More Conversation about Harassment of Women on the Internet

~ Laura

The conversation about the harassment of female writers continues.

Ross Douthat, “The War on Women” 

Lane Florsheim, New Republic, “What Male Writers Don’t Understand About Cyberstalking” 

Megan McArdle, Bloomberg, “Women and Men, Why Can’t We Just Disagree?” 

Jill Filipovic, TPM, “Let’s Be Real: Online Harassment Isn’t ‘Virtual’ For Women” 

Published by Laura

2 thoughts on “More Conversation about Harassment of Women on the Internet”

  1. I really disagree with McMegan here. I’m not at all convinced that women attract more hostility on the internet. (It’s very hard to know for sure, because you don’t know how heavily a particular comments section is moderated. Reading Brad DeLong, you would think that no reader has ever disagreed with him.) Certainly John Cochrane attracts plenty of hostility from Paul Krugman, and Glenn Reynolds from Crooked Timber, etc.

    What distinguishes comments about women is the sexually-themed hostility: threats or fantasies of rape, comments about physical appearance, speculation about sex lives, etc. That sort of commentary is almost never directed at men. (Sure there’s an occasional jibe about someone having a small penis, or being motivated by sexual frustration, but the ratio is 100 to 1.)

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  2. y81,

    “What distinguishes comments about women is the sexually-themed hostility: threats or fantasies of rape, comments about physical appearance, speculation about sex lives, etc. That sort of commentary is almost never directed at men.”

    I think there is sexually-tinged stuff aimed at men (consider the popularity of the prison rape joke). However, almost no male writer, no matter how often he gets that sort of thing, is seriously going to fear that he is going to be sexually assaulted by the authors of the threatening remarks.

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