WEB OF MISOGYNY: Driving women away January 12, 2014
Men are tourists, women are vagabonds
Amanda Hess is a writer on sex and feminist issues for several websites and online magazines. Sometime last year, while on vacation, she received a phone call from her friend early one morning. Her friend told her that she was receiving threats on Twitter.
A startled Hess checked her Twitter feed. Someone called “headlessfemalepig” had been tweeting her. One read:“I see you are physically not very attractive. Figured.” Another said that she was extremely promiscuous, in unprintable language. Hess was used to this kind of behaviour, but the next tweet jolted even her. “I am 36 years old, I did 12 years for ‘manslaughter’, I killed a woman, like you, who decided to make fun of guys c****,” it read. This was followed by an even more explicit threat. “Happy to say we live in the same state. Im looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head.” The final tweet promised more of the same. “You are going to die and I am the one who is going to kill you. I promise you this.”
Hess’ emotions went from disorientation, terror to finally anger. She dialled 911 and called the police. A couple of hours later a policeman appeared. He asked her a number of questions, and one of them was “What is Twitter?”
“The best answer I could come up with was, ‘It’s like an e-mail, but it’s public.’ What I didn’t articulate is that Twitter is the place where I laugh, whine, work, schmooze, procrastinate, and flirt. It sits in my back pocket wherever I go and lies next to me when I fall asleep. And since I first started writing in 2007, it’s become just one of the many online spaces where men come to tell me to get out,” writes Hess.
Hess’ experience is hardly unique. She lists a number of women journalists and commentators who face rape and death threats on a regular basis. She also talks about the physical, monetary and emotional toll these threats take on their targets. On the internet, she says, men are like tourists, able to go anywhere and write anything, while women are like vagabonds – not moving because they want to, but because they are forced to. “Abusers tend to operate anonymously, or under pseudonyms. But the women they target often write on professional platforms, under their given names, and in the context of their real lives. Victims don’t have the luxury of separating themselves from the crime,” she writes