Women Who Blog and The Men People Who Make It Stupid
March 29th, 2007 by SB
Update Above To The Update Below: Violet Blue has more thoughts on her website, which links to more thoughts on other people’s websites, whoo hoo ripple effect (BTW: Some of Violet’s Site is NSFW).
The Industrious Violet Blue has a Very Good column in SFGate this morning about stupidness in the blogging world:
Imagine being a girl and working really hard to earn the reputation of a respected voice in the world of tech journalism and blogging — a world populated by disproportionately more men than women — and to find yourself the target object of a hate-filled Web site. The tone and content of the hate site centers around sexually threatening you, suggesting ways you could be killed and have your corpse defiled, stating that you are a “slut” and that your gender is also in question. Your straight male colleagues don’t have this problem.
Then the person running the hate site blogs about every word you say, every time you make a post or publish an article. And targets your friends. And posts the names of your family and Google satellite maps of your family’s homes. They deface your Wikipedia page at every opportunity, with sexual slurs, objectifying you at every possible chance. It’s enough to make a girl choose not to be a tech journalist.
Speaking as a chick who builds robots, the shock and incredulity that we can do such a thing is latent, rampant and annoying. When it’s downright threatening, you (yes, YOU) should be outraged.
UPDATE: SFGate is exploring this more. Pipe up on the Culture Blog.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am
This is wrong, and not to be ignored. What can I do?
And that’s not a rhetorical question.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Be respectful and listen, don’t belittle by saying someone’s blowing it outt of proportion, and step in when you see it happening. Make people talk about it.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Good.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:06 am
While I find women blogging about sex as blase and tired as guys blogging about beer or football, I’m disgusted that someone would attack any other person in such a terrifying way. It’s sick and a dismal reminder of how many lunatics there are out there waiting to torture any random person or to heave their own emotional baggage onto someone. I hope that some sort of legal action can be taken against these individuals.