Is There a Cyber War on Women?

With any luck, this post will be killed because these sorts of discussions never go well on HN, and help reinforce all the cultural issues everyone pretends don't exist.

In the meantime...

Firstly, let's put our journalism 101 hat on. The article name "Is There a Cyber War on Women?" is precisely what it is so as to lead you into thinking "no". It's a classic newspaper trick - ask a question because the article doesn't give a conclusive answer. And indeed it can't, as Cathy is forced to admit that there is real abuse happening against women online. The original Pacific Standard article was careful to never call it a "war against women". The NY Times article only used that phase in the title, and otherwise refers more correctly to a "culture-war".In my skim of the NYT article, actually, I was quite impressed with what seemed to be a well-thought-out article.

"A man who gets into a fight with a woman risks being seen as a bully if he wins, a weakling if he loses. Women in the public eye may experience more hate, but they may also benefit from chivalry"

The quote pretty much sums up everything that is wrong about the article, precisely because she is right, but for all the wrong reasons:

1. If a man wins a fight against a woman, he is a "bully" precisely because women giving in to men is seen as normal, not something one has to fight for.

2. If a man is beaten by a woman in a fight, he is a weakling precisely because women are viewed societally as being weak

3. The existence of 'chivalry' in no means corrects for measurably greater hate. Even if they were somehow of equal level, in general the effects of suffering are not countered by good experiences - they still cause damage.

4. Sorry men, you're in an absolute double-bind here, and it is shit for those of you who are genuinely good people :(. This is because no interpretation of chivalry is without critique. Help men and women equally, and our society will view consider you to have given women the greater amount of time. Help women only, and either you are saying men and women need different levels of help and both men and women in our society are worse for this. Or, much less positively, it's 'white knighting' and an attempt to get in someone's pants.

I'll leave as an exercise to the reader extending the concepts here into why abuse against males (online or otherwise) isn't talked about more or treated seriously.

As a final aside, it is also worth noting that there is plenty of evidence that, in a mixed group of equal gender counts, women need only take up significantly less than half the discussion time to already be considered to be dominating the discussion (see also society's belief in 'meek'/'quiet'/'shy' as desirable properties in women). This automatically polarises any attempts to report in a balanced nature on the subject even further