a round-table discussion. There are no bounds on the debate made by physical presence or time constraints or loudness of voice or numbers of participants. If people are interested in something they will talk about it, and anyone else can STILL talk about anything else they want to talk about. Yes, there are nuances to do with one’s sense of entitlement and so on, but generally speaking, if no-one is interested the sub-thread will tail off. You are just as responsible for the continuation of this particular subject as everyone else who is participating in and contributing to the discussion. MariaS obviously thinks it’s worth continuing to debate, because she has written a long, considered and beautifully articulate reply, for which I am grateful. Is she derailing the main topic for doing so?
I think this is an important subject, because I, like all of us here I imagine, am actively engaged in debate on the internet and am interested in how disagreement is responded to. In CiF’s case, it is often a torrent of abuse from women-haters. In other, more co-ordinated attacks, dissent from the status quo is met with vicious misogynist abuse of the kind Cath sustained, designed to intimidate and silence and mock.
Here, disagreement seems to be met with arguments about entitlement to speak at all, which is something I’m more used to encountering from sexist bores on male-dominated sites. The “get all huffy” line is regularly used to silence women: it makes me flinch. Likewise being told one is nit-picking or being tiresome or derailing because something YOU think is important is getting dismissed: all stuff I usually encounter from men on the wider net.
I cannot see how McDuff could have made the points he made, in what language he could have spoken, without being accused of weighing in where he didn’t belong; the language used to describe his participation (“throwing his weight around”, “issuing commands”, “stomping around”, “huffy”, “mansplaining”) are only being used because you think he has a penis. It’s a crap way of going about things, in my opinion, not as monumentally, systemically, politically crap as when other people dismiss women’s participation because they think women are possessed of the wrong genitalia, but pretty crap all the same. Especially so when you take into account the complexities of gender/sexuality/genitalia that exist in the world: where debates conducted via the medium of text are concerned, I’d rather unpick someone’s reasoning than try to determine first how entitled they are to speak according to their place in the kyriachy.
Now, I’m not going to make QRG’s mistake and deduce from this that feminists are equivalent to sexist men in the way they behave (different order of thing and different order of magnitude), just that when she comes along to blogs and boards and drops her “feminists silence people too” bomb into the mix, the subsequent debate would seem to illustrate what she is talking about beautifully. I wish it wasn’t the case, and I’ve been pretty miserable to see how things have gone here, but it does seem to be something about the nature of online debate that some people feel they are guardians of what is or is not allowable to say, and anyone who doesn’t toe that line can be dismissed, with varying degrees of civility.
PS: To reinterate again, least there be more misunderstanding/misrepresentation: what I say about the dynamics of the debate here and elsewhere does not mean I am equating the way some feminists debate with systematic misogyny. I am not QRG!
Still derailing Lucy. If you can derail, I can certainly continue to point it out. This is the internet, not a round table discussion – I can point out the tactics of the derailers and the people who want to keep the focus off of organised male abuse of women, and whine instead about how “feminists to it too” (we don’t).
Is there some kind of school for liberal lecturing where people are taught how to deliver these pieces of pointless sanctimony?
Pointing it out is participating in its continuation.
No, sarah, I do not want to “keep the focus off of organised male abuse of women” and it is incredibly insulting to me that you should assert that I do. Why on earth would I want that?
I am not whining, I am speaking. Please don’t use that tone argument against me.
I am not saying “feminists do it too”, I am saying some women, some of whom identify as feminists, participate in ordinary internet behaviour and tactics towards people whose arguments they disagree with. As you are doing now. And indeed as you believe I am doing to you.
As for your proprietorial use of “we” to denote feminists, you don’t speak for all feminists, anymore than I do.
This (“some women, some of whom identify as feminists, participate in ordinary internet behaviour and tactics towards people whose arguments they disagree with.”) by the way, seems to me to be so self-evident and banal that I do not understand why anyone would dispute it… Maybe you aren’t any longer, you’re just so caught up in believing that I am wrong that you can’t see that what I am actually saying is not so controversial after all.
I am not making the same point as QRG makes.
I’m not participating in the derail Lucy. I’m actually pointing out that that there is a connection between the derail and the original attacks on Cath – a tactic designed to silence and “disrupt” (QRG’s word) feminist discussion about male abuse of women.
You and QRG have both tried to claim false equivalences with feminists not wanting to have their threads trolled and derailed, with men who launch vicious organised attacks on women. I’ve already said that this is another common tactic. When women talk about men’s abuse of them, there is almost inevitably (because this is the internet and we can never avoid the lowest common denominator) someone willing to pipe up “women do it too”. Then women are expected to spend our time defending our own behaviour instead of examining real and substantial harm that men are doing to women. Change can’t happen because women are continually being put on the back foot. Meanwhile the abusive men and their handmaidens continue on their merry way.
This isn’t about how “disagreement” as you put it is handled on the internet, this is about silencing women’s politics, derailing women’s political discussions, and ensuring that feminist discourse never gets off the ground. It is political, it is deliberate and often it is organised.
Someone who comes and trolls a thread in order to disrupt it, then attacks another woman in a sexually abusive manner, isn’t being treated “unfairly” because of a “disagreement”. If you don’t understand that then you certainly have no business using the “we” of feminism.
You don’t seem to understand even the most basic power dynamics between men and women Lucy, which is why you are dismissing feminist analysis of McDuff’s behaviour as “ordinary internet behaviour and tactics towards people whose arguments they disagree with”. If you don’t recognise petty little exercises of male power then I guess you will view any analysis of it as dismissable.
Can’t really help you with that one. Sorry.
“I’m actually pointing out that that there is a connection between the derail and the original attacks on Cath”
“You and QRG have both tried to claim false equivalences with feminists not wanting to have their threads trolled and derailed, with men who launch vicious organised attacks on women”
I have explicitly stated over and over that I am neither “trying” nor actually claiming equivalence. Those two statements put together seem to suggest that you might not be so far away from my point of view as you think. If you are pointing out a connection (ie the way that disagreement/controversy is dealt with online (by feminists or otherwise) has some connection to the way that disagreement is taken by some misogynists as licence to flame and abuse), then, yes, that is what I am saying too. There is a connection. There is not equivalence.
“If you don’t understand that then you certainly have no business using the “we” of feminism.”
Are you now telling me I can’t call myself a feminist? Way to silence a voice.
The difference is a question of intention: you believe I am consciously derailing a topic in order to, what?, crush debate about male oppression of women? I say I am not, that I am participating in a debate I am interested in, and so are others. My intention is to discuss feminism, because I am passionate about the project and am fully aware of the affects of misogyny in this society.
You see QRG as a troll who set out to derail this thread deliberately and maliciously, whereas I saw she thought she had valid points to make about sexualised abuse online and was trying to debate controversial and unpopular opinions. I don’t agree with her on much of it, but I don’t think she is a troll, however offensive she may appear. I see her persistence as stubborn and determined; you see it as derailing and destructive.
You saw McDuff as a patronising, weight-throwing, insensitive, over-privileged blunderer who should have known his place: I thought he was being measured, reasonable and well-intentioned.
I can’t make you see me or QRG or McDuff differently, but it doesn’t make your analysis utterly, objectively right.
Jesus Christ you win, Lucy. I can’t bear to read any more of it.
“You don’t seem to understand even the most basic power dynamics between men and women Lucy”
I do, thanks. I also know perfectly well that by living in a patriarchal society any interaction between men and women will be compromised to some extent by that power balance. However, I chose to have a dialogue with men, despite the fact that they belong to an oppressing class, rather than dismiss anything they say which might not be in-line with my argument at the time as a manifestation of privilege rather than a reasoned point. My choice. I tend to hope that other people wouldn’t easily dismiss points I make on the basis of my gender, race, class, sexual identity, able-bodiedness etc. but of course they do. There is a connection (not an equivalence) to the way you’re dismissing points I’m making because you appear to own feminist discourse and I don’t.
I am not an organised attack, I am not using the tactics of oppression, I am not silencing women’s voices, I am not derailing women’s political discussions: I am a woman and a feminist, I have disagreed with you over something and you are using the same language of dismissal against me that I am used to hearing from men. You are not an organised attack, using the tactics of oppression etc. etc. either. Politically, those words not the same coming from you as they would be from a man. But in accepting that I’d hope it was obvious that neither is my disagreement with you politically equivalent with male oppression.
First cab off the rank – Cath hope you’re feeling ok in light of the abuse that’s been slung in your direction. It’s about as bad as I’ve ever seen on the interwebs and that’s saying something.
It reads and looks like someone’s put a call out on /b/ which is bad, ‘cos that truly is the arsehole of the internet (as well as just sometimes being creative and hilarious), but that mob have but the attention span of several thousand goldfish so I’d be surprised if you cop much more flack.
Small comfort, hey?
Second cab off the rank, the subject of trolling.
“Troll” is a word that’s been used a hell of a lot on this thread and like any word that’s heavily used – or overused – it starts to lose it’s meaning.
My understanding of the term is that “trolling” aligns pretty much with the Wikipedia definition which I can’t be arsed to cut ‘n’ paste here.
Posting something which contradicts notions that to you are an obvious, accepted truth is not necessarily the act of a troll. Or posts that to you, personally, seem inflamatory do not have to be trolling.
Maybe the other geezer has deeply held opinions too which are just as obvious, logical and consistent (by their own lights) as yours? Unless they start contradicting themselves or getting downright offensive’/abusive, I try and give people the benfit of the doubt.
As that nice Mr Cromwell once said:
It’s amazing how quickly you can be thrown out of Feminism in some parts of the internet. At this rate there’ll be none left.
@Maria
I’m not marginalising feminism at all. I said that Bindel’s opinions on trans people come from a place of cis privilege — “here, trans people, let me tell you what’s right and wrong and moral to do with your own bodies” — and that mainstream feminism’s acceptance of that is problematic. I was defending myself because apparently sarah suggested that saying some parts of mainstream feminism need disruption makes me the enemy of feminists. If I have to be the enemy of feminists to be on the side of another group of marginalised people then *somebody* is drawing their battle lines in the wrong place, and I’m pretty confident that’s not me.
@McDuff, I should have said I have no idea whether what I wrote about cis privilege has any bearing on or relation to what Cath meant re ‘b/s meter’.
As a cis person of course Julie Bindel’s opinions about trans people, like mine and like yours, come from a place of cis privilege. Still, I don’t see what those opinions have to do with this discussion here, other than that Cath asked QRG how her tweet about JB sat with her expressed concern for sexualised insults against women, which QRB responded to by just repeating it here in this thread, for which she was banned. (Which she seemed quite triumphant about on her blog).
Who exactly constitutes “mainstream feminism” and how exactly do you hold them to account? How on earth do you know who in this discussion or which feminists anywhere agree with Julie Bindel on trans* issues or not?
No one said you had to be the enemy of feminists in order to be an ally to trans* people. Plenty of feminists identify as trans* allies too. The problem in this thread is that you came straight in paternalistically telling people they needed to apologise, and didn’t take heed when people told you why that was out of order.
It doesn’t really have any relevance to this conversation. It had relevance to something else I said over at QRG’s place, which was quoted out of context and used to make it appear as if I was “cozying up to the enemy”, as if that means anything.
The problem in the thread before I arrived was that a whole bunch of people were beating up on someone for entirely unjustified reasons. My gender has nothing to do with the fact that I commented on it. It’s something other people jumped up and down on and took as an excuse to call me all manner of things. Not that I’m incapable of dealing with it, but claiming I was “paternalistic” seems very much like people are trying to distract from their own behaviour.
Like I said, I’m always inclined to side with the little guy. If someone is getting ganged up on in a thread I’ll be inclined to speak up on their behalf, particularly if they’ve done nothing to warrant it. If that’s paternalistic and being a bad feminist ally, well, I guess I’ll have to live with those labels. I don’t think shutting up and letting people beat up on someone else is a “feminist” act, no matter my gender. And if, as I say, obeying the strict rules about who is and isn’t allowed to speak out in feminist discourse is more important than simple basic rules about fairness and decency, then that’s really a pretty backwards way of going about the whole thing.
As I said previously you could have perfectly well expressed support for Lucy and drawn attention to her situation as someone who didn’t previously know QRG’s usual style of disruptive engagement on feminist blogs, without telling people that they should apologise (as the very first thing you said in this discussion) or express disappointment in them in a headmasterly tone.
Actually I will add one more thing, although I really can’t bear to read any more of McDuff’s and Lucy’s posts.
Lucy, McDuff and QRG all think they are adding something to the conversation. They all think this massive derail, which allows them to post screeds of pointless whatever, is somehow useful in feminism – well maybe they don’t, but for some reason they still think it’s very important to say it. QRG thinks her “disruption” of feminism is something to be proud of because Derrida would have approved (who knew that when it came down to it postmodernism was basically the ideology of trolls?). They all feel that feminism needs criticising and that they are the ones to do it.
The fact that feminism particuarly radical feminism is marginal, is always on shaky ground, is either ignored or mocked, of course isn’t taken into account. Feminism must be examined as to how it deals with “dissent” – the use of the word dissent making feminism sound like some kind of totalitarian regime that persecutes anybody who dares disagree with it. Feminism must face its accusers.
Of course whilst all this accusation goes on in feminist spaces, nothing actually can progress in online feminism, not at least with regards to theorising, analysis or consciousness raising. It remains on square one – a little more battered and a little more undermined. The one place this currently doesn’t get to happen is on radical feminist blogs who have decided to reserve commenting for other rad fems so pro-sex industry feminists, haters, liberals, men – not welcome. And without those people there to disrupt the politics, the theorising has taken off. There has been some fantastic analysis recently of sexual intercourse, male violence, economic structures that keep women tied to men, trans. What’s been going on has been some of the most intellectually stimulating work I’ve read in a long time.
All these people claiming that they are helping feminism with their “dissent” and “disruption” are kidding themselves. The truth is simpler – they are getting in its way.
As, indeed, could anybody else. And yet, nobody did. Isn’t it quite disheartening that anyone else should have had to draw attention to her situation, particularly since Lucy herself mentioned it on a number of occasions?
I don’t know, perhaps there is a mote in my eye after all.
sarah
When it comes to “helping feminism” vs “helping women” I’ve always been inclined to go with the latter. There are plenty of feminist organisations who are very happy to throw all manner of disadvantaged people under the bus in order to advance the abstract cause of the sisterhood, and to cut out anyone who challenges them while they’re at it. They’re very welcome to that. But if it’s disruptive to point out that what they do is damaging, then I’m happy to disrupt it, because it’s damaging.
If you don’t care about the damage that your ideology does to actual human beings, women included, then I don’t see why those human beings should care about your ideology. Seems fair enough to me.
@ Sarah – re being able actually get on with analysis and cosnsciousness raising on feminist blogs when unhindered by antifeminists, yes, totally.
@ McDuff, you’re telling feminists they’re doing it wrong. This is mansplaining again. Given that you identify as feminist what part of this generalised feminist politics, aka “ideology” do you find problematic?
So much mansplaining from Lucy and McDuff it blows my mind and makes me want to do protect. Back off already.
Go Sarah.
I second that “go Sarah” 😛
I see that my Troll Vacuum Theory is panning out nicely. QRG > McDuff, followed by some sort of bizarre tag-team-trolling between McDuff & Lucy.
Lucy, you are a libfem, you have a long long way to go. My suggestion is less of the “you are being so unfair to a man [supposedly ally]” and more reading of the deeper theories. Sticking up for men on a feminist blog is trolling. And derailing.
And any dude that claims he is “a feminist” is someone to be wary of. It is the 21stC version of a pick-up line (to score with the ‘feminist chicks’). Very popular tactic among lefty dudes.
Cath, if I may offer up a moderation suggestion, put McDuff (and sadly, Lucy) in a Time Out (moderation queue). Unless they get back onto the topic, they stay there. Then the rest of us could actually discuss analysis and actions to combat online sexism at places like CiF. It is tiresome to keep scrolling through all the bullshit comments.
The derailing that has gone on this thread is actually typical of some of the tactics used so that feminists do not get into further analysis (Sarah said it better just a bit up thread). Derailing is the second most popular tactic after the sexist shouting down, it is its sibling, and it still works. Eventually the feminists just get sick of it, and abandon the thread (in some cases the blog).
I don’t think all feminists are doing everything wrong at all. There isn’t anything about the generalised feminist politics that I think is 100% flawed. My issues, when I have them, are with specifics relating to certain issues and certain subgroups within feminism.
I have encountered some feminist groups who believe that some people are expendable. That’s wrong, in my opinion. Be those people transgender or from the wrong class or sex workers or from the wrong religion or what-have-you, I’ll tend to side along principles of general justice and against esoteric principles that some people think are more important than human lives.
You say that nobody said you have to be an enemy of feminists to be an ally of trans people, for example. But part of being an ally to trans people, as I see it, is speaking out when prominent feminists use their positions of privilege to set back the trans cause. But if being a man, or a good feminist, means I can’t speak out against other feminists because it’s disruptive and makes me an enemy, then I can’t square that circle, can I? That’s what I mean when I say ideology can hurt people – not “feminism”, but specific parts of specific subgroups’ ideologies.
I don’t have a generalised complaint with feminism. I don’t think the kind of feminism that kicks everyone out of its special magical treehouse and then complains that it’s marginalised is especially likely to do anything except continually self-marginalise but I’m happy to let them keep doing it because self-marginalising groups tend to not threaten anyone.
And, just to make it clear, I didn’t bloody well raise this point on this thread. If anyone’s done any derailing it’s the people who followed me over to QRG’s nest and quoted something out of my ongoing argument with her completely out of context. I’m defending myself against what I consider to be unfair accusations. The only thing I ever wanted to point out on this thread was the fact that people were beating up on someone without just cause.
The question is, why was the alleged tone of my support for Lucy’s situation more important than the fact nobody else was giving her any kind of support at all?
McDuff, seriously stfu. Your constant mansplaining is so boring.
I can get mansplaining 24/7 whenever I walk out my door. The service you offer is not unique.
Ah. I get it. It’s because Lucy is a “LibFem” and therefore the kind of person you should be rude and patronising to in order for them to do the “deeper reading” that comes along with being let inside the club.
That’s so peculiar. Here’s how the last couple of posts read to my addled male brain.
MariaS: “Given that you identify as feminist what part of this generalised feminist politics, aka “ideology” do you find problematic?”
Me:
FAB Libber: MANSPLAINING BORING GO AWAY!
I was obviously fooled by the presence of a question mark into thinking it was a question. I apologise for the error.
“They all feel that feminism needs criticising and that they are the ones to do it.”
No. Wrong. I was criticising the way I perceived *some people* who identify as feminist to be behaving. I thought that some people were misrepresenting QRG. I thought that some people were misreading her points. Likewise McDuff. Then I was defending myself from the misrepresentation, caricature, silencing language tactics, tone arguments and accusations of anti-feminism and victim-blaming that were being thrown at me. And I was not “sticking up for men”, I was arguing in support of one of the many posters on here, whose comments were being dismissed and ridiculed.
Feminism is my project too. I will defend it and those who work towards its goals. But it is not yours or mine to own.
Apparently markup is problematic. There were words there, I promise. They have been erased by the internet.
The thing is – as feminists, we can criticise aspects of feminism and each other without compromising our feminism or condoning the torrents of shit that people are pouring on writers like Cath and Laurie Penny.
I have been heavily critical of what I’ve thought of as a sort of whiny, middle-class feminism in the past – the sort of “I’m a victim, even though I’ve had a good education, got a good job, have my health, can control my fertility, etc” school. I find that difficult to stomach sometimes. There are millions of women around the world who would give anything for even one of those things and I think that at some point, we have to stand up for ourselves and play the patriarchy at its own game. If we’ve been lucky enough to be given the right tools, we have to get on with it.
I think it’s possible to raise points like that, though, without compromising one’s own feminism. Mine is very practical in some ways, because I have to be practical – I want women to have equal access to all aspects of society and be in a position to earn a good independent living and to not be punished economically for having children and so on.
You can think all those things, though, and take issue with some aspects of middle-class socialist feminism while still wanting to rally round women who are being attacked online by psychopaths. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who deserves the kind of shit we’re hearing about here. This is appalling and it seems to me to be getting worse. I’m also hearing from women here and there who are concerned about pursuing their own careers in journalism because of the crap they’re seeing other women take. That’s a serious issue. It suggests that these vile attempts to close women down are meeting with some success.
All of us who are also participating in this discussion bear responsibility for its continuation. We have something to say and we are saying it, presumably because we all think it is important enough to be expressed and important enough to try to clarify misunderstandings about. That’s not trolling.
“The thing is – as feminists, we can criticise aspects of feminism and each other without compromising our feminism or condoning the torrents of shit that people are pouring on writers like Cath and Laurie Penny.”
Yes. Exactly that.
Having watched this thread for the past couple of days I think it has been a real shame that the opportunity to talk about how we as feminists can support each other online and how we could effectively rally around sisters when attacked in the way Cath has been by DSMO.
Sadly mansplaining and trolling have diverted us from this so far – but its not too late for us to think about it. How can we have an network that alerts us to a sister being attacked? How do we ensure that Cath continues with her writing, challenging misogyny and the patriarchy and that she is never again left alone to counter such abuse? That for me is the real question. Cath is a wonderful talent, but she is just one woman – what are we going to do to support her?
Don’t worry MsVirago, I’m not going anywhere. I refuse to let anonymous Internet misogynists win.
But I’m not sure we can tackle something like this on an individual by individual basis. By which I mean, we can all pile in and help a sister out when this sort of shit happens, (and I can’t tell you how grateful I am and moved I’ve been by all the messages of support I’ve had since posting this piece), but at the end of the day the problem remains. Which is that at the moment all we can do is react after the event.
I’m interested in exploring what, if anything, we can do to stop this stuff happening in the first place. How can we help to create an environment online where abuse such as that which I received is seen as just as unacceptable online as it is off? How can we help change the online environment so that women are not put off pursuing careers in writing, blogging or journalism?
And why oh why oh why are all my own comments here going into moderation??
Swarming? Maybe when we find problematic blogs and websites we organise in advance, pick a day and invade with comments and complaints about their content. It happened as a byproduct of your piece with DSMO, so it might be something we could do again on other sites. A bit like UK uncut or feminist fridays – but online action? We would have to develop a non public method of contacting each other in readiness for swarming, with key themes to challenge on each target site.
I am very pleased to know you are not withdrawing or quitting your writing – though I do hope in future you will share your concerns on abuse you receive with those you trust sooner, rather than being isolated by it and absorbing it. xx
You have to stop accepting it as normal, drive it out of the mainstream. Start with the Guardian, they are supposed to be friendly. Why are they
publishing abuse every day? They don’t have to, it isn’t necessary for debate, that they choose to. That is an astonishing thing for them to be doing. Get all over them for it. Ignore the trolls, go for the people who publish the trolls.
I’ve been on that rather appaling website and…but, and it’s a big but, if they can critsise men, as they do, surely the fact that they have the same vile for women then perhaps the job is done, and you have achieved the equality that you set to achieve. This is a discussion point, not a verifcation of the crime , so please treat it as such * hides in a copy of Clarkson’s thoughts*
@ Jane
Sensible plan, good reasoning. I concur.
They are supposed to be mainstream and intolerant of abusive behaviour after all.
I agree that an open, public (and supposedly neutral) debating space like CiF is the best place to start. More presence from vocal women and calls for more robust and clearly-articulated moderation.
I respectfully suggest that going onto hostile blogs or sites en masse and “swarming” will be interpreted as trolling and be met with rage and further abuse. Plus there is the danger that it could be countered by calling out the full flaming might of the anonymous gang. There’d be no gains made there. We can’t win a cyber flame war.
Lucy – I am not suggesting that we engage with commenters on hostile blog sites, I agree that that would be futile. I am suggesting that we organise, read hostile sites moderation policy and engage with moderators to encourage that their moderation policy is applied.
I don’t agree that CiF is the place to start. I think women have tackled CiF comments consistently and have in the past swarmed threads – it has not worked. I think the way to pursue CiF is via Natalie Hanman and review of their moderation policy. Upthread Jane said she was going to write about her meeting with the Guardian on Womens Views on News – I would like to see/hear her thoughts.
I think Liberal Conspiracy is a better place to start – if only we could make that a safe space!
@ Stevey – belittling women, telling them how useless they are, making sexual threats to them, reducing them to sexual use objects, is not something new and innovative. It’s old, old, old. It’s what misogyny looks like, not equality. Try again.
@ msvirago @ Lucy – yes, CiF & Lib. Con., because they are both supposed to be leftie, progressive spaces, where the importance and relevance of gender equality should really just be a given, but where we are forever fighting to have it taken seriously and for women to be taken seriously as contributors or commenters. Lib.Con. does seem less daunting to tackle.
The core underlying problem is simple resistance to actually listening to women and what we have to say. I mean, the DSMO thread aimed at Cath, the justification given for why she was an “annoyance” was that she is a feminist and trade unionist and has written for CiF – i.e. she’s politically active and speaks out. I was especially struck by the comment that expressed annoyance simply at a video of Cath giving a speech, and the fact that her speech was about women. A woman expecting to speak and be listened to – or expecting people to be interested in women’s concerns, how awful!
Even though the problem with CiF is exactly as has been identified, that when women try to participate the toll of braving out the misogynist responses is just often too much, but still the only way to go is to participate nonetheless, to go there and take up space and talk about what we want to talk about. This will be (is) exhausting and time consuming, and involve dealing with ignorant and pompous men who have a problem with women. But this is par for the course for struggling for women’s participation in all kinds of public and political spaces historically. Things that help – practice talking back to and in spite of ignorant and pompous men who have a problem with women; learning to spot and have a response to the unoriginal and illogical antifeminist arguments that crop up over and over again; faith that some day, some how, a critical mass of women’s participation will be achieved and become unstoppable.
As has been said, the support of the host organisation and its moderators in supporting women’s participation makes a lot of difference but is unreliable, so needs to be actively challenged when its own policies are not upheld.
I think that is the right approach, msvirago.
The Guardian’s basic view is that publishing any comment is better than publishing none, they don’t want to ban commentors, who come back anyway, and they have limited resources to monitor CiF constantly. They expect women to report the abuse for them, even though there are so few women actually there.
They do acknowledge there is a problem with a group of hostile men and that they aren’t doing enough to encourage women. What they have not grasped is that publishing hostile abusive comment about women is something the Guardian should not be doing at all. They cannot see that suspending their editorial policy, their core values, the principles by which they operate, is not possible . What they have done is change them. They didn’t mean to do that I am sure.
How can they justify publishing abuse by claiming lack of resources? This is an utterly irresponsible way to treat a powerful media platform. The Reader’s Editor has something of a quaint belief that BTL writing is just comment, ATL is where the readers may be influenced. I think 200 or 300 comments in a day screaming about false rape allegations has a big fucking impact. Where did that defendant anonymity bill come from? Daily Mail and “Guardian readers” saying the same thing looks like an easy crowd-pleaser to kick off the coalition.
We have to make them see the vile crap that they publish by picking it up and putting it in front of them – the editors, their patrons, friends, journalists, columnists, the trustees, their advertisers – everyone with the editors’ ear, and asking them why the hell the Guardian is publishing it? The advertisers will certainly respond.
I agree msvirago & MariaS, one key point with CiF was their stance that “women should just plow on through the misogyny” and that it has not worked at all – it has managed to drive a lot of women away in fact. This Jane, should perhaps be the key criticism that you take to them about CiF, that their concept is failing, and failing badly.
I do disagree with still carrying on through all the misogyny at CiF, mainly because it is tiring, boring, and most don’t have time. We get it everywhere.
So the suggestion for CiF is that do make clearer and stronger stances, with better moderation resources. On feminist posts, I would suggest that they have feminists doing the moderation, to dump the endless ‘false rape allegations’ comments and their like. Zero tolerance for all that crap, that is what it has to be, a zero tolerance policy, not one where feminists are supposed to just brave it out in a sea of hate. I am not willing to go back there until they do. I still read the posts, but I ignore all the comments.
I don’t hang around LC, so cannot comment on the situation there, but it seems also the other good place to tackle.
“I think the way to pursue CiF is via Natalie Hanman and review of their moderation policy. ”
Yes, I agree. What would make CiF a safer place, in my view, is to have a moderating voice which points out sexism (homopohobia, racism etc.) when it occurs and explicitly states: “What you are saying is sexist. We do not tolerate sexism here. You have been warned.” This happens with pretty good results on other boards. The problem with arguing on CiF is that many of the commenters simply do not accept that what they are saying is sexist. They think it’s commonsense. Or that sexism doesn’t exist any more. Or that it’s OK to make hate-filled statements because it’s just an opinion, as valid as any other. Having the site moderator make an explicit statement to the contrary would save such a lot of time and energy and emotion that is otherwise expended on reinventing the wheel in debating terms.
But of course it won’t happen because the site is too big and it would cost more than the Guardian is prepared to pay to monitor.
I wrote to the Reader’s Editor and told them that it doesn’t work, which, of course, they already know. He was good enough to invite me in to discuss it. I was stunned by Natalie Hanman declaring ‘plowing on’ to be 2011’s Big Plan, as if 5 years of history of Cpmment is Free had simply been ignored. It was disingenuous, at best, to tell Women’s Views on News this was the policy, absent any explanation or context, since anonymity is to some extent concealing what is happening from public view.
I raised it again at out meeting. Chris Elliott didn’t know what account Natalie Hanman had taken of five years’ experience, he is coming back to me on this . I asked for how much longer we might see this strategy not work. He noted that she has been editor for less than a year, as if her prior positions at the paper had been conducted in solitary confinement.
Natalie herself will not say, she only reiterates, when vigorously pushed to comment, how non-specifically hard they are working to encourage women.
Last time i wrote for Lib Con, Sunny commented to defend my use of stats in the article i had written, and the response of other commenters was that he was ‘defending her’ because ‘you obviously like her’. although it wasn’t using offensive language, i was so angry, because they would never say that if i was a man and it felt like such playground nonsense. Embarrassing for Sunny I’m sure, but so bloody rude to me too.
Anyway, my point is that on Lib Con the abuse is often very ‘polite’. It stays on the right side of ‘decency’ so that it is very hard for the moderator to pinpoint exactly what is offensive about what is being said. Concern trolling, for example, or just the total derailment into semantics that so often happens when you talk about vawg, or that endlessly patronising tone that picks and picks and picks at one tiny facet of what you have written, to avoid facing up to the big picture. I always think, why are you so defensive about this? why are you so unwilling to talk about vawg, or why are you denying trafficking or rape in the sex industry, for eg. Why are you hiding from the subject.
Online abuse/bullying takes on many guises, from the ugly violent language used against Cath, the offensive and sometimes violent language used against me (that i described wwaaayyy back at the top of this thread) and all other feminist commenters and writers, and then the nasty, patronising and snide mocking that stays on the right side of polite language, so slips through moderation.
So i guess what i am saying is we need to be able to tackle all kinds, and raise awareness that the latter can be as bullying and as undermining and unpleasant as the former. What can we do?
I agree Lib Con is a good place to start, but just like CIF i think they are losing feminist writers/commenters because it is just so hard, so draining, to deal with the crap being thrown at you.
I should add, so as not to give the impression of anything personal against Natalie Hanman – she is the editor of Comment is Free, she is in charge – that her two predecessors, Georgina Henry and Matt Seaton, each had years of failure with this same strategy.
Sianushka,
LC is a popular blog but the not the same scale of operation as CiF. Sunny is the only moderator and spoke of his frustration in the comments to the article I wrote. Of course, the same point stands that if he cannot monitor comments and that concerns him then he should not be publishing them. As you say there are consequences.
I do believe this will become more of an issue for sites as their source of funding becomes more sophisticated. Advertisers target women. Misogyny is not a winning business plan. In a year or two , someone like Cath who could organise a female boycott may have the Guardian by the balls. I’m not really joking, although the advertising industry being as neanderthal as newspapers, it maybe a year or two more than that, if the Guardian or any other paper is still with us then.
Sianushka,
The comment you describe is exactly my problem with community standards. It isn’t a type of abuse that is the problem, it is a culture of hostility, patronising condescension that drives women and moderate men away. It is a different style of moderation that is required, one that doesn’t come with a check list. Yes, it is more subjective, but the alternative is to pretend that because there is no entrance restrictions, what you are publishing is some kind of wide range of opinion, it only sounds all the same.
Jane – i completely agree.
Sianushka, yes you have outlined the disruptive tactics well. The entire point is to derail, and throw focus off the actual issue (as what happened here). The ‘right side of decency’ also shits me, it is still obvious to the trained eye what they are up to, hence it gets a rise out of me.
Jane, yes, perhaps a boycott is in order.
Another suggestion (CiF), what about if the article writer had some sort of input into the moderation process? That might work well on feminist articles.
I have refrained from commenting for two days now, and will continue to do so. I’m not ‘popular’ but I do get hits. Obviously under a different name. In fact stuff the news. I’m not hitting on the Guardian again. I will buy the paper in future if I want to read it. I can’t be doing with the comments and I think it’s run its course.
I read this post when you put it up first. I felt so badly for you. We have accepted it as an “occupational hazard” because that’s what we’re told to believe it is (see also, street harassment, sexual harassment at work, the odd slap on the face from your partner etc.). It’s NOT an occupational hazard but that is yet another aspect of the patriarchal culture that needs to be challenged.
Again, sorry you had to go through all of that.
Sianushka: you’ve described the grindingly miserable experience of online debating really well. Thank you.
My experience is that it is tough to carry on through, but I don’t know what else to do, because giving up feels worse. If I pick up misogyny in a thread about Palestine or music (as two random examples from my experience), I will point it out as a matter of principle, because being silent on something I feel strongly about is, in a way, being complicit in injustice. But, of course, comments then get depicted as being besides the point, derailing the main discussion, nitpicking, being over-sensitive, not knowing what you’re talking about (the glorious expertise argument), being a lone voice picking up irrelevancies that no-one else is bothered about, trolling, having an axe to grind (yes, and the axe tends to be countering what you feel passionately is wrong); you might get people cheering each other on in their scorn and even explicitly suggesting that you be moderated or not allowed to speak. You might get outright misogynist abuse and hateful comments, particularly, in my experience, from readers of news sites.
It’s depressing.
The trouble is that:
A: this is how online debating tends to work. If you stick your neck out and make an unpopular point, you’re likely to get responded to in more or less dismissive ways, even in those occasions that those who disagree with you stick to the ‘right’ side of civility, as Sianushka accurately describes. This is a general point: it doesn’t matter if you’re arguing about Gaza or obscure 80s B-sides, the dynamics work similarly. It’s slightly easier in an email-based group or a chat board, because you can label your response “off-topic” or start a new thread, but in linear comments sections of blogs or articles, any “nit-picking”, whoever righteous, will tend to look disruptive or worse.
B: if you hold minority opinions, almost whatever you say is able to be taken out of context, dismissed, misrepresented, and the people doing that will not take anything useful away from your intervention. They will just see it as “more silly feminists coming on here with their bloody axes to grind”; not surprising given we live in a patriarchal society that the mainstream mindset will reinforce its own view that every intervention is irrelevant disruption.
The problem of what Jane called the culture of hostility and condescension will continue for as long as that mindset holds sway; moderation, making places explicitly anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, etc., might keep those responses in check and make disagreement feel a safer thing to do, but it will a very difficult job, because what sexism is is hugely difficult to pin down in a society where sexism is deeply engrained in language and attitudes, where hugely insulting statements are seen as commonsense or valid personal opinion: I’m prefectly aware that the people I argue with feel just as fervently *right* as I do. And much as I’d like to see all ATL articles that are specifically about women/feminism/oppression have really strong moderation in their BTL comments, both from the writers, the readers and staff moderators, misogyny can and will also crop up in articles about civil engineering or basketball or ecosystems.
Lucy,
I see a complete disconnect between mainstream sexism online and any real world communication. I don’t see how the people I argue with online can feel fervently right. Where else are they able to behave like that? I don’t know if my experience is unusual but I have never heard anything like it and I cannot believe these men know no better, unless they live outside mainstream society. There was a commentor talking about this particularly nasty bit of misogyny as if it was fair comment:
“Women are just naturally better suited to the soul-crushing conformity that is the modern office workplace. .. They like dressing up, they like giving meaningless reports,and blathering on about nothing (like marketing strategies, team-building, extc). ”
I have never heard anybody put their name to something like this and it wouldn’t be tolerated in a serious debate. Is that not what you would expect?
In either case, the reliance of digital newspapers on advertising gives us leverage we did not have before. We should start using it and refuse to accept abuse, sexism, condescension, lies and hostility. What kind of consumer do you supposer the standard spitter on CiF is held to be? I think it is the height of irony that power comes through shopping but it does, it will.
@Jane: yes, absolutely; as I said upthread, being in these online spaces gives people the license to express things they would never say offline or face-to-face. There’s a one-upmanship of nastiness that the online debating format and its dynamics encourage. There’s a delight in non-PC-ness, in winding opponents up, in making mischief (at one end of the scale) and downright dangerous threats (at the other) that is peculiar to the internet. It’s all relatively new: I think things *will* be clearer further down the line. Like Cath said originally, abuse at the moment is as an occupational hazard of writing about feminism online, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Not at all.
As we’ve both said, what is seen as fair comment or personal opinion can actually be deeply misogynist: that’s why I wouldn’t let it go if I saw it. But I don’t think everyone is being disingenuous in presenting it as such. Maybe it’s what you define as “a serious debate”: perhaps these things get said offline but not in spaces where articulate feminists are likely to be. Online debate is more open in that way, anyone can end up (almost) anywhere. I ended up on the Daily Telegraph site the other week and what passed for “serious debate” there was so gobsmackingly awful, so reactionary and classist as well as sexist, that I was shocked, because even though I know in theory it’s a right-wing rag, I was expecting some level of intelligent debate that I just didn’t find. When I venture into more obviously murky waters, it’s even worse.
Added to that is the fact that the more people are expressing spurious “post-feminist” lines on places like CiF, the more people both hear them fresh and come to think that they are accurate depictions of the world, until there ends up being a culture created where that line is seen as orthodoxy and feminism is not just yer average heresy, but portrayed as boringly past-it heresy. Especially given that in the current financial environment white men particularly are looking for reasons why their life is getting shitter: it’s the age-old reflex of hitting on convenient scapegoats, entirely unhelped by the fact that this government sees it as economically convenient that women go back to childrearing rather than pay others for childcare and that people work for free (ahem, sorry, *volunteer for the Big Society*) in the caring/domestic spheres for free: fanning the flames of the flamers, I’d say.
It’s a vicious circle, dominated by the loudest, most scathing voices. Which is unfortunate, because as I said before, we can’t win flame wars by flaming back, only by either changing the culture (yay!) or by finding different ways to moderate debate.
I agree with everything you say, Lucy.
It worries me that this is the standard for online debate and it is setting a template for the post-print news world. I think there is a real risk of losing ground, particularly given the times, the mood and the government, as you say. It infuriates me to see Guardian staff taking this crap seriously, it is damaging.
I don’t think there is anything to be gained by joining the debate, in the short term anyway. No matter how good the argument, women are always outnumbered and drowned out. The small numbers who have engaged and kept CiF feminism limping along have legitimised the hostile abusive environment, which is now firmly established. Is it too late to change? I think it may be, how long would it take to attract a new crowd even if the management were minded to evict the old one, which currently they clearly are not. There is certainly no time to waste doing nothing useful.
I think boycotting the site is worthwhile and, more importantly,
consciousness raising, particularly for the advertisers, on the cesspool of CiF.
The other area I am interested in is how accurate their online audience demographic data is, which they use to price advertising. The advertising guide says the Life & Style site has 63% female traffic. Well the comment on Life & Style is more like 25% and lower on feminist articles and, even on the coldest button topics, I would doubt the genders break even. I don’t see why traffic should be all that different. They can ignore the comment, more easily, certainly, but I cannot imagine the hostility is not similarly off putting for female traffic as for commentors.
So is their data accurate? I don’t know but the advertisers can certainly be made aware of the parlous state of female commentors on the site. I’m no expert and I don’t think pricing is very sophisticated or targeting very targeted at present but the Guardian is said to be the leading the field, so how they deal with the anti-women culture with advertisers who supposedly target 80% of advertising to women would be interesting to know.
I think all the suggestions made above are worthwhile: threatening boycotts in a targeted way for specifically egregious offences on CiF would be a good strategy, as would comment-swarming and mod-swarming other, less mainstream fora like LibCon or /. , as indeed would taking the straightforward political route of lobbying and letter writing to the people in charge of large platforms lie CiF or the Torygraph blogs (and the Indie – things can get hairy there, too).
One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention though is the A word – anonymity. Since the Gawker sites had to go over to Facebook/Google/Twitter account logins for technical reasons, the comment threads there have improved a lot. There is little data to quote in support of this increasingly popular theory, because anonymity is still the gold standard online, but it seems likely that people would think twice about how they express themselves – even what they comment on – if they were aware that their mother/employer/doctor/husband may read the comments under their real name (or a well known alias).
I’m not saying anonymity shouldn’t have a place online – on blog comments and many specialist fora I think it should be maintained and enforced. But it has no place in a forum as public as the comment section of a major paper of record (or website of record, for that matter). Yes, there will be special instances where the policy should be flexible – very sensitive articles about sexuality, gender expression, sexual violence and so on will need to be exceptions. But these are the minority as we all know; the merest hint of Bidisha writing 100 words for CiF on birdwatching is usually enough to bring on the shrieking anti-woman histrionics, and why should those people have license to create this mayhem and hurl this abuse in secret?
The content of newspapers is public, and is part of the public conversation we as a society are having about various subjects – so participating in that conversation BTL should also be seen as a public act, undertaken openly by participants in full standing, not clandestine mud-slingers. Plus of course you’ll be able go and tell their mum.
Good points Lucy
My experience is that it is tough to carry on through, but I don’t know what else to do, because giving up feels worse.
It does. But after years and years and years of this hostility, it just wears you down, and many of us give up.
I like a lot of the ideas expressed, from boycotts to approaching CiF etc.
I don’t think there is anything to be gained by joining the debate, in the short term anyway. No matter how good the argument, women are always outnumbered and drowned out. The small numbers who have engaged and kept CiF feminism limping along have legitimised the hostile abusive environment, which is now firmly established.
I agree Jane. It is somewhat pointless going on, plowing on through, without structural changes and stronger moderation policies being made. Otherwise we are going around in circles.
If CiF put better moderation in place, perhaps groups of feminists could actually help the moderation process along, by reporting the bad comments, and also posting why the comments were sexist? This is a short term strategy only, not meant for the long term. But it is obvious that CiF is completely clueless in this regard, and need hand-holding.
Marina,
Chris Elliott at the Guardian raised the issue of anonymity briefly when I saw him. They certainly aren’t sold on the idea of name registration but I think it’s a good idea. Extremism and hostility driving moderate opinion out of the centre ground is a problem everywhere, it isn’t just misogynists. There seems to be support at the Guardian for the freedom anonymity brings to develop identity, but I said told him that was not a freedom many women were enjoying. Quite the reverse.
Cath, what do you think can/should be done?
I can’t see anonymity being withdrawn from CiF and I don’t think it should be. People have all kinds of reasons for constructing online personae and although anonymity gives a certain amount of licence it also provides a certain amount of protection, particularly for women. I sometimes chose to post under gender-neutral names, for example, because I am sick of the assumptions made about women commenting on certain subjects. I certainly wouldn’t post on CiF if it were linked to my Facebook or Google account, which are set up under my real name and are private.
Excellent points raised so far.
I would also add that a lot of it stems from selfishness and self absorption. I’ve seen an explosion of the listen to me, me, me (a lot of it seen on blogs but not this one or many of the socio/political/radfem sphere I wander around).
People think that what they say is important and in order to get the wow factor and keep them head and shoulders above others they seek to disgust and thrill. It’s not new, happened a lot in the ‘age of enlightenment’.
However, I can see the sense of removing anonymity on CiF and think it’s a good idea. Why not? It would certainly reduce the number of comments but would make for a more palatable debate and I’ve no doubt a bigger readership. I’m certainly inclined not to carry on reading the comments if a misogynistic tone is present, though I’ll heartily read the desperate musings of Tory trolls.
Late in here, but this is awful. Not suprising though.
Classic ignorance from DSMO in his response: “someone once said a rude word about David Cameron(or any other man) therefore a culture in which women are relentlessly harrased, abused, lied about, excluded, silenced, threatened, bullied, called b*tch-c*nt-deserved to be raped and on and on and on just for daring to exist and speak, well that isn’t really misogyny at all !”
“I’ve been smarting, actually, at the comment from ‘parallel’ on the last post (or two?)”
Oh dear. It’s not “hate speech” to object against the use and abuse of women by men, however many rude words I use, or however much it makes you “smart”.
Please note, people, that this is a man who is *glad* that the Poppy Project is closing down, is actually laughing about it on “punters” blogs (again – *he is pleased that services for raped and abused women are being shut down*), claims that the idea of traffiked women is a mostly feminist invention (the rape doesn’t happen and even if it did she was asking for it approach), believes that there should be more ! and better! prostitution services provided, and so on.
Check out his blog and his links – and then consider that “scum rapist johns and their apologists” covers him and the misogynistic company he keeps rather accurately.
Yet he comes here, into yet another discussion, where women want to discuss the issues around women being abused by men, being all “mr reasonable”, derailing, whining, oh so totally innocent and wounded.
Hopefully most people posting here will not be taken in by him.
Huge congratulations, Cath, on your Orwell Prize shortlist inclusion. What a wonderful antidote to the original subject of this post and thread, and also a superb affirmation of why it is worth soldiering on in the face of abuse.
I’m writing to the CiF editor to explain why I’m not clicking through on any links to that part of the Guardian site, nor linking to them elsewhere, until something is done about the moderation policy. I might also explain my need to contact advertisers and explain my decision to them…
Complete online anonymity is going to go, it’s just a question of when. The internet will implode under the weight of its own bullshit otherwise, and the likes of Facebook, Google and other Web 2.0 companies that make their money from user-generated content can’t let that happen or their business model is bust. The recent revelation that Scott Adams had had a sockpuppet “fan” for years, going around singing his own praises on all kinds of message boards, is hastening this process I think, as does the growing awareness of astroturfing on political websites. It’s just not sustainable the way it is.
Like I say, anonymity still has a big place on many parts of the internet, but not on large public forum-of-record websites like CiF (or Slate/Salon/HuffPo boards, for that matter). And all of these fora are already discussing getting rid of complete anonymity – so not necessarily tying it to your real name, address and bank account, but to other parts of your online persona.
I went from a mishmash of handles to MarinaS (which is my real name) about a year ago – it’s on my blog, on my Twitter account, and in comments, including CiF & LibCon. Personally I’ve seen no adverse effects, but of course one never knows what the trolls will come up with next. I did have someone on LibCon once try to intimidate me by “revealing” some “personal information” about me, but as I could see it was taken direct from my blog I just laughed at him. Anything that is truly private is either locked behind friends-only filters on LJ & FB, or not online.
We have a situation right now where not just women, but anyone who is traditionally denied a voice by virtue of not being a het white guy are being driven off what was once the great promise of a truly democratic and open avenue for cultural dialogue & discussion (a promise of course that has also been realised to a huge degree, but more at the margins than in the mainstream). And I think largely it is because the mores that are enforced in everyday life – however loosely or selectively – about speech, attitudes and personal responsibility for one’s words go by the wayside thanks to anonymity. Yes, it does benefit many marginalised voices, but it benefits the trolls more, and I think it’s a worthwhile project to think about how we control it.
But we can’t control people’s opinions. We can ask for more, for clearer moderation; we can chose to stay on CiF or to boycott it; we can go directly to the owners of sites like DSMO and call them out on their site policies; we can rally to the defence of other people getting bullied online; but the only way the culture of abuse will change online is if it changes offline. Depressing but true.
I think the benefits of anonymity for the marginalised (who might face actual physical threat offline) outweigh the benefits gained by abusers, who are mostly utter hot air and are dependent on the culture of the spaces they occupy. And I can’t see how non-anonymity can be enforced totally fairly and safely in a way that would inhibit the haters but free the marginalised.
I’m also worried about the effects of the market on debate that Jane talks about, because generally speaking the market does not favour the oppressed in the end.
I work on the assumption that you can never, ever change anyone’s mind. You can only influence their behaviour, and things out of your control that happen in their lives can sometimes change their attitudes slowly and incrementally.
To translate that into CiF terms, I don’t care what the misogynist trolls think: I just want them to shut up so the rest of us can have a conversation.
And in terms of influencing behaviour, people’s own sense of ego and their own image in the world are the best tools we have, which is why transparency is so important and superinjunctions are so fashionable (topical! ;)). Neither of us are speaking from data here, but your hunch seems to be that more people are freed to speak by their own access to anonymity than are silenced by the freedom and anonymity of the trolls; my hunch is the opposite. If it became unacceptable, through the medium of real-life social pressure, to behave in certain ways online, then a large proportion of the marginalised people who protect themselves with anonymity now will simply not need it anymore, anyway. Together with the women and other marginalised groups who are currently voting with their fingers against CiF, the net effect will be an improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio.
I came back to this thread to see if anyone had taken up the point I was trying to make about a group action.
Having trawled through the endless hijacking of this thread by those who only ever want to use comments to promote their narrow view point of what is or is not acceptable as feminism, leads me to conclude that there is actually no point suggesting a group action.
By and large I think most feminist activists, ie those who are actually achieving something for themselves and other women are not interested in and dont have the time to indulge in this type of exchange.
I only suggested a boycott of CiF as it illustrates the sheer lack of progress that what was Women’s Liberation, and has now become watered down feminism, has made.
And unfortunately this is all to readily propelled down hill by the relentless hostility by the pro queer pro trans lobby to any other feminist and by the women who as indiviudal feminist will sell out feminism because as individuals they want to be recognised as writers, journalist, CiF contributors. Look at the totally insulting off topic “contribution” to a real issue, ie provision of services to women, in the value of the Poppy Project article – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/22/poppy-project-trafficking-salvation-army
I am beginning to think that by and large the patriarchy has won, not only because they remain by and large unmoved by the advances of women’s liberation, by they now have allies amongst “feminists” aiding and abetting them by jumping in at the first opportunity to show how “contemporary” they are by undermining the hairy legged lesbian feminism of Women’s Liberation.
The irony of course being that the WLM was the engine that drove any number of advances for women and as real radical feminism put it into practice, ie setting up refuges and RCCs. Third wave feminism has allowed this to be dismantled by allowing the men in their heads to tell them that interacting with the media and setting themselves up as leaders is progressive, whilst the (at best) parallel movement of queer politics desperately and continuously tries to present itself as the real vanguard by acting as agents of the patriarchy in endlessly denigrating women’s liberation. (And ;lease don’t bring out that tired old chesnut about WLM being exclusively white. Their were more women from BME communities active in Women’s Liberation, eg Outwrite, Mukkti, Brent Asian Women’s Centre, Southall Black Sisters, than any 3rd wave elitist top down shame network or any queer venting has ever evidenced).
Why did I ever think there could be joint action?!
There are too many women / feminist who would be pointing out why they cant be part of a joint action.
Sorry passerby couldn’t possibly boycott cif today as there were two articles
‘Calm down dear’ cameron gaff
‘Whose boobs are these?’ an article by Miss Jones in the Telegragh
Couldn’t possibly let the MRA’a get away with ‘haven’t you lefties got a sense of humour?’ now could I?
Hah! Someone’s actually come out and said it:
“It’s the taking offence that is the offence.”
(from an anti-woman commenter on Cath’s CiF article re Cameron’s “Calm down, dear” assdouchery)
passerby I think you’re making a bit of an assumption in creating such a distinction between feminists who write, blog and whatever, and feminist activists. Most feminist writers I know, and yes I do include myself in this, are also activists – the two things certainly aren’t mutually exclusive.
I think I’d also have to question this whole boycott issue. I do understand where people are coming from on this, but I suppose my issue with it is that if we refuse to engage with the msm, if feminists refuse to write for the Guardian and other left publications, then how do we get our message out there? How do we expect to have any influence or input into changing the tone of the debate if we refuse to take part in that debate in the first place?
Why would we want to silence our own voices? Aren’t there already enough people out there trying to do that to us anyway, without us voluntarily doing it to ourselves?
I’d also add that I see feminist writing as another form of activism. What’s the quote again? “The pen is mightier than the sword”, or something like that anyway.
Engaging on these terms and has achieved nothing, Cath. All it has done is legimitise abuse and the hostility. I don’t suggest disengaging permanently, but all the time you allow your articles to be opened for comment then the Guardian need do nothing about the abuse. If you refuse to allow your articles to be the means by which the misogyny is given public voice, then 1) you are silencing it and 2) if the Guardian wants to publish debate, it has to change the manner of it. What does contining as before achieve? Try something different. Women have new leverage, take a leap and use it.
Jane
I really don’t think that it is the right thing to boycott cif at all, whether its as commenters or above the line contributors. Whether we like it or not, (and I don’t) CiF is a bear pit sometimes. Changes in moderation need to happen, but ceding all ground and withdrawing from CiF takes us backwards. Its the equivalent of saying the streets are not safe so women should stay at home.
Also I assume that contributors (those who write above the line) actually get paid something for their work. If I was a Guardian contributor, I wouldn’t take kindly to being told to stop or reduce my earning potential – most of us work to keep a roof over our heads, not for the fun of it.
I know the contributors get paid, I am not suggesting this might not involve some cost, if temporary. The idea of making money from an undertaking that harms women is not,I would hope, appealing to an actual feminist, which I distinguish from, say the feminists running Comment is Free, who clearly are very comfortable with the idea.
CiF is a bear pit sometimes, yes. It does not have to be. It is not the streets, or, if you like that analogy, then the Guardian is God of the streets, who supports safety for women and safe streets, who has the power to make the streets safe, but chooses not to . Leaving God aside, the streets are not within the power of any friend of women or feminism to make safe. If they were, wouldn’t we expect them to do that? The Guardian has the power to stop CiF being a bearpit, it simply chooses not to. Why is that ok?
“The idea of making money from an undertaking that harms women is not,I would hope, appealing to an actual feminist, which I distinguish from, say the feminists running Comment is Free, who clearly are very comfortable with the idea.”
Erm, writing pro-women blogs/articles on the Guardian is not “an undertaking that harms women”. Nor, actually, is commenting under them either as a feminist or an anti-woman ranter – it’s a bit more structural than that, surely? And it’s an odd distinction to make between “actual feminists” and the feminists who are trying to run CiF (which is surely not entirely down to the editors and their own personal ideals; in fact everything that Natalie has said about CiF – even if you disagree with her methods of moderation – has suggested that she is not in “very comfortable with” at all).
I wouldn’t claim the power to label people “actual” or, what? “fake”?, feminists.
And, conversely, when Cath realises then power she can wield as champion of the Guardian’s female readership, imagine the leverage that could give in a discussion on pay.
I don’t accept that the editor is not in charge of and responsible for the site. I think to absolve a women who is ostensibly in charge of her responsibility as a supportive gesture does women no good at all. If she has not been given the power to do what she wants to do , she should resign. I think Comment is Free actively harms women. What have we been talking about? Do you think that constant promotion of, for example, false rape claims and rape myths does not actually keep rapists on the streets?
I’m not absolving Natalie or anyone else – I was only taking issue with her being either an un-“actual” feminist (who may or may not be making poor decisions) or one who is “very comfortable” with making money from an undertaking that harms women. I think that’s not a fair representation of what is going on with the moderation of CiF.
How does Cath Elliott writing an article for the Guardian about women/feminism harm women? Because it enrages women-haters? Should we otherwise keep schtum?
I would not claim to know anything about the strength of a person’s convictions unless their actions were clearly incompatible with those convictions. I don’t believe that anyone with power over the operation of Comment is Free who operates it the manner that it is currently, which I see as plainly hostile and damaging to women, can have feminist convictions of any worth. The Guardian online is a powerful media platform, it carries with it great responsibility, and it is being badly misused to the detriment of women. The editors, all of them, and the staff, are responsible for that to the extent of their power and their involvement.
Cath is not just writing an article about feminism. She has been writing articles for five years and allowing them to be published on CiF for comment. She has been one of very few women on CiF and she has by her involvement legitimised a hostile and abusive manner of communications to women which is now entrenched and threatens to become the norm for contentious discussion between men and women online. If no women had accepted this manner of debate it would have changed. Even Comment is Free (probably) cannot purport to open gender issues for debate if no women at all will take part. It would have to change the terms of debate.
Cath gives her opinion in circumstances where most other women cannot, she finds the silencing of those women acceptable and, again by taking part, legitimises silencing the great majority of women. I don’t think of that as just writing an article.
Le sigh. We are getting off the point again, women!
OK, so a boycott is not for everyone (I’m not in favour personally). But if you want to organise one, Jane, what do you need from us to help you out on that? If you can mobilise enough support and write to the Guardian with a bunch of signatures, it will have an impact. Let me know if I can help.
I’ve taken some personal action in the last 24 hours by representing like mad under Cath’s piece on Dave’s latest gem; I believe that drowning out voices and making an environment hostile cuts both ways, so I’m for swarming, or at least showing a strong presence. I’ve also reported as abuse every comment that seemed abusive to me (as opposed to just wrong, or off topic, or rude).
Who’s with me? And how can we keep in contact and let each other know that something needs commenting on before the troll take it over completely (well, even after tbh)? I’ve bee racking my brain but apart from FB groups, which have limited efficacy and are troll bait themselves, I can’t think of anything. Ideas, feminists?
Excuse me, I don’t know how many years you have written for CiF, Cath, but I believe it is several.
I will help out with whatever the favoured approach or approaches are. I can organise and I can look into advertisers. I want Cath to lead it because she has an audience and it will work.
Conversely, if people like Cath are not onside then action has little chance of success. Why should an advertiser make waves if we cannot even convince someone who knows there is abuse?
One way to apply pressure to a media organization is threaten their advertisers with campaigns that will result in the boycott of their products that are advertised on the media organization. The campaign must make it very clear what changes are needed from the media organization. Money talks.
Perhaps a front page link on cooperating (hopefully all) high profile feminist blogs with lists of products/manufacturers that support objectionable behaviour.
stephen m
Marina, I came late to the party once again regarding Cath’s substantial input to the “calm down dear” debate.
You got my vote, both of you. Carry on as you so deservingly should…
Jane. Seriously, there are many problems with CiF, but I don’t believe that Cath has legitimised or condoned any abuse or hostility by writing for the Guardian. I think her presence on CiF as a contributor and commenter have been a positive influence in threads, which has encouraged other women to comment, blog and have an online presence.
You appear to place responsibility for the CiF misogyny on Cath – and I think that is shameful on your part, and then you follow that with your hope that she will lead some form of action, which I find amazing! Not exactly sisterhood.
According to you, women at the Guardian are supposed to resign because its not run to your liking and Cath is supposed to temporarily or permanently forego writing for CiF until things change. Cath has an audience on CiF – but she won’t have for long if she doesn’t write for CiF, audiences are fickle things, they move on.
You also seem to assume that all women who post on CiF are feminists – when very clearly they are not. though quite what you mean by ‘actual’ feminists is not clear at all.
MarinaS – I think you did a fantastic job on the CiF thread yesterday, (by the time I got home the thread was closed) brilliant comments and I am really pleased to know you reported abuse as you saw it. I think that is exactly the right approach – but we need to do that in greater numbers and support each other. I wonder if a private blog could be set up, password protected so we could all share email addresses – and as and when feminist articles are going up on CiF, an email alert is sent round to all to get on the thread and support?
Women are outnumbered 7:1 on Cath’s thread. I stopped counting at 105 men and 15 women, and Marina is posting about 25% of all comments by women. Not all, but most of the men are against the women on the thread and there is a hell of lot of nasty patronising shit being posted and going unchallenged because there are not the women to do it, no matter how fast Marina posts.
The overall of this thread is one long description of women as humourless and unable to hold their own against men without special protection. Do you think people don’t read dozens of men saying these things and agree. Popular prejudice is just that. This is reinforcing the prejudices that stop women getting selected.
Cath,
Do you really think it is better to print this than not print it? If so, please tell me why? If it is to challenge the bigotry, I will show you dozens which are not challenged, not on that thread and not on every thread. They are not being challenged because women are outnumbered 7:1.
Re what msvirago said: yes, I’m glad someone else sees the oddness of blaming a journalist for the behaviour of her opponents in the comments section; I thought it was just me who disagreed with Jane’s assertion that writing challenging sexism on a national news site is harmful to women… !
Msvirago,
I do not mean that Cath intends to legitimise or condone an abusive culture but that is the result if her participation. I expect that Natalie fully intends to encourage women to battle through abuse and change the culture, but we must not ignore the reality that that is not happening and nor can we ignore the responsibility for it. Only the people with responsibility can make changes. They are failing to even look at the experience of five years of CiF history and that is incompetent, it is negligent, it must be held up to the scrutiny. Real women are being hurt by an anti-feminist agenda that has been pumped out of CiF for five years. Nobody thinks this is a game, do they?
I am too blunt, perhaps, but do you see what comes out of CiF? Do you see women trashed and condemned and denied pay and jobs and justice every fucking day on that site by men who believe they are entitled to do it and women who allow them when they should not. It is wrong, Why doesn’t it make you angry?
Lucy,
If what you are doing is counterproductive then yes, it harmful, and people need to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Meaning well is no good if what you are doing hurts people. You need to look and see, you cannot just assume because you mean well, you are doing the right thing.
Look at what I asked Cath about her thread. Is it really better that it was printed Really? All in all? Why? If Marina and Cath are overwhelmed by comment 7:1 that say women are not up to the job, then should Cath have opened the thread? Has it hurt women to do that?
I understand you want to challenge abusive comment, I do to, but if it does not happen we cannot ignore that. It is harming women if we refuse to see clearly what is happening.
I seem to be being misunderstood, I don’t have any problem with what Cath or anyone says, but by taking part they have legitimised an abusive culture in which women are routinely abused, their rights are undermined, their access to justice denied and most women are silenced.
It is ok for the people who can stand the culture to speak, but what about the great majority of women who cannot. We all know how vile and wearing it is to be patronised and insulted all day. Are women not allowed to speak because someone, who?, has decided that men can shout abuse at them while they do? Where is the solidarity for the 100s of women forced off the site?
We need to stop accepting rules that mean we lose before we even start. We need to start agreeing the terms on which all women or most women can participate. Why not try to do something different. Nothing has been gained in 5 years on CiF, we are losing a propaganda war every day .
The only thing I can say to you Jane is that if you put the same energy into the CiF thread as you have into this one then maybe it’s be 6:1. I don’t know – I’m not sure it’s always self evident on CiF who is which gender (another point against anonymity! ;)). I just get impatient with these arguments among ourselves; let’s go argue with the real idiots out there, you know? *shrug*
By the way, I’ve just had a look at Facebook group settings and it’s possible to created a “secret” group – one that is only visible to members, so will attract fewer trolls. Does anyone think creating something like that would be a good idea? Any member can post on the wall of the group when they see/write something that could do with some comment love, and whoever’s around could head on over and represent…
Jane – “but by taking part they have legitimised an abusive culture in which women are routinely abused, their rights are undermined, their access to justice denied and most women are silenced”.
How does taking part legitimise others abuse? How are my rights undermined? How is justice denied to me? How does CiF silence me?
Taking part does not do any of those things to me, or any of my women friends I know who post on CiF. CiF is just one site on the internet and I have no idea why you seem so fixated and obsessed on it, or why you continue to blame Cath for it. I am beginning to think that an apology from you to Cath is in order.
What great majority of women is it that you assert can’t post on CiF – who are these women and how did they inform you of this?
The anti feminist agenda is much more vocal on other sites. CiF has its problems, but I will always prefer to go there rather than the likes of DSMO.
@ MarinaS 12.10 and 12.14am
Yes, yes, and yes. I agree absolutely.
“If what you are doing is counterproductive then yes, it harmful, and people need to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Meaning well is no good if what you are doing hurts people.”
Jane, I understand your good intentions and your concern about this, but CiF (and other similar mainstream debating sites) doesn’t silence women: it doesn’t silence me or you or anyone else when we post comments on it, it gives us a place to counter the misrepresentations. And it doesn’t silence Cath when she writes for it: it gives her a platform. The wearisomeness of the hate and abuse can be tedious and/or distressing but it doesn’t do the harm that institutional sexism does to women; there may be a complicated cause and effect going on here, but I’d rather women had some voice to deal with the manifestations of sexism out there in the non-textual world than kept quiet about it. The sexism is still there. And for every time I get a prickle of fury, or feel distressed and depressed by the woman-hating relentlessness of it all, there is also the cheer of solidarity that I feel when I read a really incisive comment that spears some spurious argument with a pithy counter or lays down an argument so unassailable that I know I will use it myself sometime. I bet other people get that too. Maybe especially those that read but don’t post.
Marina,
If I thought it would make any difference I would. It’s soul destroying and futile, but don’t let me put you off 😉
Lucy, I am not talking about the women on CiF, I am talking about the women who aren’t on CiF. So there are 100 men and 15 women on Cath’s thread. Where the hell are the rest of the women? Normally gender rights is wall to wall women, but not on CiF. Sometimes there are only 3 or 4 women on a long thread. It is just men and they aren’t friendly. I really don’t why people find it so impossible to tell who anyone is. Most people have been on there for years, they say who and what they are and usually they tell the truth. MrsHappy isn’t very convincing and monty86 can’t keep her life story straight for five minutes at a time. Most amusing, both of them, but 95% of people tell the basic truth, it is just too difficult to lie.
CiF is important because 1) it is very popular and 2) it is supposed to be friendly and it isn’t . It is run badly and women are losing a powerful voice because of it. It will be even worse when the print newspaper is retired if something is not done. I don’t why people don’t just refuse to accept abuse, you never would offline and the Guardian is on your side. It will be if you remind it forcefully enough. The Mail is never going to give women the time of day, we should concentrate on the battles we can win and I want to be effective. That means looking at what we are doing and seeing if it is worthwhile. CiF is less than worthwhile, it is actively harmful. The easy acceptance of a really damaging propaganda machine worries me.
If you don’t look at the effect you are having, how can you know if you are doing any good? I really will shut up now.
Don’t shut up! No good comes of that 😉
But to pick up a couple of your points: people ARE angry about the hostility of that environment, and people ARE challenging abuse, even if it is a grim task and the numbers are against them.
MarinaS
I think the secret facebook group is an excellent idea. I agree that the thing to do is to fill the first page with comments that reflect a feminist perspective. Beat these MRA’s at their own game – I can do swoop and pounce.
OK chaps, I will set up the group and have a think about how to let everyone know about it without alerting the trolls. But not today! Today I am off on holiday for the long weekend. Be in touch.
Jane
I think you’re setting far too much store by the comments; personally I don’t think they have anyway near the kind of impact you’re talking about. I don’t actually think the vast majority of people reading CiF and other sites even read the comments, and I certainly think it’s only likely to be a very small minority of readers who read *all* the comments, especially in a long thread.
Have you heard of the 90-9-1 rule of online communities? The theory is that 90% of readers do just that; they read, but they don’t actively participate in the site. Meanwhile, 9% participate, but only occasionally, while 1% are the stalwarts, those regarded as the heavy contributors.
CiF gets millions of hits per month, way way in excess of the number of comments it receives, and a significant proportion of those hits are likely to be from people who simply scan through the articles and then move on. How many times have you seen people on Twitter and other social media sites for example promote links to CiF articles with the warning – “but don’t read the comments”? I see it a lot, and I genuinely think that’s how a lot of people approach CiF and other online newspaper sites.
No, I do not find the silencing of any women acceptable. But likewise, neither will I accept anyone trying to silence me. And I have not legitimised an abusive culture by taking part, I have tried to do my bit to fight that culture and to change it. For that I have attracted the kinds of comments and the abuse that this post set out to expose, and yet it appears to me that you’re now saying that that’s my own fault, that by putting myself out there I have encouraged and legitimised said abuse. Is that really an argument you feel comfortable making?
Cath,
No, but then it isn’t an argument that I am making is it ?
There are very few women that take part in the fem/anti-fem brawling on CiF, and you are one. If you and those other few didn’t take part it could not happen. The Guardian would be required to change the environment to get women to take part. Your presence allows them to do nothing.
You publish the articles which draw the mob and get them fired up over the ‘radfems. The abusive comments are posted on your threads, yours and the other feminist journalists. You are their means of broadcasting prejudice to the world and reinforcing all those damaging preconceptions and myths that fill your threads. If you don’t allow it, if the other feminist journalists don’t allow it, it has no home.
If you writers don’t allow comments which you know will be abusive, then it has to change. When are your complaints ever listened to ? When are anyone’s complaints ever listened to? They never are. The Guardian doesn’t have to. If you refused to accept the environment, it would be changed. They can change it you know. I appreciate how important your voice is to you. I am not talking about silencing you. I am talking about you using your position to do something about those other voices. But it’s not important, you say, ok.
Jane, I’m not saying it’s not important, I just don’t necessarily agree with your proposed solution. I don’t think withdrawal is the answer, because I don’t accept that that would then force the Guardian to make the changes we would want to see. Their advertising revenue is based on hits, not on numbers of comments, and a few feminists withdrawing from CiF is not going to make a significant dent in their hit count.
I know that. The comments are a visible sign of how unwelcoming CiF is to women. Don’t you think female traffic is also put off? They can ignore it more easily but they are more likely to be going elsewhere, I would think.
Incidentally, Cath, in your haste to accuse me of arguments I did not make, you neglected to answer the questions I did ask about your last thread.
“Do you really think it is better to print this than not print it? If so, please tell me why? If it is to challenge the bigotry, I will show you dozens which are not challenged, not on that thread and not on every thread. They are not being challenged because women are outnumbered 7:1”
Sianushka
I did not mean you! I was talking about Laurie Penny who seemed to turn the issue immediately around to herself.
Jane
Talk about blaming the victims! I think it is important that feminists write for CiF. We need support not condemnation and blame. Cath, as you were! x
What I want is to get women writing for CiF. But if the feminist writers are comfortable on a public platform that denies most women a voice, well, hey, at least you get to keep on speaking for them.
The abuse aimed at you is appalling, Cath. It’s horrifying to know that there are people filled with such hate that they can enjoy carrying on such a misogynist, homophobic and venomous personal attack online.
You can’t control the internet of course, but you have done something positive to combat such poisonous writing by your piece above. You have shown that you, and we, must not become immune to such verbal violence. We must all continue to feel and express our shock and horror.
Keep writing, Cath.
Oh Cath, I’m so sorry to hear about this, it’s really upsetting. Just wanted to add to the supportive messages: you’re awesome, don’t let the bastards grind you down. ❤
Hi Julie – no that’s ok, just made me think a bit more about what i was trying to say!
hope all is well
I’m returning to this after stopping and thinking for a while about what practical action might be possible. Having read what Cath and others had to say about boycotts, I modified my plans and contacted The Guardian/CiF, telling them I’d be reading, promoting and supporting women writers (especially feminists) but would not be anything like so generally engaged with CiF as I had been, nor would I be sharing general links until their standard of moderation improves. No response yet but it was very recent. I’ve also felt moved to complain to the moderators of a couple of sites about particularly egregious examples of misogyny and hate speech.
It occurs to me that one way of moving forward might be to set up a restricted-membership group or email list – something along the lines of Yahoo Groups – so that people could make other interested parties aware of matters of concern. This also takes the onus off one individual blogger having to take responsibility and have it all played out on their site, making them the potential focus for even more unpleasantness. It also might offer a safe space for discussion.
Just another idea to throw in the mix…
That torrent of abuse was appalling, because it sounds like it comes from people who obviously have some degree of intelligence and use it to convey their small-minded ideas in the most revolting and offensive language imagineable. I’m amazed at your resilience; it’s easy to say ‘ignore it’ but it’s kind of difficult when so many people decide to chip in and see who can come up with the most imginatively sickening responses.
People like that are the perfect reason why feminists exist, why they need to exist. All that bullshit about every world invention never coming about is just ridiculous and suggests that women would never be smart enough to invent them themselves, ignoring people like Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale who obviously weren’t women. There’s absolutely no need for that kind of abuse and it was heartbreaking to see even a small portion of it.
I hope you do get some support from the people who do genuinely respect and admire you; there’s no formal qualification for ‘contributing to the world’, just giving people hope and something different to think about is just as vital and important.
I suppose it’s best not to give these worthless people any more thought that has already been wasted on them. Keep saying and writing the things you do, because people, not just women, need to listen to opinions from people like you. At least you have a cause and a sense of accomplishment, those people have nothing of value in their lives besides telling as many people as possible just how insignificant they really are.
Hi Cath, haven’t done my usual lurking thing here for a few weeks so only just saw this thread, but just wanted to add to so many comments, saying that I’m utterly horrified by what you described here, and my respect for you just jumped another few notches with the strength you showed in bringing this to everyone’s attention and talking openly about it. It would have been much easier to slink away and sob, but you did the right thing, I think.
I’ll add that if all the world’s internet users were a thousand people in a big room, about 996 of them haven’t have noticed you at all, three of them think you are a bit of a star (even if a couple of those think you talk nonsense from time to time), and there’s one greasy slimeball with no mates who has decided he doesn’t like you. The moment that one guy opens his mouth to insult you, the other 999 in the room instantly think ‘Christ, what a turd.’
hugs x
Unfortunately in this day and age hate breeds hate. I have stumbled across a number of forums whereby gangs (literally) of people pull another person apart. It is disgusting and needs to be taken seriously. If a person cannot put a point of view across without resorting to aggression and verbal violence (look at ‘I usually find stuffing a cock in her mouth, shuts women like her up’ – if that was said in the workplace to a woman there would be outrage over it), then in my opinion that person does not deserve to be heard. Freedom of speech is relative, if social media now allows the persistent and chronic abuse of individuals via the internet to gain power, we have all lost something we valued and that should be cherished. We are lucky to live in a country where we can be heard, it is a shame so many pricks like those aforementioned by you have to spoil it for everyone else. I think a new campaign should be started to get violence and intimidation off the internet. The powers that be can absolutely do something about it, by ensuring all internet domains and servers and websites are monitored by the owners. Granted it will be a big job but we have to start somewhere, there should be penalties for people posting vile hateful abuse, like a fine perhaps, hit them where it hurts and lets fine the owners of these fucking sites as well.
Lets all do some research and put it out there, NO TO ONLINE ABUSE!
What I just read left me shaking with rage, they are nothing more than a pack of animals engaging in pack mentality because they have no autonomy of thought, bullies will always bully, but they don’t have the sense to question thier motives.
You are a great writer and activist keep doing what you are doing cath and let’s face it, If any of those pricks had actually said something along the lines of ‘she’s really sexy’, the first thing I’d do is go out and get a facelift, It would make me physically sick to have a wanker like that find me attractive!
Writing on CiF is utterly irrelevant to feminist activism. It is only relevant to women who wish to be writers and use feminism as an issue they can barter to the editors to get commissions. Having ambitions as a writer doesn’t normally require one to be publicly spat at.
If the few women who contribute to CiF on “women’s issues” thought online commenting about feminism would help stop the attack on women only refuges, the transfer of gender specific services to a faith based non gender specific service provider you would be writing for the largest available audience, and one with the most influence. And that is the mail on line. The Guardians online audience is piffling in comparison. (You can find the stats on the Guardian web site in fact.)
Please don’t confuse a personal desire to be a big fish in a small sea with doing something of significance for other women. This is just about a few bloggers who are part of a small circle who comment on each other. Who knows or cares who Sunny is or whether or not they met with the current editor of CiF. Get over yourselves!!
The question is what possible function does online feminism serve. It may have grown over the past few years, but in terms of the actual practice of feminism, eg women’s services, equalities, etc., there have been terrible losses.
Look at the apolitical non historical feminism lite at the F Word. If anything online feminism has led to a misguided assumption that the act of writing or reading a blog post is somehow equivalent to actively volunteering, acting as a trustee, endlessly applying for funds, negotiating with local councils etc..
If you think writing about feminism is a positive contribution to the growth or and support of women activists, its a question of sorting out the arena in which to do it. You would have more impact writing letters to your local newspaper.
Lets face it, getting an online thumbs up from AllyF arguably the biggest block to CiF ever being a better and more representative of feminism in a supportive atmosphere because he is one of the CiF clique who actively egg each other on with their male adolescent “let the battle begin” is hardly something to be proud of!!
In the meantime, in the print version of the Guardian Amelia Gentleman and another female writer whose name I cant remember (shame on me) are actively supporting feminism with their news reports and articles.
Doing tricks for daddy is bad enough for any woman’s sense of autonomy, doing them in public diminishes us all.
Meanwhile to get back on topic, should feminists be able to blog without becoming the target of unreconstructed male reactionaries?
In an ideal world – of course!
The hatred and disrespect of women that the unregulated internet allows to surface is a reminder of the reality lurking beneath the surface of our “more equal” society. (Not unlike the male chief of police in Sweden who was actively part of promoting their anti john campaign when it came to light that he regularly visited brothels where women had been trafficked).
The internet wont change the world, it just reflects it. It is only the medium.
Can we start talking about how Women’s Liberation got derailed and can we get it back on track.
A bit less about personalities and friends, and a bit more about group working and movements or is this no longer possible?
I don’t think just over 1,000 signatures on a petition to save the poppy project is going to make the white right wing male establishment think they have got anything to fear!!
Cath, found out about this from Ally this morning on waddaya. You are a decent human being and and I generally agree with your Cif pieces – but even if you were a shite human being and I agreed with bugger all you said, you still wouldn’t deserve this – no one deserves this.
The fact that you are a woman – and a witty and intelligent woman as well – no doubt explains why these particular prats have attacked you in such a manner. Cyberhate takes many forms: the guy who ran the Steamie site on the Scotsman had his house attacked – most likely it was neds but he found himself wondering if it was one of the hatefilled posters on the site, which says it all. The estimable Kenneth Roy of the Scottish Review – which does not allow comments because of the viciousness of the Scottish blogosphere – has just written a piece pondering the fact that he is being denounced on the web as a ‘traitor’ to Scotland for his unfashionable views on the Holyrood election.
There is an awful lot of hate out there as was horribly evidenced on Cif by the recent McCann thread. What sort of person accuses a mother of causing the death of her child? Lots of people apparently. I’d guess premod is coming to most sites but that doesn’t solve the problem of specific hate sites. The best thing is ignore them Cath. You have plenty of people out there who admire you – and I’d guess that’s a feeling unknown to your stalkers.
Hi Cath,
I hope you are well.
I followed a link from Ally on waddya to get here. (Thanks Ally.) I am horrified by what you have reported but so pleased that you have written about it. So many victims of this type of abuse stay quiet. This kind of hate talk is thoroughly disgusting and people hide behind anonimity too much. Cowardly sniping with mob mentality. It made me feel a bit sick tbh. Personally, I would never dreams of saying anything on line which I wouldn’t say to someone’s face.
You are always welcome back at cifunderground anytime you like where you won’t have to put up with jerks such as the ones you speak of.
All the best to you and yours,
SleepyChow
Thanks for the lovely comments folks. In fact thank you to everyone who’s contributed to this thread – it’s been a really thought provoking discussion. x
Late to this (and have just read the entire thread, phew!) but obviously, the first thing that needs to be said is that the abuse you receive is utterly disgusting, utterly unwarranted, and quite obviously has a gendered and violent aspect which is simply not present in all internet scraps. Cath, you are a brave and inspiring woman and I thank you for what you do.
In terms of solutions, I think the anonymity issue is the big one. I accept the arguments against requiring actual names (people posting from work etc) but an appropriate compromise would be to require real-name, verified registration and then allow posting under a username. This might have a similar effect to the now-standard “this call is being recorded” telephone tactic which apparently reduces abusive behaviour by over 60%.
As for posting on CiF legitimising misogynist abuse, I speak as a non-blogger, non-activist feminist and regular reader of CiF. The feminist posts ATL and BTL, although relatively few, are reassuring and a reminder that we are not alone. While those of us who post feminist comments on CiF may be in the minority, we frequently get a significant number of recommends, and I personally find this encouraging, knowing that there are silent readers who get it and agree.
MARINA S: I would be really interested in joining your FB group and participating. I often go a few days without reading CiF and getting a FB message about providing solidarity would make a huge difference to my level of participation.
God this whole post made me angry. What makes me sick about incidents like this, is that people anonymously sit behind the beloved shiny gadgets that rule their pathetic lives, and throw the worst insults their puerile little minds can muster at people they don’t even know, when they wouldn’t speak to people like that in real life. Ok, you may get the odd social reject who would say it to your face, but most of these imbeciles will go to work every day, and no doubt have pleasant banter around the water machine, with their colleagues never suspecting what vile little creeps they’re talking to. I mean, seriously,’This c*nt is needed in Holland, the f*cking Dyke!’. I just imagine a member of my family, or a colleague knowing that this was my intellectual contribution to an online discussion, and I feel a bit sick. I would absolutely love to meet the person who typed that. I bet they’re as beautiful on the outside as the bile they spew. Sometimes I love the anonymity of the internet, but when I see things like this, it makes me wish there was a way to ensure that out and out bullies had to display their name and contact details, and see how witty they are then.
I really admire you carrying on with your blog and writing about this. It’s about time people start to feel some shame for their cowardly antics online.
Gah! I’m fuming on your behalf! That’s outrageous, no, actually it’s deeply, deeply horrible. I’ve no suggestions about how you can deal with it, well, apart from trying rise above it – easier said than done, I know.
Sadly, there seem to be more and more knuckle-dragging knobs like this permeating the internet. I suppose it’s a reflection of this awful trend for saying and doing ever more hateful and offensive things, combined with technology giving sad little men the chance to band together. In the past all they could do was sit alone in their damp, cabbage-scented bedsits and rant to themselves about the injustice of the womenz being allowed to speak and stuff.
I wonder if their mothers, daughter, sisters, wives know about these comments? Would love to start a website daring them to ‘reveal’ who they really are. Richard White, come on – post a RL photo of yourself (without the pathetic cross over your face), let’s see your facebook page and some articles you’ve written. Where do you work? Do you work? What’s your boss think about this? Then we can make some comparisons based on evidence instead of hate speech.
My guess is we’ll never find out and the black cross on a scared man’s photo will remain. Sad little man.
Reading this made me wince.
Have just read this piece, so apologies for the belated response. Frankly Im speechless. And, right now I’m afraid to say, feeling ashamed by association to be a man.
Some people’s behaviour is just utterly unpardonable
Keep going. Good luck. You deserve better.
From (trust me) one of the huge (unfortunately silent) majority who are on your side
The level and nature of the abuse you’ve received is absolutely disgusting.I really can’t fully comprehend how these people don’t realise that they are offending REAL PEOPLE.I’m sure they don’t escalate disagreements with the opinions of other like this in real life;why should it be acceptable online? I wish I could think of options to try and cut this down..wall of shame on newspaper websites for those blocked/suspended for abusive messages?Yes,we obviously need free speech,but just because you’re entitled to your opinion doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have an offensive/violent post remain online.
This all made me so sad. There’s plenty of right wing writers and activists who I seriously dislike, but I never feel the need to be personally cruel to them. Just remember that most people are good and the nasty ones just shout louder.
I’m a woman, though I don’t identify as a feminist.
I’ll also admit to not really knowing who you are, so perhaps my anger is biased.
But fuck. Reading this pissed me off an awful lot. The things you believe in and the things you stand up for aren’t things you should be abused for. I don’t give a fuck who agrees or disagrees with what you have to say – there’s no fucking need for abuse like this.
The internet seems to be filled with more fuckwits than the real world. Probably because they get to hide safely behind a monitor and still make people cry. Is it a power thing? I genuinely do not understand it.
Jesus. I know saying ‘their opinions don’t matter’ is completely pointless, because you’ve obviously been upset by this. But really… As someone who rarely gives a damn what anyone says about them, whether it be in real life or on the internet, it’s so much better… When you realise that you’re fucking awesome, and anyone who doesn’t agree is clearly blind, the world seems to run that little bit better.
Keep strong ❤
Try, people are trolls. These people who write such tripe are morons who have nothing else to do but put others down. If I were any better of a person, I’d feel sorry for them. But I don’t because I know the worst punishment for those wankers is to just be themselves. How much would that suck, to be them. Ha
Sorry, I know this isn’t the point of the blogpost, but how do you get those twitter posts to show like that in your blog?
Hi Paul. WordPress does it like that automatically if you paste the tweet url into the piece you’re writing. Not sure if other blogging platforms do the same.
Another passer by… so sorry for you. Not because you’re a woman, or a feminist, but because you’re a human being and no-one deserves this.
I feel somewhat ashamed of my gender after scanning this.
just arrived here from the guardian; this is the first comment i’ve ever left on any blog or article. Just wanted to say that i have a huge amount of respect for you for posting this.
One of the great things about the internet is that it allows like minded people with obscure interests to find each other around the world. Unfortunately this also leads to things like this. If everyone in the world had to comment on one of your articles (or anyones) hateful comments like these would be lost amoungst all the comments from people who aren’t total morons
Another from The Guardian here: haven’t had time to read all your blog here, or there for that matter, but as I intimated in my post I’ve got an interesting perspective on how people are perceived and reacted to on-line based on gender or (again) perceived gender. Struggling with my own gender status years ago in the early days of the internet it was interesting and,for some reason, not at all offensive to be regarded as female based on writing style. Five years later it became apparent why!
[PS: Marc -“One of the great things about the internet is that it allows like minded people with obscure interests to find each other around the world.”
How true!!]
So yes, there are different reactions according to gender and poor futdashukup et al do feel put upon. Strangely enough my old male friends who are confident in themselves and their own sexuality have no problems with me or with feminism.
Perhaps you should try writing in an anonymous male persona just for the experience, and to see if anyone notices.. I’ve just remembered, with a strange joy, the first woman, on Compuserve, who thought I was female based on my writing style
Oh gawd, it’s a bit late where I am so I took it as read that I didn’t need to comment on just how horrible the comments in your original blog were.
Nothing would make me raise _my_ head over the parapet though.:-)
Some disgusting comments but just ignore them Cath – the internet should never be policed in the way some posters are advocating above or it will cease to be the truly powerful, independent and open information exchange medium it is currently. There are infinitely more important issues to be dealt with than silencing a small group of massively offensive and occasionally mildly humorous (sorry) idiots.
Don’t let them distract you from your objective – we must all push hard over the next few decades to eradicate neo-liberal corporatism from the face of the Earth.
God Cathy they really are pathetic. I can just see a congerie of unhappy men with small pricks banging away hopelessly, like Michal Houellebecq minus the genius
Why are these sorts of fellow always obsessed with their own penises? Presumably it’s because nobody else is, the poor little mites.
I don’t know what to suggest, other than that you take heart from the comments here, and keep speaking out about anything you damn well want to. The actions you identified in this post as “mistake 1” and “mistake 2” actually weren’t mistakes. They were the only courses of action available to you, and you did the right thing – it is not YOUR failing that no effective action was available to you, nor is it your failing that the responses you received were inadequate and misogynistic.
This post of yours forms part of the broad current discussion online about misogynistic abuse, and is very valuable. Thank you for writing this.
Hi Cath, I have never posted / blogged before, but felt moved to do so when my sister sent me this link. The despicable abuse you have have been subjected to is deeply wounding. Whilst incredibly personal, at the same time such violence functions as a powerful form of intimidation / social control – a deterrent to ALL women against challenging normative patriarchy.
Well intentioned advise to ‘ignore it / rise above it / laugh it off /accept it as the price of having freedom of speech” etc is unwittingly (or conversely quite consciously) victim blaming i.e. there is something wrong with you if you ‘let it get to you’. Actually this tactic is as old as patriarchy, and a common response to, and by, victims of abuse.
Denying outright that the abuse happened / the extent of the abuse or minimising the impact the abuse has, at both a personal and societal level, leaves the victim to struggle alone with the impact, and society able to push the uncomfortable truth of structural gender inequality back under the proverbial carpet and perpetuate the status quo. This is precisely the dynamic that is played out with rape, childhood sexual abuse, domestic abuse, racism, homophobia etc etc,
I appreciate, from personal experience, the desire not to give perpetrators of abuse the satisfaction of knowing they have been successful in causing me distress and harm. However, to deny, perhaps even to oneself, the true impact, is to inflict further wounding on oneself, and at a wider level, to tacitly condone such abuse by colluding with the received wisdom that women who react with anger and distress to such ‘abuse’ are deranged / over-sensitive / inadequate / humourless. When a victim of abuse internalises such messages about herself, she is further disempowered.
The ‘freedom of speech’ argument is a fatuous distraction / distortion from the core issue – personal abuse, threats and intimidation are unacceptable, period, and constitute hate crimes (i.e. they violate other, and no less important human rights) when gender based.
In the west, gender based abuse still has a legitimacy and acceptance that some other forms of abuse no longer have (at least on the surface). If the verbal abuse levelled at you had been racist abuse against a black / minority ethnic person, with the same ferocity and vitriole I think there would have been more of an outcry, and the site moderator would have been keen to be seen to be doing the ‘right thing’.
For these reasons, we do need to hold social networking site moderators to account and insist that they uphold their own policies, and we do need to make gender hate crimes more visible, and take perpetrators to task. The caveat being that presently the systems for redress often re-traumatise women who have already suffered enough e.g. the criminal justice system re rape cases, and each individual woman needs to at least have the power to decide what she is prepared and able to withstand.
And sadly it is an ‘occupational hazard’ that challenging the standing order will provoke a violent backlash, but that doesn’t make it right, doesn’t mean you asked for it, doesn’t diminish its impact, doesn’t confer on you the responsibility to shrug it off.
Surround yourself with the people who make you feel good, and consider yourself hugged sister.
appalled to read this stuff, as I always am, though it should come as no surprise after all hate I’ve seen spewed onto the internet via Youtube comments, online gossip columns etc… But what you should know is that though it was personally directed at you in this instance, these people don’t hate you personally. They hate anyone they can. Theirs is a blind, sad, desperate and grasping hatred, which is directed at anybody they can find; anybody who is successful, anybody who is intelligent, anybody who is brave… And any woman who is all three is the kind of woman that terrifies and angers them the most.
I try to look at it this way: however bad it makes one feel when people direct their pathetic and ultimately ineffectual hatred at you, think how much worse it would be to be that actual sort of person. Shudder.
Best wishes and keep up the good work 🙂
This is a pretty old blog post, but I just stumbled across it today.
For what it’s worth (probably not a lot), I think it’s probably true that for every hate-filled, twisted comment coming from some mysteriously damaged, ignorant individuals hovering in cyberspace, there are several other people who have had a positive reaction that gets drowned out in the idiotic cacophony of reactionary spite. It seems to be the reality that people are more likely to be loud and boisterous when they feel hateful or angry than when they feel supportive, receptive and friendly.
I don’t know what can be done to end the culture of violence towards women online and off, other than for members of the online community — male and female — to call people out on their comments (at least public comments) and not ignore them, because by ignoring them they are being granted a type of legitimacy and given space to grow roots and become further entrenched.
I found this via a link – http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/comments-rape-abuse-women
And I have to say, it embarasses me that ‘my gender’ is the problem. Please keep blogging and please ignore the trolls.
Whatever happened to Richard White ?