Uploading Hatred Of Women

Death Threats Against Prominent Female Blogger Spark Debate About Prevalence Of Sexism Online

(CBS)  Blogophile is written by CBSNews.com's Melissa P. McNamara

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Death Threats Roil Blogosphere

Kathy Sierra, a prominent technology blogger, says she suddenly canceled a talk she was supposed to give because of specific, sexually graphic death threats posted on her blog. Her remarks about the threats have sparked a debate online about whether women are especially targets of online threats simply because of their gender.

"I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified," Sierra writes on her blog, Creating Passionate Users. Sierra's work is hardly controversial – she writes about cognition and computers. She doesn't know who is responsible for the threats, but criticizes "people like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy)" who founded one of the blogs that hosted the vicious comments.

"It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. I really don’t care if you attack me. I take those attacks in stride," Robert Scoble blogs. "But, whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn’t happen if the interviewee were a man. It makes me realize just how acerbic this industry and culture are toward women."

Kim Klaver agrees. "These are all vicious attacks on her - as a woman. Yes, anyone who has a point of view and expresses it in print will get disagreements and often, personal attacks. I've had them here. But death and sexual threats?," Klaver blogs.

Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh concurs that "misogyny grows wild on the Web."

"Attitudes toward women have improved dramatically just in my lifetime, but still the world has too many misogynists, and the Web has given them a microphone that lets them turn up the volume on their quavering selves, their self-righteous fury, their self-loathing expressed as hatred of women," Walsh writes on Salon.com. "And yet, mostly, women on the Web just have to ignore it."

In a response to Sierra's comments, Chris Locke responds that "it comes with the territory," adding that he was "certainly not out to 'target'" Sierra" on his blogs. "I think her response, as it pertains to anything I personally wrote, was unjustified -- but highly effective -- character assassination," he writes at Rageboy. "As a result, I'm sure I'll be explaining for years to come that I'm not really an ax murderer and child molester. Nice work."

The debate over online mysogeny and the threats against Sierra have made her one of the most searched people on Technorati for the past week. Many of Sierra's fellow bloggers have come to her defense, questioning the limits of free speech in the blogosphere.

"What Kathy is putting up with is totally unacceptable, and I'm frankly sickened at what she has had to go through. It is totally unacceptable to make threats to people. Period," Technorati's David Sifry blogs.

Many say the incident raises questions about what should be tolerated online. "It certainly raises questions about sexual equality on the web - as Kathy correctly points out if she was a man the threats would not have been posted. But it is still wrong that people can anonymously do this to someone," Ian Devlin blogs.

Some are calling for a bloggers bill of rights to encourage good conduct. But whether even that would work remains to be seen.


Breaking News...Ha!

Watch out, CBS News. The Onion News Network has debuted, online that is. The satirical newspaper turned satirical news network entered the broadcasting world with three new videos on immigration, Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice and another about Civil War re-enactors serving in Iraq. The Onion plans to add new video clips every week.

On its Website, the Onion News Network proclaims to have "set the standard for globe-encompassing 24-hour television news since it was founded in December, 1892." It considers CNN and MSNBC its rivals. "Those are parody shows," Onion president Sean Mills told Variety. "This is serious news." Many advertisers are already on board – including Dewar's Scotch, Hyundai and Red Stripe Beer.The Onion News Network has set the

"This is awesomely hilarious," a blogger at L33TG33K writes.

"The production quality of the ONN videos available so far is quite high across the board. The writing is somewhat less consistent, but at its best it is wickedly funny stuff," Rick Albertson blogs at Democracy Cell Project. "If the early segments are any indication, they ought to be very popular among the politically-oriented viral-video cognoscenti with a sense of humor."

"The Onion News Network takes the approach of a network that’s been in the game for quite some time, and in true satirical Onion style they mock, well, whatever they can," a blogger at 901am writes.

"I thought the clips were pretty consistent with The Onion's brand of humor -- we're not seeing real people being humiliated here, nor are we seeing a Jon Stewart-type personality deliver the news," Whitney Matheson writes at USA Today's Pop Candy.

But not everyone is a fan just yet. "ONN -- as of this writing, less a network than a Web page with four clips and a Dewar's ad -- finally takes that extra step. Its news items are, indeed, mocked-up rather than simply mocked," reviews New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. "This means that both the anchors and the subjects are played, hammily, by actors, and the 'news footage' is as scripted as the banter around it. Sadly, though, it is not particularly well scripted, nor particularly amusing."


Baghdad Bound Blogger

Jane Stillwater, a 64-year-old California blogger, left for Kuwait last week in the hopes of ending up in Iraq as a blogger embedded with the U.S. military. The prolific blogger is being sponsored by The Lone Star Iconoclast, a liberal weekly based in Crawford, Texas, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Stillwater said she's going to Iraq to write about the war for "real people." She also wrote on her blog that she wanted to go to "Baghdad to write fabulous stories for YOU all about how our brave troops are doing a bang-up job over there despite the fact that their bosses in the White House are sadistic bastards, terribly inefficient crooks and totally nuts -- or I will spend three weeks wandering the streets of Kuwait City waiting for my flight home, searching for internet cafes and trying to sell bootleg Girl Scout cookies."

She landed in Baghdad on Sunday, and has been blogging about her trip. When she arrived in Iraq, she describes a conversation with an Iraqi reporter "who said that the market they went to was the safest in the city and several American reporters added that walking around in Baghdad without troops backing you up was suicidal and anyone who did something like that had a death wish."

Bloggers say they respect Stillwater's determination to head to Iraq. "Whether or not you agree with her, I hope you admire her moxie. We need more chicks with moxie," a blogger at Curbside Prophecies writes.

"This is one woman who has decided to live her life by not following the set rules that everyone thinks they are supposed to follow," Liz Folger adds.

But not everyone is sure it's the right decision. "I think this is cool, brave, crazy, dangerous, nuts," Tony Stubblebine writes at Stubbleblog.


Blogophile RSS Feed

[nachalle]

Well it's time to do an investigation and get rid of these web-sites that promote hatred. Blackplanet.com for example, promotes hatred towards Black woman, younger and older Black women. The site allows under-aged girls to created dating profiles and personal pages and allows older men to post on forum boards their sexually relations with younger girls. Men can post on forum boards the most degrading things about Black women that it amazes me that the web-site would not delete such postings about Black women. If Black women report such degrading and sexist postings to the Moderators on that web-site, then their complaints would either go ignored or their profiles would be automatically deleted along with their e-mail address banned...Such a web-site is capable of influencing great harm and hatred to anyone who is hated upon. This web-site should be held accountable for their promotion of hatred!

[actornaught]

Blue, your stated message has NO RELEVANCE to this article.

However your multiple lengthy ramblings do illustrate a person that finds satisfaction in harassing women online.

Any possibly valid point is utterly drowned out by your choice of venue and inappropriate language.

[bluestardad]

I understand to even hint that women pull their share of defense of this nation to some would be considered UGLY POST or offensive! But the truth is that This country deserves the efforts of all those who enjoy its freedoms. Freedom is not free or given it must be earned! So ladies go down to the Selective Service Branch when you get 18 and demand your rights as Americans and register for the Draft! Until you do that you have no rights to DEMAND EQUAL ANYTHING! Make no mistake your gender will be required to register for the draft in the future. I myself have already contacted the ACLU because of this discrimination of requireing only males to register for military service!

[actornaught]

i have to say i dont want to be associated with the ugly posts by bluestardad, in case anybody did that. they don't have the slightest relevance to this article, and they make even less sense. The only point that i see him making is that he needs massive therapy. I'm not at all saying that to lash out, he really sounds that mixed up.

but i do wonder where these people are in real life. do they sit in the next cubicle, somehow smart enough to not speak their ugly minds? do they sit at home with the shades drawn, watching Fox news? Are they just teenagers trying to see what kind of trouble they can cause?

i really am disappointed with the human psyche, sometimes.

[bluestardad]

Probably wouldn't be any wars if the cowards that usually start them had to spill their own blood or that of their wives, sons, daughters, husbands.

Where are the Bush twins?
Posted by newsreader2 at 12:19 PM : Apr 05, 2007


Exactly!

[Syndicate]

What makes me angry is the fact that these are only words posted on the internet. Big Deal. Come cry to me when some one points a gun at your head. Only then wil I be able to relate and have sympathy.

[bluestardad]

Yes Thank you I have served in the military from a private to a Captain, my family have KIAs given blood and treasure to buy your freedoms, and so have my family all the way back to the start of this country on both sides of my family, mothers and fathers, and all the women in my family are leaders both at home and in their commuinty. My family is made up of strong matriarchs, my great grandmother was a Practicing Doctor during the Civil War, tell me she did not work thru gender problems, my grandmother was a large land owner and worked in a factory during WWII and taught me how to shoot a gun on her farm, my mother was a Preacher, my wife is an accountant, feminist and is politically active, and my daughter is a Sergeant in the Army going on two combat tours. So you see I am quite comfortable around strong women. Likewise I have little sympathy for those women who lay around wanting America to GIVE THEM SOMETHING BECAUSE OF THEIR GENDER! It is time they got of their lazy backsides and earned the Freedoms in the defense of our great Nation!

[bluestardad]

actornaught; well spoken and true, thank you for the comment.

[bluestardad]

You can see by the angry banter generated in your responses at just the thought of some Women pulling their own weight in the Security of our Great nation%u2019s defense has hit a nerve. By women being required to register for the Selective Service Draft our nation%u2019s defense will be strengthened. However some Women do not have the Character to step up to the plate and earn these Great freedoms men and some women have sacrificed in the Military to provide. These people will be on the front lines using EVERY RESOURCE, even flat backing it for congressmen, available to them in an effort to thwart those who are pushing for their inclusion in National Service. The time is soon coming where all men and women will be required to register for the draft. Get use to it as you will soon be required to register and serve in the defense of the Nation. Then when you start screaming and protesting for preferential treatment because of your gender you will have at least earned your Free Speech Rights!

[bluestardad]

xrk9854; God Bless and keep you for your service, and to all the Ladies that serve, Truly thank you. My daughter serves also and 24 months out of 36 months of my grandsons life she was in Iraq or Peru replacing another unit going to Iraq. She is scheduled to go to Iraq again this August.

[linfinster]

To Bluestardad and all you other male hooligans going on about the draft. Have any of you actually done time in the service? I did about 8 years myself. Don't tell me I did nothing for the freedoms I enjoy as a woman in this country! I and millions of other women have served in the military.
Posted by xrk9854 at 04:22 AM : Apr 05, 2007



Right on sister!! LOL

Bluestar, you sicken this world with your hateful words. It's not difficult to see the mindset of the pigs and scum who bully women online when reading your words.

[truthword]

In 1975, a radical feminist group called Redstockings published their research on Steinem and Ms. magazine. Four years later, Random House was preparing an edition of Redstockings' Feminist Revolution. Steinem, Clay Felker (who launched Ms. and once worked for Steinem's CIA front), Katharine Graham, Warner Communications (Graham and Warner were major Ms. stockholders), and Ford Foundation president Franklin A. Thomas complained to Random House. The offending chapters were deleted and an "Abridged Edition" was published.
This abridged edition is still available from Redstockings, and you get the censored section. It contains detailed material on Steinem's early work with the CIA, and an account of how this story was censored after originally being scheduled for publication.
See also: Gloria Steinem Spies on Students for the CIA

[truthword]

The New York Times, February 21, 1967

Miss Steinem said she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her C.I.A. money might be available to finance American participation in the seventh postwar festival scheduled for Vienna in the summer of 1959.
The former association officers had had ties with the C.I.A. while serving the association, which last week conceded it had taken money from the intelligence agency since 1952.

"Far from being shocked by this involvement, I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days, who were far-sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival," Miss Steinem said. She noted that most Americans who had attended various festivals were sympathetic to Communist policies.

The Independence [sic] Research Service, originally called the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna Festival, was organized with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. It concentrated, Miss Steinem said, on disseminating information about the festival and urging young persons who espoused flexible, but non-Communist, foreign policy views to attend.

Miss Steinem was a full-time employe of the service till following the Helsinki festival in 1962.

About 130 youths who had made contact with the foundation did attend, although few of them received significant financial help, Miss Steinem said.

[xrk9854]

To Bluestardad and all you other male hooligans going on about the draft. Have any of you actually done time in the service? I did about 8 years myself. Don't tell me I did nothing for the freedoms I enjoy as a woman in this country! I and millions of other women have served in the military.

[xrk9854]

In a response to Sierra's comments, Chris Locke responds that "it comes with the territory,"

Why?

Why is this boorish male behavior simply accepted?

It's time to hold them (men) accountable. The "Old Boys Club" should be a thing of the past!

[silver9991]

Apologies, godofredo. My post just below should have been addressed to cbscrash07.

[silver9991]

godofredo29, you got some deep issues here, and a professional might be in order.

Register for the draft? There's no draft right now. Yes men register (and women probably should as well, but then again I'm over the age where a man or a woman would be tapped to begin with... But it's just a formality, registering.)

No woman ever bought you a drink? I've bought men entire dinners because they were awesome cool friends.

Maybe just try to stop being so bitter. Personally, I've never felt like I'm a second-class citizen because I'm a woman. I think overall women earn less on average than men in the same job, but this situation isn't going to be resoved by our being bitter, either. Either by us women, or by you.

[sy2502]

Most guys who whine because women are getting the same recognition at work of men are just immature and insecure. If you do such a poor job that you start to panic when you don't get an advantage over a female colleague just in virtue of your gender, you may want to start working harder. And you may want to grow up.

[teeus]

Glorian Steinman....Oh, you mean Gloria Steinem?

admitted CIA operative....Maybe in CRAZYLAND.

Nowdays a lot of women don't even want a man, they just want a baby...I guess men should work a little harder at being wanted and needed and not just assume that some one will want their *** butts automatically because of their awesome male-osity.

and those with children will tell you that "my child is the most important thing in my life, my child comes first" well that's totally wrong also...That's motherhood, dude, and that's always been and will always be. Mothers nearly always put their children first., and it has nothing to do with feminism, and it's not a new phenomenon either. Jesus%u2019 mother didn't stay home to cook dinner for her husband while her child was being killed.

I refuse to play 3rd fiddle in a relationship, I'd rather be single forever than have some woman and some child bossing me around...And on behalf of all thinking women everywhere...I thank you.

[truthword]

I don't hate women, I love women, and I think both sexes have certain strengths and weaknesses. Fact of the matter is the "Feminist" movement was started by the government and the CIA to get women working so they could double the tax base and get more control of children. Glorian Steinman is an admitted CIA operative. They promoted their goals through the mass media like they always do and people foolishly bought into this scam, now look at America today. Most families now consist of the woman running the household, the children running the woman, and the man if they still have one is nothing more than a breadwinner who's supposed to keep his mouth shut and let the woman and the kids run his life. You can see how well this is all working out.... Nowdays a lot of women don't even want a man, they just want a baby, and those with children will tell you that "my child is the most important thing in my life, my child comes first" well that's totally wrong also. First of all God should come first if you have a relationship with him, then your husband, then your kid, because if those things are healthy and in place, your kids a lot better off than if you put them above everything. I refuse to play 3rd fiddle in a relationship, I'd rather be single forever than have some woman and some child bossing me around.