Why do trolls go after feminists?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The fact that feminists appear to be uniquely targeted by trolls is indeed the result of a societal structure, but it is not unique to feminists. Instead, feminists are just another set of humans who are louder when they get upset. People used to complain about so-called Soccer Moms being too easy to upset.
If you don't like the trolls, then don't feed them. I had thought that people had learned from the vi-vs-emacs flame wars how to avoid unproductive drama. Feminists spin their wheels by getting upset at trolls, just as vi users wasted their time getting mad when emacs users were not using vi.
Ignore trolls, and they'll (eventually) ignore you. Keep responding and baiting them, and you're toast. Same thing goes if you run a community. Don't want trolls? Ban and move on. Don't turn it into a big dramatic deal and 'war on trolls'.
This might have mixed results. Some trolls see getting banned as proof of successful trolling, whereupon trolling via another account might still be an option.
I think the users are the key to making trolls go away, because it is a social issue and not a mechanical issue. Put another way: you can't program away trolling, despite how fun XKCD's idea [0] might be to implement.
Society is ever changing rubbery blob that's being melded into different shapes based on what people do, have done or will do.
You can't just go ahead and make large generalisations about men or women without any backlash, especially on the internet.
I'm sure if I made a comment saying all women should be/are xyz on twitter, I sure as hell would be trolled/attacked; it's what you as a person deals with it.
On a serious note, not every gender stereotype is inherently bad. I don't recall ever making a threat against anyone, certainly not doxing them, and don't support the behavior. Some people tend to force a victim mentality, it doesn't mean that they aren't victims, I'm only saying it's so as there are instances where I think we've gone too far.
The concept of "trigger warnings" in classrooms just seems absurd. Also, people can't take a joke anymore. Many comics won't even do shows at college campuses anymore. It's kind of a sad statement.
As a kid, I was picked on more than most.. and while I feel such behavior shouldn't be encouraged, you can't stop all bad behavior in an instant, and becoming militant about it will only serve to fan the flames. Compare racial tensions in the U.S. vs the U.K. for example.
There are times to speak out, and times to suck it up.
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Edit: I realize that this isn't a popular point of view, but if you disagree, reply and add to the conversation, the negative vote isn't supposed to mean you disagree with something.
If you'd like somebody to take you seriously enough to write a reply, take a point seriously enough to write it out clearly and give some substance to it. Data. Personal experience. Careful, clear reasoning. Anything to demonstrate that you've put some time in.
As it is, I don't have any reason to think you have thought about the topic enough to be worth responding to. I'd expect the conversation to go something like this:
http://chemicalsinpants.tumblr.com/post/101787704848/the-pro...
It's enormously convenient for you to tell other people to suck it up, while being apparently unable to endure the discomfort of other people having opinions without whining about it online. It sounds familiar:
http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-w...
I didn't want to dig into this specific case, as it seems to relate to gamergate, which is a lot of bad acting on all sides, especially those making physical threats of violence, and doxing people. Regardless of the merits of any underlying philosophy, such behavior is indefensible.
I'm not really right-wing, though do lean that way on a few specific issues. I'm very much of a pragmatic libertarian mindset. I tend to disagree with many on the left and right-wing viewpoints simultaneously. Even on the same issue.
It's not just a right wing talking point to say that there's been a lot of over-reaction to a great many things, and some of the actions coming out of our universities currently is pretty backwards. People have every right to be offended by things... they do not have a right to not be offended by anything. One's privilege ends where another's rights begin.
My intent was not to derail conversation into a spew of he-said/she-said or even to deteriorate into hyperbole. I was vague because in this case, there's merit. I was only mentioning that in a lot of cases there is not.
Even here, you still haven't said anything specific. Everybody can agree that in some cases there is merit and some there is not, because that's true about everything. Everybody can agree that sometimes there's been over-reaction, because that's true about any topic where people have ever reacted. There is no need to say something that is always true.
If you're still wondering why people were downvoting, I'd say it was because you made objection-like noises without ever saying anything specific enough to serve as a real objection. If you'd like to object, by all means do it. Or if you'd like to avoid derailing with side issues, then just don't bring them up. But raising them while being vague reads to me like an attempt to undermine without taking responsibility, a way of clouding this issue a bunch of vague and unspecified junk.
I see.
Do you remember being potty trained? Do you remember being trained on what things and behaviors are masculine and feminine? Because you were trained, and if you spend time around toddlers you can see them being trained on both.
You were also trained in the use of tens of thousands of words. Do you remember being trained on each one of them? I sure don't. Do you remember being trained on how to avoid collision on the sidewalk? On how to use a fork? On how to use your fingers to put things in your mouth?
Your memory of being trained on something isn't a good indicator of whether you were trained on it. A relatively small amount of what society trains people on is explicit, formal, and sufficient to cause episodic memory formation. Most of our learning is implicit.
> And I don't remember my wife being "trained"
Were you married when she was 2? Gender role training starts at least that early.
Regardless, if you look you can read plenty of actual stories from adult women on how they have been trained to deal with it, and how they're still being trained in that by being punished for breaking from it.
Clementine Ford has experienced exactly that kind of training, so if you wanted to learn something, you could start with her articles. Other good sources are Everyday Sexism, Project Unbreakable, or the autobiography of pretty much any pioneering woman. Madeleine Albright talks explicitly about this and how rising through the man's world of diplomacy forced her to cast off her training and adopt loud and space-demanding behaviors just to be heard.
Note that your reply here is basically "not all men!" A response that has been examined and found deeply lacking:
That's fair. When somebody leaps into a discussion without understanding the basics and acting in a way that is basically ignorant denial, I am ok with condescending to them.
The discussion of gender bias and gender equity is a rich and complicated subject. Here on HN, people are generally expected to know something before they open their mouths. I think my condescension here is about 1% of what somebody would get if they were ignorant about language design and still offering similarly bold opinions on languages that they've never used.
It appears to me that this implies that these ideas are beliefs that rely on faith in the belief and that challenging the belief is considered a sign of ignorance at best and a conscious attack at worst. It seems to me that all a questioner need to do is educate themselves in the correct literature and there would be no need to question anymore. To challenge the belief of faith creates incomprehensibility in the holder of the beliefs as it implies that the belief is not certain and can be open to challenge. Thus the most common reply to a question about the certainty of the beliefs is a urgent request to educate themselves.
Or, alternative theory: the topic is actually complicated, they are tired of ignorant people acting like ignorance is just as good as knowledge, and they don't feel obliged to spoon-feed decades of complicated material to people who, by all evidence, have no interested in learning it because it would interfere with what their gut tells them on the topic.
If you can find some way to interpret him otherwise, I look forward to reading it.
Try it yourself. Take any complicated domain that you know well. It's pretty easy to construct statements that make it clear that a speaker wouldn't know much.
My point is, you are deciding something completely off little information and I'm only suggesting that your guess on this person is not as accurate as you may think it is. I do agree that there's a chance you are 100% correct on the matter, but I don't see how we can determine that.
Of course, I admit that cartoon may apply to myself in this context as well.
I'm not deciding anything irrevocably; if he had come back and started talking sense on the topic, I would have been happy to revise.
And yes, of course my picture based on a couple of paragraphs is incomplete. But that's true of any comment here. It's the commenter's job to make sure what they post is a reasonable representation of their views. Repliers reply to what was actually written, not the infinite penumbra of the possibility space of what could actually be going on.
Your standard of "100% correct" is a deeply weird one to apply to online discussion, especially since you clearly aren't applying it to your own comments. I may not know what martiuk knows, but you have no better idea of what I know. But here you are, sniping as if you do.
And yes, I'm critiquing what you implied because you initially weren't brave enough to say anything specific, just to raise a (false) contradiction and then call it "interesting" when you meant something other than interesting.
You're critiquing, I'm critiquing, it's all good. Well, until you start arguing semantics over words I chose to use (and define them for me to boot), even though I was quite obvious in my initial statement, is clear evidence this is going nowhere.
Thanks, it has been enlightening.
The guy is talking about socialization of gender, and proving that it happens how he says because he doesn't personally remember it happening some other way. This blithely ignores that this is an actual field with actual decades of research. E.g., Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" is 33 years old at this point, and that's built on research that goes back decades more.
It also ignores decades of discussion about the discussion of gender and sexism. The blowhard guy asserting that there are no problems because he has never personally experienced them is so common that it is literally a meme:
http://cdn.viralwomen.com/ContentFiles/viralwomen.com/Posts/...
I'm fine with people having different opinions. I'm also fine with people not knowing. But I object to him acting as if he knows without knowing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZY6D2hFdo&app=desktop
...they suggested it was that a few women disrespected their market, trolled millions of people (including women gamers), made claims of abuse with feminist ideology, violated their own rules for money in design of their own games, and were possibly using the claims to get attention to their games. Never heard any of that in original reporting on major sites and that's why I was originally confused about why so much hate came their way.
Not saying this is true of anything referenced in the above article. Just telling readers to be aware that there's at least two trends going on:
1. People, including & especially women, being harassed online with any number of bogus justifications covering up bullying. It's a larger problem & the justification (eg feminism) rarely is the real issue.
2. A tiny portion of women, who may or may not represent most feminists, getting slammed online for using bullying and media manipulation to push their politics or products. I say media manipulation because I almost never see major media report calling it out even when it's obvious. Reporting is often one-sided, possibly due to risk of losing business if their image is seen as discriminating against women. I think one can argue against specific women's claims without hating on women in general.
So, we have two problems. One gets all the attention. Each time, the recipient of that abuse spins it as them being in a minority, having certain attributes, etc as evidence there's a large scale attack on those things. Reality is human nature is at work with any group competing with others and lack of accountability letting some be abusive. Certainly prejudices in there to combat but it really boils down to abusive people enabled by the Internet. Happens offline, too, as anyone who went to school, a bar, a football game... anything... should know.
Other problem we should watch out for and call out when we see it. That problem is not limited to feminist: any members of a group that can make itself look the underdog or target of abuse can use that as leverage in promoting politics or themselves. This happens across the board. Relevant to this thread, that many feminists do it certainly contributes to attacks on those individuals and might contribute to attacks on others posting similar idea. The troll throws them all in one mental category and attacks at the first sign of the same ideology in a new person.
So, that's my two cents on the problem.
The fact the media covers this sort of stuff in such a biased and often hateful way is symbolic of a press that's become a clique and doesn't represent the population at large.