I think this is important, and it fundamentally challenges the idea that abuse is mainly perpetrated by people who think too highly of themselves. If there’s a large correlation between violent crime and childhood abuse (and aside from that, it’s hardly the most privileged sectors of society who have high criminality rates), then often we’re dealing with people who have been long term victims, enough to change their genetic makeup and make them less likely to feel empathy for others or act in non-violent ways. Added to this, you have other evidence that it is fragility, not strength that leads people to discriminate against others. Extreme homophobes often turn out to be homosexual themselves. Sexist comments in video games often come from the poorest players. Extreme racists are generally not physically or mentally the strongest in their group.
I’d say a big problem is that many people have not learned that they are good enough. This is not ego stroking, but saying in a profound way that you can accept yourself as you are and don’t need to feel threatened by those around you. Empathy is key here: if these people have been made to feel insignificant through abuse, telling them that male victimisation is not that bad is telling them what they already know - they don’t matter. Nobody has the right to dominate or abuse others, but if anyone is being attacked, we should have their back. No more than that - MRAs want to make a political issue of this, but it doesn’t have to have anything to do with who is more frequently attacked. This behaviour is not acceptable whoever the victim is, even though there are clear patterns in society. Past abuse has to be addressed in ways that don’t promote abuse now.
Sending people to prison should be the last resort - putting men in an environment where they are surrounded by indifference and cruelty and other low empathy males will not teach them empathy. There have to be more effective tools to encourage people to accept themselves and not pull others down.
This seems to be an important principle in general that is very problematic here. If something is stolen or someone is killed and you think you know who did it, it’s good to keep an open mind as the evidence available to you could be pointing in the wrong direction. With a rape (especially when the perpetrator is known to the victim) or many cases of online abuse, the victim has no doubt about the person’s identity and what they did. This isn’t because they don’t have an open mind, it’s because it happened to them and they were fully aware of it. Unfortunately there are very rare cases where people do lie, but presuming innocence is not a neutral stance at all.
Just another data point, but I haven’t personally been threatened online. Many times in person, but I’ve never feared for my life or safety other than being physically or verbally attacked. My wife found a creep literally the first time she went online back in the 90s, in the first internet conversation she ever had. Luckily that was more of an exception than the rule.
My thought would be just as someone who is accused of a crime such as harrassment is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, victims should be also considered innocent of making false accusations or perjury, until they are found guilty, too. That is to say, when an allegation is made, it must be assumed to be made honestly and investigated thoroughly as such. To investigate an accusation thoroughly (including bringing charges) should not presuppose guilt on the part of the accused - all it indicates is that there is enough evidence that a crime may have occurred that a court must examine the case.
You say that you have never felt threatened or fearful due to online interactions, but does that mean that you have never been threatened? I’ve been addressed in a manner that was clearly intended to threaten, but that didn’t actually scare me the way that a similar interaction in the street would. Harassment is clearly a crime of intent, though, isn’t it?
I think it helps that I finished school before I was on social media, and I was older than the other students at uni and mostly kept to myself (I didn’t live on campus either). I really don’t think I’ve ever been intentionally threatened online. Somebody started a Facebook group to criticise me and a couple of other students who liked to unicycle to university, and somebody else started one to support us, but that’s probably about the most online attention I’ve had related to myself rather than my opinions.
I’ve just checked the two groups, and the unicycle hate group is down. “I wish I could unicycle like him” is still there, with all the fan mail:
Obviously if they don’t talk about it, I won’t know. But they have no reason to keep it from me since it’s not as if I’m going to share anything about specific people with anyone else. I would also wonder then how the Pew report got data for online harassment of men if they’re reluctant to talk about it.
Regarding your not feeling threatened: From what I can gather second-hand, harassment generally falls into four broad categories, insults (often sexist towards women), threats, stalking and physical/sexual violence (anything from groping to rape). If for men it rarely ever goes beyond threats, that still not okay, but easier to ignore, though of course doxing means posting anything linking back to your RW identity is potentially dangerous if it can be used to paint you as a target for those few who might go beyond threats. For a woman, minority or non-cis person, that’s an even bigger danger in the real world where there are a lot of people who may not know how to dox someone, but who will happily stalk someone at home or at work just for being in a group they dislike. So the fact that you don’t really feel threatened is great, but could that have something to do with the fact that you don’t feel you have to wonder which internet trolley will become or facilitate real world danger?
I have 2 boys, so my job at a minimum is to make sure they are aren’t what you & she needs to defend against, but I’m sure I can do better.
I have yet to witness online or in RL an example of this subset of men that has ever left their bedwomb emotionally except in some form of anger. That’s sad, but my sympathies are reserved for any who would be different.
There are also examples of bro-bags with children who seem unchanged, so unfortunately even the best things in life can’t always be a remedy. Adam Baldwin, the Throbbin Hood to his merry Mini-Meese, being the prime example.
It’s true, and of course we need to evoke cultural change. I’m all for cultural change and more clearly defining what is acceptable speech & acceptable protest and what is unacceptable.
OR, barring that idealism, I am all in favor of places where certain types of speech and the written word are restricted, so that the vast plurality of members may co-exist for a common purpose. That’s where I think technology comes in.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the rest don’t have to be unmoderated spaces. We can design any website we want to. We can insist, as consumers, on not having to deal with trolls by taking our business elsewhere. Or designing places that suit us more.
As much as I hate some of the rules the FCC has placed on TV and radio broadcasting, such as Carlin’s banned word list and other antiquated prohibitions, I believe that they have a role. I like the fact that I can turn on the TV and, generally speaking, I won’t have some a-hole shouting obscenities and threats at my face. I like that. And I abhor censorship. But I abhor the crap more.
So that’s why I say technology can be the answer and action plan to what we have been discussing here this week. With good technology, we can hold the multiple priorities simultaneously. And nobody will have to ride out with a spear to spear the bad guys. We can filter 'em instead.
Why would you think harassment stops at threats for men? Violent crime against men is slightly more common than violent crime against women. The only reason I was rarely afraid is because the likelihood that someone will actually even attempt to go through with it is astronomically low.
There is some really bizarre cognitive dissonance going on here. Both men and women should be equally weary of other men, but people seem to be jumping through mental hoops to protect their rather chauvinist, “protect the women”, idea of the world.
I really don’t know if my experience is representative or not, but I’ve been a target of harassment and violence so rarely that I at first was skeptical of how much women reported experiencing it, until I heard the same sorts of reports from numerous women I trust who did not all know each other or come from the same walks of life. And I very emphatically do not believe society needs to “protect women”. I believe, I was pretty clear about this earlier, that women and other marginalized groups are substantially disproportionately targeted with actual violence compared to straight white men. What we need to do is empower those targeted and speak out against violence. Trying to protect people is a fool’s errand and, while I know you didn’t mean any malice by it and it’s really how you interpreted what I said, I will thank you not to put words in my mouth that diametrically oppose my own stated views and beliefs. Thanks.
ETA: And to be sure, fighting cultural norms that enable violence is to the benefit of all of us. But what I find happens in these discussions online - and I want to be clear that I’m not saying this was the argument you personally were making - is that some SWM argue that men experience harassment too (which is undoubtedly true, whether it’s as often or not), and therefore non-SWM should just STFU and the harassers will simply go away (which they won’t), and that non-SWM are makikng mountains out of mole hills because they (those SWM who do make these arguments) have done just fine by ignoring the harassers. To which I submit that harassers are bigger threat to non-SWM precisely because society accommodates harassment of non-SWM far more readily than harassment of SWM. People are self-evidently free to agree or disagree with my rebuttal, but that is the rebuttal I’m making to what I regard as a flawed argument predicated on the idea that everyone, on average, experiences the same level and severity of harassment.
Why is this so hard to understand? Punching up versus punching down. Men are the empowered, both literally and metaphorically, class. Black people need more protection from cops than white people do, for the same reason.
I really don’t get what is so difficult to understand about it. I don’t need protection from other men nearly as much as women do.
You know if I ever meet you IRL I will buy you the adult beverage of your choice, right? Your ‘alphanumeric character to Win average’ is pretty damn high.
It’s these kinds of quotes that lose their meaning on these threads. Often what happens is people see it and react, like I am having a hard time not doing. Of course I am going to protect women. You said society. But I am saying I. I am going to protect my family and friends, and by extension people that I converse with and care about remotely online too. Even though I don’t know you, I actually do care about you, @Missy_Pants, @anon15383236, @anon67050589, @japhroaig, @slybevel, and many others. I don’t know precisely how I will do it, but just know that I will. And it’s not paternalistic. It’s called being a friend. That’s what friends do. They look out for each other. To suggest anything otherwise is… errrrhhhhh… unfriendly… maybe not unfriendly. Perhaps just not realizing.
But to solve a lot of what’s going on in this thread, mainly I advocate safer places to allow people to just be themselves. Specifically because that’s do-able. It’s an actionable item that we can do with software and how we structure a place on the Internet. I also advocate change on the society level, but that is much harder to evoke and requires a different kind of effort. Software is something I can wrap my head around. So that’s why I keep coming back around to this, because it can actually be done. We are using a piece of software right now that is well along the continuum of what I am talking about. The other more abstract ideas about change are much harder to implement on a shorter time scale.
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