RIGHT so when I started my sociology course in college, my teacher stated us off with
‘well I guess we have to do icebreakers. i’m Jon, and I fear bears. why do I fear bears? because bears can run at 30 miles per hour and Chester Zoo is 30 miles away. that means a bear can be outside this door in an hour. why would a bear be here? because they can smell fear and I fear them.’
Any woman who’s ever been on Twitter knows harassment is de rigueur—and a new study from Women, Action and the Media (WAM!) confirms that once and for all.
The study found that women on Twitter are subject to many forms of harassment, including threats of violence and revenge porn, but endure hate speech (sexist, racist and homophobic slurs) and doxxing the most.
The study, which builds on a 2014 Pew Research Center report that found women are most often targets of online sexual harassment and stalking, reviewed 811 detailed accounts of cyber bullying on Twitter. Researchers found that 27 percent of female Twitterers who complained about harassment (including LBGTQ women and women of color) were victims of hate speech, 22 percent had their personal information shared online without their consent (doxxing) and 12 percent experienced threats of violence.
To collect the data, Twitter users reported their experiences to WAM!, which then evaluated the complaints and noted relevant information, such as the type of harassment being reported. Then they passed the complaints along to Twitter and tracked the site’s response. This is the first time Twitter has granted such access to an organization like WAM!, a feminist nonprofit committed to increasing representation of women in the media and countering gendered harassment online.
The WAM! researchers found Twitter’s response mechanisms to be lacking. For example, users who wish to file complaints are required to submit URLs of harassing tweets (screenshots are inadmissible) thus failing to address “tweet and delete,” a popular doxxing technique. Moreover, Twitter’s URL requirement makes it nearly impossible to report abuse that is not linked to a URL, such as being subject to disturbing and sexually violent imagery and language contained in profile pictures and usernames made ubiquitous through favorite and follower notifications.
But even if users meet Twitter’s rigid harassment evaluation requirements, few see immediate action. According to WAM!, 67 of their study’s submitters mentioned notifying Twitter at least once prior to filing their complaint with WAM! and 18 percent reported contacting Twitter at least five times. Of the 161 reports of harassment WAM! escalated, Twitter acted on only 55 percent of them, suspending 70 accounts, issuing 18 warnings and deleting one account. In addition, while Twitter moved to resolve most complaints involving hate speech submitted to WAM!, they dragged their feet with cases of doxxing, ignoring nearly twice as many requests for action than they addressed.
Fortunately, WAM! has devised some strategies to improve the social media site’s response to online harassment, including developing new policies to address the unique challenges “tweet and delete” harassers and doxxers pose to Twitter moderators, refining and broadening the definition of abuse to include the myriad ways trolls harass and intimidate women online and empowering users to filter out trolls.
In the meantime, WAM! introduced #HarassStats to continue the conversation on Twitter and beyond. Hopefully, with WAM!’s help, the campaign to end gendered online harassment will attract a few more followers.
when i was like 14, i once wore contact lenses instead of glasses to school bc i had just learned how to put them on and i wanted to show them to my friends right, and this one guy goes and tells me “i thought girls were supposed to become beautiful when they stopped wearing glasses. something obviously went wrong with you” and that was??? so incredibly rude i wanted to cry but i just stood there not knowing what to say bc i honestly thought we were friends
but the girl sitting in front of him (who was also his crush, mind u) hears him and turns around with the most disgusted expression on her face, and calls him out on it like “omg i cant believe you said that have you even seen yourself in a mirror you have no right to tell her shit” and then she turns to me and says “dont listen to him, you look gorgeous with or without glasses” and she probably already forgot about that but i always remember it whenever i feel self-conscious about myself
so the moral of the story is: if u see someone being a jerk to someone else, dont laugh along and call them out on it. stick together and bring all the fuckboys down
i remember in 6th grade public school one of my friends in the class used the word “bungalow” as often as possible and every time he needed to say “house” or “home” he swapped it for “bungalow” and me and the rest of the class thought it was so fucking funny.
so everyone in the class started using it too like saying “I brought my lunch from the bungalow today” or whatever and the teachers HATED IT.
it started getting out of hand when we were learning about the presidents and we often needed to say “the White House” so of course we would say “the White Bungalow” and the teacher was so furious and then there was a ban on the word and if anyone said it they were sent to the office and I remember the kid who started all the bullshit one time got in trouble for something petty like sharing his homework and the teacher said that she was going to call home to him mom and he just stood up and cried out “No, ms_____! Please don’t call home!”
and there was this huge silence because he just raised his voice at the teacher
and then a huge smile spread across his face and he said
For the National Security Agency, the fingerprint reader on your smartphone just isn't secure enough. Lockheed Martin has confirmed to Nextgov that the intelligence outfit is testing Mandrake, an identification system that verifies who you are based ...
I read this quote, from an interview with Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, and the interviewer asked about why she was a pilot and all that, and she just said "I wanted to fly, so I did." And I thought MAN! I can't even figure out what to eat for breakfast, never mind sailing through a load of barriers just because I think I want to give something a shot. "Flying? Whatever, I'll just Do It."
Another quote? "What's the point of flying a plane if you can't have fun doing it?" I love her!
I love early aviatrices - Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham, etc - they were like "oh is there a brand new job on the face of the earth? Think I'll invite myself to do it before anyone says I can't."
Not too much time goes by before Top Gun washes up once again on these shores.
Kitty Lindsay is a former Ms. intern and an employee of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Follow her on Twitter @KittyLindsayLA
For the National Security Agency, the fingerprint reader on your smartphone just isn't secure enough. Lockheed Martin has confirmed to Nextgov that the intelligence outfit is testing Mandrake, an identification system that verifies who you are based ...
