Female’s opinion is the mini-skirt of internet

While most users are familiar with these common domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has been adding hundreds of new domains to increase choice.

While most users are familiar with these common domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has been adding hundreds of new domains to increase choice.

Published Nov 11, 2011

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Belfast - You come to expect it, as a woman writer, particularly if you're political. You come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death-threats.

After a while, the e-mails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to assault you cease to be shocking and become merely an annoyance.

An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the internet. Having one and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you what they'd like to do to you.

Last week, after a particularly ugly slew of threats, I decided to make just a few of those messages public on Twitter and the response I received was overwhelming. Many could not believe the hate I received - and many more began to share their own stories of intimidation and abuse.

Perhaps it should be comforting calling a woman fat and ugly is the best response to her arguments, but it's a chill comfort, especially when one realises just how much time and effort some vicious people are prepared to expend trying to punish and silence a woman who dares to be outspoken. No journalist worth reading expects zero criticism and the internet has made it easier for readers to critique and engage. This is to be welcomed and I have long felt that many more established columnists' complaints about the comments they receive spring, in part, from resentment at having their readers suddenly talk back.

In my experience, however, the charges of stupidity, hypocrisy and poor personal hygiene which are a sure sign any columnist is at least upsetting the right people, come spiced with a large helping of violent misogyny.

Many commentators, wondering aloud where all the strong female voices are, close their eyes to how normal this sort of threat has become.

Most mornings, when I check my e-mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts, I have to sift through threats of violence, public speculations about my sexual preference and attempts to write off challenging ideas with the declaration that, since I and my friends are so very unattractive, anything we have to say must be irrelevant.

The implication a woman must be sexually appealing to be taken seriously as a thinker did not start with the internet. The internet, however, makes it easier for boys in lonely bedrooms to be bullies.

Like many others, I have also received more direct threats, like the men who hunted down and threatened to publish old photographs of me which are relevant to my work only if one believes that any budding feminist journalist should remain entirely sober, fully clothed and completely vertical for the entirety of her first year of university.

Efforts, too, were made to track down and harass my family, including my two school-age sisters. I could go on.

I'd like to say none of this bothered me - to be one of those women strong enough to brush it off , which is always the advice given by people who don't believe bullies and bigots can be fought. Sometimes I feel that speaking about the strength it takes just to turn on the computer, or how I've been afraid to leave my house, is an admission of weakness. Fear that it's somehow your fault for not being strong enough is, of course, what allows abusers to continue to abuse.

I believe the time for silence is over. If we want to build a truly fair and vibrant community of debate and social exchange, online and offline, it's not enough to ignore harassment of women, LGBT people or people of colour who dare to have opinions.

Free speech means being free to use technology and participate in public life without fear of abuse - and if the only people who can do so are white, straight men, the internet is not as free as we'd like to believe. - Belfast Telegraph

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