The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women

[seabeyond]

If, as the communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said, television brought the brutality of war into people’s living rooms, the Internet today is bringing violence against women out of it. Once largely hidden from view, this brutality is now being exposed in unprecedented ways. In the words of Anne Collier, co-director of ConnectSafely.org and co-chair of the Obama administration’s Online Safety and Technology Working Group, “We are in the middle of a global free speech experiment.” On the one hand, these online images and words are bringing awareness to a longstanding problem. On the other hand, the amplification of these ideas over social media networks is validating and spreading pathology.

We, the authors, have experienced both sides of the experiment firsthand. In 2012, Soraya, who had been reporting on gender and women’s rights, noticed that more and more of her readers were contacting her to ask for media attention and help with online threats. Many sent graphic images, and some included detailed police reports that had gone nowhere. A few sent videos of rapes in progress. When Soraya wrote about these topics, she received threats online. Catherine, meanwhile, received warnings to back up while reporting on the cover-up of a sexual assault.

All of this raised a series of troubling questions: Who’s proliferating this violent content? Who’s controlling its dissemination? Should someone be? In theory, social media companies are neutral platforms where users generate content and report content as equals. But, as in the physical world, some users are more equal than others. In other words, social media is more symptom than disease: A 2013 report from the World Health Organization called violence against women “a global health problem of epidemic proportion,” from domestic abuse, stalking, and street harassment to sex trafficking, rape, and murder. This epidemic is thriving in the petri dish of social media.

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Across websites and social media platforms, everyday sexist comments exist along a spectrum that also includes illicit sexual surveillance, “creepshots,” extortion, doxxing, stalking, malicious impersonation, threats, and rape videos and photographs. The explosive use of the Internet to conduct human trafficking also has a place on this spectrum, given that three-quarters of trafficked people are girls and women.

*
(i believe this one came up on du, asking for help to get it off. instead, we had SOME men tell us it was simulated, though nothing in the film suggested anything but rape, and redq had her post hidden, asking people to get in contact with FB).
Not long after Thorlaug’s struggle to remove her image, a Facebook user posted a video documenting the gang rape of a woman by the side of a road in Malaysia. The six minutes of graphic footage were live for more than three weeks, during which Facebook moderators declined repeated requests for removal. It had been viewed hundreds of times before a reader of Soraya’s forwarded the video to her with a request for help. We notified a contact on Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board, and only then was the video taken offline.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/4/

this is a very long article. because it is so long, they are able to spell out the problem clearly. this would also be the kind of shit, we women are denigrated for, calling us prudes and every other sexist slur to shut us up. the reality, kinda doing the same shit that is discussed in this very long article.

[KitSileya]

1. I wandered into the hashtag gamergate on twitter.

Talk about cesspool. I found one of them interesting - Brad Wardell (@draginol) retweeted "a small sample of the daily smearing" he gets...

"Hey look, one of the people “interviewed" for that article is Brad Wardell. He continues the lie that feminist critics don’t know games."
"Brad Wardell defines corruption as... victims complaining about sexual harassment. "
"If you're quoting Brad Wardell for your cause, you already done fucked up. He's a known misogynist."

While the women gamer developers get posts like the following: (trigger warning for rape and death threats, strong language)

https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/520739878993420290/photo/1


Yeah, there's some false equivalence, there, dude.

[seabeyond]

2. i never ... never read comments anymore from any article that highlights women. that is not a small

group of men, as the problem, if it is every article, and various abhorrent comments. that is large scale of an issue. thanks kit.

wow. i do not do twitter either. and still.... i get enough of the shit to have it effect me.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Violence against women, children, gays & other vulnerable people

is one of the most intolerable aspects of the insane worldwide culture of Patriarchy.

And I think patriarchy dehumanizes dominant males just as much as it does everyone else. "Real men" don't cry. "Real men"are tightly restricted in the range of behaviors acceptable for them (just imagine what would happen to a boy who chooses to play with dolls). Rage and resentment are the only emotions they are permitted to show. "Real men" are so trapped in the system that they can't even perceive the chains that bind them.

Our species can't survive patriarchy. Either patriarchy comes to an end in the next decade or 2, or we all do.

Patriarchy is all about dominion--male dominion over women, human dominion over Gaia. Dominator ideology has brought us fracking, climate change, and Dick Cheney. Well, Mother Nature has about had it with this lunacy. We either get our shit together and grow up out of our dysfunctional adolescence or She's going to take us off the board and start over with the cockroaches.

The Atlantic article points out the mixed blessing and curse of the Internet and social media as they interact with all this. The ugliness is being exposed; it's up to us to decide how to use that information. For some, it's a negative feedback loop--exposure to the information leads to compassion for the victims, disgust with the violence, and the impulse to end the ugliness. Unfortunately, for too many others, it's a positive feedback loop--exposure results in desensitization and in the impulse to glorify and emulate the violence.

Who will prevail, the humanists or the monsters?

That, my dears, is the question of the age.

The answer will determine not only whether the species will survive, but whether it deserves to survive.

[seabeyond]

4. this is an excellent post in the conclusiveness of the article. i agree totally.

you said it well, and i think make the point we need ot hear. thanks for taking the time.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Thanks, Sea.

Given this encouragement, I posted this as an OP in GD.

[seabeyond]

6. what a man. (i do not mean that in a gendered manner, lol). i hope it generates

thought.

[brer cat]

7. Well worth reading the entire article.

One of the things that worries me the most for my granddaughters (now 13 and 14) is the impact of social media. My daughter has been cautious with their tv/movie viewing and ability to move around the 'net, but we all know children are exposed to much before they are mature enough to handle it. The constant barrage of trash talk and graphic images available on social media threatens their self esteem and their perceptions of reality. Same for young men. I find it frightening.

Thanks for posting, seabeyond. It is an important article. Good to have you back at DU.

[seabeyond]

8. i felt the same about the article. ya long. and important. i have two boys.

i also had the opportunity to be home, raising them. i really had the control on the input they received, who they hung with, the influences they had. i am so thankful. it was never depriving them of information or knowledge or awareness. it was providing in age appropriateness, and keeping the adult world out of their life.

and.... i was able to.

i would watch my youngest, just a year or two ago, and listen to his questions, or seeing his lack of understanding, on issue too many young got.... that the should not be understanding yet. and i watch him today. getting those very things. just a couple years difference, but the ability to process at 16 as opposed to 14 and younger, is a big deal, in child development.

thanks for your post.

[daredtowork]

9. Followed some bread crumbs from GD

This is a terrific article! Thank you for posting it!

[ismnotwasm]

10. This

All of this raised a series of troubling questions: Who’s proliferating this violent content? Who’s controlling its dissemination? Should someone be? In theory, social media companies are neutral platforms where users generate content and report content as equals. But, as in the physical world, some users are more equal than others. In other words, social media is more symptom than disease: A 2013 report from the World Health Organization called violence against women “a global health problem of epidemic proportion,” from domestic abuse, stalking, and street harassment to sex trafficking, rape, and murder. This epidemic is thriving in the petri dish of social media.