That’s How It Works When You’re a Woman on the Internet

In my second year I was teaching in an autotutorial class where we were working together to help students learn. We were overloaded one of the first nights of the semester and, in front of other people, I criticized a first year grad student (a woman) for what I thought was a poor prioritization of her work. She really "lost her shit" and broke down and cried and I felt really bad about it.

The next day the department head took me aside and explained to me that people find public criticism to be deeply humiliating and that he had learned that lesson himself the hard way. He told me that next time I have a problem like that I should take the person aside and give my criticism privately. I told him, "Yeah, you're right, I feel bad about what happened."

This guy who offended her might have made one of the lamest passes of all time. Despite that, he might have spent weeks building up his courage to do it. He is opening his heart and showing real emotional vulnerability. He's probably got no idea of how to approach somebody in a way that might be effective. He's possibly afraid he's going to grow old and be alone unless he ends up like this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther

Women believe that love is going to come to them but almost all men face the burden of making an approach and it's a really difficult thing to do that somebody might not have empathy for unless they've experienced it themselves.

It's predictable therefore, that somebody would experience it as deeply wounding that their private failure be turned into a public humiliation that could be witnessed by thousands or more people. It was bad behavior before but the stakes are vastly magnified in the age of social media. All of the time people in relationships or on the edge of relationships say humiliating things about other people on social media and it's a deeply hurtful form of bullying.

The lady involved might well think her actions were justified because "the personal is political" but I'm sure the people who made death threats would agree that their (unjustifiable) actions are justified by the same slogan.

Posting that kind of thing to twitter speaks negatively about her character. Whoever flagged this post was doing her a favor.

If was a potential employer I'd be afraid of her saying something about me, her coworkers, my customers, my vendors, etc. She might do the same thing to a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I can think of one time when a guy said something stupid to a girl at a conference, the kind of "joke" that they turn on the laugh track for on The Big Bang Theory but that isn't funny when you really say it. The girl tweeted about it and started a big controversy -- they both got fired. Your employer doesn't send you to a conference to create a huge amount of trouble.