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roneLet's start from the top: over the last month, Kathy Sierra has been issued death threats, both on her Weblog and on others. As a result, she's been terrified to leave the house, and canceled her appearances at a technical conference.
However, my first reaction wasn't particularly compassionate. Misogynist fuckheads on the Internet? Not a big shocker. I was perplexed by her reaction; this wasn't some idiot coming to her door and threatening her with a knife, but some pusbag who said something gross and hateful. It ranks rather low on my crime scale. But there's a lot of cultural baggage (i lack a better phrase at the moment) for men and women regarding how they react to threats. Women don't react like men do to threats, and there's no reason for me to assume that they do, or expect that they should.
Another thing about her post that bothered me was the way she seemed to be trying to pin some blame on the events on Christopher Locke. There's simply no evidence that Locke had anything to do with the threats, so it's irresponsible of her to keep throwing his name in with others who clearly did have something to do with them. However, when i look at what Locke did in helping set up meankids.org and the subsequent unclebobism, i think of earlier days in talk.bizarre when many of us would pile on to berate willful idiots like Lloyd H. Wood, or the insistently kooky Andrew Beckwith. I think upon that, and especially my own participation, as a bad thing and a classic example of the bullied bullying. I can always try to plead my young age as an excuse, but Locke can't.
One assumption i was making regarding Kathy's post was that she should either be too terrified to post, or she should be over it. This was a very poor assumption. As i reread it, i realized that she's clearly coming out of her state of terror and she's trying to put her thoughts together.
It boils down to this: i would have reacted differently to the threats because i have years of experience on Usenet making a complete ass of myself and others, and a few years unmaking that ass. My reaction to Kathy's post was along the lines of saying, "Oh, snap out of it!" to someone with chronic depression (and, yes, i've done that). While i dispute ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dawn_guy's assertion that my response is indistinguishable from that of someone with a total lack of empathy, i do admit that her assertion that my reaction points to something unpleasant in my character is near or on the mark. I think it's something that i've fought against for quite some time, and there's obviously still more work to do.
Lastly, i'd like to thank Kim for talking about this with me and setting me straight on a few points.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 03:16 am (UTC)If it gives you a calibration point, I was finding myself having a strong 'for fuck's sake' reaction, not to the locke/sierra shit-flinging, but to Dr. S's overwrought sturm und drang about how horrible men, and white men in particular, are -- but I have limited patience with his peculiar penchant for autoflagellation.
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:20 am (UTC)I've been surrounded by strong, brave women all my life - still am - and I know that I consistently undercount and underestimate the amount of fear women live with daily in our society. I remember telling one girlfriend a story about a patient of mine, who awoke at the end of a subway stop, having had a seizure and lost consciousness; she found on awaking that, while she was still unconscious, after the seizure, someone had robbed and raped her. And wasn't that terrible.
The response was, "Is it any more terrible than if she'd been robbed and raped when she was conscious?" And the point was that, apparently, this is something that's on the mind of women riding the subway all the time. Which is the kind of thing that I may know intellectually but it doesn't really come home to me all the time because no one's ever trying to rob or rape me.
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:37 am (UTC)I've know some guys who were freaked by death threat trolls
Date: 2007-03-28 07:43 am (UTC)One woman's POV
Date: 2007-03-28 03:38 am (UTC)What's going on has to be terrifying from her perspective. Just because gross and hateful speech exists, doesn't mean it's ok and the anonymity of the internet makes it that much scarier. How is she to know whether the people saying those things are the sort that like to spout off at the mouth and then it's done, or the sort that spout off at the mouth, plot, and follow through. There's no way to know and as a public persona faced with anonymous threats, she's in the place of vulnerability. I applaud her reaction in calling the police, especially over some of the emailed threats. I even applaud her reaction in publicizing what's going on...because frankly, if one of the original culprits can quote himself as saying "The only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her own neck size" and still claim he made no threats what-so-ever, then there's some serious disconnect going on in the community.
From a personal standpoint, I've never been in her position. The closest I've been is the fact that I answer a lot of the public email that arrives to my organization...we work on what can be very politically polarizing emails and I've seen my fair share of hate speech and yes, even death threats. I'm always appalled with the things people feel they can get away with saying over the internet, either not thinking or not caring that yes, that is another human being on the other end that you're "speaking" to. But at least I can wrap myself in the knowledge that they are unaware of my personal identity and are merely attacking the organization as a whole. Kathy has no such assurance
However...her post blurred some serious lines. There were three targets in her post: People sending threatening emails and comments, people posting threats and offensive photo manipulations in certain forums and the moderators of said forums. Unfortunately, she does an abysmal job of clearly compartmentalizing those three parties, the wrongs they've committed and the responsibility they hold, and as such has done some serious character damage. I find the first two parties described above totally reprehensible, but the latter should not have been vilified in the same company (Although considering some of their responses, I don't necessarily feel bad about it in all cases).
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 03:42 am (UTC)I don't disagree with your initial reaction, honestly. As you say, it may be Usenet jadedness, and that those who were gently reared in the kindly airs of the blogosphere (?!?) may wither in the breath of the typical intarwub performance artist; but do I ascertain correctly that the victim has a number of years' experience as a net.presence of some kind? and it's completely new to her what kind of obnoxious shits people are when they get behind a keyboard? This seems odd.
Now, it seems pretty clear that she feels genuinely threatened. And if so, by all means with the police reports and the subpoenaing post logs and whatnot. But on the other hand, there is a line somewhere (and where it lies is, of course, endlessly debatable) beyond which one's hysteria:cause ratio starts sharply shifting; and the ultimate end of that spectrum is people calling in the fuzz because someone called them a big doodyhead. I'm in no way contending that this situation is there, but part of what's bugging me is a feeling that it's somewhere along the slippery slope thither. How far down? Hard tellin', because one thing conspicuously lacking in all this is facts. So any discussion about it is going to be a bunch of empty air *anyways*.
(And thus, we have encapsulated the essence of Internet. Please insert another glass of port to continue.)
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Date: 2007-03-28 05:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 11:31 am (UTC)Over on rasfwr-j, we had one poster threatened by someone who was close enough to her that it was taken seriously (he, by all indications was mentally ill, and they both lived in Atlanta at the time), but she wasn't about to stop leaving her house over it.
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Date: 2007-03-28 11:34 am (UTC)Your experience on t.b wasn't terribly uncommon by Usenet standards. Bashing random idiots who couldn't be bothered to read the FAQ and then got defensive when it was pointed out that they'd just walked into an established community and started insulting the people who inhabited it.
This sentence no verb...
Here, let me add the rest:
...and started insulting the people who inhabited it was a fairly common occurrence on every Usenet group I frequented.
I miss Usenet.
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:04 pm (UTC)from where i'm standing, this blogger is overreacting a bit, yes. but i'm not standing where she is. i don't have kids, and i do have 20 years of experience with net aggro, so i know exactly how seriously to take it (or not, as the case may be). if you're not in her shoes, you can't really make a fair judgment of how seriously she should be taking this.
for example, i was stalked once. did the guy make threats? no. did he follow me around? no. did he bang on my door and demand to be let in? no. but he was unbalanced -- he'd already made a suicide attempt that he blamed on my failure to LURVE him -- and he was 6'4" and weighed well over 300 lbs. and could have physically overpowered me without even trying. he was obsessed. he moved into my neighborhood and hung out at a comic shop down the hill from my apartment. i had to drive by there to leave or come home so he always knew whether i was there. i had the locks changed because the wife he left to pursue his obsession with me had fed my cats when i was away, and he might have gotten her key. i got caller ID because he called 20 times a day to breathe into the phone. he borrowed money from his mother so he could remain unemployed and thus spend all his time hanging around my neighborhood, keeping an eye on my comings and goings.
to my knowledge, that's all he did. but you know what? it was scary enough. i'm a pretty tough chick. i've faced down an armed assailant on the street at 2 a.m. with nothing but attitude. but i couldn't know exactly how much of a threat this guy might be. i didn't know if he might decide to break down my door in the middle of the night (which would've been trivial, at his size). i didn't know if i might find him waiting for me in the elevator, or by my car, or following me around the grocery store.
i started sleeping with a baseball bat next to my bed, and put a nightstick behind my front door just in case. i wouldn't answer the phone unless i was sure i knew who was on the other end. i couldn't sleep through the night -- the slightest sound would snap me to full wakefulness, and i'd lie there, wide awake and paralyzed with terror, listening to see if he'd finally decided to come after me. (i had to take medication to help me sleep until i moved out of that apartment years later, and suddenly -- as if by magic -- i could sleep again. subconsciously, i guess i'd just never gotten over feeling that i wasn't safe there.)
and then... a completely unrelated friend, knowing i was going through a rough time, decided to send me flowers. anonymously. a dozen roses, delivered one a day, left on my doorstep with no explanation.
i freaked the fuck out. and the friend sending the roses didn't understand why at all. "i was trying to do something nice for you," he protested. but i'd been worked up to such a fever pitch of paranoia that i couldn't even imagine those roses being anything but a threat.
that's the mindset this woman is in. there people making public death threats and posting degrading images of her on the web, and from a purely rational point of view they don't seem terribly serious -- but she's a woman, so she's already on 24-hour alert for this kind of thing, and she has children, which increases that alert level by an order of magnitude. she has no choice but to take the threats seriously. a threat against her is by default a threat against her children -- it means there's potential, however small, for violence to be done to them, and for them to witness violence done to her. the threats alone are enough to scare the hell out of her kids if they're old enough to be aware of and understand them.
the woman has a right to be freaked out.
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Date: 2007-03-28 11:48 am (UTC)1) Who?
2) Are you kidding me? Shut up!
But I already know that I'm dead inside.
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Date: 2007-03-28 12:47 pm (UTC)I got to see our new infrared cameras today. I was dissapointed not to find I had a cold black heart.
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Date: 2007-03-28 12:56 pm (UTC)A lot of what I would say has already been said, so I'll just try to tactfully join with those who've said that it's probably a "male privilege" type of thing that makes the death threats she received not raise any red flags for you. It's just not anywhere in your personality or personal experience to be able to really understand where she's coming from. I don't think it's a lack of empathy; but it's something that, if you want to be able to empathize, you'd have to work to get it.
As to whether she overreacted . . . I dunno. I consider myself less scared than most women, for good reasons (I've had a little self-defense training and can be observant to the point of hypervigilance) and bad reasons (sometimes I just don't care). But I'm super, super careful not to let my address out on the Internet, and the few times I've almost dated a guy who has clearly been an abuser in the past have really shaken me.
Scary men are, well, scary! It's hard to articulate the depth of that and the reasons for it to a man who doesn't kind of intuitively get it, even if he's a caring guy like yourself.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 01:11 pm (UTC)1) I was naive and needed to protect my real identity or at least learn to be deliberately vague.
2) I needed to try and follow a personal rule of "don't say anything to anyone you wouldn't say to their face".
Having said that after 15 years on Usenet I'm still appalled whenever I see someone cross the lines into real life by using intimidation factors. The feeling is so violating when it crosses that line. I've been trying to think of a similar situation that made me feel the same way and I think I've got it: When I was around 19 or so I had a friend with an abusive boyfriend. He took after her once and out of concern I stood up to him. He grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved me down onto the sofa pushing my face into the cushion and held me there.
I was paralyzed with fear but more so later I was (and still am) angrier about the helpless way it made me feel. Literally I was nothing more than a puppy to him having my face shoved into my pee so it was his attitude towards me, the complete dismissal of me as a human that still rankles me the most. He made me afraid and that's the worst part of it. A guy probably would have risked getting punched and defended himself rather than just freeze like that but that's not how women in our society are taught to act.
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Date: 2007-03-28 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 03:20 pm (UTC)I'm glad you and Kim have talked things over. There was some speculation in our household that she might tear you a new asshole, but I gather you can still sit comfortably.
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Date: 2007-03-28 04:26 pm (UTC)Heh. That's not the kind of relationship we have. She's only ripped me a new one once, and by god i earned it.
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:41 pm (UTC)I do find it interesting that much of the reaction to such threats on the Internet is that this woman should toughen up or that such language is acceptable and should be accepted in an anonymous "oh, we don't really mean it" kinds of ways (I don't see this as your point of view or that it is universal, but the level of response is not negligible). I worked in a jail with inmates incarcerated for violent crimes and the language expressed in Kathy Sierra's blog was shocking.
I disagree that men cannot understand women's point of view in such matters. I think most men are scared to death of actually truly understanding it. I think evidence of this lies in why many (not all, obviously) straight men have an issue with gay men. Men find it highly disconcerting and do not know how to handle situations when they are viewed as sexual objects to be conquered and penetrated and I think there is an assumption that this is what gay men do wrt straight men. In general, the gender does not know how to react and therefore responds with fear, loathing, and looking the other way (try bring up the topic of male rape around a group of men some day and see what kind of reactions you get).
Here's another kind of example from my own experience of what I mean. I am often referred to as "one of the guys." I think it has something to do with my hobbies (like diving, spearfishing and motorcycling). I've been told many a time that I am "one of the guys" and that a guy knew I had his back in a fight (how guys figured that out, I'm not sure since I don't tend to be a fighter by nature). So, being perceived as one of the guys, guys will often stand around and objectify women they're observing in a sexually aggressive manner. It can get bloody unnerving to be the only woman with a group of otherwise nice guys who are talking about a woman as if she was a bipedal ewe and like they had the right to do whatever they wanted to her. This happens a lot more than one might expect. One time, I pointed this out to the group of guys with whom I was training to become a divemaster. They just laughed at me and even tried to get me to join in. So, the next time I saw a hot guy on the beach, I started making similar comments about him and all the aggressive sexual things "I would like to do" to him. The looks I got were looks of absolute shock and no small amount of discomfort. They were perfectly capable of understanding how uncomfortable and demeaning the situation was, the sad thing is that they weren't willing to consider it until it had been thrown in their faces. Later that day when we were having dinner, they all apologized to me and we had a fascinating discussion about gender issues.
Anyway, I think it is easy for us (in general) to say things about people and pass judgments when we do not understand their points of view and especially if we think we could never possibly be in their situation. I think it's always a great leap forward when people do try to understand the situations of others, even when we don't necessarily see eye-to-eye. So, kudos to you Rone for holding this discussion.
Definately kudos to Rone!
Date: 2007-03-28 07:09 pm (UTC)yet civil discussion on an important issue.
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Date: 2007-03-28 03:58 pm (UTC)I've always admired that you say exactly what you want to say with no bullshit. You're an upstanding guy and I don't think you should beat the crap outta yourself in any way. Ok, so you might think you went over a line, but I don't think at anytime you were being untrue or intentionally mean. In that I admire.
Peace.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 08:19 pm (UTC)But in entirely pragmatic terms, she's still kind of fucking the whole thing up by making a huge fuss all over the internet, because the reason a people do this is to provoke a reaction. And it'll only attract more of the kind of people who think it's fun to poke at people who make a lot of noise when provoked.
Calling the police on people who make death threats is just fine, even if they are do not mean it (it can serve as a useful lesson for them, too), but that kind of thing is really best done quietly and discreetly.
Look, I'm a woman.
Date: 2007-03-29 03:32 am (UTC)The woman lead way too sheltered a life. B. It sounded like she Googled for discussions about her. If somone trolled her to that discussion, she should drop the acquaintence, but if she got herself onto the site without any prodding, then she walked into a group that was dissing her without expecting her to show up at all.
The sane thing to do if you find something impersonally nasty when you're ego surfing is not poke the folks.
Re: Look, I'm a woman.
Date: 2007-03-30 05:44 am (UTC)However, I don't come from blogland or usenet land. I also don't live under a rock. I am a social worker and there are laws that govern what I must do should a client make a threat to commit a crime against someone else. When a threat is made, even a therapist must break confidentiality and make a Tarasoff Report (http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug05/jn.html) which entails informing the authorities and the intended victim.
Based on this I find your comment interesting. First it implies that the threats are nothing but threats and should not be taken seriously. I wonder how many times a threat has to turn out to be real before one that assumption is re-examined. Second, I believe you are saying that if the threat was never intended for your eyes, it's not really a threat and it shouldn't be taken seriously. Well, those who tell their therapists don't intend the news to reach a potential victim's ear, yet there are well documented laws about how the target of a threat should be warned and the reason is that at least one time the threat did turn out to be real and a young woman was killed.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every twerpy spammer who calls someone names should be reported, but death threats are pretty serious and the ones I read in the blog Rone linked to are on par with any threat I have ever heard one gang member make upon a rival gang member (I used to work with with gang members) and I do not see why the target of these threats should be expected to just brush it off no matter how she found out about them. In fact, I would probably feel more frightened if I Googled for my name and found "secret" threats against my wellbeing out there than if they had all shown up on my blog where I could monitor them. I guess I also don't find it particularly impersonal if the threat includes a name and/or the image of a particular individual.
So yeah. I guess that's just another POV. I don't know if she's doing the right thing slinging mud at "suspected" targets, but I think she has every right to be frightened and to take steps to protect herself. She also has the right to talk about it if she wants to. That she does talk about it, from my point of view shows that she not living a completely sheltered life.
Re: Look, I'm a woman.
Date: 2007-03-30 06:12 am (UTC)Re: Look, I'm a woman.
Date: 2007-03-30 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 10:19 pm (UTC)however in this case, i did empathize with her. i dont see all the stuff she mentioned as being seriously physically threatening, but then i'm not a woman. and the addition of sexual violence i think put it over the top.
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Date: 2007-03-29 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 01:08 am (UTC)As far as I can tell, this is someone who's written books about programming. Why someone feels like that's a good reason to threaten to kill her,I don't know. And why I should get worked up about such threats just doesn't appear on my radar.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 08:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:40 pm (UTC);)
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Date: 2007-04-02 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 03:58 pm (UTC)because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.
Martin Niemöller
as printed in Time Magazine
no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 08:14 pm (UTC)I suggest reading Theodore Sturgeon's "And Now the News...", which puts forth my point in a manner with greater clarity than I can.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-10 04:56 pm (UTC)The Really Fuggly Part...
Date: 2007-04-03 12:20 am (UTC)I think that it is important to keep the doors of communication open.
The problem of course IS that there are those who do not understand that 'death threats' are very impolite, and are sooooo hard to schedule life around. Where as a more straight up reservation, if one is not able to immediately follow through on one's promise, at least shows the minimum social requirement to retain the civility that should go with Professional Killings.
What makes all of this so patently absurd is that here we are, nearly six years into the Whatever On Whomever, when everyone should have had some sort of Majikal Clue that TheyThemThoseFolksOverThere all Hate Us and want to kill us, and yada-yada-yada, that you would figure that the sort of americans who get their kicks out of Killing And Torturing would already be On Contract and Productively Engaged in what they do so well, and would not be rudely out marketting their ignorance.
If you have not read some of the Lituration On Trauma, there is a whole bunch of really good bits out there, that can help your wrap your head around the varying degrees of Angst and Issues that go with 'death threats' and that Unpleasant wake up moment folks have to go through when it hits them that there ARE such people, and they may well be that Ugly, that they really ARE planning to follow through, and that for no reasonable reason.
{ sorry to hear about your 'snap out of it' folly - that is such a suicidal stance around folks who are still dealing with 'unresolved stressor issues'.... }
I will of course argue with you that there IS the fundamental problem that your general line of advance is not easily distinguishable from the Rest of the American Lunatic Fringe... since a lot of us love you for whom you are, and know that you really are NOT THAT DORKY inside - no matter how 'main streamingly American' you from time to time behave...
Mad Props on recognizing some of the bad behavior from the dark days of T.B. that is a critical insight that folks REALLY should be thinking through in the midst of all of this...