OMG why are you showing them our secret sigil Millie! This will get you drummed out for sure! I’m telling the elders!
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OK, I have a serious question. I’m with @Missy_Pants that this is not an “all men are pigs” sentiment; rather, a subset of men who follow and harass. It truly is harassment, and it’s evil behavior. So, the question: how many of those guys do you think are younger, daughterless guys?
I have a daughter. She’s very young. She’s the smartest, sweetest, most beautiful person I’ve ever known, wife be damned! LOL. So she will definitely be harassed later and I’m prepping for how to deal with it and help her maintain her self esteem.
I doubt knowing the answer to the question would help, because the countermeasures needed to survive online have nothing really to do with that answer. I’m just suspecting that it’s mostly guys who are 1. young and 2. have no real perspective on life and 3. no personal experience with raising children and 4. especially daughters.
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I wonder about it.
I wonder if there are men who really cannot put together the way they treat women and how their own daughters will be treated.
My daughter is 17. As far as I can tell, she’s pretty clever about the places she visits on the Interwebs and who she associates with. I’m not quite sure how she worked that out. One of the big plusses of the Internet is that you can hang out in your own little corner of it where things are safe, and she seems to have found that corner and staked out a spot there.
Still, I worry about it. I worry about what is coming up for her in college and what her experiences “dating” will be like (or whatever it is the kids do these days) and how the misogyny on the web will affect that. For example, a story like this makes me wonder about her safety. She’s found her corner of the web but what corner of the web have some of her fellow students found?
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In some ways, good men the internet have no more power than anyone else to stop it from happening - even a minority of abusers can make it intolerable. On the other hand, I guess some general principles are:
- FFS, don’t be an abuser yourself.
- Believe that it’s happening. Even if women also abuse, this is a specific thing that keeps women from voicing their opinion.
- Don’t accept it or allow the idea that you approve. People like to imagine that the silent majority agrees with them.
Anything else? Personally, I’m not on Twitter but it seems to make piling on easy and prevention of abuse difficult, even at a systems level.
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Not as many as you think. From my personal experience of being a lady on the interwebs with opinions; the persistent dogged “listen to me” dude are closer to middle age, married/divorced, grown kids/or-none, and by and large, all white.
And the daughter thing… /sigh - I know, I know, accept all allys no matter how late to the game they are, but seriously, dudes… you couldn’t step up when your Mother/Sister/Wife/Girlfriend/Collegues were at the plate? You had to wait until it was your daughter? Like, ok, sure, get up here, but you see how we’re gonna be a little miffed by that right?
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A certain Leigh Alexander is already on it. 
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Thanks for the link! Ok, to develop that thought a little: I mentioned the Tim Hunt case yesterday in a different thread. There’s disagreement on whether the journalists were unfairly attacking him or not, but leaving that aside - Connie St. Lewis shared a comic that many people thought misrepresented him:
Almost all of the responses are critical of her and defend Tim Hunt. Most, if not all, are guys, and nobody accuses them of white knighting. Anybody might think the term was an attempt to isolate women from potential avenues of support.
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Funny, insightful, and nutritious. Please, may I have some more?
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Yes. Why are so many guys stunted in their moral development? If they are pulling that stuff in their middle age years (and by that, I define it as about 35 to 55, with some leeway at either end) then why did morality never develop? WTF? What we are talking about is the kind of stuff that should resolve in the late teen years. Yet the stunted development persists… it’s baffling to me. I don’t want to go off on a Trump tangent, but it’s the same behavior we see playing out on the national stage with his stupid antics. What makes this OK in those guys’ world? What are they gaining by harassing women this way?
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Me either. OK I am but I don’t use it and probably won’t ever. Should just delete it; I have like three tweets. To hell with the twits. Too much openness to attack and snide harassment. I hate making YouTube comments, too, because then strange holier-than-thou people get on there and feel the need to put others down as un-knowledgable. Jeez, so stupid.
I’m also on a few technical google groups and some listserves. Stupid immature harassment is there too. People getting on there with their I’m-better-than-you attitude: well you know nothing John Snow, ye bastad. Etc. Meanwhile, I’m actually a seasoned expert in my field and I truly do know my stuff and could code circles around people in certain areas… yet they still bully, even when it’s a non-emotional, fully factual response trying to help shed light on a subject. Happens all the time and I just throw up my hands at all the idiots and walk away.
Sometimes the Internet is wonderful. Sometimes the Internet is a million screaming, biting, flailing babies who just need their mommies and daddies to hold them.
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I know we all all know this, but “we” are. And this is not snark or a joke, but a sad reality: its gonna take us a couple lifetimes to change behaviors if we get there at all.
And again, preaching to the well informed choir here (plus I’ve never had an original thought in my life ), a multi pronged approach is needed.
Laws regarding harassment aren’t all that bad, but the process of discovery of harassers is terrible.
Rank stacking in the LEO world of harassment cases is laughable.
Online platforms are financially disincentivized from pursuing harassers.
So while we work on changing the behavior that leads to harassment (a generational change), there certainly are tactical fixes in the structure that allows harassment which can be applied.
Gah, I need to just stay with jokes. I’m totally bummed out thinking about this. Anyone got a unicorn chaser? 
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This is always a problem. As person who likes to think of himself as a “nice guy” (I.e. don’t be a jerk to anyone), how can I combat the jerks in my gender, without being a jerk? Just telling abusive men “hey, by the power of penis I compel you to be decent!” Doesn’t work.
I think there is a fallacy there, its like blaiming Muslims for the few terrorists who also claim to be Muslims, because they don’t stop them. Or Christians for tolerating the Christian lunatic fringe. A shared reproductive organ membership card, and use of a common pronoun doesn’t give me any power over others in my gender.
@Missy_Pants: I generally find they have either daughters or wives (or at very least mothers). I often get caught saying “surely this guy can’t have a wife”, and then immediately find the opposite. In my experience domineering jerks (or either gender), find submissive matches. There is, also, a fair number of women who are against feminism, and agree with the MRA or " traditional" values crowd
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Ask for a unicorn, and you get the unicorn you deserve.
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Screw you, I love Twitter! I’ve curated my followers/followees pretty well, and its witty and sharp and hilarious. Its like a cocktail party, you just wander about joining conversations as you see fit. And leave when you want. Its great!
That said, I’m still not unlocking my account. 
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Yes, it does.
(Don’t actually say penis)
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I work on a University campus. The local MRA groups favourite tactic is to get women speakers to speak against feminism. To say it is disheartening would be putting it mildly.
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I dunno man. I have no problem with my fists. Some asshole started abusing my wife on Facebook a few years ago. I told him we were 1. deleting his comments 2. unfriending him and 3. if he didn’t stop, I’d make it my life’s work to find him and make him eat my knuckles for lunch. Sure it’s a threat and I could go to jail for it. But I have no problem putting assholes back into their place when they step out of line. That’s a power that you DO have. Most of the time it doesn’t need to get to that point. But when dealing with other men, ALL OPTIONS INCLUDING GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR are on the table.
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