Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

[Lucius]

You uncover something potentially interesting

 

To aid in this I have created a Google Doc spreadsheet with the relevant data that can be found here. The highlight is that the values this person used are accurate on whole and hold up over the whole set, there was an interesting omission from the article: the perps. I found this data quite interesting. It suggests that in the author's established time frame, known male and female perps were in neigh equal proportion. Over the whole of the available data, known male perps were at about 41% and known female perps were at 36%. I would think that this kind of revelation would help open up a new dialogue about 'gendered' harassment. While it is true that a member of a group can be prejudice against that same group, it isn't exactly in keeping with the common belief of online harassment that both men and women are, in largely equal proportion, harassing others. That really goes against the generally held notion that Online harassment is an act that men perform against women. 

 Foreign Orchid.

 

And promptly forget it.

 

So why is it that messages of a sexual nature must be taken differently than those of a violent nature (really? I need to explain this?)? Well, at the most basic level, everyone who has lived a few days as an adult most anywhere knows that one of the key distinctions between men and women is the classic "predator : prey" analogy. Be it due to purely cultural reinforcement or purely biological need, or a mix of the two, Men feel the need to pursue sexual congress while women feel no particular need (or so the trope goes). The roll of 'gatekeeper' has afforded women the ability to not need to be forward with their explicit sexual desires / requests. 

 

To put this into more context, when we look at a bar or nightclub, I would expect that the proportion of men initiating first contact with the goal of developing some layer of intimacy to be easily in that 25x range. Indeed, I would be surprised if it wasn't. Think back to your own personal history when dealing with the opposite sex. How often do you think men have felt  pressure to initiate first contact versus women? Think back to the number of occasions you have actually seen women initiate first contact. Without doubt it does happen, but the proportions will heavily skew in one direction. Now take that bar context and reduce it to simple Chat-Room interactions. Seeing more men initiate any conversation between opposite sexes and for those initiations to have a sexual component is not out of the realm of reason. Indeed, I would say it is to be completely expected.

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says I'll probably promptly forget this post too

[Nolgroth]

Thank you Ranxerox, for the link. I found some issues with the vagueness of the article, but it did provide a link to WHOA. There is some meat to the numbers now. I have been looking over the numbers and noting some trends. Based entirely on that one source of information, I am inclined to believe that women are the primary victims of online harassment. 

 

It is the rest of the data that is pretty interesting too. As the years count up from 2001 to 2013, two really interesting trends become apparent. The percentage of prior relationship harassment increases. The second is the increased uncertainty of the gender of the harasser. To me, the first trend indicates that the advent of social media led to more cases of prior relationship harassment moving to the online venue. The second trend is odd. It suggests that we have gotten more savvy or more tools exist to protect our online identities. On the other hand, identity theft seems to be at an all time high. Maybe there is a causal relationship in there somewhere.

 

One of the things I am not so sure about is the appearance and subsequent disappearance of some stats from year to year. I suppose in some years the number of instances of that kind of thing were statistically negligible. Still, a notation indicating as much would have made the year to year reports more consistent. It also appears that their statistical data is all from self-reporting. I'm not sure how that skews the numbers. I acknowledge the whole bots thing from the linked article, but I wonder at the lack of details such as where the bots were placed. If they were placed in the Avowed Misogynists for Life chat channel, I would not be surprised at the outcome. If they were placed in a more gender neutral online community, then that would be more telling. Sadly, we don't know which IRC channel(s) these bots were deployed to. That makes it harder to create a frame of reference.

 

As I said in my opening paragraph, I am inclined to believe that females are more likely to be harassed. I just wish the reporting and statistics weren't so sloppy. 

[Cygnia]

 

Reporter Gets Sexually Harassed During Live Report on Sexual Harassment

 

[Cygnia]

 

Harassment in the Comics Industry, and How to End It: An Investigation

[Ranxerox]

I think the rising tide comment is hyperbole. And what harm have the mouth breathers actually done? I do believe they should all be tracked down and charged with the crimes they've committed. I just dislike hyperbole UN grandstanding.

 

And let's put this in context: The UN fails miserably to do anything about depots filling mass graves, so let them fry some bigger fish before making a mountain out of a mole hill. Unless the internet trolls have backyards filled with the bodies of thousands of dead women, I'm not buying the  hype from the UN. It smacks of a grasp at publicity for acting on a trending topic.

 

Grandstanding?  They had some committee hearings and they wrote a paper.   It has had plenty of committee hearings and written many papers about despots filling mass graves. Having meetings and writing paper is what the UN does.  It is basically all that the nations of the world have given them the power and mandate to do.  So given that they don't have power or the mandate to stop the despots of the world from filling mass graves, it seems unfair to blame them for failing to do so.

 

Internet harassment is not just a problem in the US, but is international like the internet itself.  Since the biggest function of the UN, IMHO, is to give people space to talk on the record about problems that cross international boundaries, it would seem to be exactly the place to talk about internet harassment.  YMMV.

[Ranxerox]

Thank you Ranxerox, for the link. 

 

<snip>

 

Glad that the link was helpful.  Here is another one. http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/

 

 

 

 In theory, these things can happen to anyone—but they don’t. They happen overwhelming to women and the abusers are overwhelmingly men. Stalking, off and online, is a crime in which men are the majority of perpetrators and women the targets. Justice Department records reveal that 70 percent of those stalked online are women. More than 80 percent of cyber-stalking defendants are male. Similarly, a study of 1,606 revenge porn cases showed that 90 percent of those whose photos were shared were women, targeted by men.

[Cygnia]

Still say it's hyperbole?

 

Threats. Vitriol. Hate. Ugly truth about women in sports and social media

[Ranxerox]

"t really does not matter how they define harassment as long as they define it the same way for both "male" and "female" bots"

 

Yes, yes it really does matter. And despite my comment above about how definitions matter, you seem to be willfully ignoring that point. 

 

When we are discussing this topic, a topic that has been highlighted in the last few years, it is very important to keep in mind what things are being counted. A violent threat, akin to those that we have seen promulgate the internet with individuals like Anita are wholly distinct from "feeling horny". And to liken the two as somehow being the same is to severely distort the image that is trying to be conveyed. 

 

The common notion of the harassment endured is one of violent aggression towards women entering the online world. One in which individuals like Anita receive real and credible threats of violence on a regular basis. That is the image that is being pushed and is claimed to be gendered. It is on this point that the critics of this assumed gendered violence raise the question: is it gendered? Is the violence or threat of violence woman receive online in keeping with the violence or threat of violence men receive? This is the ignored point that the supporters of the common message need to deal with. And by obfuscating it away by including extraneous amounts of non-comparable information, the message gets diluted and the integrity of that side gets drawn into question. 

 

---

 

Now, having my intellectual honesty called into question by you, Ranxerox, is not quite kosher. But since you seem to be screaming at the wind for me to address this point of yours, allow me to. 

 

 

Bots with female names received, to a higher degree than male named bots, messages of a sexual and or threatening nature. Looking at your link I do not see any source for the original data, so I can hardly confirm what they were including in those messages, so I have to make a good deal of assumptions based on less words than an average tweet on twitter.  It would seem that any message that could be construed to have a sexual or suggested tone to it was taken to be part of that 'Sexually explicit or threatening" group. The fact that no examples of the "threatening" messages were given gives me pause. And the fact that this group also engaged in practice of intermingling the two is also gives me pause. I would wager that the messages rising to "threatening" status were far more infrequent than those of a sexual nature. And it is the desire to see those numbers highlighted and compared that gets shouted down by your side, Ranxerox. 

 

 

So why is it that messages of a sexual nature must be taken differently than those of a violent nature (really? I need to explain this?)? Well, at the most basic level, everyone who has lived a few days as an adult most anywhere knows that one of the key distinctions between men and women is the classic "predator : prey" analogy. Be it due to purely cultural reinforcement or purely biological need, or a mix of the two, Men feel the need to pursue sexual congress while women feel no particular need (or so the trope goes). The roll of 'gatekeeper' has afforded women the ability to not need to be forward with their explicit sexual desires / requests. 

 

To put this into more context, when we look at a bar or nightclub, I would expect that the proportion of men initiating first contact with the goal of developing some layer of intimacy to be easily in that 25x range. Indeed, I would be surprised if it wasn't. Think back to your own personal history when dealing with the opposite sex. How often do you think men have felt  pressure to initiate first contact versus women? Think back to the number of occasions you have actually seen women initiate first contact. Without doubt it does happen, but the proportions will heavily skew in one direction. Now take that bar context and reduce it to simple Chat-Room interactions. Seeing more men initiate any conversation between opposite sexes and for those initiations to have a sexual component is not out of the realm of reason. Indeed, I would say it is to be completely expected. 

 

So, I feel lumping in my innocuous but sexually charge phrase of "Hey, Beautiful! How you doin'?" with threatening statements such as "I will kill you" is completely ignoring the reality of human interaction. One must not forget the context in which we live and operate when looking at things. This is something the advocate of the gendered nature of online activity seem to conveniently forget. 

 

--

 

Now setting aside that petty squabble you want to have, lets get back to the real issue: Is online violence gendered?

 

Do women experience more semi-credible and/or credible threats of violence or suffer from more committed acts of violence than their male counterparts? 

 

I do not know the answer to that question. It could easily be the case that the issue is truly gendered. It could be as night and day as some would seem to claim it to be. But before committing myself to accepting that truth, I would like to actually see some hard evidence. And not ill designed and over inclusive wastes of time. 

 

Foreign Orchid. 

 

Except I'm not buying your claims of being a skeptical, neutral observer trying to find out whether online violence is gendered.  I believe that you have a position on the subject, but don't wish to state it.  After all, if you really wanted to know the answer to the question of whether online violence is gendered, you wouldn't come here with the question; that is what Google is for. It is this refusal to state your position and defend it that I see as a form of intellectual dishonesty.  

 

Also, I take issue with the notion that the threats need be "creditable".  If you point gun at someone and threaten there life, you have assaulted them with a deadly weapon even if the gun is unloaded.  That isn't my opinion; it is the opinion of the law.  I imagine this is because judges got tired of having people commit armed robbery and then claim after the fact that the weapon had no bullets.  So maybe the person sending the death threat lives in another state and has a heart condition and can't travel.  How is the person he is threatening suppose to know that and why are they suppose to be sanguine about the death threat just because it is coming from a stranger over the internet?

 

Now back to the chatroom study (yes, I know that I am answering post in the reverse order from how it was written), a chatroom is not a bar.  When a man approaches a woman in a bar, he can see her, if he he is not a total meathead he can pick up what sort of signals she is sending and since they are both there something could potentially come of his approaching her.  In a chatroom none of this is the case.  The chances of "Jill" being an attractive female living nearby are less than the chances of "Jill" being a married man living in another state.   Now, I grant you that there are lots of lonely, stupid guys out there, so maybe some of the time these sexual advances are just pathetic attempts to hook up. However, given the low chance of these pick ups succeeding versus the high chance of them offending and possibly driving off the recipient of the comment, I am inclined to think that most of these "come ons" are actually aggressive, displays of dominance.  So I support the study's decision to categorize these messages as malicious. 

[薔薇語]

Except I'm not buying your claims of being a skeptical, neutral observer trying to find out whether online violence is gendered.  I believe that you have a position on the subject, but don't wish to state it.

 

 

 

And what in my decade of holding unpopular stated positions on this forum has led you to believe that I shy away from stating my opinions on any subject, including this one? Grasping at straws by challenging my authenticity isn't doing you any favors.

 

 

 

 

After all, if you really wanted to know the answer to the question of whether online violence is gendered, you wouldn't come here with the question...

 

Did you forget how this whole thing started? I believe you did so let me recap:

 

In post number 1916, Cygnia posts a link.

In post number 1917, Pattern Ghost makes an offhand comment about the UN and their role in this issue.

In post number 1920, Nolgroth asks a question about the veracity of the claim about gendered interactions on the web.

In post number 1921, You, Ranxerox, link to a website talking about this issue.

 

I don't come into this conversation at all until you decided to link to that blog. I then explicitly state my view of that article.

 

I didn't come here asking questions. And yes, I know what google is. Rather, I read your link. I found it to be a fair representation of a lot of blogs and 'studies' on this subject. Being that is far from the first time I have come across such information, I even throw in the "most studies I have heard of..." line into my initial post.

 

Given the above, I find your comment about my actions woefully uninformed about the very context in which it arose. It isn't like I am criticizing you for not knowing me personally, but rather that you seemed to have ignored my rather long history on these boards, the flow of this conversation, and the actual things I have stated to arrive at an indefensible position. A position that seeks to dismiss without critical thought. Oh, and to top it all off, you are still questioning my intellectual honesty. That is a bit of a joke.

 

 

It is this refusal to state your position and defend it that I see as a form of intellectual dishonesty.

 

As I stated in my previous quoted response, I don't shy away from stating my positions on basically any subject matter. Even and especially controversial ones. The fact that my actual stated position on this subject* does not play well with your pre-formed narrative of me is not my issue; it is yours.

 

*And allow me to be even more succinct with my stated position (it is explicitly stated in post 1925 and vaguely implied in the previous one): I do not know the answer to the question of whether violence on the internet is gendered or not. I am open to the idea that it could be but I also want some kind of evidence before I believe such claims.

 

 

Also, I take issue with the notion that the threats need be "creditable".  If you point gun at someone and threaten there life, you have assaulted them with a deadly weapon even if the gun is unloaded.  That isn't my opinion; it is the opinion of the law.  I imagine this is because judges got tired of having people commit armed robbery and then claim after the fact that the weapon had no bullets.

 

Good lordy back up from that strawman argument you just made. There is a reason why I chose to say credible and it has nothing to do with what you just posted. What you posted is obviously a threat. Period. End of story. Now that we can both agree that water is wet (thank God!), lets looks at what it is I actually said and place it into the context you ignored. To do this, allow me to quote myself from earlier:

 

 

" I think most individuals are wanting to single out credible / semi-credible threats of violence AND actual attempts of violence from what they considered every day trolling. To help highlight this difference, me saying something to the effect of "I hope John Doe gets run over" or "Good Gosh I'd love to 'copulate' with Jane Doe" is substantively different from "I am going to go to John Doe's house Tuesday and slit his throat" or "If I ever get close to Jane Doe, I am going to rape her"."

 

I used the phrase credible and semi-credible threats as a way to distinguish them from non-threats. This is the same sort of distinction we all generally make and that the courts go with. So, if you are going to argue with that position, feel free. But make it sure it is the position I have actually stated and not some figment of your active imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

Now back to the chatroom study (yes, I know that I am answering post in the reverse order from how it was written)

 

No worries. Such is the way of text dialogue - especially on internet forums. I do it all the time, too.

 

 

[A] chatroom is not a bar.  When a man approaches a woman in a bar, he can see her, if he he is not a total meathead he can pick up what sort of signals she is sending and since they are both there something could potentially come of his approaching her.  In a chatroom none of this is the case.

 

Let's start with your first sentence: Is it not?

 

That isn't suppose to come across quite as snarky at it might seem. Rather it is an honest point. Just as not all bars are alike, not all chatrooms are alike. But unlike bars, the collective assumptions about what is an isn't appropriate on the web doesn't have generations of social reinforcement in which to be rooted. I recently made the choice to allow my mother to be FB friends with me (something that took a few years of being out of the country for me to finally do). Within the first month I had to send several "don't do this" messages to her to help her understand general social etiquette while on the web in general and FB in specific. So, I come back to my initial point: Is it not? Some chat rooms I think can rather obviously be labeled as areas for explicit conversations, some can be rather obviously labeled as not being such a place, and there is a nebulous set of chatrooms not as easily defined.

 

Personally I have always thought of most chatrooms as being such places (place where explicit conversations occur). As such, I have avoided most chatrooms. I can recall being propositioned for a sexual conversation by a self-stated female back when I was playing StarCraft: Broodwar and using their built in chatrooms for the game. I am nearly a digital native and even I find the 'status' of chatrooms hard to nail down. Back to my point, chatrooms and the like (even more so when that study was likely conducted) didn't have generations of cultural relevance and interaction to come to have commonly held identity by which we could mark it. And the fact that we still have ill-defined concepts of what is and isn't appropriate in a club or bar, why is it so hard to apply that same level of understanding to a far newer, less dynamic situation like a chatroom?

 

 

Getting to your next point: Yes, in real life interactions the amount of data a person puts off is far greater than their digital avatar would put off. But while you seem to presuppose that means we should not push forward with the initializing of communications, I say that it makes the interaction hazier and more prone to individual assumption. And those assumptions, once again, do not have the benefit of having generations of social development nor all the other subtle cues that a person would hopefully have in regards to initializing a conversation.

 

Next, by making negative assumptions about the character of the people making these initial comments (comments that you have in large part not read based on the fact that there was no way to get to the original study data**) is a very bad and prejudicial decision. It relies on beaten to death stereotypes that I would hope we could move past when trying to have this kind of discussion. Some of the people who initiate conversations with phrases like "Hey Beautiful. How you doin'?" might be lonely and loathsome human beings. But I am going to guess that aggregate average is similar to that of the normal person. So, I turn this back on you: Why would you choose to ignore Hanlon's razor on this issue?

 

Also, look at this from an economics perspective. John is a consumer. What he is seeking is sexual gratification of some kind. In order to achieve that gratification he will have to communicate with several individuals over time to find one also seeking such gratification. Now John has a choice, he can spend a couple hours talking with one girl and slowly ease into the subject of sex or be extremely forward with his wishes with neigh countless girls in that same time frame. While the conversation he has might be interesting on some level, it is hardly what he is seeking. And of course if he is wrong about the girl's feelings when he broaches the subject, he will be accused of being as much of, if not more of, a jerk for seeking that kind of relationship. The 'if not more' comes from the accusations from the woman that he was also a lying jerk since he wasted several hours of her time, too.

 

Doing the mental calculus it is easy to see that for John it is generally far better for him to be upfront and honest with his sexual desires than to be secretive about them. And it isn't just better for him, it is better for the woman as she knows within seconds that John is either worth or not worth talking to.

 

 

---

 

Ultimately the point I have been trying to make is that we should be critical observers of our world. Never accept statements to be true lest you have good reason to. Applied in this case is that there are lots of people who claim the gendered perspective but when pressed on it, the evidence tends to not hold up well - or at least has been my experience up until now. That does not by any means mean that it isn't gendered just that despite years of hearing about this and reviewing equally countless blogs and 'studies' about this, nothing has presented a strong enough case to prove it to me. And since I didn't enter into this debate with the presupposition that it must be true, I am not inclined to allow my affirmation-bias to make even flimsy evidence acceptable. And that is what I view the blog post you posted - which was NOT in response to anything I brought up, as being a bad source. I was rather explicit with my thought process on why I thought it was bad. Now, of course if you think I am wrong, so be it. But please take the time to actually address the issues I brought up rather than create straw-men arguments, ignore my rather long history here, and ignore my actual digitally printed words.

 

Foreign Orchid.

[Pattern Ghost]

 

Still say it's hyperbole?

 

Threats. Vitriol. Hate. Ugly truth about women in sports and social media

 

 

The phrase was, yes. I was objecting to their language. And to the UN in general, really. I never said there wasn't a problem, so don't imply that I did.

 

Here's the real issue: Why isn't law enforcement tracking these people down and arresting them? It's not really that difficult to catch someone who posts threats online. Hell, when my wife was a teenager, her cousin posted a vaguely suicidal poem on her Prodigy account, and the authorities were out the next day asking her about it. But death threats seem to be ignored. Has any law enforcement agency made any example out of anyone for this yet?

[Pattern Ghost]

Also, I take issue with the notion that the threats need be "creditable".  If you point gun at someone and threaten there life, you have assaulted them with a deadly weapon even if the gun is unloaded.  That isn't my opinion; it is the opinion of the law. 

 

I'll point out that you're talking about two different things here. In the case of pointing a gun at someone and threatening someone with it, the person has committed aggravated assault. Law enforcement is much more reluctant to pursue communicating a threat charges when the only actions are verbal, and there aren't many witnesses. The third case, internet death threats, is certainly more easily prosecuted, though, since there is plenty of evidence to be had. What needs to happen is some follow through. People need to have their doors kicked in by local law enforcement and/or FBI, and brought up on federal charges for these threats. If that's happened, I haven't heard about it yet.

[Pattern Ghost]

Grandstanding?  They had some committee hearings and they wrote a paper.

 

Fair enough. I just generally dislike the monkey show that's the UN. And they don't need to be involved to solve the problem. However, if they produce anything of merit (doubtful) that convinces law enforcement to act on at least some of the more high profile of these cases and scare the crap out of the little turds doing it, that'd be a good thing.

[Cancer]

Here's the real issue: Why isn't law enforcement tracking these people down and arresting them? It's not really that difficult to catch someone who posts threats online. Hell, when my wife was a teenager, her cousin posted a vaguely suicidal poem on her Prodigy account, and the authorities were out the next day asking her about it. But death threats seem to be ignored. Has any law enforcement agency made any example out of anyone for this yet?

Partly because there are potent mainstream individuals and groups who support the use of such tactics when they suit their purposes.

 

Earlier in this thread (here) I posted links to reports of harassment (cyber and otherwise) of climate researchers, and some of the harassment comes for folks on the payroll of Big Energy. Also, attacks by in-office and running-for-office politicians means, implicitly, that these people support cyberharassment etc. as long as it promotes their agenda. This being the case, vigorous systematic prosecution of harassers will never happen, because that's a tool they already use and like.

 

I focused on the harassment of climate scientists in my posts above because I follow that science/policy front more than casually (having once done research in radiative energy transfer), it is pretty much the same stuff (though admittedly the precise language varies if the scientist being harassed is female), there are identifiable political and business entities who make use of and encourage the harassment, and therefore important powers who will stonewall attempts to crack down on it.

 

That doesn't have direct effects on specific harassment of women, except that it means that existing political and business powers aren't going to permit it to be shut down.

[Pattern Ghost]

I'm all for flogging the bigwigs, too.

 

Also, to everyone, sorry if my offhand distaste of the UN caused any derailment.

[Cygnia]

Enough is Enough: Dark Horse’s Scott Allie’s Assaulting Behavior

 

How a toxic history of harassment has damaged the comics industry

[Vondy]

_{My issue with the narrative about online harassment is that they don't bother to reference the numbers. Almost all studies to date show higher male reporting of online harassment than female reporting. Pew, for instance, put the numbers are 44% of male internet users and 37% of female internet users. Similar ratios play out in several reports. The average ratios of abusive tweets, for example, was that 2.54% of 2 million aimed at men, and 0.94% of 2 million aimed at women. This is despite the fact that female adoption of social media is 10+% higher than their male counterparts. Now, this does not alter the fact that roughly 75% of internet abuse is linked to male users. But, by that same token, women are significantly more likely to harass other women, than men, online.}

 

_{The one unique factor about the online harassment of women is that it does disproportionately reference their biological sex and/or gender. Women do report greater levels of upset over online harassment than men, but that doesn't mean more women are harassed. Also, the actual numbers of people who faced realistic real-world threats from their online harassers is less than 2% of those harassed. We should do something about the problem, but lopsided-gender profiling and grotesquely sexist assumptions about threats and violence ignores the big picture while not solving either part of the problem. What is more, in terms of violence, its great that we want to stop violence against women. But, what about violence against men?}

 

_{Women are more likely to be raped, stalked, or the victims of domestic abuse (though the gender gap on the latter isn't nearly as wide as people like the think). But, most (and its a big gender gap) victims of serious street violence and MURDER are male. Also, far more men commit suicide or face homelessness than women do. Men also have issues society is morally obligated to address. Men are also victims. Focusing on women's issues while excluding male issues - and male victims - is also the mindset of a mob of vile sexist pigs. Gynocentrism is just as detestable as phallocentrism. We have to take care of everyone. Men and women alike.}

 

_{And, for the record, the UN statement on the matter was ludicrous and read like it had been written by a lunatic.}

 

_{Get a grip already.}

[薔薇語]

I have never heard of that study before, Vondy. Do you have a link or some more info so I can go find it?

 

Foreign Orchid.

 

Edit: Just to clear up things, I am talking about the pew study.

[Cancer]

In the US, roughly 3.5 as many women as men attempt suicide, but for actual dead by suicide men outnumber women by approximately that same factor of 3.5. This is at least partly because the means used in the attempts are generally different.

 

This general trend recurs in other countries, though the numbers vary.

[薔薇語]

Just in case that was for me Cancer, I am talking about the Pew study. I do know about the suicide numbers. Sorry for any confusion. I should not reply right after waking up. (^^)

 

 

Foreign Orchid.

[Ranxerox]

Given the above, I find your comment about my actions woefully uninformed about the very context in which it arose. It isn't like I am criticizing you for not knowing me personally, but rather that you seemed to have ignored my rather long history on these boards, the flow of this conversation, and the actual things I have stated to arrive at an indefensible position. A position that seeks to dismiss without critical thought. Oh, and to top it all off, you are still questioning my intellectual honesty. That is a bit of a joke.

 

 

 

 

As I stated in my previous quoted response, I don't shy away from stating my positions on basically any subject matter. Even and especially controversial ones. The fact that my actual stated position on this subject* does not play well with your pre-formed narrative of me is not my issue; it is yours.

 

*And allow me to be even more succinct with my stated position (it is explicitly stated in post 1925 and vaguely implied in the previous one): I do not know the answer to the question of whether violence on the internet is gendered or not. I am open to the idea that it could be but I also want some kind of evidence before I believe such claims.

 

 

 

 

Good lordy back up from that strawman argument you just made. There is a reason why I chose to say credible and it has nothing to do with what you just posted. What you posted is obviously a threat. Period. End of story. Now that we can both agree that water is wet (thank God!), lets looks at what it is I actually said and place it into the context you ignored. To do this, allow me to quote myself from earlier:

 

 

" I think most individuals are wanting to single out credible / semi-credible threats of violence AND actual attempts of violence from what they considered every day trolling. To help highlight this difference, me saying something to the effect of "I hope John Doe gets run over" or "Good Gosh I'd love to 'copulate' with Jane Doe" is substantively different from "I am going to go to John Doe's house Tuesday and slit his throat" or "If I ever get close to Jane Doe, I am going to rape her"."

 

I used the phrase credible and semi-credible threats as a way to distinguish them from non-threats. This is the same sort of distinction we all generally make and that the courts go with. So, if you are going to argue with that position, feel free. But make it sure it is the position I have actually stated and not some figment of your active imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No worries. Such is the way of text dialogue - especially on internet forums. I do it all the time, too.

 

 

 

 

Let's start with your first sentence: Is it not?

 

That isn't suppose to come across quite as snarky at it might seem. Rather it is an honest point. Just as not all bars are alike, not all chatrooms are alike. But unlike bars, the collective assumptions about what is an isn't appropriate on the web doesn't have generations of social reinforcement in which to be rooted. I recently made the choice to allow my mother to be FB friends with me (something that took a few years of being out of the country for me to finally do). Within the first month I had to send several "don't do this" messages to her to help her understand general social etiquette while on the web in general and FB in specific. So, I come back to my initial point: Is it not? Some chat rooms I think can rather obviously be labeled as areas for explicit conversations, some can be rather obviously labeled as not being such a place, and there is a nebulous set of chatrooms not as easily defined.

 

Personally I have always thought of most chatrooms as being such places (place where explicit conversations occur). As such, I have avoided most chatrooms. I can recall being propositioned for a sexual conversation by a self-stated female back when I was playing StarCraft: Broodwar and using their built in chatrooms for the game. I am nearly a digital native and even I find the 'status' of chatrooms hard to nail down. Back to my point, chatrooms and the like (even more so when that study was likely conducted) didn't have generations of cultural relevance and interaction to come to have commonly held identity by which we could mark it. And the fact that we still have ill-defined concepts of what is and isn't appropriate in a club or bar, why is it so hard to apply that same level of understanding to a far newer, less dynamic situation like a chatroom?

 

 

Getting to your next point: Yes, in real life interactions the amount of data a person puts off is far greater than their digital avatar would put off. But while you seem to presuppose that means we should not push forward with the initializing of communications, I say that it makes the interaction hazier and more prone to individual assumption. And those assumptions, once again, do not have the benefit of having generations of social development nor all the other subtle cues that a person would hopefully have in regards to initializing a conversation.

 

Next, by making negative assumptions about the character of the people making these initial comments (comments that you have in large part not read based on the fact that there was no way to get to the original study data**) is a very bad and prejudicial decision. It relies on beaten to death stereotypes that I would hope we could move past when trying to have this kind of discussion. Some of the people who initiate conversations with phrases like "Hey Beautiful. How you doin'?" might be lonely and loathsome human beings. But I am going to guess that aggregate average is similar to that of the normal person. So, I turn this back on you: Why would you choose to ignore Hanlon's razor on this issue?

 

Also, look at this from an economics perspective. John is a consumer. What he is seeking is sexual gratification of some kind. In order to achieve that gratification he will have to communicate with several individuals over time to find one also seeking such gratification. Now John has a choice, he can spend a couple hours talking with one girl and slowly ease into the subject of sex or be extremely forward with his wishes with neigh countless girls in that same time frame. While the conversation he has might be interesting on some level, it is hardly what he is seeking. And of course if he is wrong about the girl's feelings when he broaches the subject, he will be accused of being as much of, if not more of, a jerk for seeking that kind of relationship. The 'if not more' comes from the accusations from the woman that he was also a lying jerk since he wasted several hours of her time, too.

 

Doing the mental calculus it is easy to see that for John it is generally far better for him to be upfront and honest with his sexual desires than to be secretive about them. And it isn't just better for him, it is better for the woman as she knows within seconds that John is either worth or not worth talking to.

 

 

---

 

Ultimately the point I have been trying to make is that we should be critical observers of our world. Never accept statements to be true lest you have good reason to. Applied in this case is that there are lots of people who claim the gendered perspective but when pressed on it, the evidence tends to not hold up well - or at least has been my experience up until now. That does not by any means mean that it isn't gendered just that despite years of hearing about this and reviewing equally countless blogs and 'studies' about this, nothing has presented a strong enough case to prove it to me. And since I didn't enter into this debate with the presupposition that it must be true, I am not inclined to allow my affirmation-bias to make even flimsy evidence acceptable. And that is what I view the blog post you posted - which was NOT in response to anything I brought up, as being a bad source. I was rather explicit with my thought process on why I thought it was bad. Now, of course if you think I am wrong, so be it. But please take the time to actually address the issues I brought up rather than create straw-men arguments, ignore my rather long history here, and ignore my actual digitally printed words.

 

Foreign Orchid.

 

 

 

Actually, your long history here has everything to do with my response on multiple levels.  If I did not like you or care about you, I wouldn't have bothered.  Really, I don't get in long drawn out arguments with people on discussion boards.  It's not my style.  I say whatever it is that I wanted to say and walk away.  Occasionally, I will make a second post when I feel that I did a poor job expressing myself in the first post, however, it is very rare for me to make a third response. So the fact that I have pursued the conversation this far is due to your history here and the fact that it has led me to consider you worth my time. No, I don't expect you to feel honored by this or even believe me, but there it is.

 

The other thing about your post history here that factored into my response, is that in the past you have shown sympathy for the MRA movement.  They have a narrative about how men are the real victims, and I thought that a saw in your skepticism about women facing more online harassment a shadow of this view.  Because when you have two groups and one of them is complaining about a problem and the other isn't, the most straightforward assumption is that the group that is complaining is experiencing the problem and the group that isn't complaining either isn't experiencing the problem or is experiencing it to a lesser degree.  Yes, there are other possible reasons why one group might complain and the other group not, but these wouldn't be my initial go to assumptions.

 

Women (and not just the ones who make headlines) are complaining about the online threats they receive, and these threats are often very specific in the types of harm that is being threatened.  Furthermore, a lot of these threads seems to have more to do with femaleness as opposed to something specific that they are doing.  So sure abortion doctors both male and female get threats but female game designers get threats and male game designers not so much, and the threats they get seem be very focused on their status as females.  The studies that I have seen haven't been perfect (few studies are), but they are in line with the anecdotal evidence that I have heard, and at this time I have no reason to doubt them.  Maybe, a good study will come out that supports the counter intuitive view, but until one does I am incline to believe that the duck is a duck.

 

As for John the consumer seeking romance in the most straightforward manner possible, I am going to reply with John Nash.

 

[Cygnia]

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/09/28/the-13-most-ridiculous-things-gamergaters-have-said-about-anita-and-zoes-un-visit-reddit-edition/

[Cygnia]

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2015-10-05/colts-keep-women-out-locker-room-usher-female-gender-equality-indianapolis?eadid=SOC/Twi/SNMain

[Cygnia]

 

Sexual Harassment and the Toxic Culture of Comics

 

[Lucius]

This column

http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2013/02/gaming-while-female/

 

References this study

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/WaiYenTang/20130208/186335/Reactions_to_a_womans_voice_in_an_FPS_game.php

 

Which looks like good evidence that in online gaming, gamers presenting as women are about three times as likely to garner negative verbal reactions than gamers presenting as men or presenting ambiguously.

 

The study controlled for skill level; if I'm reading this right, highly skilled women can still expect to get thrice the insults a similarly skilled man will get.

 

edit: they also distinguished "directed negative comments" from "queries" so presumably "What's your number/email/approximate geographic location/etc" are not included in with threats and insults.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary has a Y chromosome and a Y-not? chromosome.
 

[Cygnia]

http://www.juliawertz.com/2015/10/05/on-sexual-harassment-and-public-discussion/