Misogynist
Perspectives On Misogynist Trolling
If you're a woman who writes about, well, pretty much anything online, there's a good chance you've been told in a comments section how stupid/fat/feminazi/ugly/insecure/overly sensitive/ [insert insult here] you are. Trolling and bullying goes with the territory of being a female or gender variant individual who deigns to have an opinion online. Trolling is so common, in fact, that it's easy to dismiss it as "just part of the job."
But we can all agree that no job should involve persistent—and potentially dangerous—harassment.
As GamerGate has made clear, online abuse can quickly escalate into physical threat, and coordinated campaigns of violence have traumatized and silenced countless women writing the very things we need to hear most.
We asked writers, both female and male, to weigh in on Internet misogyny, its effects on society, and what we can all do about it.
Here's what they had to say.
I experience online harassment for the work I do offline.
The Lord of the Flies can feel like a vacation spot for conflict-management consultants in comparison to social media.
We must resist the urge to put our internal debates on hold while we face the menace of an organized hate machine.
We need to talk about online misogyny within a wider cultural context of woman-hating.
To fight trolls is to feed them. But to ignore them is to let their provocations go unchallenged.
No one has ever threatened violence against me, or said I was too ugly to rape. Why? Male privilege.
"Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others."
This is what it's like to be a feminist on the Internet who also happens to be a mother.
Actually, no, I'm not a gluttonous moron.