71–80 of 345 posts
Trolls exist on the internet. Bayley is just supporting negative stereotypes about how women can't handle the pressure when she lets a troll get the best of her and changes her whole life because of him.
No disagreement with the basic, point, but was a bit surprised by this quote: "So, here's our situation. We have a man (presumably; at any rate he appears to want to be identified as such) in the Australian Linux community, who targets women by sending them private abusive emails from a throwaway address and with a name that can't readily be connected to any publicly known member of the community. His ISP won't hand…
MikeeUSA frequently states dumb shit like "oh, women deserve to be raped since the day they first bleed because this is what God created women for" and other shit. He does it purely for the sake of trolling, and people periodically bite the trollbait. Is this illegal? No. Should he be beaten with in an inch of his life? Yes. Is that going to happen outside of a prison? Probably not, no one is quite sure of his exact…
As MikeeUSA himself wrote:
> The women of the "geek feminism" movement will be just as effective at excising men from the movement as Nina was at systematically destroying Hans Reiser's life untill he saw no reason, nothing left in his life, that could hold him back from striking back.
Hans was convicted in 2008 of murdering his wife Nina. MikeeUSA is saying categorically that Nina deserved to die, just like MikeeUSA's targets.
http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-littl...
And a third person kept phoning various people's workplaces and accusing them of being involved in child pornography. Seriously? I'm having a hard time believing that this was instigated purely because she's a female developer. Surely there was more to it than her gender for someone to stoop that low?
That story started as a female blogger attacked for being a successful female in tech. It's an easy simplification. Meanwhile, I followed that story and it turns out (unrelated to tech, success, or being female) she was involved in breaking up a marriage (being the other woman) which lead to harassment from a Christian fundamentalist relative.
While I have no doubt individuals can be hostile towards women in tech, I generally find posts from people heavily involved in a cause tend to re-contextualize stories to fit their narrative. If you read a blog post from feminists in tech you are going to read a post about how women are mistreated in tech.
Which turns a story about an former partner calling up the work place to harass his ex girlfriend into an attack on women in tech.
Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse. Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway. It's important for communit…
"I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway" This is called "blaming the victim". It is bad, and you should consider researching it.
If you get offended by random emails, don't have a public email address.
Trolls exist on the internet. Bayley is just supporting negative stereotypes about how women can't handle the pressure when she lets a troll get the best of her and changes her whole life because of him.
Excuse me? At what point do you stop calling someone a "troll" and start calling them a "stalker"? Perhaps the harassment she received was so much that changing her whole life greatly improves her quality of life. Is she still "just supporting negative stereotypes" then?
The article(and blog post) imply that this has been a long-term issue, and the level of threats are pretty terrible, even to the level where most good forum admins would seriously think of tipping off the police if these messages were brought to their attention.
Trolls exist on the internet. Bayley is just supporting negative stereotypes about how women can't handle the pressure when she lets a troll get the best of her and changes her whole life because of him.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time this sort of reprehensible behavior has cost the tech community good talent. Kathy Sierra comes to mind. Other notables (male and female) have recently removed their presence from the internet. Although it isn't always clear why, I'd speculate some sort of harassment was at play there too.
Welcome to the Internet. As Paul Vixie pointed out ages ago: "The Internet is not for sissies." Trolls are almost as old as the net, and they are not going to disappear without something short of a big-brother state that makes the Great Firewall Of China look like kids play. So better get used to it. Also remember: "Liberty resides in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious." — John Stuart Mill [Di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm being downvoted for supporting woman's rights and publicly stating so. Welp, I have karma to burn, I'm not going anywhere.
Your public support for woman's rights is undermined by your implication that she is "stupid" for "falling for his shit". It's not like she got duped into giving her bank account information to a Nigerian Prince. She's become a target for bigotry. I also wouldn't call harassing emails, phoning people's work places, and changing an employer's online database as "nothing substantial".
There is also insufficient proof such things happened. If they did, why has she not gone to the police and legally pursued it? I'm not seeing that she has done so at all.
It distresses me that "political correctness" has become a dirty "four letter" word rather than simply a shared understanding that people who address others in a hate-filled, bullying, disrepectful and demeaning way should be actively shunned and censured (i.e. not "censored").
When someone initiates physical force against you, it is an action being done to you, the consequences of which you cannot avoid due to the laws of physics. We take actual threats of physical violence seriously because of this.
When someone says mean things, the above attitude presumes that the consequences to you are entirely within your own mind. One can either be offended or not offended, angry or not angry, etc. The presumption is that the onus of response is on the trollee, not the troll.
Modern psychology and neuroscience have some things to say about the degree of distinction that the human mind makes between physical and verbal "forces". It also has some things to say about how much control we actually have over our responses to these forces. But so long as humans like to believe that they are in full control of their own actions, and that lacking this control is a personal fault, the mentality you describe will persist.
Whether it's sexist jokes, inappropriate language or illustrations, or plain old stereotypes, it sometimes feels like the tech community's firmly stuck in the 70s.
The worst thing is that none of this is difficult to solve, it just involves growing up, frankly.