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This seems pertinent.

By Jill on 4.13.2007

What’s with all the sexualized threats against women?

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Author: Jill has written 4631 posts for this blog.

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17 Responses

  1. 1
    QueenFrostine 4.13.2007 at 7:07 pm |

    It’s interesting that the first comment to that post is some schmuck insisting that death threats against women are made up problems that distract us from the real issues facing the world. It provided a nice “case in point” to the original post.

  2. 2
    DataShade 4.13.2007 at 7:31 pm |

    Kozmik is just a schmuck. When Henry Ford posted and the people at TPM brought out a lot of no-cussword criticisms of Ford’s policies etc, Kozmik was basically the only guy defending him.

  3. 3
    DataShade 4.13.2007 at 7:31 pm |

    And when I say “defending,” I mean “acting like Joe Lieberman.”

  4. 4
    Bruce 4.13.2007 at 9:26 pm |

    I think Josh Marshall needs to do a little weed-pulling over there. But great piece by EJ Graff.

  5. 5
    evil fizz 4.13.2007 at 10:10 pm | *

    Bruce, seriously. I really like TPM, but I avoid the cafe as a general rule because the comments are frequently pitiful. Which is a shame, because there are some great people engaged over there.

  6. 6
    Sachi 4.13.2007 at 10:36 pm |

    I concur – an excellent piece. I am a motorcyclist and check out many forums for biking, and it is just sickening how abusive most men can be about women. What’s even more appalling is that the women who participate in those fora are blind to the abuse, often because the guys think they are cute. (I’ve found a few places where women are appreciated but they are rare indeed.)

  7. 7
    Elayne Riggs 4.13.2007 at 10:46 pm |

    So, re the comments there, is “the feministing crowd” now the new code for “the women’s studies set”?

  8. 8
    Moira 4.14.2007 at 5:39 am |

    It must be tiring to live with so much rage all the time.

  9. 9
    oudemia 4.14.2007 at 11:53 am |

    Seconding evil fizz, Bruce and others who think there needs to be some wheat/chaff separation over there at TPM Café. The obnoxious commenter just utterly derails and disallows any interesting conversation.

  10. 10
    W. Kiernan 4.14.2007 at 1:55 pm |

    Why do bullies use sexualized insults and threats of violence to harass women? Because it works; it offends and scares women. Being antisocial, they would use the exact same tactic against guys too, but it wouldn’t work.

    That’s a matter of statistics; anybody is going to be a lot more nervous about dangers that happen all the time than about dangers that almost never happen. If some internet psycho started sending me (I’m male) threats of rape, I wouldn’t believe he’d actually do it, because outside of prisons, males almost never get raped. So it’s just not a credible threat. Since the typical male target remains unaffected by this variety of threat, psycho bully types don’t bother pulling that act on male targets.

    Whereas everybody who reads the paper or watches the teevee news knows women get raped pretty often. So when some creep starts mouthing off though he were going to stalk and rape a woman, even though most likely he’s just a jerk-off trying to freak her out, she takes the threat seriously, because that sort of thing actually has happened frequently before. Since that technique of harassment achieves its goal so often – the creep who is trying to freak the woman out does so – that successful technique gets used again and again and again.

  11. 11
    sophonisba 4.14.2007 at 5:16 pm |

    What’s even more appalling is that the women who participate in those fora are blind to the abuse, often because the guys think they are cute.

    How, exactly, is that more appalling than men being abusive? I’m interested to know.

  12. 12
    Echidne of the snakes 4.15.2007 at 5:57 am |

    That comments thread to E.J.’s piece was very interesting. It had every excuse and belittling opinion about violence against women one could possibly imagine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done before. Although the guys at Alternet tend to go all misogynistic, too, whenever a post says that women have any problems whatsoever.

  13. 13
    Torri 4.15.2007 at 11:33 am |

    I don’t know if I’d say men just about never get raped out of prison, I think it’s more that men are more likely to hide and repress.
    But I agree with W. Kiernan’s point.
    I’m sick of seeing all this shrugging off of the issue, like the people being harassed should just walk it off. Some creep leaving hate mail is one thing, but to have someone go on and on in great detail about torturing, raping and killing you is whole new level of crap that no one should be expected to quietly put up with.

  14. 14
    Sara 4.15.2007 at 12:13 pm |

    but to have someone go on and on in great detail about torturing, raping and killing you is whole new level of crap that no one should be expected to quietly put up with.

    To me, that’s the key to this whole issue – opening up space in the culture of blogs for people to actually talk about how these things affect them and not just pretend that we’re too strong or smart to let them hurt us. Being bullied isn’t about how strong the bullied is, it’s about how cruel the bully is, and until we see that, keeping quiet about it is the same as victim-blaming.

  15. 15
    DAS 4.15.2007 at 4:53 pm |

    they would use the exact same tactic against guys too, but it wouldn’t work. – W. Kiernan

    Except they do sometimes use these tactics against guys, although certainly not as often as they do against women.

  16. 16
    Jeff Fecke 4.16.2007 at 2:25 am |

    is “the feministing crowd” now the new code for “the women’s studies set”?

    I hope so.

  17. 17
    Andrew Golis, Editor TPMCafe 4.16.2007 at 2:17 pm |

    A quick response to Echidne: though it’s true that many anti-feminist views were offered in that thread, they were almost 80% from just one user. Most of the Cafe denizens were fighting against him.

    In terms of “weeding” the thread, I generally try to stay hands off unless something crosses the line. While I might not agree with many of the anti-feminist arguments that were made on that thread, that’s not reason enough to start to delete things. Also, the community itself is pretty good about discussing this stuff.

    I’m curious as to what others think we can do better, though. Always open to constructive criticism.

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