Why Women aren’t Welcome on the Internet

This week I read two articles about how women are harassed on the internet. “High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online,” by Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer, reminded me of some other articles I’ve read about women and technology and how in the early developments of each technology, from the typewriter to the telephone women’s involvement was stigmatized and their desires such as being able to use the telephone for communication were dismissed as foolish and stupid ideas. In Boyd’s work she mentions that moral panics come with each technological shift, from Victorian romance novels, to comic books to Elvis (112). Cassell and Meg Cramer state that “Because the telegraph was supposed to radically improve business, the effort it took to send every letter of a message was deemed worthwhile to expend only when the message held military or commercial importance, realms that were at that time controlled and dominated by men,” and so women discussing life at home was considered “frivolous (59).” I think the idea of seeing women’s ideas as frivolous is still happening today especially with the hate and discrimination they get, when people don’t understand or like what someone is saying, they try and dismiss it; “when people become famous, they are often objectified, discussed and ridiculed with little consideration for who they are as people” (Boyd, 149). And so women who have a fan base, whether they are actual celebrities or just regular people, such as journalists, often have to deal with aggression more so than men.

From an early age women are taught to fear predators online. But when girls are online they look use the internet for a to look at a wider variety of content and this gives them “metaphoric mobility” which can alarm parents because they lose complete control (Cassell,70). All in all, “the number of young women who have been preyed on by strangers has decreased, both in the online and offline world” (Cassell, 70). Flirtation and sexual harassment online tends to come from people their own age and only 4% of solicitation happened by people over 25 (112).
What I find telling is that even when these girls mature and become successful and use the internet to have a public presence for their career or just for fun, women are still encouraged to leave. The Internet and social media platforms have become a stage where people can listen to anyone, and through harassment and threats, people can encourage someone to “get off the stage.” In “Why Women aren’t Welcome on the Internet” Amanda Hess explains that being in a position of power or simply just voicing ones opinion as a woman can get you into a lot of trouble and that can be draining and time consuming, especially when you have to call the police and go over all the death and rape threats you’ve received. An idea in that article I found interesting was as distinction Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman draws between “tourists” and “vagabonds” in the modern economy:

“Privileged tourists move about the world “on purpose,” to seek “new experience” as “the joys of the familiar wear off.” Disempowered vagabonds relocate because they have to, pushed and pulled through mean streets where they could never hope to settle down. On the Internet, men are tourists and women are vagabonds.” People who threaten to attack women, are usually anonymous and often act like they own the place and feel like they have a right to be there, such as one computer programmer who “enjoys riling people up” and is “infamous for posting creepy photographs of underage women and creating or moderating subcommunities on the site with names like “chokeabitch” and “rapebait.””
I think it’s important that young girls be encouraged you understand technology so they can influence the way it grows and changes in the years to come and so we can all be tourist and welcomed on the internet.

 

 

 

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170

http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/

 

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