Men Are Harassed More Than Women Online | Hacker News Reader

Men Are Harassed More Than Women Online

thedailybeast.com

21 pointsyuashizuki19 comments

I've been saying this for a long time. Women are not actually being singled out, they are now equal with men. But for some reason, they feel they should have special treatment. We need to find ways of combating all harassment..not just for women.

About 10 years ago, I had a programming blog that talked about topics such as Mysql VS Postgres and other topics I was interested in discussing. I got death threats, harassed, and emails telling me some of the worst things in the world (including the rape of me and my family members). I never really took it seriously, but it still happened on a constant basis.

It's pretty sick when talking about equality earns me a down vote. It really tells me that nobody wants equality, they want more power for special interest groups.

Didn't downvote you. But it might be because you're wrong, derailing, cite nothing, and make this about yourself.

> Women are not actually being singled out, they are now equal with men.

Gender pay gap? Just one example.

> But for some reason, they feel they should have special treatment.

Who exactly wants what special treatment?

> It really tells me that nobody wants equality, they want more power for special interest groups.

This just screams conspiracy theory.

The gender pay gap has been debunked.

More information: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023035327045794837...

> > Women are not actually being singled out, they are now equal with men.

> Gender pay gap? Just one example.

What's that got to do with whether women are more or less harassed on the internet than men are?

I can cut a little slack because the portion you quoted didn't explicitly say that, but we're in a thread about harassment on the internet... you were either too hasty or disingenuous.

Hasty. And I regret that so much, look at the sibling comments I attracted... :(

I'm sorry. I'll go to bed now.

"Gender pay gap? Just one example."

If this really was as wide-spread as the media would like us to believe, why wouldn't companies have entire departments of women? If they have the same education and experience, companies would be able to save 30% right off the top. But this isn't happening.

From my own experience, I just haven't seen this happening. I know this doesn't prove a statistic, but I've worked at many different companies and hired both men and women and candidates in equal experience and education were paid the same.

"This just screams conspiracy theory."

Unfortunately, it's the world we live in. A good example of this is the ex-Mozilla CEO that got bullied online and was forced to quit over his personal beliefs. If the same thing happened to someone who supported gay marriage, there would be lawsuits and protests. Many people seem to be open and accepting..until you do something they don't believe in..which isn't really open or accepting at all.

I think you ran in to problems with the part where you implied you could read the minds of half the planet's population:

> But for some reason, they feel they should have special treatment.

> I've been saying this for a long time. I'm sure you have, as have many others. What is less clear is how founded this perception is.

> About 10 years ago, I had a programming blog that talked about topics such as Mysql VS Postgres and other topics I was interested in discussing. I got death threats, harassed, and emails telling me some of the worst things in the world (including the rape of me and my family members). I never really took it seriously, but it still happened on a constant basis.

There's no question that trolling happens to everyone, and trolls can often strike without the foggiest clue about someone's gender. It's not like the Y chromosome gets you a free pass.

However, did you, for comparison, try setting up a similar blog, masquerading as a woman, in order to compare the experience? While this study didn't find it, I believe the evidence from other studies has pretty regularly found that at the very least women get more vicious attacks and are more likely to be stalked. Sentiment analysis on very large datasets has been pretty conclusive in this regard.

It could be there was something critically different about this study that was, until now, ignored, but I don't see much reason for it to be an outlier beyond that it is so narrowly targeted (small sample population, UK only, etc.), or reason to think your perspective is more well informed than anyone else's.

> the evidence from other studies has pretty regularly found that at the very least women get more vicious attacks and are more likely to be stalked. Sentiment analysis on very large datasets has been pretty conclusive in this regard.

That's interesting, can you source it please.

"However, did you, for comparison, try setting up a similar blog, masquerading as a woman, in order to compare the experience? While this study didn't find it, I believe the evidence from other studies has pretty regularly found that at the very least women get more vicious attacks and are more likely to be stalked. Sentiment analysis on very large datasets has been pretty conclusive in this regard."

So if a women gets 10 threatening messages and I get 8, does it really matter? Who cares who gets more threats..threats are threats and they need to stop.

"It could be there was something critically different about this study that was, until now, ignored, but I don't see much reason for it to be an outlier beyond that it is so narrowly targeted (small sample population, UK only, etc.), or reason to think your perspective is more well informed than anyone else's."

The same thing happens on other Internet forums and on social media. If you have any kind of opinion that someone doesn't like, you will get threats. Even more so on Twitter where it's really easy to fire off a shitty @ reply.

If I was a woman, I don't think you would be trying to explain away my personal experiences. This is what I'm talking about.

> So if a women gets 10 threatening messages and I get 8, does it really matter?

I think you are minimizing the differences, and of course, there can be differences in credibility of threats as well.

> Who cares who gets more threats..threats are threats and they need to stop.

Absolutely.

> If I was a woman, I don't think you would be trying to explain away my personal experiences. This is what I'm talking about.

I'm not trying to explain your personal experiences away. However, I think you are mistaken about what the experience is for women. Mansplaining wasn't made up for no reason.

A Very Small Sample of Selected (Celebrity/Public) British Men are harassed more than Selected (Celebrity/Public) British Women.

Watch #gamergate on twitter for just a minute and you'll get the opposite impression. By far.

*Edited to emphasize the celebrity/public status, as I think that might attract harassing a bit.

I was wondering how this study got this result, since other studies have come up with very different numbers.

Yup, they even mention other studies in the article but could obviously not find one to support their headline. So they write stuff like:

    While Hess’s Pacific Standard article drew on that
    survey to note that “5 percent of women who used the
    Internet said ‘something happened online’ that led them 
    into ‘physical danger,’” it made no mention of the fact 
    that 3 percent of the men also reported such an experience.

>Watch #gamergate on twitter for just a minute and you'll get the opposite impression. By far.

I'm not seeing any harassment. On the other hand I don't see anything about ethics in game journalism either. It's just some completly stupid sjw vs anti-sjw fight.

It's worth noting that the article is generalizing from a very limited study among British celebrities and journalists. It's entirely possible that abuse and threats happen differently in different countries, and you certainly can't assume that celebrities are treated the same as non-famous people. Furthermore, the article explicitly mentions that their sample size was so small that classifying a single famous, controversial journalist as either celebrity or journalist had a dramatic impact on the results.

What also matters is the nature of the abuse. Is the abuse aimed at men just as sexual/rape oriented as that aimed at women? It doesn't say.

All in all, my impression is that the article selects and presents the data in a way convenient for the point it's trying to make.

(That doesn't change the fact that of course all harassment and threats are bad, and they all need to be fought.)

Well, yeah. As much as anonymity is necessary for political dissent, whistleblowing, etc, it does come with the cost that it promotes douchebaggery. Which means the internet is hostile to everyone.

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