I read a Washington Post article this morning that got me thinking. Here’s a quote:
A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males.
And another:
Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, “it’s been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men.”
What concerns me most is whether or not police departments will take these types of threats seriously or whether they will brush them off as trivial. I’m not here to present a case for the validity of the Internet as a form of real community and communication. If you’re a skeptic, nothing I say will convince you anyway. I know my husband makes a living - a very GOOD living, as a matter of fact - by helping create content for this virtual world. That makes it real enough. He jokes that he makes a living by creating things that don’t tangibly exist.
A death threat, a threat to strangle, kill, rape and molest on the Internet is just as real as a threat in the physical world and should be taken as such. It is sad and a shame that due to the anonymity of the online forum that people can get away with thinking it is okay to make such threats, or pass them off as jokes, that women’s voices are being silenced. That they are being introverted because that are so afraid of what someone might do to them, or say they will do to them, if they continue to speak their mind. And that is NOT okay.
Generally, men don’t face this problem. If a man speaks his mind, it’s accepted as a part of life. But when a woman speaks her mind, nay, dares to speak her mind, she is labeled - “outspoken,” “opinionated,” “masculine,” “bossy,” “bitch” - and must deal with consequences, threats, and punishments, simply for being who she is. I’m sick of it. I’m tired of it. I want to see change taking place.
As women, we can speak up against this, and I think we should. At the same time, I don’t fault the women who have retreated and pulled away - no one else can make a decision for another about how much risk they are willing to accept. I’m proud and privileged to be in global community with both men and women who value women’s voices and interactions and stand in solidarity to help all of our voices to be heard.