why the net sucks for women

[Lilium of the Valley]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I am going to point out here that one can only get hurt by other people calling you negative things if there is something already weak about your self esteem. Someone with healthy self esteem who knows they are a good person can't be hurt/convinced otherwise by some moron saying they aren't.

Since people will not change, the best solution to being immune to other people's crap is to work on oneself. After all YOU are the only person YOU can rely on.

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As Mrs. Shrink I had to throw that ^ out there gais lol just sayin'

[iflewoverthecuckoosnest]

Re: why the net sucks for women

Or sissy, or dickless, or wuss, or girlyman... Emasculation, because that's the biggest and most common insecurity among men. Pretty much every guy is terribly concerned about how big their dick is compared to other guys. Figuratively and literally.

Though people being called ugly is unisex.

I've always thought that the male insecurity surrounding penis size is very exaggerated. Speaking from a lady's perspective, size is not the be all end all of sexual prowess. When I think about the best male partners I've ever had, penis size is not correlated with how satisfying they were in bed. It's more about the motion of the ocean, not the size of the boat, as they always say.
At the same time, I can understand that sort of obsessive, irrational insecurity very well, considering how many years I spent berating myself over my small breasts, until I started to learn that most people don't even care that much in the first place.
Anyway, that was kind of a diversion from the main topic of the thread, sorry

Back to the mother-topic: Both men and women face sexist harassment online. People tend to turn into dickfaces once they're armed with a keyboard and a password, and, as is common practice among dickfaces, they take easy shots. When you think about it, people usually know little else about an online commentor other than their gender, so if they are going to take a cheap shot at a person, it's going to be at widely shared cultural insecurities surrounding that particular factor.

[Denarius]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I've always thought that the male insecurity surrounding penis size is very exaggerated.

Penile neurosis is just a thing with a lot of dudes.

Stuff like this "male enhancement" commercial don't help.

Studies have shown that by and large most men A: think their penis is smaller than it actually is (As in less than average when it's not.) and B: Consider that to have a negative affect on their self esteem especially as it pertains to sexuality.

See also: Genital retraction syndrome and Castration anxiety.

[Aeran]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I've always thought that the male insecurity surrounding penis size is very exaggerated. Speaking from a lady's perspective, size is not the be all end all of sexual prowess. When I think about the best male partners I've ever had, penis size is not correlated with how satisfying they were in bed. It's more about the motion of the ocean, not the size of the boat, as they always say.
At the same time, I can understand that sort of obsessive, irrational insecurity very well, considering how many years I spent berating myself over my small breasts, until I started to learn that most people don't even care that much in the first place.
Anyway, that was kind of a diversion from the main topic of the thread, sorry

It's the same with women who worry about their breast size, or their labia, etc. Guys generally don't give a damn about that stuff, but people will always find a way to compare themselves to an intangible ideal they fall short of (and then frequently being convinced to spend money to address the 'problem').

I had a girlfriend once who's body I was crazy about, but she became obsessed for some reason with the idea that her breasts were too small (they weren't, from my limited knowledge in the subject I'd say they were somewhere between a B and C cup) and started eating more crappy food with the idea that if she put on weight her breasts would get bigger, it was a constant uphill battle to convince her that A) her breasts were fine, both objectively and in terms of my own personal taste and that B) there's no point in having slightly larger breasts if you're going to ruin the rest of your body in the process. I've got no clue where that idea came from because I certainly wasn't complaining, just one of those things that society embeds in peoples heads I guess. 3 or 4 years later I added her on facebook and she's constantly talking about going to the gym and trying to lose weight :/

I suspect porn weighs into the equation somewhere (although it certainly isn't the only factor), but that's not something I can back up.

[DanieMarie]

Re: why the net sucks for women

This. It absolutely happens to men, although the specific content in the comments is different because men have different buttons to push. The difference is that, for whatever reason, men are more likely to recognize that it's just an attempt to get a rise out of them and ignore, whereas more women seem to struggle to separate internet trolling from a serious, personal threat.

It's pretty shitty, but they're just angry kids looking to get a rise out of people, all this talk about 'death/rape threats' as if they're actually serious just gives them what they want. The internet is the one medium of communication which the individual has absolute control over, just ignore it and they'll get bored and piss off.



No, they aren't. What they clearly are is an angry individual who was offended by something you wrote and responded in the only way they could lash out back - by saying horrible things to you.

The thing is, although the strong majority just want to get a rise out of people, how do you know that for sure? I just have trouble letting stuff like that roll off my back, because I have been stalked, followed, and threatened in real life and I think a lot of women have. Once something negative like that happens to you in real life, it's hard to just let it roll off your back online. Also, although the strong majority don't mean it, there are lots of cases of women who have been stalked online or who have been hacked and threatened in real life. I remember a while back there was that post about revenge porn and how the woman who was fighting for legislation because of what happened to her daughter was harassed horribly in real life. Someone saying "I know where you live and I'm going to kill you" is probably empty, but it -could- be true and what do you do with that when someone says that to you?

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I think another issue at hand is how people talk to each other online in terms of men vs women. Do men harass each other online and say awful things to each other? Sure. But a lot of the comments I see aren't that far off from things that get said in real life. Women, on the other hand, tend to get very serious comments that most people would -never- say in real life (and if they do, they're usually taken pretty seriously, whereas when it happens online, they aren't). It's not necessarily a men vs women issue here either, because women can be HORRIBLE to each other online. A lot of women make awful comments to other women about how they should kill themselves, which is something few would say in real life.

[MaskedOne]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I am going to point out here that one can only get hurt by other people calling you negative things if there is something already weak about your self esteem. Someone with healthy self esteem who knows they are a good person can't be hurt/convinced otherwise by some moron saying they aren't.

Since people will not change, the best solution to being immune to other people's crap is to work on oneself. After all YOU are the only person YOU can rely on.

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As Mrs. Shrink I had to throw that ^ out there gais lol just sayin'

This sort of depends on how it's pulled off. Yes confidence makes for great armor against simple insults. Slander/libel however can seriously screw up your day regardless though provided that the people around you believe what's being said. The old sticks and stones rhyme has always been at best only partially accurrate.

[Lilium of the Valley]

Re: why the net sucks for women

This sort of depends on how it's pulled off. Yes confidence makes for great armor against simple insults. Slander/libel however can seriously screw up your day regardless though provided that the people around you believe what's being said. The old sticks and stones rhyme has always been at best only partially accurrate.

I get what you are saying MO, the talk was about actually hurting as opposed to maybe screwing up a day here or there. IMO there is a difference of lets say a day being messed up by it and then someone else being deeply hurt wanting to throw themselves off a bridge because of it. The latter simply shows that the person already (most likely) has little to no self confidence/esteem...resulting in a weak spot, easy for someone to be able to attack on a deeper level. Resulting in the complete emotional annihilation of another human being.

[DanieMarie]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I get what you are saying MO, the talk was about actually hurting as opposed to maybe screwing up a day here or there. IMO there is a difference of lets say a day being messed up by it and then someone else being deeply hurt wanting to throw themselves off a bridge because of it. The latter simply shows that the person already (most likely) has little to no self confidence/esteem...resulting in a weak spot, easy for someone to be able to attack on a deeper level. Resulting in the complete emotional annihilation of another human being.

But if someone does that, don't they bear some responsibility? Like, if someone told someone with low self-esteem repeatedly how worthless they were and that they should just kill themselves in real life and then that person committed suicide, they'd probably get into some real trouble for it. It's not really different online.

[Lilium of the Valley]

Re: why the net sucks for women

But if someone does that, don't they bear some responsibility? Like, if someone told someone with low self-esteem repeatedly how worthless they were and that they should just kill themselves in real life and then that person committed suicide, they'd probably get into some real trouble for it. It's not really different online.

Of course they carry responsibility for this. Which is what I wrote in my first reply to this thread.
I am merely pointing out that there are ways to protect yourself from this. By making sure you are "self confident healthy". After all we both know people aren't going to change any time soon.

[DanieMarie]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I still don't think people should be let off that easy. Although people certainly suck, it can be made socially unacceptable to behave that way.

Also, I'd like to add (to this thread, not to you, Lillium!) that although both men and women get nasty comments online, I don't see it happening as much with male professionals. Women who are journalists, writers, musicians, etc seem to get a lot of ugliness directed at them online. For example, check out this piece by Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES: http://www.theguardian.com/music/mus...nline-misogyny. I so rarely hear of this kind of behaviour towards male musicians.

[Rowanwood]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I just personally think the longer we perpetuate the idea that cyber threats (or real life threats, or whatever) are a GENDER issue, vs. a human decency issue, we as woman actually encourage misogyny. I don't need to be a special snowflake of abuse to recognize that the behavior is wrong.

To me, the entire 'hate crime' business is used when it doesn't apply a lot of the time.

Frankly, most people who are targeted are chosen for their opinions and the way they are expressing them, not for their actual crap between their legs. If a man posed as a woman and said something terribly controversial, in a place known for abuse...say Reddit and got hammered with threats, and then comes out and says, "ha, ha! I have a PENIS!" do you think the abuse would stop or instead the abuser would just change tactics, knowing that the insecurity buttons for some men and women are in different locations?

Maybe we'd have more results and more allies if we stop worrying about some specificity of the victims and worry about what the heck is actually wrong with the perpetrators.

[DanieMarie]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I think people are asshats on Reddit and YouTube comments regardless of gender, but I rarely see men harassed for doing their jobs (ie promoting their band, publishing an article professionally, etc).

[Aeran]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I think people are asshats on Reddit and YouTube comments regardless of gender, but I rarely see men harassed for doing their jobs (ie promoting their band, publishing an article professionally, etc).

Except this harassment isn't usually happening because people are doing their job, it's happening because they did something to provoke a segment of the population. I'm not saying their reaction is justified, but when you express opinions which are vehemently disagreed with in many quarters or act in a way which antagonizes a group or community over a medium which guarantees anonymity, then you'd be naive in the extreme to not expect them to lash out back at you. It's not a gendered thing, just the nature of the beast. If you think it doesn't happen to men or isn't perpetrated by women more or less as often as the opposite, then I'd imagine you aren't exposing yourself to a particularly broad swath of the online world.

[MaskedOne]

Re: why the net sucks for women

I get what you are saying MO, the talk was about actually hurting as opposed to maybe screwing up a day here or there. IMO there is a difference of lets say a day being messed up by it and then someone else being deeply hurt wanting to throw themselves off a bridge because of it. The latter simply shows that the person already (most likely) has little to no self confidence/esteem...resulting in a weak spot, easy for someone to be able to attack on a deeper level. Resulting in the complete emotional annihilation of another human being.

I was talking about hurting people too.
Creatively applied libel can ruin relationships and threaten/kill jobs. You can destroy even a confident man or woman with words provided that enough of the right people believe them. It just requires a little bit more effort and care than simply throwing insults because you need to be persuasive. Tanking an insult is easy. Tanking everyone around you shunning/turning on you is much harder.

[DanieMarie]

Re: why the net sucks for women

Except this harassment isn't usually happening because people are doing their job, it's happening because they did something to provoke a segment of the population. I'm not saying their reaction is justified, but when you express opinions which are vehemently disagreed with in many quarters or act in a way which antagonizes a group or community over a medium which guarantees anonymity, then you'd be naive in the extreme to not expect them to lash out back at you. It's not a gendered thing, just the nature of the beast. If you think it doesn't happen to men or isn't perpetrated by women more or less as often as the opposite, then I'd imagine you aren't exposing yourself to a particularly broad swath of the online world.

I don't think posting a screen cap of a sexist email your band got and saying "hey guys, not cool" is an opinion that is "vehemently disagreed with in many quarters or act in a way which antagonizes a group or community" and I don't think it warrants the kind of reaction it got.