

"You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online - AndrewDucker
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/comments-rape-abuse-women

======
theorique
I find it hard - like, _really hard_ \- to put myself in the state of mind of
someone who would write something like this at someone else. It's strange - I
just really don't get it.

The danger is when people with mindsets like us extrapolate outward to assume
that essentially everyone is people like us, and therefore "it's not that
serious a problem".

It _is_ a serious problem - if even 1% of internet users are behaving this
way, then there's a lot of abuse going around every day.

No easy or obvious solutions - it's systemic.

------
jgrahamc
Sad, but not unexpected to anyone who's been online for a while. Back when
Usenet was the place people discussed things it could get really nasty.

When I was working on the Turing petition I received all sorts of hate email.
Apparently, I'm going to hell where I am going to spend eternity having 'bum
sex' with Turing himself. If you have any questions for him I'll try to ask
him.

~~~
rb2k_
I think you make a good point. While I know that HN doesn't like meme's
popping up in the comments, I think that these situations are really well
described by one phrase: "haters gonna hate"

There are just people out that that are angry at something (life, job, ...)
and they seem to like venting by writing stupid emails or comments to people
the usually have never met in person.

I think that most of the sexism, racism, *-ism is just the easiest way of
trying to hurt somebody emotionally. They're just going for a cheap shot. As
long as it's not institutionalized by policies, I think the best thing to do
is not even dignifying that with a response. You certainly can't have a
discussion with those kinds of "fundamentalists" when their goal is not a
discussion about gender/race/religion/... but rather to get people upset.

~~~
jgrahamc
_but rather to get people upset_

And they do that for their own pleasure.

------
thom
We expend huge amounts of time and computing power to track people's likes,
dislikes and spending habits to show them better advertising. It would be
interesting to see a service that uses the same expertise to pin online hate
speech to someone, publicly and for all time.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It would also be interesting to see a service which uses the same expertise to
pin online speech to closeted gays, closeted conservative academics, occupiers
who work on wall st and redditors with gimmick accounts (e.g.
steamingpileofpoo).

And lets not forget, a service which pins anti-Islamic Republic speech to
Iranians.

~~~
thom
Yup, those would be cool too.

------
sellandb
I don't disagree with the general sentiment of the article, but judging from
this quote it would appear to be a two way street:

"A lot of [commenters] seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single,
slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's
basements and ranting."

~~~
rsynnott
(a) She's quoting someone else (a MAN!)

(b) That's rather hard to equate with rape threats.

~~~
sellandb
Okay, like I said, I still agree with the sentiment of the article (Which is
pretty much entirely quoting other people). I just think that it is a little
hypocritical to pen an article calling out abusive comments in the blogger
community and then present other abusive comments in a positive light. I am
certainly not saying this equates, vindicates, or in anyway excuses rape
threats, or really any other abusive comment. Just pointing out that perhaps
that quote is inappropriate considering the point the article is trying to
make.

------
count
How is this Hacker News?

~~~
rsynnott
A common topic on here is "why aren't there more women in computers?" I'd say
this sort of thing is highly relevant.

