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Online Bullies
Sep. 17th, 2012 04:35 pmBullying is a largely invisible phenomenon. Oh, sure, most people know it happens, but it's usually viewed as isolated cases, or just something that everyone has to go through, kind of like a rite of passage. But it's not relegated to a few "you stink, give me your lunch money" on the playground. It's a deep, cultural, systemic problem. It affects every area of our culture and ignoring the "minor" stuff only gives the real, harmful bullies a place to bully with impunity. It's the reason why feminism is still alive and necessary. It's why women are still minorities in many professions in spite of the fact that they are just as capable in those professions (when given the proper experience & support) as men are. It's why women are so absent* from the gaming & geek communities. It's why we're in the 21st century and still even debating whether or not gay people should be allowed to marry. It's why eating disorders are still distressingly common. It's why religious thugs can get away with raping boys & girls in their care. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that we have these problems because we allowed them to exist.
The latest strategy of feminists is to get people to speak up about the abuse they see online & not let it go unpunished. Women are asking men to speak up, not for their protection, but in their defense & support. When the elevator debacle happened with Rebecca Watson, pretty much every single sex-positive, "equalist" (i.e. feminist, whether we knew it or not) guy I knew was just shocked by the torrential downpour of shit that Rebecca got just for daring to say "this kind of behaviour makes women uncomfortable. Guys, don't do that". Because, for the most part, "guys" don't see it.
I've had my Online Skeezballs tag forever. I originally started posting the worst of the emails I receive online because people just didn't know. If I complained about someone being an asshole, the response was unanimously "just block him", "just ignore him, he'll go away", and "stop worrying about it, this is some faceless stranger on the internet that you'll never meet. It isn't that big of a deal unless you let it get to you".
And yeah, an isolated incident may just be "not a big deal" and something I should not hold onto, just let go of, just ignore the bully and he'll go away. But these aren't isolated incidents. These are symptoms of a much larger problem - that we live in a society that excuses and ignores this kind of behaviour; in which women are afraid to wear the wrong thing or go to the wrong places or do the wrong things because if they do, then they will have brought their rape upon themselves; that gives bullies positions of power and refuses to take it away when they abuse it.
When I tell one of my horror stories, I often get "seriously? Someone did/said that?" and "you must be exaggerating/misunderstanding" and "well *I* never see anything like that". So I post this shit so that you can see. When people wonder why I'm "always so angry", I post why. Imagine growing up your whole live and being bombarded with messages like that. Imagine never having a place that is safe from these kinds of attacks. Imagine being told from birth that you are in danger, that the danger is your own fault for being born and for making "wrong" choices, and that there is nothing anyone can do about it, you just have to suck it up and take it and eventually the bully will get bored and go away.
So I post so that people can see. This is a PROBLEM, people. And I encourage others to post. And I encourage people to respond. We need to make our society hostile towards bullies of all stripes, from the "eww, you stink!" grade school kids to the rapists and thugs who harm, maim, and kill and get away with it.
I'm not particularly strong, I'm not gifted with any sort of real fighting skills, I don't have any political leverage or friends in high places, and I don't have any money to contribute to campaigns. So I do what I can. I post. I raise awareness. And I argue and persuade.
My call to action is to ask everyone to start posting their bullying experiences in whatever manner is safe to do so. You don't have to engage if you don't feel safe, you can post under a pseudonym, you can create an account just for that, separate from your regular profiles, whatever. Post about the shit you get and let others know. Post about it, talk about it, make sure that everyone knows that this happens all the time to a lot of different people. Publicly shame people for poor behaviour.
The next step is for those who have the luxury and safety to do so, confront those bullies and bullying behaviour when you can. If you're a guy & you see or hear a guy making a sexist joke or making some girl uncomfortable, let him know that you don't approve, that he does not have the support of the guys around him (hint: condescention & derision works better than the white-knight "I am here to SAVE THE DAMSEL!" approach - tell the other guy that he's a loser rather than saying "the lady isn't interested", or better yet, say this stuff). If you're online & you see someone getting verbally attacked, jump in and defend them. Re-post the posts you see about this stuff so that the people around you can no longer hide their heads in the sand and say "it's no big deal" or "well *I've* never seen anything like that happen!"
Here's my latest online skeezball encounter. I will continue to update the post as more tweets are made. I originally made a tweet complaining about poly people going to poly events, and then saying "I was hoping to meet someone, but everyone there was already partnered". I don't want to debate this tweet here, this is part of a larger issue that the 140 character limitation of Twitter necessarily truncates & requires incomplete, generalized, and/or soundbitey statements and is not the point of what happened next.
So I made that tweet and @isayshizzz responded "sounds like you've never heard of polyfi"
So I said "sounds like you've never heard of Twitter, where things have to be summarized in 140 characters"
So they said "I hear you're fat, old, ugly and hide behind the internet"
To which I said "wow, you're an ass"
And they said "not as much as you, claiming to be an ally for poly people but you do more harm#cunt"
At which point, I blocked them. But then others came to my defense (much more politely than even I was here), and here is what @isayshizzz to that: "are u all fucking the old hag or what? This is why she's a cunt, she gets others to be cunty for her. Eat my asshole"
Now, if you go to their twitter feed, every single response having to do with me has been deleted, which is why I'm actually missing a bunch of them, including insinuations that this person, whom I've never met, "knows" me and thinks my "behaviour" (but not my tweets) is "harmful" to the poly community. So I've started retweeting their tweets when I see them, now that I know they will conveniently delete them after they've had a chance to piss off whomever they're attacking.
This is what the crux of the Rebecca Watson problem was - someone makes a suggestion, maybe politely worded, maybe not, that people be a little nicer, a little more considerate, pay attention to other people, or pay attention to their own issues/actions/thoughts/whatever, and someone else responds with "OMG YOU FUCKING CUNT!"
This is the problem. The silencing of social justice, the implicit permission to respond to demands for social justice with violent hatred and anger, and the general acceptance of such from those around them. If you're not doing anything at all, then you're part of the problem. Ignoring it, pretending it doesn't exist, thinking or saying that it's not a big deal, all that is what gives these people the freedom to behave this way. And that license for bullying is a fertile ground for creating & hiding abusers, rapists, people who commit hate crimes, racists who tie black men to their trucks & drag them on the ground until they die, homophobes & transphobes who kick the shit out of gays & trans people, and even those lone nutjobs who shoot up gyms and movie theaters.
Silence is the enabler. Break the silence.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4eVjwVd_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2TmllUrGqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEUUj2RqToM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tva9vIYxLY
*When I say "absent from these communities", I don't mean they are literally not there. I mean they are underrepresented, either because their active numbers are actually low or because they are overlooked or because, in the case of online communities, many are just hiding behind male or gender neutral pseudonyms in an effort to avoid the shit they get when the bullies find out that they're there.
The latest strategy of feminists is to get people to speak up about the abuse they see online & not let it go unpunished. Women are asking men to speak up, not for their protection, but in their defense & support. When the elevator debacle happened with Rebecca Watson, pretty much every single sex-positive, "equalist" (i.e. feminist, whether we knew it or not) guy I knew was just shocked by the torrential downpour of shit that Rebecca got just for daring to say "this kind of behaviour makes women uncomfortable. Guys, don't do that". Because, for the most part, "guys" don't see it.
I've had my Online Skeezballs tag forever. I originally started posting the worst of the emails I receive online because people just didn't know. If I complained about someone being an asshole, the response was unanimously "just block him", "just ignore him, he'll go away", and "stop worrying about it, this is some faceless stranger on the internet that you'll never meet. It isn't that big of a deal unless you let it get to you".
And yeah, an isolated incident may just be "not a big deal" and something I should not hold onto, just let go of, just ignore the bully and he'll go away. But these aren't isolated incidents. These are symptoms of a much larger problem - that we live in a society that excuses and ignores this kind of behaviour; in which women are afraid to wear the wrong thing or go to the wrong places or do the wrong things because if they do, then they will have brought their rape upon themselves; that gives bullies positions of power and refuses to take it away when they abuse it.
When I tell one of my horror stories, I often get "seriously? Someone did/said that?" and "you must be exaggerating/misunderstanding" and "well *I* never see anything like that". So I post this shit so that you can see. When people wonder why I'm "always so angry", I post why. Imagine growing up your whole live and being bombarded with messages like that. Imagine never having a place that is safe from these kinds of attacks. Imagine being told from birth that you are in danger, that the danger is your own fault for being born and for making "wrong" choices, and that there is nothing anyone can do about it, you just have to suck it up and take it and eventually the bully will get bored and go away.
So I post so that people can see. This is a PROBLEM, people. And I encourage others to post. And I encourage people to respond. We need to make our society hostile towards bullies of all stripes, from the "eww, you stink!" grade school kids to the rapists and thugs who harm, maim, and kill and get away with it.
I'm not particularly strong, I'm not gifted with any sort of real fighting skills, I don't have any political leverage or friends in high places, and I don't have any money to contribute to campaigns. So I do what I can. I post. I raise awareness. And I argue and persuade.
My call to action is to ask everyone to start posting their bullying experiences in whatever manner is safe to do so. You don't have to engage if you don't feel safe, you can post under a pseudonym, you can create an account just for that, separate from your regular profiles, whatever. Post about the shit you get and let others know. Post about it, talk about it, make sure that everyone knows that this happens all the time to a lot of different people. Publicly shame people for poor behaviour.
The next step is for those who have the luxury and safety to do so, confront those bullies and bullying behaviour when you can. If you're a guy & you see or hear a guy making a sexist joke or making some girl uncomfortable, let him know that you don't approve, that he does not have the support of the guys around him (hint: condescention & derision works better than the white-knight "I am here to SAVE THE DAMSEL!" approach - tell the other guy that he's a loser rather than saying "the lady isn't interested", or better yet, say this stuff). If you're online & you see someone getting verbally attacked, jump in and defend them. Re-post the posts you see about this stuff so that the people around you can no longer hide their heads in the sand and say "it's no big deal" or "well *I've* never seen anything like that happen!"
Here's my latest online skeezball encounter. I will continue to update the post as more tweets are made. I originally made a tweet complaining about poly people going to poly events, and then saying "I was hoping to meet someone, but everyone there was already partnered". I don't want to debate this tweet here, this is part of a larger issue that the 140 character limitation of Twitter necessarily truncates & requires incomplete, generalized, and/or soundbitey statements and is not the point of what happened next.
So I made that tweet and @isayshizzz responded "sounds like you've never heard of polyfi"
So I said "sounds like you've never heard of Twitter, where things have to be summarized in 140 characters"
So they said "I hear you're fat, old, ugly and hide behind the internet"
To which I said "wow, you're an ass"
And they said "not as much as you, claiming to be an ally for poly people but you do more harm
At which point, I blocked them. But then others came to my defense (much more politely than even I was here), and here is what @isayshizzz to that: "are u all fucking the old hag or what? This is why she's a cunt, she gets others to be cunty for her. Eat my asshole"
Now, if you go to their twitter feed, every single response having to do with me has been deleted, which is why I'm actually missing a bunch of them, including insinuations that this person, whom I've never met, "knows" me and thinks my "behaviour" (but not my tweets) is "harmful" to the poly community. So I've started retweeting their tweets when I see them, now that I know they will conveniently delete them after they've had a chance to piss off whomever they're attacking.
This is what the crux of the Rebecca Watson problem was - someone makes a suggestion, maybe politely worded, maybe not, that people be a little nicer, a little more considerate, pay attention to other people, or pay attention to their own issues/actions/thoughts/whatever, and someone else responds with "OMG YOU FUCKING CUNT!"
This is the problem. The silencing of social justice, the implicit permission to respond to demands for social justice with violent hatred and anger, and the general acceptance of such from those around them. If you're not doing anything at all, then you're part of the problem. Ignoring it, pretending it doesn't exist, thinking or saying that it's not a big deal, all that is what gives these people the freedom to behave this way. And that license for bullying is a fertile ground for creating & hiding abusers, rapists, people who commit hate crimes, racists who tie black men to their trucks & drag them on the ground until they die, homophobes & transphobes who kick the shit out of gays & trans people, and even those lone nutjobs who shoot up gyms and movie theaters.
Silence is the enabler. Break the silence.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4eVjwVd_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2TmllUrGqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEUUj2RqToM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tva9vIYxLY
*When I say "absent from these communities", I don't mean they are literally not there. I mean they are underrepresented, either because their active numbers are actually low or because they are overlooked or because, in the case of online communities, many are just hiding behind male or gender neutral pseudonyms in an effort to avoid the shit they get when the bullies find out that they're there.
