Two news stories from last week sufficiently disturbed me that I decided to write about something different this week than what I had planned. The first was a New York Times article last Thursday about how women sports journalists get harassed online. The second was an NPR piece about Nicole Mittendorff, the Virginia firefighter whose body was found in the Shenandoah National Forest. These seemingly disparate stories share a theme: the online harassment women who venture into non-traditional professions experience. I am fairly familiar with this topic because my sister-in-law, Soraya Chemaly, a feminist activist who writes and speaks about violence against women, has covered this issue and has received personal threats herself. Nonetheless, these two stories shocked me again. I find the behavior so appalling, so reprehensible, so hard to understand that I feel compelled to draw attention to it. We need to understand this world because our children already have access to it, because we need to think about what it means for our daughters, but also our sons. I'm not sure that many people comprehend the depth of the misogynistic vitriol that gets freely expressed in the cyberworld. Only by shining light on this behavior can we expect to end it.
The article about the female sports journalists focused on a video created by two Chicago-based reporters, Sarah Spain (ESPN Radio host and espnW reporter) and Julie DiCaro (a radio show host and Sports Illustrator writer) to highlight the harassment they endure. In the video (be careful where you watch this – it's not appropriate for any audience especially young children), male friends sit in front of them and read tweets they've received out loud. The men show visible discomfort, hesitating, one even saying he couldn't read a tweet, apologizing. Almost every tweet has words prohibited from the airwaves and the mainstream print media. The printable ones include hopes that Spain and DiCaro will be physically assaulted, even raped or killed. One urges Spain's boyfriend to beat her up. Another hopes that "this skank Julie DiCaro is Bill Cosby's next victim." "That would be classic," he adds. One recommends that "the players should beat you to death with their hockey sticks" while another believes "You need to be hit in the head with a hockey puck and killed."
Not surprisingly, this video went viral and prompted a series of news stories like the one in The Times. The female sports writer, Juliet Macur, who wrote that article experiences the same kind of harassment. People excuse this kind of attack saying that men receive similar messages. However, as Spain explains, there's an important difference. "Men get mean comments, too, but I think the context of it is quite different for women," Spain said. "It's not just, like, 'You're an idiot, and I'm mad at you for your opinion.' It's: 'I hate you because you are in a space that I don't want you in. I come to sports to get away from women. Why don't you take your top off and just make me lunch?' " What is going on with these men that women sports reporters provoke such powerful reactions?
While no one is saying that cyberbullying caused Fairfax County firefighter and paramedic Nicole Mittendorff to commit suicide, her death has brought to light another arena in which online bullies target women who, like the sports reporters, have chosen a traditionally male field. According to the NPR story, women represent fewer than 4% of firefighters in the U.S. In Fairfax County, a thread devoted to firefighters on the "Fairfax Underground" provides a forum for people to bully female firefighters. WTOP says "Most of the posts are too obscene to quote, and call the 31-year-old Mittendorff out by name." The anonymous contributors "criticize her body, her sex life, even her death, while also shaming other women." Apparently, given the familiarity of the posters about firehouses, it appears that the commenters to the blog are fellow firefighters. This makes the harassment all the more troublesome, especially in a job that already suffers from high stress levels and in which you identify the people with whom you work as family.
Several weeks ago, Upworthy posted an article by Matt Schlicht entitled "Every man should see the infuriating reaction to this woman's blog post" about Helen Situ's blog about SH//FT, a new non-profit organization founded to encourage women and minorities to get involved in virtual reality. Schlicht understands the underrepresentation of women in technology – fewer than 20% -- and he applauds the women who have created SH//FT, saying "women supporting each other is awesome." He urges men to be like those who wrote positive comments on Situ's blog, and deplores the negative posts, most of which I can't even include here. Here's one I can: "I would love to see her in VR [virtual reality], esp in a maids costume!" The rest are even more demeaning and marginalizing. I guess the very idea of any number of women working in the world of virtual reality, which, it seems to me has particular opportunities for women given its wide range of applications (not just gaming), seriously threatens these men.
Like sports journalism and firefighting, men dominate and define the culture in the tech world. We saw similar violent online attacks on women in the gaming industry in the fall of 2014 during what came to be called "Gamergate." As tends to be the case, this was a fairly complicated event/movement. However, in terms of facts, it involved men attacking female video game designers and critics so viciously online that the FBI got involved. The attackers objected to women entering the realm of video games, especially when they create non-traditional games or criticize the gaming industry for its violence and lack of inclusivity. In addition to anonymous rape and death threats, common fare for women in non-traditional fields as we've seen, people posted nude photos of these women as well as their home addresses. Fearing for their safety, several of the women fled their homes.
I will confess that it's hard for me to understand why anyone could get so exercised about video games. However, as The Washington Post's digital culture critic Caitlin Dewey observed, Gamergate, which went on for months, actually represented more than just a horrifyingly brutal digital war within the gaming world. "In fact, in many respects," she argues, "Gamergate is just a proxy war for a greater cultural battle over space and visibility and inclusion, a battle over who belongs to the mainstream — and as such, it's a battle for our cultural soul."
This conflict lies at the heart of these vicious attacks on women who dare to step outside traditional female roles. Another sports journalist on a CBSN piece shared a tweet she received asserting that women "don't know [expletive] about sports" with the hashtag #stayhomeandcookplease. Like it or not, we no longer live in a world where the majority of women stay home and cook. As a country, I don't know what we do with the level of anger these online messages reveal. We know that it's easier to act intemperately when we can be anonymous, and I would argue that allowing oneself to write such sentiments helps cement them in our minds. Because social media is just that, social, when such violent expressions go unchecked, it makes such discourse appear acceptable to large online audiences.
The vast majority of men count themselves with the horrified readers of DiCarlo and Spain's tweets, the Fairfax County Fire Chief who has called for a full investigation of the misogynistic postings about female firefighters and consequences for perpetrators, and tech reporters like Matt Schlicht who support women in technology. However, there exists a loud, belligerent minority of cowards who hide behind the anonymity of the internet to behave in reprehensible ways. While we may need to think about why these men are so angry, we do not and should not tolerate this vicious misogyny. I hope that we will talk to our children, especially our sons, who surely read this kind of thing online, about why this is wrong. I hope that we, especially men, will stand up in the digital space for women's right to assume non-traditional roles. Finally, I hope we will lodge complaints about inappropriate postings on blogs like the "Fairfax Underground" and "DC Urban Mom" and even encourage the big social media entities like Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, and Snapchat not to allow hate speech. If we don't, by creating such a hostile environment that young women, like one whom Spain has been mentoring, will choose other professions, we let these men win.