
Why do trolls go after feminists? - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-35009045
======
scrupulusalbion
FWIW, trolls don't uniquely focus on feminists. Their emotional buttons are
just so easy to find and push; when your advocacy === your emotional button,
then you are broadcasting how to make you upset. If you are easily made upset,
then you are self-primed for being trolled. So, if you don't like being
trolled, then either hide your emotional buttons or change what happens when
someone pushes those buttons.

The fact that feminists appear to be uniquely targeted by trolls is indeed the
result of a societal structure, but it is not unique to feminists. Instead,
feminists are just another set of humans who are louder when they get upset.
People used to complain about so-called Soccer Moms being too easy to upset.

If you don't like the trolls, then don't feed them. I had thought that people
had learned from the vi-vs-emacs flame wars how to avoid unproductive drama.
Feminists spin their wheels by getting upset at trolls, just as vi users
wasted their time getting mad when emacs users were not using vi.

~~~
CM30
Pretty much this 100%. It's not being a feminist or female specifically that
makes you a target, it's being seen to respond poorly to attacks and trolling.
If it's not feminists, then its furries, or otherkin, or bronies, or fanboys,
or whoever else is seen as an easy target that responds poorly to criticism.

Ignore trolls, and they'll (eventually) ignore you. Keep responding and
baiting them, and you're toast. Same thing goes if you run a community. Don't
want trolls? Ban and move on. Don't turn it into a big dramatic deal and 'war
on trolls'.

~~~
scrupulusalbion
>Ban and move on.

This might have mixed results. Some trolls see getting banned as proof of
successful trolling, whereupon trolling via another account might still be an
option.

I think the users are the key to making trolls go away, because it is a social
issue and not a mechanical issue. Put another way: you can't program away
trolling, despite how fun XKCD's idea [0] might be to implement.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/810/](https://xkcd.com/810/)

------
bunnymancer
Article hits pretty close to the truth in that our societal structure is based
around males being trained to be loud and space-demanding while females are
trained to "deal with it"

~~~
martiuk
I don't remember being "trained" to be loud and space-demanding? And I don't
remember my wife being "trained" to deal with it.

Society is ever changing rubbery blob that's being melded into different
shapes based on what people do, have done or will do.

You can't just go ahead and make large generalisations about men or women
without any backlash, especially on the internet.

I'm sure if I made a comment saying all women should be/are xyz on twitter, I
sure as hell would be trolled/attacked; it's what you as a person deals with
it.

~~~
wpietri
> I don't remember being "trained"

I see.

Do you remember being potty trained? Do you remember being trained on what
things and behaviors are masculine and feminine? Because you were trained, and
if you spend time around toddlers you can see them being trained on both.

You were also trained in the use of tens of thousands of words. Do you
remember being trained on each one of them? I sure don't. Do you remember
being trained on how to avoid collision on the sidewalk? On how to use a fork?
On how to use your fingers to put things in your mouth?

Your memory of being trained on something isn't a good indicator of whether
you were trained on it. A relatively small amount of what society trains
people on is explicit, formal, and sufficient to cause episodic memory
formation. Most of our learning is implicit.

> And I don't remember my wife being "trained"

Were you married when she was 2? Gender role training starts at least that
early.

Regardless, if you look you can read plenty of actual stories from adult women
on how they have been trained to deal with it, and how they're still being
trained in that by being punished for breaking from it.

Clementine Ford has experienced exactly that kind of training, so if you
wanted to learn something, you could start with her articles. Other good
sources are Everyday Sexism, Project Unbreakable, or the autobiography of
pretty much any pioneering woman. Madeleine Albright talks explicitly about
this and how rising through the man's world of diplomacy forced her to cast
off her training and adopt loud and space-demanding behaviors just to be
heard.

~~~
csorrell
I find this attitude pretty condescending. A broad gender statement like "boys
are trained to be loud and space demanding" isn't honest in representing all
boys.

~~~
wpietri
> I find this attitude pretty condescending.

That's fair. When somebody leaps into a discussion without understanding the
basics and acting in a way that is basically ignorant denial, I am ok with
condescending to them.

The discussion of gender bias and gender equity is a rich and complicated
subject. Here on HN, people are generally expected to know something before
they open their mouths. I think my condescension here is about 1% of what
somebody would get if they were ignorant about language design and still
offering similarly bold opinions on languages that they've never used.

~~~
csorrell
Can you really say that the parent comment lacks an understanding of the
basics, or is somehow misinformed in their opinion? People aren't always going
to agree with the things you say or the way that you choose to say them. That
doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong or ignorant.

~~~
talmand
Seeing "The discussion of gender bias and gender equity is a rich and
complicated subject" statement with an attitude of "I know more than you
despite me not possibly knowing anything of what you know of the topic" paints
an interesting picture.

~~~
wpietri
What I know of what he knows is what he said. In particular, the statement I
addressed is one that no reasonable person would say if they had real
knowledge of the topic.

If you can find some way to interpret him otherwise, I look forward to reading
it.

~~~
talmand
That's the point, I'm not interpreting anything the person is saying. I'm
commenting on you admitting the subject is complicated but you are somehow
able to guess the knowledge of a person based on one statement you read on a
website with little context.

~~~
wpietri
Animal taxonomy is complicated, but if somebody says "bats are bugs" [1] it's
fair to guess that they don't know much.

Try it yourself. Take any complicated domain that you know well. It's pretty
easy to construct statements that make it clear that a speaker wouldn't know
much.

[1]
[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/11/03](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1989/11/03)

~~~
talmand
But, this game is easy. If I make ten statements about a particular topic, one
of them is spectacularly wrong, the rest are spot on correct; by your logic I
don't know much about the topic.

My point is, you are deciding something completely off little information and
I'm only suggesting that your guess on this person is not as accurate as you
may think it is. I do agree that there's a chance you are 100% correct on the
matter, but I don't see how we can determine that.

[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

Of course, I admit that cartoon may apply to myself in this context as well.

~~~
wpietri
If that's your only point, then it's mostly not correct, and where it is
correct is isn't interesting.

I'm not deciding anything irrevocably; if he had come back and started talking
sense on the topic, I would have been happy to revise.

And yes, of course my picture based on a couple of paragraphs is incomplete.
But that's true of any comment here. It's the commenter's job to make sure
what they post is a reasonable representation of their views. Repliers reply
to what was actually written, not the infinite penumbra of the possibility
space of what could actually be going on.

Your standard of "100% correct" is a deeply weird one to apply to online
discussion, especially since you clearly aren't applying it to your own
comments. I may not know what martiuk knows, but you have no better idea of
what I know. But here you are, sniping as if you do.

~~~
talmand
I'm glad you agree with me, although it is a strange "I'm not really wrong but
you are because of claims you didn't make" way of doing it.

~~~
wpietri
I'm glad you can parse "mostly not correct" as agreeing with you. That must
really help minimize feelings of cognitive dissonance.

And yes, I'm critiquing what you implied because you initially weren't brave
enough to say anything specific, just to raise a (false) contradiction and
then call it "interesting" when you meant something other than interesting.

~~~
talmand
I'm glad you're glad, but now you're using big words and my lowly status as
someone who doesn't understand complicated things as easily as you do is
causing me to be confused.

You're critiquing, I'm critiquing, it's all good. Well, until you start
arguing semantics over words I chose to use (and define them for me to boot),
even though I was quite obvious in my initial statement, is clear evidence
this is going nowhere.

Thanks, it has been enlightening.

------
nickpsecurity
Interesting that this question was asked in relation to GamerGate. When I
researched _that_ , the major media was only reporting the feminists' side of
things and the claims of abuse. It was _really hard_ to cut through the noise
to figure out what the core dispute was. By the time I found a structured
presentation of counterpoints...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZY6D2hFdo&app=desktop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZY6D2hFdo&app=desktop)

...they suggested it was that a few women disrespected their market, trolled
millions of people (including women gamers), made claims of abuse with
feminist ideology, violated their own rules for money in design of their own
games, and were possibly using the claims to get attention to their games.
Never heard any of that in original reporting on major sites and that's why I
was originally confused about why so much hate came their way.

Not saying this is true of anything referenced in the above article. Just
telling readers to be aware that there's at least two trends going on:

1\. People, including & especially women, being harassed online with any
number of bogus justifications covering up bullying. It's a larger problem &
the justification (eg feminism) rarely is the real issue.

2\. A tiny portion of women, who may or may not represent most feminists,
getting slammed online for using bullying and media manipulation to push their
politics or products. I say media manipulation because I almost never see
major media report calling it out even when it's obvious. Reporting is often
one-sided, possibly due to risk of losing business if their image is seen as
discriminating against women. I think one can argue against _specific women 's
claims_ without hating on women in general.

So, we have two problems. One gets all the attention. Each time, the recipient
of that abuse spins it as them being in a minority, having certain attributes,
etc as evidence there's a large scale attack on those things. Reality is human
nature is at work with any group competing with others and lack of
accountability letting some be abusive. Certainly prejudices in there to
combat but it really boils down to abusive people enabled by the Internet.
Happens offline, too, as anyone who went to school, a bar, a football game...
anything... should know.

Other problem we should watch out for and call out when we see it. That
problem is not limited to feminist: any members of a group that can make
itself look the underdog or target of abuse can use that as leverage in
promoting politics or themselves. This happens across the board. Relevant to
this thread, that many feminists do it certainly contributes to attacks on
those individuals and might contribute to attacks on others posting similar
idea. The troll throws them all in one mental category and attacks at the
first sign of the same ideology in a new person.

So, that's my two cents on the problem.

~~~
CM30
GamerGate became what it did because the media grew utterly detached with
their audience, and a couple of unfortunate events pushed it over the edge and
broke the camel's back. You had a bunch of issues with poor journalism before
(see, Doritosgate or something similar), a group that was more interested in
pushing political beliefs that discussing games and a huge amount of
resentment from the audience.

The fact the media covers this sort of stuff in such a biased and often
hateful way is symbolic of a press that's become a clique and doesn't
represent the population at large.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Great points. I agree.

