I’m not excusing the behavior by pointing this out, at least not intentionally. I observed the same sort of behavior from males when I was in art school, more out West than back East. Again, I think there was a stereotype of art as being “girly” or “gay” and thus these guys had to denigrate women to prove they could be as macho as the next guy.

This is absolutely true, and something I’ve long observed. In particular protest movements that are against the bastions of masculinity (whether that’s war, rugby, mining, or whatever) tend to be the ones that build up the grossest most misogynist alternative macho culture (a classic example of this, of course is the anti-war Vietnam war movement and it’s slogan “girls say yes to guys who say no”). I do want to write about this more extensively sometime.

OTOH, I’m not attractive enough to incite lustful remarks from women, but I do think that on occasion I’ve seen similar remarks online made by women about men.

I really don’t think these comments had anything to do with my attractiveness or otherwise. About half the time men yell at me when they drive past it’s to say I’m fat, about the other half it’s to say they want to fuck me. But they’re both driven from exactly the same place, which is owning my body and treating it like an object. I do think that is different, I do think it’s gendered.

Yeah, because someone who called you a ‘leso’ and said they should give you ’some fuken meat’ won’t harrass you online at all. Nor will their cohorts. Jaysus.

When “liberal” men continue to assess women according to their bodies and their potential as sex objects, what are we left with? When women join them or do not confront them, it is even worse.

I think there is often a view that censorship must be avoided on the internet at all costs, particularly from political activist groups. I remember once approaching the new editor of the student rag and asking specifically about whether he would publish letters that were sexist, racist, homophobic, and he got all high and mighty about “freedom of the press” etc. It was depressing. I’m not saying that I don’t agree with the principles of freedom of speech, I do, but it doesn’t disallow people for taking some responsibility for the kind of speech that is on sites that they control. It’s not as if the hateful commenters haven’t got oodles of other sites on which to poor their bile, even set up their own blog.

As for the blogosphere being mainly female, I find that an interesting fact. Certainly my experience in the kiwi political blogosphere is that it is almost 100% white, probably 90% male, and certainly almost exclusively middle and upper class. The right wing heavily outnumber the left (even counting the Labour blogs as left). I suspect that other parts of the NZ blogosphere are more female, but the demographics of the political part worry me. It really is a boys club, especially as a lot of the bigger players link almost exclusively to men in their posts, or link to women only when there is an objectifying element (eg the obsession many seem to have with certain right wing women MPs, or with slagging certain left wing women MPs, often because of their appearance).

I despair sometimes.

I’m not excusing the behavior by pointing this out, at least not intentionally. I observed the same sort of behavior from males when I was in art school, more out West than back East. Again, I think there was a stereotype of art as being “girly” or “gay” and thus these guys had to denigrate women to prove they could be as macho as the next guy.

I’ve also observed that when somebody on Indy goes off on a tear about how fatness = moral decay, it’s nearly always fat women they mention, not fat men. It’s as if there’s always a subconscious deference to men’s bodies as being private property, but women’s bodies are always public and thus open for ridicule and scapegoating whenever the mood strikes.

OTOH, I’m not attractive enough to incite lustful remarks from women, but I do think that on occasion I’ve seen similar remarks online made by women about men. This doesn’t justify your treatment, but it does suggest that the societal bias, whatever it is, isn’t simply “women are always dominated by men.”

I’d say there’s a bias online to accept sexual fantasizing, even when the fantasies are repugnant or illicit. At least there’s a bias to ignore it. Hell, we see it in our e-mail spam every day; it would be exhausting to take each and every one of them separately to task.

But I do think that the prevalence of spam and other repugnant sexual materials online needs to be addressed somehow — but how? Not censorship, certainly. How else? It’s an honest question — any ideas?