Shouldn’t we be pleased that men who abuse women online are being held to account?
Twitter’s UK boss, Tony Wang, made a public apology to women who had received rape threats and death threats on the site this week. So what’s the appropriate response as a man?
Do we join the campaign to tackle misogyny online? Do we champion free speech and tell the women to “grow a pair” or do we say, “hang on a minute, what about the men”?
Before you jump to your own conclusion, let’s have a look at what’s happening behind the headlines. There is an emerging “fourth wave” of young, social media-savvy, feminist campaigners in the UK who are successfully using social media to challenge British institutions they believe need to change.
One successful campaign recently saw the Bank of England hastily announce plans to put the novelist Jane Austen on a banknote to ensure women had better representation on the nation’s currency.
The young woman behind the campaign received rape and death threats which sparked a new campaign demanding a “report abuse” button on twitter.
Members of Parliament got involved, celebrities backed a 24 hour #twittersilence dubbed a #trolliday and male suspects were arrested by the police.Then, while taking a well-earned break from Twitter, the “commentariat” got busy sharing its opinions about online abuse.
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Some have said that misogyny is a social problem that can’t be solved by social media. The US tech journalist, Quinn Norton, for example, said:
“The social problem is that men are raised to hate women and technology is not going to fix that. Just shutting down the voices we don’t like doesn’t make the sentiments go away.”
Toby Young in the right-wing Daily Telegraph said that simply shutting down the voices of trolls was exactly what people should do in most cases. He illustrated the point by sharing some of the personal twitter abuse he’d experienced from fellow journalist Caitlin Moran who’d called him a “total C***” and wished that Germaine Greer would run a sword through his face. How ironic, Young pointed out, that it was Moran who was now proposing the 24-hour boycott of Twitter, to highlight its poor policing of abusive tweets.
And this is why it can be tricky to know how to take a position on online abuse as a man. Women are clearly not incapable of hurling abuse and men can obviously be the target. So while it’s easy to condemn a man making rape threats on Twitter, the ease with which we buy into the broader “stop men abusing women” narrative may depend on our personal ideology.
John Niven in Scotland’s Daily Record was in no doubt what the left-wing response should be:
“This is a men-on-women issue. Guys are pretty much doing it to the girls. Which, thankfully, is where our good friend socialism steps forward. Because this will not stand for those of us who are socialists. We are all equal.”
While Ed West in the conservative Spectator magazine said it wasn’t about misogyny, it was about manners and longed for a gentler world:
“The women-hating trolls do not show that society has a problem with misogyny…the most pleasant places to live are those where…men in particular have an incentive to be viewed as gentlemen – a word sadly missing from this debate about the treatment of women.”
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Interestingly the UK edition of GQ magazine offered a new perspective when they revealed some of the extraordinary abuse they receive from One Direction fans who were offended by a cover shoot of singer Harry Styles.
Much like the offensive tweets directed at feminist campaigners, the online abuse of GQ’s staff included death threats and threats of sexual violence, with calls for all the men who work for the magazine to be castrated.
The abuse was certainly shocking and graphic, but somehow seemed trivial when compared with the rape threats against named women. Maybe it’s because the GQ journalists weren’t targeted individually or maybe it’s simply that One Direction are such a “safe” band that we don’t deem their fans to be a serious threat?
Niall Paterson at Sky News came closer to getting inside the male experience of abuse, recounting what happened when he broke a story that damaged Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the 2010 General Election.
When people say this is a “men on women issue”, it becomes essential that men say “what about the men?”
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“A female tweeter I didn’t follow…tweeted that I was a ****” he said, “an interesting word for a self-confessed feminist to use. I replied to the profanity….My words were immediately re-tweeted. For the next 24 hours I was subjected to abuse and threats of violence from many of this writer’s 70,000-odd followers. Despite a reporter’s thick skin, I’ll confess to a sleepless few nights. I’d never received such constant abuse and it certainly affected me emotionally.”
I made reference to Paterson’s experience in a comment piece for the left-wing Guardian newspaper and he later tweeted me saying: “interesting and brave piece, certainly comes closer to a conclusion than my witterings on the topic”.
My conclusion was simply this, if you cast a wide enough net you soon discover that online abuse is not limited by gender. It seems like a blindingly obvious thing to say but when people respond to this problem by saying “this is a men-on-women issue” and that “men are brought up to hate women”, it becomes essential that men say “and what about the men?”
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Tim Reed, a commentator, below the line, on Ed West’s Spectator article summed up the issue for men as follows:
Women’s groups have been very adept at ‘genderising’ problems that affect females, abuse aimed at men is assumed to be non-gendered.
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“Women’s groups have been very adept at ‘genderising’ any and all problems that affect females, and are able to exploit the media’s obsession with women-specific issues. As the current Twitter abuse issue shows, they have asserted that it is almost always women that receive these kinds of comments. On the other hand, abuse aimed at men is assumed to be non-gendered, receives no attention, and is usually considered fair game. Complain, and you’ll never be far from a ‘man up’ style dismissal.”
For me, Tim’s comments really got to the heart of problem from a male perspective. In a conversation where it’s presumed that men are causing a problem for women then there’s only two acceptable roles for men—either being a perpetrator or being a man who stands up and speaks out against male perpetrators.
All the men I’ve spoken to are happy to condemn rape threats and welcome men being held to account. And many would like to see the bigger picture—what about women abusing men, men abusing men and women abusing women? It isn’t easy to talk about these variations of online abuse — or any abuse for that matter. So what stops us?
Is it male stoicism? When the hashtag #KillAllMen began trending on twitter, Michael McKenna at Ask Men summed up the male response:
“It’s a direct provocation, and something of a mass movement, but it’s also too crazy to pay much attention to.”
Certainly men’s willingness to not take some things too seriously plays its part and there are also certain taboos at play in the gender discourse. As the feminist blogger Portia Smart wrote recently:
“Abuse also happens online by women against women. And yet…feminism is deathly quiet on the issue. The anger & volume that we collectively use to denounce male violence is noticeably absent when it comes to women that abuse.”
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Earlier this year, Jackson Katz’s TEDx talk—violence against women, it’s a men’s issue-–went viral. It’s an excellent talk that widens the conversation about male perpetrators and female victims to include the men and boys who are victims of men’s violence.
But watching through the eyes of men and boys who have been abused by other men, we remain an afterthought and as for men and boys who have been abused by women, our experience was completely overlooked. As Portia Smart said, “the volume that we collectively use to denounce male violence is noticeably absent when it comes to women that abuse.”
One place this isn’t true is amongst anti-feminist men’s rights activists who work hard to create wider awareness of the issue of women who abuse men and boys. And yet the volume of conversations about male victims of men’s violence and abuse amongst these activists is notably quieter.
We need to ask ourselves why are we collectively more tolerant of violence against men and boys?
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So where do men who are concerned about all victims of violence and abuse stand when people speak out about men’s abuse of women? Do we get behind them? Do we leave them to get on with it? Do we say ‘what about the men’? Do we say what about everybody? From my perspective, holding men who threaten women with rape to account for their actions is a welcome move and at the same time we need to ask ourselves this very important question—why are we collectively more tolerant of violence against men and boys?
Until we ask that question, the majority of gendered conversations about violence will continue to focus on men abusing women and when it comes to violence and abuse, online or off, that isn’t the only gender angle we need to focus on.
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Photo Credit: Flickr/Craig Sunter
Basically I think, her fiance is right, he obviously dislike anything regarding feminism for whatever reason and he should not be forced in the home to listen to pro-feminist stuff.
Yes I do agree, and his right. Feminism is 99% still centered on women. Thats why lots of men are hostile toward it. A good portion of men knows that what women experience are not unique to their gender. But for cultural reasons men shows a straight face and for the most part suck it up. Meanwhile women gets all the the attention. Look the campaign stop violence against women. And look how they try to make the various issues unique to women (like teach men not to rape). In reality, they are not. Yes men experience sexual abuse, yes… Read more »
This is a good question, but I think it is far off topic. However even within this topic you see what feminism did for men – the topic is Men, We Have a Problem With Online Abuse Shouldn’t we be pleased that men who abuse women online are being held to account? About online abuse in general I think a significant number is done by women against women. Basically as I see it, it’s only called online-abuse if the target is a woman. Nobody cares about men – men as victims of online abuse done by women is not even… Read more »
I look forward to someone else actually answering my question rather than slapping my hands for asking it.
I have answered, but do realize that your comment is derailing the original thread so not all people will be pleased with it. In future it’s generally a better idea to find a recent article that has a similar theme to your question, or say (Side note, apologies for derailing but I don’t know where else to ask this) so that people understand you realize it may cause offense.
In fairness to Lollipop, we tangent quite a bit on GMP that’s why I enjoy it. It’s not that stuffy. I remember a conversation about breasts, tangenting to a conversation about Christina Hendricks, tangenting to a conversation about Firefly. I know Castle and I think Law and Order were discussed also. Not saying that it’s polite, but that is the nature of these threads to let conversation take it’s course and I think that the freedom to say what you think and express ideas even if not popular sets this site apart. It’s better than the heavy censorship on feminist… Read more »
I have a question. I cannot mention feminism in any form to my fiance without him immediately saying that “this feminist movement is all about making all men look bad and it blames men for everything, and it paints all men with the same brush. It lumps all men into the same category of leering abusers who are all capable of rape and it’s not fair to me or all the other “good” men out there”. That’s the only point he ever makes about what he thinks of feminism. I have agreed that some people lump all men into these… Read more »
Here is advice from another feminist.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/get-men-to-understand/
Oh God, I never thought I’d ever click on the link, but you’re a member of the GMP community and we should help each other out.
Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the video and am not endorsing any of the suggestions therein.
Let him know of good feminists, let him know that you understand a lot have done bad things to men but there are a lot who do not follow the misandric shit of the others. If he has mostly seen negatives, then he needs far more positives to reset his view. I’d avoid mention of privilege unless you’re willing to accept female privilege too, otherwise it’ll probably be quite condescending. (yes females do have privilege, selective service for one, circumcision n body integrity in the U.S is another, ability to opt out of parenthood post conception, etc).
Agreed. Let him see that there are fair minded reasonable feminists out there despite how poisonous mainstream feminism can get sometimes. I find myself hearing this same thing over and over, and I just shut down because it seems like all he cares about is how feminism affects the people who are not actively oppressing & hurting others. How can I further the conversation without seeming like I’m invalidating his opinion? I know you don’t want to invalidate his opinion but that’s his experience. There’s no shortage of feminist material that says that, in a movement that is about social… Read more »
I’ve thought about this awhile. I appreciate Archy and Danny’s answers and will add my two cents. My experience is similar to theirs. I looked at feminism and found it less than welcoming and at time quite hostile to me personally and men in general. After conversing with many feminists here and IRL, I’ve started to distinguish between feminist and feminism. I still believe feminism is on balance hostile to men, but many feminists are not. Ask yourself is it important to me that he identify feminism as the proper perspective to strive for social justice or is it OK… Read more »
Where I disagree with Archy and Danny is that I don’t think you can just show him a good feminist (he already knows one) and say feminism is good.
Believe me that wasn’t my line of thought. At most it would be that there is good in feminism.
However you did did a much better job fleshing out what I was trying to say.
Its going to be a matter of showing him that even for as much as he may disagree with parts of feminism and no matter matter how exclusionary feminists can be, there is room for inclusiveness.
Joanna Schroeder says: August 10, 2013 at 2:19 pm …..there is not ONE single reason to say that the campaign to end violence against women is, in any way, wrong or off-base. ….an article about how it’s not fair that women are getting all the attention. The reality is, women are NOT getting all the attention. Yes that Twitter hashtag was disgusting, the one about killing men. It’s horrific! But there have been many abusive hashtags against women, too. As long as the campaign ‘end violence against women’ is financed solely out of private donations, there is no reason to… Read more »
Iben says: August 10, 2013 at 1:07 pm Do you think a man will be laughed at if he fights back if he receives threats Will a man be seen as a coward if he reports threats towards his wife and himself? In my eyes it is more cowardly not to respond ! Why don’t men make a video like this one and show us the true content of the hate mail they receive ? What is stopping them? Well, about myself, as MRA since decades, I don’t care about hate mail I am receiving despite I am neither using… Read more »
Hi Yohan
It would scare me.
I do not understand the phenomena. In this article some see indications that it is sometimes organized.
http://www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2013/07/who-are-trolls
“Maybe it’s because the GQ journalists weren’t targeted individually or maybe it’s simply that One Direction are such a “safe” band that we don’t deem their fans to be a serious threat?”
Because white teenagers and young adults are not the “right” kind of criminal that needs prosecution unlike the scary rappers and their black fans.
Indeed John. I’d say it’s probably that people see them as “emo”, a whiney band, a boy group, etc so their fans aren’t tough, gangster, or hard metal heads.
I think there’s also a bit of racism involved. We know that when the IRAA cracked down on piracy, the resulting backlash caused them to tone it down. When people realized that much of the piracy was being done by middle class white kids it wasn’t viewed as particularly serious. I remember an incident in Chicago about 20 years ago. There was a music festival in Grant Park. There was rampant, visible drug use and not a single drug arrest. Black ministers complained pointing out that the majority of the people at the festival were white and suggesting that’s why… Read more »
My conclusion was simply this, if you cast a wide enough net you soon discover that online abuse is not limited by gender. It seems like a blindingly obvious thing to say but when people respond to this problem by saying “this is a men-on-women issue” and that “men are brought up to hate women”, it becomes essential that men say “and what about the men?” I think this speaks to a major roadblock on dealing with online abuse. Men by the very nature of masculinity are taught that when abused, taunted, teased, or otherwise attacked it’s a test of… Read more »
Hi Archy Do you think a man will be laughed at if he fights back if he receives threats that say they know where his children go to school,or kindergarden and they will rape his children, cut their head off, hang all their body parts in the trees? Will a man be seen as a coward if he reports threats towards his wife and himself? In my eyes it is more cowardly not to respond ! It takes a lot of guts to speak up and fight back,when white supremacy group threaten you because you befriend Muslims,or write things in… Read more »
I try to speak up but there are many who won’t if it’s just themselves, not their family since it’s ok to defend n make a complaint on behalf of your family but there is still a lot of stoic/macho/sacrificeyourself type mentality around here.
“Victorian novelist Jane Austen”, Glen? It is clearly time she did appear on a banknote.
If I personally threatened you (hopefully with witnesses in earshot) or wrote you a threatening note or letter, I would be arrested , right (at least I would think so)? Since you know the real name and e-mail address of all the responders, Shouldn’t you be able to get the I.P. address and have them arrested? Look, I’m not very ‘Tech Savy’ so I’m just asking. I would think that any threat so severe against anyone should be treated with the utmost urgency and the people making these threats should be held accountable!
Twitter could, but people can use VPN’s to hide themselves to some degree. They may not be in the same country either so it can be very hard to prosecute.
Hi Bobbt I know little about tech. But I do know that the IP identify the computer. So if you do not want to reveal you IP you simply go to a library and use a public computer ,or to an intent cafe. Well away from cameras. And anyone can make up fake e-male addresses. That is what the “Yahoo- boys ” do when they send out all their scam using Yahoo. And there is Tor,but I know nothing about it, only that Anders Behring Brevik used Tor. But some e-mail providers let their users be anonymous for idealistic reasons… Read more »
This Quinn Norton who says “Men were raised to hate Women” just sounds like the the biggest asshole in the world to me! I mean, I’ve been raised my whole life to protect women! Joanna and I may be polar opposites on many occasions, but I’d be the first (OK , the second after her husband) to defend her right to speak her mind! I mean, what Divine entinity says I’m right? The more voices we have on an issue the better, right? Let ‘Polite Soceity’ decide whats right!
Men (usually) aren’t raised to hate women. Men are usually raised to be chivalrous, protect women more than themselves. Women are often treated in specialness as somewhere between children (who get the most protection) and men (who get the least). Trouble is they are seen as fragile n delicate, special beautiful humans but who need men’s brawn n tough protection. Do men n women hate children? They are still somewhat legally property and parents act on their behalf to try keep em safe. I’d say a lot of misogyny was born from paternalistic attitudes towards women to try protect them.… Read more »
Agreed. There seems to be a belief that someone (and since most primary caregivers are supposedly women I wonder who….) is teaching men to hate women. I think its more of a rebellion against chilvarous ideology that puts women on a pedestal just for being women. When you are expected to treat someone in a certain way while not getting anything in return then of course there will be resentment.
I’ve had a “feminist”, one that worked with a slutwalk, say she wished I had been raped so I could know blah blah blah, treating the abuse I faced as if it were nothing compared to the horror of rape. In games I’ve seen torrents of abuse, even hurled at me, so many times I’ve been called misogynist and misandrist, homophobic, geekshaming, virgin shaming slurs, threatened with violence n death, so much that I just learned to tune it out. The anon nature of online allows trolls to be pretty disgusting in their behaviour. Possibly trolls think men will not… Read more »
Not to mention men also are more likely to wanna put on a brave face, not show fear or “weakness”. Women protesting this stuff will get far more sympathy than a man, a man will be thought to be some weak coward over it probably.
I don’t think that happened with Tom Daley during the Olympics last year, Archy. A guy was actually *arrested* for that.
Aussie news must suck then! Recently I’ve heard of the twitter and violence against women stuff on our local/national news. Maybe the U.S takes it far more serious? I started out on the net about 15 years ago and you had to really have a thick skin on any chatroom, game, etc. The amount of bullying that went on was stupidly high and now it’s on facebook too for highschool. I’m out of highschool going on 10 years now and I got rid of the annoying people that would bully others so my feeds are pretty calm now but occasionally… Read more »
@ Archy Men probably do get the majority of their threats off-line. I know I have, but there is a dynamic I’ve noticed. I remember an incident where my mom came in flustered because she got into an argument with three younger female neighbors. She was upset because they ganged up on her and she’s old. A few weeks later she got into an argument with the same women, but this time I had walked outside. The whole dynamic changed by me just being there. My mom was doing all the talking they just listened. One went back to get… Read more »
Offline can be very strange like that. I recently had someone call me 4 eyes in a cinema after I asked them to be quiet in a movie that they talked 10 minutes straight during…they didn’t realize I am 2-3x bigger than they are. When I was in year 8 I had adults try to bully me off a video game(arcade machine), I stood up, I was taller, they changed their mind after that. Size alone seems to help a lot, to be honest though I was shit scared of the ones in year 8, but the guy in the… Read more »
@ Iben “Why don’t men make a video like this one and show us the true content of the hate mail they receive ? What is stopping them?” A lot of the hate I receive is on comment boards. The threats usually come from self identified male feminists. At times I think about taking screen shots, but usually don’t or if I had, they’ve been filed away on some electronic media that I’ll probably never find. The comments have always been deleted off the message boards when I’ve gone back to look. Do I take the threats seriously. Sure, but… Read more »
And maybe us women are actually afraid because we are physically smaller, most of the time AND because so many of us have had these anonymous assholes send us maps to our houses or point out that they know where our kids go to school. That is scary. And that is the reality for myself and almost every other feminist I know on the Internet. Our kids, our families are threatened. We’re threatened with rape. And you know what? I face the reality that I cannot really keep my family and myself all that safe from these guys if they… Read more »
@ Joanna As I reflect on it, I probably shouldn’t have said that’s half the problem because women do get much more abuse directed at them. Many have had to abandon social media / an internet presence at least for a time. Sites should do more to ensure that they can participate in the discourse without being harassed. With very few exceptions, I prefer a mixed gender conversation. Many behaviors have been stopped because they have become socially unacceptable. There are still racists, but few people would admit to racist things in public and the few that do get minimal… Read more »
Thank you for that, John. I really appreciate the reflection. I had this discussion on Twitter once with a woman who was being verbally assaultive about The Good Men Project. Her anonymous name was something like, “Wildfire99” (not that, I made that up). I said, “At least I’m brave enough to be on social media with my real name.” And she goes, “Seriously? Do you not get why so many women won’t use their real names? REALLY?” and I felt like a total shithead. Because despite having rape, stalking, and sexual harassment online myself, I was being insensitive to the… Read more »
The threats men face I think are mostly offline, much of it is street violence + DV as well. Online it seems a lot of threats are against women in the public areas, men probably have most of their threats in gaming.
“Maybe it’s because the GQ journalists weren’t targeted individually or maybe it’s simply that One Direction are such a “safe” band that we don’t deem their fans to be a serious threat?”
YES that is it, Glen. Because maybe they aren’t being old that they’ll be raped when they’re sleeping, and their addresses and Google Earth photos of their homes are tweeted out publicly.
Do you understand how brave it is for a woman to write under her real name online? A feminist? Or anyone else with an opinion.
Um Joanna, there are people threatening GQ with RAPE on that article. Threats of mutilation n feeding the dog with their remains, castration, stabbing vaginas, bomb threats, selling children, violence with bleach n forks, chainsaws. Is it hard to find where they live? You appear to be making this call for additional empathy for women who write under their name, BOTH genders need to be brave to write under their real name. I don’t do it because I’ve had feminists n trolls say they hoped I was raped and don’t want to be a target of stalking n other stuff… Read more »
Hi Glen I followed the stories in The Guardian with interest lately. Reading you article I as myself what stops men from speaking up? I think it is a good thing that women speak up. And I ask myself ,do men get exactly same kind of threats as women? *Threats because they had friends or sex with men of other races. *Threats of cruel sadistic sexual violence , *Threats that say I know where you live and where your kids go to kindergarden. *Abuse about your looks, their value sexually, their bodies,their face…? I did read about the GQ journalists.… Read more »
I think the reality is that we DO need to pay attention to all abuse via Twitter, but there is not ONE single reason to say that the campaign to end violence against women is, in any way, wrong or off-base. If you want to write an article about the necessity to focus on all sorts of online bullying, that’s great. But the tone of this piece is that somehow these campaigns to end violent threats against women are wrong. You’re saying YES we should speak up against men making threats against women online, but you aren’t actually writing an… Read more »
Um, Joanna? I heard shitloads about violence against women on tv and NOT A SINGLE BIT about the one direction stuff. I dunno where you’re from but here in Australia it’s near UNIVERSALLY about women. I’d be surprised if discussions of online trolling to men exist in the papers here, the FIRST article I saw on the topic was written by Glen and the only reason I saw that was because he’s on my facebook. That’s how little the attention is. I don’t think his intention is to say it’s wrong for women to speak up, I believe his intention… Read more »
What’s stopping men from making videos and organizing over this abuse issue? Well, there are sites, actually run by and for men who were victims of abuse (by women and in general). They always seem so…clandestine, even on the net. That is because it’s still shameful for men to “complain” about being “abused” (is that even possible? or a myth like male rape). You won’t be taken seriously, or compassionately. It’s enough to dissuade the many men from talking about it (period)–stuff like this is why many statistics are inaccurate when it comes to these masculine issues…its the shame, really.
“Twitter’s UK boss, Tony Wang, made a public apology to women who had received rape threats and death threats on the site this week. So what’s the appropriate response as a man?”
The appropriate response is good. We’re half way there. Now what are you going to do about the threats of murder, rape, and mutilation made by girls (and boys) against men and women?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/31/one-direction-fans-wage-twitterwar-against-gq.html
I agree, we should care about everyone who is a victim of violence and abuse.