6 ms·
Lena Chen and Kathy Sierra shouldn't be mentioned in the same article. Kathy Sierra was attacked for being female. She did nothing that would cause people to a
by michaelochurch 13y ago
Lena Chen and Kathy Sierra shouldn't be mentioned in the same article.
Kathy Sierra was attacked for being female. She did nothing that would cause people to attack her, except for being a successful woman. It was disgusting, unprovoked, and utterly wrong.
Lena Chen didn't deserve what happened to her, but she courted the attention in a way that a mature and psychologically sound woman wouldn't. She ran a blog called Sex and the Ivy. I'm sorry, but if you write a blog whose title says, "I'm in the most privileged 2% of the population, I have lots of sex", you're putting a target on yourself. Maybe the world shouldn't be that way, but it is. There are reasons why adults keep their sex lives private (and non-adults, regardless of chronological age, shouldn't be having sex).
I don't think she deserves "slut-shaming" at this point, and the men involved in the revenge porn clearly belong in jail. Anyway, she's been in a long-term relationship (with Hamm) for years, and she's clearly trying to better herself and recover from the mess she made of her college years (and the additional mess others worked to make of her life). And the last thing a person with an obvious biological mental illness needs is for a bunch of cowardly, anonymous, asswipes on the Internet to make it worse by tearing her down.
Where the anger rightfully belongs is on a culture, not on specific people or a gender. The Sex and the City fake feminism (it's actually one of the least feminist TV shows out there) is horrifying, but people like Chen should be left alone to work out their problems in as much peace as they can have.
This is a strange topic because I know exactly where that male anger comes from. The culture of casual sex (in high schools, colleges, and some professional circles) has broken down respect between the genders. It leads naturally to pre-monogamous, primitive, dysgenic, and in practice anti-feminist social patterns and has divided men between an "alpha" contingent who objectify and degrade women, and an "omega" contingent (cyberstalkers, doxxers) who hate them. It's a hideous culture based on social status and acquisitiveness ("Game") and it's left a large number of people (men and women both) unable to form mature relationships.
Most male misogynists are in what I would call the Misogyny Loop. (There's probably a Misandry Loop for heterosexual women.) Because they have negative and false beliefs about women (i.e. "all women are whores who fall for Game") they end up meeting and dating only damaged women, and the sampling confirms their incorrect (and, from our perspective, socially unacceptable) beliefs.
The real enemy, though, is a specific culture created by the worst of men and the worst of women. Sex and the City feminism is based on lowering moral standards for women (i.e. women should be able to behave like the worst 5% of men without consequence) when the real goal should be to raise moral standards for men.
I want to make it clear that I have no sympathy whatsoever for the 1% of men who engage in cyberstalking and doxxing. I do feel slightly bad for the 39% who have been led astray into casual misogyny by a fucked-up and perverted culture. (But I feel much worse for non-participating, innocent women like Kathy Sierra.)
- marquis 13y ago>she courted the attention in a way that a mature and psychologically sound woman wouldn't. You just justified the attacks on her, which was the entire point of the article, saying that no attacks are justified, regardless of the situation. She was studying sociology and gender theory. As a woman I appreciate it when other woman have the courage to write about their lives in public, it enriches our own understanding of ourselves. If we all kept to ourselves there would be less information, especially for young woman whose lives are complicated (like young men). Anyone has a right to keep a blog about anything she wants, using her real name, and not be attacked for it. The issue here is that people are posting vitriol about others, on sites where there is no allowance for rebuttal. I just read a book about the Victorian-era, where it was fairly common to complain in the local newspaper about someone else, and the ethics of the papers allowed the attackee to issue a rebuttal in the same issue.
- selmnoo 13y ago> You just justified the attacks on her, which was the entire point of the article, saying that no attacks are justified, regardless of the situation. No, he didn't. I have a daughter who I instruct to dress in a way that covers most of her body. This does not mean that I am justifying rapes that happen because some lustful men are aroused by scantily-clad women, it simply means I observed and recognized the reality of the situation, and realized that dressing in a certain way reduces the chance of an incident. The fact that there are men out there who are unable to control their urges is a separate thing (that we of course should be talking about as a society). Likewise, michaelochurch made an observation on what is a good strategy to reduce the chances of being hurt. He explicitly went on to mention that he wishes the reality of things weren't this way.
- anu_gupta 13y ago> I have a daughter who I instruct to dress in a way that covers most of her body. Honestly, you couldn't make stuff up like this if you tried. Amazing.
- 13y ago