
The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women - denzil_correa
http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/#
======
tzs
> A report, “Misogyny on Twitter,” released by the research and policy
> organization Demos this June, found more than 6 million instances of the
> word “slut” or “whore” used in English on Twitter between December 26, 2013,
> and February 9, 2014.

It's worth clicking through to the actual report [1]. For the several words
they look at, they don't just count them. They break them down by gender of
the tweeter, by comments (tweets about the word itself) and conversations
(tweets where the word was used as part of the conversation), and how the word
was used (non-offensive, colloquial, misogynistic, and so on).

For "slut" and "whore" in conversation, there is a really strong periodic
component. The graph looks like a triangle waveform, with a big spike at the
peak of the peak. It's probably a 24 hour period, but I can't really read it
well because (for no reason that I can discern) they have used a spacing for
the time grid lines of 1 day, 3 hours, 47 minutes?! See figure 5.

Figure 6 shows "slut" and "whore" in conversation tweets by gender. The graphs
for males and females are nearly identical. They mention this in their "Key
findings" section:

    
    
       Women are as almost as likely as men to use the
       terms ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ on Twitter. Not only are
       women using these words, they are directing them at
       each other, both casually and offensively; women are
       increasingly more inclined to engage in discourses
       using the same language that has been, and continues
       to be, used as derogatory against them.
    

Is it misogynistic for a woman to call another women, with offensive intent, a
slut or whore? Or is she simply being a jerk?

[1]
[http://www.demos.co.uk/files/MISOGYNY_ON_TWITTER.pdf?1399567...](http://www.demos.co.uk/files/MISOGYNY_ON_TWITTER.pdf?1399567516)

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arjie
> As Hess herself put it, “Policing misogyny is fabulous in theory. In
> practice, it’s a bitch.”

It's interesting, but this seems to be very true. Creating rules to behaviour
seem to have the primary effect of spurring people to find ways to circumvent
the rules. Any attempt at enforcing the spirit of the rules and not the letter
leads to long diatribes on the nature of free speech coupled with some
incredible persecution complex.

The interesting part is that the culture of a community is so incredibly
fragile. They do not require a majority of bad actors, because beyond a very
small number, these bad actors will quickly cause the original members of the
community to leave and soon the ratio becomes more and more unbalanced
spiraling until the community is no longer what it started out as.

Despite my aversion to overlords in real life, I find that online communities
are most effective when strongly policed with unproductive dissent silenced
outright. Not all dissent, just that which is unproductive.

My personal hypothesis is that while we see public places as public, and
private places as private in real life, these distinctions are less clear
online. Couple that with the problem where you don't know if a person is
undesirable until after you've let him in and things quickly become hard to
control.

I don't know if there is a solution.

~~~
ObviousScience
> Not all dissent, just that which is unproductive.

And who gets to pick what's productive or not?

That's always the hitch in these schemes: is criticizing decisions about what
to police productive? is criticizing the beliefs of the owners productive? is
not agreeing with the norm of the community productive?

The person making these calls has a vested interested in not seeing certain
kinds of criticism and in accruing more power for themselves, so there's an
inherent conflict of interest that tends to go wrong.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's certainly a problem in politics, which is why in democratic countries
free speech protections are usually broad enough to encompass everything short
of incitement to criminal activity.

But on private online platforms the owner/operator is in effect a
dictatorship, and users can participate or not as they see fit. While free
speech laws prevent official censorship, nobody is owed a platform for the
expression of their views; so if some trolls are discomfited by being
unwelcome at many social sites, so what? Why should their putative right to
say obnoxious things take precedence over others' perfectly reasonable desires
not to be harassed, and the site operators' (typical) choice to cater to the
larger demographic?

~~~
ObviousScience
My point is that site policing rarely stops at trolls: it usually creeps out
to extend first to people who criticize the policing of trolls, because who
thinks trolls deserve defending? and then it creeps out a little more to
silence fringe views, because what are they really adding to the conversation?
and then it creeps out a little more to silence people who don't share the
majority view, because who wants to be in a community where we constantly have
to deal with people who don't agree with the obvious rightness of our
opinions?

It's not like it hasn't been tried before, it's just that policing ideas so
rarely stops with just the trolls I'm skeptical of the whole premise.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's all true, but if an online community becomes unwelcoming the cost of
leaving is virtually zero - I've abandoned several because I had begun to find
them toxic for one reason or another. I do think moderation works better when
it's unilateral and there's a clear demarcation between administration and
membership so you don't end up with social capture, ie a clear understanding
that Forum X is not a democracy or even a polity.

It's an imperfect situation, but if you want to run a structured forum (eg the
typical case of one that's dedicated to particular topics of mutual interest),
then it's better than just establishing it and walking away, because without
any sort of moderation at all the evidence is that it will quickly turn into a
toxic shithole and be useless for its original purpose. Usenet's alt tree was
the best example of a benign self-regulating anarchy but even that buckled in
the wake of Eternal September and never really recovered IMHO.

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freshflowers
Let's stop pretending that this is just caused by a small minority. I've more
or less abandoned Reddit because misogynist crap is no longer limited to
obscure subs but gets upvoted to the front page via mainstream subs.

I used to think the anonymity of the internet was an outlet for a small
minority of psychopaths, but aggressive online behavior towards women seems to
become increasingly normal.

~~~
archagon
People have said in the past that HN is just as bad as Reddit in this regard,
but I've found discussion here to be quite reasonable over the past year.
(Caveat: I could be totally wrong about this as I don't follow all the
discussion.) I wonder what changed? After all, HN uses a voting system just
like Reddit. I don't think it's the audience: Slashdot covers a similar
demographic and discussion there is horrible. The only other public site I
know of that does it well is Metafilter, and that's on account of heavy
moderation and community policing.

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oldmanjay
The article uses some fairly disingenuous constructions to make online words
resonate emotionally, such as intercutting with stories of rape. I understand
what they're going for but I find the technique slimy.

------
x0x0
I read about #jadapose -- people tweeting pictures of themselves in the same
pose as a 16 year old drugged and raped at a party -- and decided I need to
use the internet less. For fucks sake.

edit: s/them/themselves/

------
sr-ix
"As Hess herself put it, 'Policing misogyny is fabulous in theory. In
practice, it’s a bitch.'"

This woman's word choice is particularly revealing of the pervasiveness of
misogyny in (our) human culture.

~~~
arjie
I think that was the intent.

------
spindritf
_Her article seems to be about what could be done to stop anonymous trolls
from terrorizing and threatening women. How about prosecuting them, since
terroristic threats is already a crime? Unfortunately, as Hess discovers, the
police don 't care much about online stalking, which is consistent since they
don't care about IRL stalking either. But never mind, it's not the problem:
misogyny is the problem, amplified 1000x by online anonymity. Anonymity makes
the internet mean and gives trolls= men too much power. This is the subtle
shift: what starts out as "misogyny is bad" becomes "anonymity facilitates
misogyny."_

 _Keeping in mind that actual stalking has never been dealt with in any
significant way ever, the desire of a few female writers to curb online
anonymity wouldn 't be enough to get an @ mention, except that this happens to
coincide with what the media wants, and now we have the two vectors summing to
form a public health crisis. "Cyberbullying is a huge problem!" Yes, but not
because it is hurtful, HA! no one cares about your feelings-- but because
criticism makes women want to be more private-- and the privacy of the women
is bad. The women have to be online, they do most of the clicking and receive
most of the clicks. Anonymous cyberbullying is a barrier to increasing
consumption, it's gotta go._

 _..._

 _If you 're a guy, you probably don't realize the awesome pressure on women
to let themselves get looked at: to reveal themselves online, to post a pic,
to give everyone your attention, to stop what you're doing and give the other
your self, even if they want to yell at you. "Hey lady, I hate you!" And yet
that same pressure tells women they are valueless unless they are public.
Madness._

 _The system is illogical, the things you want cannot actually coexist, but
you dare not attack the system that promises everything, therefore something
else must be blamed. As a basic example, Hess probably wants all the benefits
of socialism and all the brand products of capitalism. When she can 't have
it, obviously the problem is misogyny._

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html)

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icpmacdo
I have read more article's in the last month that feature Anita Sarkeesian in
them than I previously thought I would have in my entire life.

~~~
potatolicious
There are 5700 words in this article. Exactly 72 of those words refer -
directly or indirectly - to Sarkeesian.

Before even mentioning Sarkeesian the article reports on the threats and abuse
suffered by 4 other women. Directly after mentioning Sarkeesian it details
stories of 5 more women who have been harassed, violently attacked, or
threatened.

So... Sarkeesian is the part that you latch onto here?

~~~
icpmacdo
I know its a monster of an article I was commenting that when I got to that
spot it registered as another data point in a the number of times I have read
that name over a huge assortment of publications. I kinda of understand the
downvoting I am getting for pointing it out as it seems to be a charged topic.

------
l33tbro
Downvote away, but "meh" from me. This read to me like just another SJW
alarmist, wringing their fists and crying "because social media". Women, like
every other group, need to engage with the internet on it's own terms. The
lights are out - so of course people are going to act based on their id. Hence
the IDiots making all the rape jokes.

If people are making legitimate threats, then it should be a serious matter.
Otherwise,accept there are sad morons out there who don't get to say this
stuff IRL, and don't let it get to you. Sorry ladies, but creeps will always
exist. So some sad Redpill fucks are making comments about some chick tied up?
Yes, it sickens me, but "do as thou will" until you actually harm another
human.

Full disclosure: white middle class male.

