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Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like tha

Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." And that makes me so angry. Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. (also, for anyone wondering whether the number of people affected really is "significant", I would consider even one person to be a significant number) I also get really angry at posts like "This has never happened to me, so I'm sure it's all ok". This may come as a surprise, but individual experiences are not universal. That something has never happened to you doesn't mean it's never happened to anyone else. And if you're getting tired of seeing posts like this, don't complain about the people making the posts. Complain about the people harassing them. It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop. "This happens all the time" is never a valid excuse.

bsder 11y ago
> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police. Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- cjbprime 11y ago
  > Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop. What evidence do you have that the police will do something? We could look at people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who I feel confident we'll agree have experienced massive and credible death threats. They report the threats they get to the police and FBI. Who's in jail as a result?
  - alaroldai 11y ago
    Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. I haven't seen or heard of many court cases dealing with this, and when I have it's been via a blog post. Calling the police might be helpful in the specific case, but unless it really is high profile, it's not going to help change the culture.
    - bsder 11y ago
      > Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. High profile blog posts don't make it stop. In fact, it likely adds fuel to the fire. A video of a perp walk will drive home to the anonymous cowards that this isn't acceptable.
  - throwawayihz 11y ago
    Maybe the fact that nobody went to jail for those threats means they weren't as credible as you seem to think.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Since when do the police care about online harassment?
  - bsder 11y ago
    Police care about death threats. Really. Now, if the harasser is 2 continents away, it's going to get circular filed. If the harasser is two continents away, though, you can just ignore the message. However, if the harasser turns out to be in the same state or even the same county, the police will care a lot. And someone in the same state qualifies as an imminent threat. And has likely done it to other people.
- __z 11y ago
  What makes you think she didn't call the police? http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170 http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome... "Two hours later, a Palm Springs police officer lumbered up the steps to my hotel room, paused on the outdoor threshold, and began questioning me in a steady clip. I wheeled through the relevant background information: I am a journalist; I live in Los Angeles; sometimes, people don’t like what I write about women, relationships, or sexuality; this was not the first time that someone had responded to my work by threatening to rape and kill me. The cop anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, “What is Twitter?”"
  - ajsharp 11y ago
    Glad you posted this. They mentioned this incident in a segment they did on Last Week Tonight. The police are completely ill-equipped to deal with online harassment, even if they could determine the identity of the attacker, which they likely rarely can.
    - bsder 11y ago
      Most harassers really aren't that clever at hiding their tracks. Someone that smart is probably doing something more productive with their life. It's likely a simple request from the police for identity is probably going to cough up the idiot.
  - vilmosi 11y ago
    Um... Twitter isn't nearly as prevalent as people in the tech industry think it is.
- wpietri 11y ago
  One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.) Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shit, and when they do, it's an extremely hard case to pursue. Three, if you're tired of people talking about their lives on their blogs, don't read their blogs. You coming on here to whine about other people supposedly whining is ridiculous. There are plenty of us who actually want to solve these problems and are glad when people post.
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    So if I was mugged or being robbed, I have no friends around when this is happening, and I am not paying a security service, I shouldn't call 911?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - wpietri 11y ago
      If you think calling 911 will benefit you, by all means do it. There are plenty of people for whom it is either not a benefit or an active danger. For them, I can understand why they don't call.
TTPrograms 11y ago
>That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. Is that really the case, though? If there's a violent criminal in a town, does the town as a whole have problem? Is the whole town to blame for the acts of that individual? We should do what we can to stop this sort of abuse and make things better, but why do we have to spend so much time allocating blame to everyone in same field of work?
- alaroldai 11y ago
  If we're doing what we can to stop this sort of abuse, there's nothing to blame us for. If we're spending our time trying to sweep these issues under the rug, maybe there is.
  - TTPrograms 11y ago
    I don't think refusing to take blame for the acts of others is sweeping anything under the rug.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      Nobody is blaming you. They are asking you to take responsibility for your professional community. Will you?
      - TTPrograms 11y ago
        >Nobody is blaming you. >The Industry Is Fucked. That's my industry that's fucked. Not some random people on the internet, not some assholes in a convention. The statement is that the entire industry that I participate in, interact with and identify with is fucked.
        daveloyall 11y ago
        Nobody is blaming you. They are asking you to take responsibility for your professional community. Will you?
mholt 11y ago
> It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop. You have evidence to back this up? Honest question.
- alaroldai 11y ago
  Actually, no. But I can't believe that ignoring the issue is going to be more helpful than bringing attention to it.
  - JoshuaDavid 11y ago
    Have you heard the phrase "don't feed the trolls?" Generally, if someone is saying hurtful things because they didn't know better, raising awareness is likely to help. If they're saying hurtful things to get attention, saying that they're hurting people and should stop is likely to be counterproductive. I don't know enough to be positive in this case, but I'm guessing this is a case of "trolls", not a case of "ignorant people" (at least not ignorant in the sense of not knowing that they're causing someone distress).
    - aredridel 11y ago
      Turns out the trolls have found impossible to ignore ways to interact now: they'll SWAT, Dox, and DoS you right out of your life.
  - purp 11y ago
    Actually, yes. There's ample evidence of the effects of under reporting crimes: http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/more-than-3-million-violent-crimes-in-us-go-unreported-every-year?news=844943 http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/more-than-3-million-v... http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf From the article: "Bullying remains a big problem, according to the study data. About 76% of violent crimes that occurred at school were not reported to police, which is consistent with the findings that from 2006 to 2010, crimes against youth age 12 to 17 were more likely to go unreported than crimes against persons in other age categories." Now, here's my question for you, mholt (and others), meant in a kind but very direct tone: why should someone need to prove that reporting more of these crimes is justifiable? Why quibble with that question versus addressing the question of, "is there a wrong being done and can I help stop it?" There is a wrong being done. You can help stop it. So let's fix it.
astrocyte 11y ago
It makes you angry to think? Is this the modern day internet in which lots of individuals say stupid things to get a rise out of people (troll for the lulz)? or is it a tech industry problem Turn your base emotions off for a second and try to use your higher level brain facilities to target the actual root of this. I'm an african-american in tech. Lots has happened to me. What has ever happened to you such that you can relate? So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting? Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct. Rise above it. This isn't the stone-age.
- magicalist 11y ago
  > So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting? Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct Yes, we call this sort of thing a straw man. I do enjoy, however, that the OP is blogging "because she feels she's the center of the world"[1], alaroldai is an irrational, rampaging white knight, but you're just bringing clarity to the issue. No, you don't seem irrationally invested in the issue in the slightest. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836257
generic_user 11y ago
>Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. There is not one "person in this industry" that was named or identified here. To project that anonymous internet trolls are "the tech industry" says more about how you view the tech industry then the industry itself or the people in it. What needs to stop is blanked condemnations of an industry, any industry because someone gets nasty tweets or emails. I got nasty email therefore the tech industry is responsible is not credible. Anyone regardless of who you are or what you do can end up with a mailbox full of nasty emails for innumerable reasons.
- wpietri 11y ago
  This is a strongly gendered phenomenon. Prominent women in tech have an entirely different experience than prominent men in tech. (This is mostly true for non-prominent people as well.) This comes up over and over and over. But by all means keep clouding the issue in hopes of not having to talk about it.
  - generic_user 11y ago
    The conversation that can be had is about slander and false accusations leveled against the tech industry as a whole. And the motivations of those who propagate such narratives. There has been no connection established between said emails and the "tech industry". The implication that only girls get nasty emails on the internet and they obviously come from the "Assholes in the tech industry" is childish, not credible.
  - shykes 11y ago
    I meant to upvote you but accidentally downvoted,sorry! I strongly agree that this is a gendered phenomenon.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
beloch 11y ago
The problem is, just one person like this is "enough" to really mess people up. You can have hundreds of normal, positive interactions in a week and it just takes one a$$hat to make you forget all that. Thanks to the internet, one guy can ruin hundreds of other people's days. He (or she) can do it anonymously and safely from a great distance. For the overwhelming majority of us, there simply are no barriers to prevent this. We routinely filter out nuisance emails from Nigerian princes but very few people try to filter out the crazies. Most of us, if given the chance to have our messages filtered, would choose not to do so. Most people are eager to please and want to know when somebody is unhappy so they can fix it. Only people in the most visible positions are faced with such a deluge of crap that they're forced to do something about it. For the average person, the aberrant attention that comes from a small amount of exposure, such as a conference talk, is just big enough to throw us for a loop but not so big that we'd think about taking steps to never see that stuff. This isn't only a problem for women. Men face it too. Perhaps the time has come to approach harassment the way we approach spam. Namely, make it easy to report personal attacks so that we can start using the same techniques that block spam to block harassment.
- zaccus 11y ago
  IDK, she's talking about hundreds of vile personal messages. Sounds like more than one a$$hat to me. And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. I think when this kind of thing happens it should be called out. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    >And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. Men rarely send men rape threats. A woman threatening a man with rape usually isn't seen as threatening due to power dynamics between the sexes (good luck overpowering the man to rape him?) So that doesn't come as a large surprise to anyone. But a large number of men do receive death threats and threats to their family. "I'll kill your kids" and "I'll kill your wife" are still threats against that person. They are meant to intimidate and control that individual, fearing for the people he cares about. He'll receive a picture of his girlfriend with another man's semen plastered on it. You learn to ignore it - because there isn't another way to deal with it. Blaming a specific community for it is a joke. What do you want the community to do about it? Say it's not okay? Well it's not okay. We say that, but it falls on deaf ears. You want us to do something about it. But there isn't anything to do about it. Simply saying it's not okay isn't enough. It won't stop what happens. If you think it will, I'd love to hear your reasoning for how you came to that conclusion and what alternative universe you've wished yourself into. Telling people that theft is not okay doesn't prevent all theft. Telling people that killing people is not okay doesn't prevent all murders. Telling people that [this] is not okay does not prevent all [this]. That's simply a fact of life. What people are saying is: "No, this isn't okay. It's still going to happen. What do you want us to do about it, we can't do shit. You're going to have to deal with it." Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."
vilmosi 11y ago
>>> That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. I'm not disagreeing with you. But... Isn't that true with everything? Is the medical industry fucked because some doctors are getting sued for malpractice? Is accountancy fucked because some accountants embezzle money? Are teachers fucked because some guy fails students who look like his ex? I mean come on. These attitudes are in no way productive and the only reason the above post exists is to attract attention, not to fix anything.
- adamlett 11y ago
  Your examples all have something in common which is that the harm is caused indiscriminately by which I mean that there is I reason to think that any one group of people is affected more than any other. In other words they are like car accidents. Everybody has a roughly equal chance of being affected and therefore everybody has the same incentives to fix or not fix the problem. But when some problem affects a particular group of people disproportionately and when that group is itself powerless to fix the problem, well then the situation is fucked. Especially if those who do have the power to fix the problem instead choose to wash their hands of it.

bsder 11y ago

> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police. Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cjbprime 11y ago
> Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop. What evidence do you have that the police will do something? We could look at people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who I feel confident we'll agree have experienced massive and credible death threats. They report the threats they get to the police and FBI. Who's in jail as a result?
- alaroldai 11y ago
  Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. I haven't seen or heard of many court cases dealing with this, and when I have it's been via a blog post. Calling the police might be helpful in the specific case, but unless it really is high profile, it's not going to help change the culture.
  - bsder 11y ago
    > Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. High profile blog posts don't make it stop. In fact, it likely adds fuel to the fire. A video of a perp walk will drive home to the anonymous cowards that this isn't acceptable.
- throwawayihz 11y ago
  Maybe the fact that nobody went to jail for those threats means they weren't as credible as you seem to think.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Since when do the police care about online harassment?
- bsder 11y ago
  Police care about death threats. Really. Now, if the harasser is 2 continents away, it's going to get circular filed. If the harasser is two continents away, though, you can just ignore the message. However, if the harasser turns out to be in the same state or even the same county, the police will care a lot. And someone in the same state qualifies as an imminent threat. And has likely done it to other people.
__z 11y ago
What makes you think she didn't call the police? http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170 http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome... "Two hours later, a Palm Springs police officer lumbered up the steps to my hotel room, paused on the outdoor threshold, and began questioning me in a steady clip. I wheeled through the relevant background information: I am a journalist; I live in Los Angeles; sometimes, people don’t like what I write about women, relationships, or sexuality; this was not the first time that someone had responded to my work by threatening to rape and kill me. The cop anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, “What is Twitter?”"
- ajsharp 11y ago
  Glad you posted this. They mentioned this incident in a segment they did on Last Week Tonight. The police are completely ill-equipped to deal with online harassment, even if they could determine the identity of the attacker, which they likely rarely can.
  - bsder 11y ago
    Most harassers really aren't that clever at hiding their tracks. Someone that smart is probably doing something more productive with their life. It's likely a simple request from the police for identity is probably going to cough up the idiot.
- vilmosi 11y ago
  Um... Twitter isn't nearly as prevalent as people in the tech industry think it is.
wpietri 11y ago
One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.) Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shit, and when they do, it's an extremely hard case to pursue. Three, if you're tired of people talking about their lives on their blogs, don't read their blogs. You coming on here to whine about other people supposedly whining is ridiculous. There are plenty of us who actually want to solve these problems and are glad when people post.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  So if I was mugged or being robbed, I have no friends around when this is happening, and I am not paying a security service, I shouldn't call 911?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - wpietri 11y ago
    If you think calling 911 will benefit you, by all means do it. There are plenty of people for whom it is either not a benefit or an active danger. For them, I can understand why they don't call.

TTPrograms 11y ago

>That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. Is that really the case, though? If there's a violent criminal in a town, does the town as a whole have problem? Is the whole town to blame for the acts of that individual? We should do what we can to stop this sort of abuse and make things better, but why do we have to spend so much time allocating blame to everyone in same field of work?

alaroldai 11y ago
If we're doing what we can to stop this sort of abuse, there's nothing to blame us for. If we're spending our time trying to sweep these issues under the rug, maybe there is.
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  I don't think refusing to take blame for the acts of others is sweeping anything under the rug.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    Nobody is blaming you. They are asking you to take responsibility for your professional community. Will you?
    - TTPrograms 11y ago
      >Nobody is blaming you. >The Industry Is Fucked. That's my industry that's fucked. Not some random people on the internet, not some assholes in a convention. The statement is that the entire industry that I participate in, interact with and identify with is fucked.
      - daveloyall 11y ago
        Nobody is blaming you. They are asking you to take responsibility for your professional community. Will you?

mholt 11y ago

> It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop. You have evidence to back this up? Honest question.

alaroldai 11y ago
Actually, no. But I can't believe that ignoring the issue is going to be more helpful than bringing attention to it.
- JoshuaDavid 11y ago
  Have you heard the phrase "don't feed the trolls?" Generally, if someone is saying hurtful things because they didn't know better, raising awareness is likely to help. If they're saying hurtful things to get attention, saying that they're hurting people and should stop is likely to be counterproductive. I don't know enough to be positive in this case, but I'm guessing this is a case of "trolls", not a case of "ignorant people" (at least not ignorant in the sense of not knowing that they're causing someone distress).
  - aredridel 11y ago
    Turns out the trolls have found impossible to ignore ways to interact now: they'll SWAT, Dox, and DoS you right out of your life.
- purp 11y ago
  Actually, yes. There's ample evidence of the effects of under reporting crimes: http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/more-than-3-million-violent-crimes-in-us-go-unreported-every-year?news=844943 http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/more-than-3-million-v... http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf From the article: "Bullying remains a big problem, according to the study data. About 76% of violent crimes that occurred at school were not reported to police, which is consistent with the findings that from 2006 to 2010, crimes against youth age 12 to 17 were more likely to go unreported than crimes against persons in other age categories." Now, here's my question for you, mholt (and others), meant in a kind but very direct tone: why should someone need to prove that reporting more of these crimes is justifiable? Why quibble with that question versus addressing the question of, "is there a wrong being done and can I help stop it?" There is a wrong being done. You can help stop it. So let's fix it.

astrocyte 11y ago

It makes you angry to think? Is this the modern day internet in which lots of individuals say stupid things to get a rise out of people (troll for the lulz)? or is it a tech industry problem Turn your base emotions off for a second and try to use your higher level brain facilities to target the actual root of this. I'm an african-american in tech. Lots has happened to me. What has ever happened to you such that you can relate? So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting? Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct. Rise above it. This isn't the stone-age.

magicalist 11y ago
> So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting? Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct Yes, we call this sort of thing a straw man. I do enjoy, however, that the OP is blogging "because she feels she's the center of the world"[1], alaroldai is an irrational, rampaging white knight, but you're just bringing clarity to the issue. No, you don't seem irrationally invested in the issue in the slightest. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836257

generic_user 11y ago

>Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. There is not one "person in this industry" that was named or identified here. To project that anonymous internet trolls are "the tech industry" says more about how you view the tech industry then the industry itself or the people in it. What needs to stop is blanked condemnations of an industry, any industry because someone gets nasty tweets or emails. I got nasty email therefore the tech industry is responsible is not credible. Anyone regardless of who you are or what you do can end up with a mailbox full of nasty emails for innumerable reasons.

wpietri 11y ago
This is a strongly gendered phenomenon. Prominent women in tech have an entirely different experience than prominent men in tech. (This is mostly true for non-prominent people as well.) This comes up over and over and over. But by all means keep clouding the issue in hopes of not having to talk about it.
- generic_user 11y ago
  The conversation that can be had is about slander and false accusations leveled against the tech industry as a whole. And the motivations of those who propagate such narratives. There has been no connection established between said emails and the "tech industry". The implication that only girls get nasty emails on the internet and they obviously come from the "Assholes in the tech industry" is childish, not credible.
- shykes 11y ago
  I meant to upvote you but accidentally downvoted,sorry! I strongly agree that this is a gendered phenomenon.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

beloch 11y ago

The problem is, just one person like this is "enough" to really mess people up. You can have hundreds of normal, positive interactions in a week and it just takes one a$$hat to make you forget all that. Thanks to the internet, one guy can ruin hundreds of other people's days. He (or she) can do it anonymously and safely from a great distance. For the overwhelming majority of us, there simply are no barriers to prevent this. We routinely filter out nuisance emails from Nigerian princes but very few people try to filter out the crazies. Most of us, if given the chance to have our messages filtered, would choose not to do so. Most people are eager to please and want to know when somebody is unhappy so they can fix it. Only people in the most visible positions are faced with such a deluge of crap that they're forced to do something about it. For the average person, the aberrant attention that comes from a small amount of exposure, such as a conference talk, is just big enough to throw us for a loop but not so big that we'd think about taking steps to never see that stuff. This isn't only a problem for women. Men face it too. Perhaps the time has come to approach harassment the way we approach spam. Namely, make it easy to report personal attacks so that we can start using the same techniques that block spam to block harassment.

zaccus 11y ago
IDK, she's talking about hundreds of vile personal messages. Sounds like more than one a$$hat to me. And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. I think when this kind of thing happens it should be called out. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. Men rarely send men rape threats. A woman threatening a man with rape usually isn't seen as threatening due to power dynamics between the sexes (good luck overpowering the man to rape him?) So that doesn't come as a large surprise to anyone. But a large number of men do receive death threats and threats to their family. "I'll kill your kids" and "I'll kill your wife" are still threats against that person. They are meant to intimidate and control that individual, fearing for the people he cares about. He'll receive a picture of his girlfriend with another man's semen plastered on it. You learn to ignore it - because there isn't another way to deal with it. Blaming a specific community for it is a joke. What do you want the community to do about it? Say it's not okay? Well it's not okay. We say that, but it falls on deaf ears. You want us to do something about it. But there isn't anything to do about it. Simply saying it's not okay isn't enough. It won't stop what happens. If you think it will, I'd love to hear your reasoning for how you came to that conclusion and what alternative universe you've wished yourself into. Telling people that theft is not okay doesn't prevent all theft. Telling people that killing people is not okay doesn't prevent all murders. Telling people that [this] is not okay does not prevent all [this]. That's simply a fact of life. What people are saying is: "No, this isn't okay. It's still going to happen. What do you want us to do about it, we can't do shit. You're going to have to deal with it." Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."

vilmosi 11y ago

>>> That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem. I'm not disagreeing with you. But... Isn't that true with everything? Is the medical industry fucked because some doctors are getting sued for malpractice? Is accountancy fucked because some accountants embezzle money? Are teachers fucked because some guy fails students who look like his ex? I mean come on. These attitudes are in no way productive and the only reason the above post exists is to attract attention, not to fix anything.

adamlett 11y ago
Your examples all have something in common which is that the harm is caused indiscriminately by which I mean that there is I reason to think that any one group of people is affected more than any other. In other words they are like car accidents. Everybody has a roughly equal chance of being affected and therefore everybody has the same incentives to fix or not fix the problem. But when some problem affects a particular group of people disproportionately and when that group is itself powerless to fix the problem, well then the situation is fucked. Especially if those who do have the power to fix the problem instead choose to wash their hands of it.