Slate's Bizbox
culturebox: Arts, entertainment, and more.

Fear of BloggingWhy women shouldn't apologize for being afraid of threats on the Web.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, May 4, 2007, at 7:20 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

The Internet simultaneously fosters both false intimacy and false isolation. That intimacy can be a good thing: It's why we feel that we "know" the writers we read frequently on the Web, but it's also why people leave their spouses for the beautiful Russian "supermodel" they met online last month. At the same time, the Web allows you to say things you've only dreamed of and threaten things you might never really dream of doing. It's that combination of factors that can be so fraught when it comes to sexual threats against women. Posters felt both that they knew Kathy Sierra or Jessica Valenti and rejoiced in the freedom to say things they would never have said face-to-face.

There's another aspect of sexualized Web threats that makes them particularly frightening for women: These are not just communications between the poster and the target. They can also serve as calls to action for truly crazy third parties. The threats against Sierra were frightening not just as threats but because, in combination with postings of her Social Security number and home address, they could be seen as incitement. And in a community that reaches the entire world, it's useful to recall that—male or female—you are only as safe as your most deranged critic.

Finally, Web threats are different because they collapse distinctions between the personal and the professional. If I receive a threatening letter at my office in D.C., I can send it through the shredder or forward it along to human resources, if not security. But it's hardly "crying victim" to say that something graphically violent that I can read in my home, with my children asleep upstairs, lands differently. My colleague Michael Agger wrote powerfully this week about the ways in which the line between personal and professional e-mails have become blurred. A violent sexual threat, even if sent to a journalist purely in response to something she wrote in her professional capacity, can become a very personal threat when it enters her home at 3 a.m.

By that same token, we need to recognize that the Internet has blurred the distinction between a new mom's whimsical blog about the new baby and Malkin or Ann Althouse blogging about politics. The intent of these writers is totally different, but on the Internet, that difference evaporates. Not every woman who starts a blog for the grandparents in Montana or poses for a snapshot has chosen to make herself (or her sexual attractiveness) the "issue," any more than the Rutgers women's basketball team did. Readers may certainly choose to treat all women as though they've agreed to be as public as Maureen Dowd, but it's not quite fair to hold every woman who blogs to that bargain. Dowd has some real institutional heft behind her. A law student who blogs from her dorm room didn't sign up for that plan.

No woman should have to choose between writing—either personally or professionally—and being told that her family will be raped. Sadly, that appears to be the current choice. But the important inquiry isn't whether she should drop out or not. Nor is it whether she should stop whining or keep screaming. Those questions are personal and subjective, and the answers will be as different as the writers who consider them. The better questions are: Are these threats serious? Why do they feel so serious? How often do they result in something serious? And what might we do about it? Gender differences are only the beginning of the important discussions—not the end of them.

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Let the Oil Deals Flow
Raad Alkadiri | Congress should not interfere in the oil industry's contract negotiations with the Iraqi government.