While I’m sure plenty of you have already seen this, if you haven’t, it’s well worth a read.
Violet introduces some of the basics of this matter here, succinctly and pointedly. And she asks a very potent question, namely “Do we women need to portray ourselves as victims to garner support when men threaten to defile our corpses if we gain notoriety?”

I’ve been stalked (in-person and online both) before because of my sex and what I do online and in print, and I’ve been hated on for what I do and who I am, for certain, but I don’t kid myself. When we’re talking about harassment based solely on work, for the most part, the genre I work in isn’t one which is going to usually bring this kind of hate down upon me, because no matter how I redefine sex, no matter how what I prescribe and discuss in the work I do might challenge patriarchy and the status quo, the fact that it is sexuality and sex I’m writing about, and the fact that I say sex is a good thing is — quite unintentionally — some measure of protection for me against this kind of violence. In short, I remain in an arena I am often perceived by many to be protecting for men, not my own behalf or that of women, no matter what I say, or in which men just want no real ownership of. Sexuality education: what a bore, right? Besides, half the time what I’m doing with all the referring of locations for EC, comforting through pregnancy scares and wounded vaginas, places to get STI screenings, help with how to reclaim sexuality, counseling for rape and abuse survivors is just cleaning up the messes lots of men have made for them.

I also have the benefit — if you can call it that — of the fact that calling a sexuality writer and artist a slut, a whore, a cunt, or sexualizing me period doesn’t pack a particularly powerful punch when it comes to undermining my credibility, largely in part because my credibility is tenuous at best anyway (and that’d be part of the other entry that’s in the pipes), but also in part — whether I like it or not, whether it is true or not — because to many, it’s already a given that I’m a slut, a whore, a sexual object, and that I LOVE all that, or else I wouldn’t be doing what I do in the first place. But I digress.

* * *

In reading Violet’s piece, reading other coverage of what’s happened to Kathy Sierra, and keeping in mind the multitude of other times things like this have happened and will continue to, I was painfully and unexpectedly reminded of something I’d filed away for my own sanity for some time. In part it was also filed away because from the time it began happening through now — and still now — I couldn’t think of a way to air any of it that didn’t seem unfair or potentially hurtful to others involved, even though there wasn’t anyone it was ever going to harm the way it harmed me, and the only reason it did me less harm than it might have was simply because I was used to this sort of treatment and know how to compartmentalize it.

The tone and content of the hate site centers around sexually threatening you, suggesting ways you could be killed and have your corpse defiled, stating that you are a “slut” and that your gender is also in question. Your straight male colleagues don’t have this problem. Then the person running the hate site blogs about every word you say, every time you make a post or publish an article. And targets your friends. And posts the names of your family and Google satellite maps of your family’s homes. They deface your Wikipedia page at every opportunity, with sexual slurs, objectifying you at every possible chance.

A handful of years back, I had a brief relationship (far briefer in the actual relationship than in the aftermath, unfortunately) with another blogger which very quickly became emotionally abusive when the limits and boundaries I’d made clear I needed were simply not those he desired, and which from the start, he’d only said were okay because he’d clearly decided for himself he could ignore them completely. What was supposed to be, agreed to be, a temporary stay in my apartment until he found housing of his own very quickly escalated into a long-term cohabitation I incessantly protested, and which became a tool used to manipulate me with daily.

After I finally managed to get that person out of my home and my life, the abuse escalated from afar and moved online. For a while, I simply stopped writing anything at all personal about my life, because if and when I did, it would be unraveled, respun and used as a weapon on his blog and amongst shared friends. For a little while in there, I just stopped writing, period: nothing felt safe, nothing was safe.

I got to watch someone with a readership that included lesbians and women launch barbs at me on both accounts that were at worst, applauded, and at best, silently allowed because I had made the grave mistake of not giving some man who other people liked what he wanted, or perhaps, simply because his abuse gave others a convenient place to hide a desire for same (or perhaps because no one wanted the same abuse launched at them). I got to have friends tell me unbelievable slander he’d disseminated among others (my personal favorite was that I had raped him via the interesting logic that once or twice when we were having sex, I wasn’t demonstrating my enjoyment of sex as clearly and vocally as he’d desired). I got to watch a very smart man very calculatingly use what he knew were triggers for me — which much if not most of his readership was likely unaware of, and thus, unaware he was doing — in what he wrote about me, knowing full well that the only vague recourse I had to make things like that stop was expressly to publicly proclaim certain types of victimhood — including acknowledging that he was succeeding in victimizing me — which I did not want to.

It didn’t stop with me, either. Several friends of mine had to block their emails or change their addresses: one other was also harassed by this person online, and since he couldn’t be maligned by his gender, instead, his race was where the abuse was placed. My closest friend, having the unfortunate burden of being female and of a higher economic class, as well the wrong race was harassed on all accounts.

When endless private emails and calls to me went either ignored, or were responded to with yet one more calm request to please stop contacting me, that person quite clearly and purposefully found a way to escalate it further by bringing it to their blog, watched as some commentors to that blog egged it all on. (I won’t pussyfoot: it was my good fortune that the majority of his readers were female, and sparing maybe one exception, all the eggers-on were indeed male.) Mind you, as I said, I did not tell my story, and I accept the responsibility that goes with my silence. I was trying to do everything I could think of to quell the abuses and harassment, foolishly thinking silence — and my even publicly stating there were no bad guys when there very much were — would accomplish that, and in hindsight, I was also pitying the person who was doling out the abuse and also very much not wanting to either play the victim or recount the ways in which I had been victimized, especially since lord knows, I’d been victimized enough already in my life as it was. (Not to mention that I was also at the time getting a whole different brand of shit on my own journal from random commenting/emailing assholes about finally accepting the fact that my attraction to women had hit an all-time high and my attraction to men an all-time low. Bisexual and lesbian women, never forget — as if you could — that the only way to be accepted in our culture en large as such is for men to have the idea that women are but a dalliance to you, and men ever-preferable.)

That, right there — okay, not quite right there, the stuff before my bi-dyke-beef — is an answer to Violet’s question, and one pretty much any solidly or radical feminist blogger already knows: I don’t know a one who has a readership of any size who isn’t faced with comments like Sierra got in her comments all the time, many on a daily basis. I get them less often here than plenty I know, but I can predict at this point to a near-pseudo-science when I will get them. I brace myself any time I speak unapologetically or without victimhood about abortion, about sexual violence from men, about being nonsupportive of D/S, about loving women, about why masturbation masquerading as sexual intercourse is boring as hell, to say the least, about body image issues, about how fat women are beautiful, about some of the reasons why porn is a problem, about older men going after teenage girls, about… yeah, you get it.

Sparing two mutual friends (one of whom had been made an unwitting party to the final in-person abuse I tolerated), and my own close circle of friends, no one reading what he was penning or speaking to him was told, to my knowledge, that, for instance, I was dealing with a daily barrage of emails and messages that continually went back and forth on the predictable abuser seesaw between “I love you, you’re so wonderful, please take me back, please love me back” to “You’re a man-hating dyke bitch, and I’m going to come into your house whether you like it or not, at any time I want.” No one reading likely knew that despite being abused by this person, out of an earnest concern for their well-being and safety, I’d only told the couple mutual friends about the real deal in the hopes that they could mediate and provide some sort of support that for obvious reasons, I was unwilling to give, and one reason why I didn’t tell anyone else is that I did not want this person to lose the allegiances and friends he had. Save maybe one other person of our shared friends and readerships, no one else even knew or knows the backstory of this person to have any idea of what I was dealing with and how entirely unsurprising it all was: pity I didn’t have that information in advance myself. To my knowledge, he told only one mutual friend, who only passed this on to me today, about the crafty “game” he was playing with me (and was shocked when she didn’t respond with shared glee to this presentation of the abuses, but with complete disgust).

In more ashamed hindsight, I found myself in the position of dealing with abuses and harassment from someone who I knew people glorified and didn’t think for an instant I’d be believed (though as it turns out, the few who were ever as close to that person as I did believe me, without any reservation, when I finally starting talking in private), and I honestly didn’t see what use speaking out would have had, for me or for anyone else. In my defense, I did finally say something to one other mutual friend a year or so later who I worried might have found herself in the same line of fire in time, though I recognize that even that is weak, at best: you never can know who is going to be at risk, not really.

I suspect that the vast majority of those commentors and other folks who did the egging, really did not know what was going on behind the scenes, though they certainly can’t claim innocence about seeing what was right there on the surface in his words. My impression is that some simply took what was said about me and what went down at face value, without question, or thought so little of me that whatever I’d have had to say would have been fruitless. A few others seemed to have the idea that harassing someone else online was some sort of acceptable catharsis for the harasser. I also think some who engaged in this through that by virtue of identifying as progressive people, as people sensitive to issues of minority of various types, had made themselves completely blind to what they were doing, full-stop, because gawd knows, people like “that” aren’t capable of such things, right?

But none of these things are reasonable excuses — there simply are no reasonable excuses for ad hominem attacks and for enabling and taking any part in stalking and harassment — because people earnestly interested in assuring that violence or harm isn’t done to another person simply do not engage in this sort of thing at all. Ever. In any circumstance, in any venue, for any reason.

One can only reasonably assume that when someone goes into a forum or blog and contributes in any way to verbal abuse, women-hating and stalking, it is because they enjoy doing so, because they like the veritable masked gang-bang, and because when the invitation to do so is in any way extended, they are happy to accept. I simply do not see any other conclusion to reach from where I’m sitting.

* * *

I’m not sure how I feel about having stayed silent, and even still staying partially silent now, giving only the Cliff’s Notes. Part of me feels like a chicken-shit, and like my silence, like so many silences, enabled the whole culture of silence that I do work to try and dismantle every day.

On the other hand, I have a private life that is public in many respects, and when my relationships go south, overall no one is informed as to why, because relationship conflicts of any type strike me as utterly personal for all parties, and I’m well aware that no matter what the situation, my readers have a feeling of loyalty to me, so even when there isn’t a bad guy, the other person is very likely to come out looking like one. Heck, I don’t even write about petty arguments, about a lot of the sex I’m having, about a given partner or friend’s personal details or life issues, and I understand that that often results in most of my relationships looking different than they actually are, but everyone having some semblance of privacy is more important to me than complete accuracy in this regard. And no matter the scenario, I very much want to avoid any sort of public demonizing of anyone, or what could be perceived as such, for all the most obvious reasons. (It also is doubly complex when the person in question is no longer living, and so can’t speak for themselves.) Point is, I’m somewhat conflicted about the silence I kept, and the silence I’m still keeping: it’s a tough line to walk, always has been, remains so, and is all the more complex when dealing with an actual demon.

One reason I’m really not conflicted about some aspects of my silence, though, is that as a writer, I obviously have a firm belief that words hold great power, and we can wield power with them. As a Buddhist, and as someone simply invested in doing my level best to enable as much kindness and compassion as I can, I think that we all need to give pretty serious thought and care to how and where we use words, and be ever-mindful of the fact that they not only are powerful, but that when we put them out to the ears and eyes of the massive, unknowable many, we have only so much control over the impact they have and what they will cultivate, even in those instances when we don’t even intend to do harm. That isn’t to say there were not ways I could have handled this better, still using the power of my words without any intent to harm, but that my motivation to handle it as I did was greatly fueled by trying my best to be as compassionate and caring as I could (even if some of it was also based in my being less than brave).

Now, I don’t doubt for a minute that those who initially maligned Sierra, and plenty thereafter, DID and do give thought to their words and very much meant and mean for them to have the effect which they do. Same goes for what this guy, himself, did to me. I’m not certain I can say that about the participants from the sidelines with this experience of mine, but I can say that had things escalated among commentors even further, that none involved would have called for a halt, including the original author, and that it was his hope and intent that they WOULD go that way: that was what he was seeking out, and that was his intent. It’s entirely possible and likely that had a commentor gone so far as saying some of the things that were said about Sierra about me that the blogger might, on a good day, have asked them to play nice online, but knowing him, I assure you that as he typed that, he would have been inwardly pleased they said those things all the same, and found a way to use them to harass me further. Do all the people who egg on folks who abuse this way know that? I don’t know.

I don’t think that everyone who engages in these kinds of free-for-alls does really know or understand (or care to know or understand) the effect they have. Perhaps I’m naive in that respect, but I don’t think so, not about everyone. It isn’t because I think some are kinder than they seem, but rather because my impression is they’re either just not that bright, just that self-absorbed, have just that much internalized misogyny they’re blind to or think is somehow rational and acceptable, or all of the above.

The invisibility the net provides, as likely most of us well know, is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it allows for situations like youth posting questions to me at Scarleteen, important questions, some of them with answers that will actually save lives, which they wouldn’t post without some degree of that invisibility. On the other hand, it very clearly gives all too many the permission to act without conscience and to enact abuses, especially en masse abuses, and to have the feeling that nothing is real: the people they abuse aren’t real, their actions aren’t real, the harm they do isn’t real. I think we can safely — albeit sadly — say that some of the thinking that fuels this isn’t “If it were real, we’d see real hurt,” but “If it were real, I’d be getting in real trouble.”

* * *

Part of the illusion of ‘net invisibility is also, of course, safety. Plenty of us — and I’m no exception — may think we have some relative safety, even if we think we only have it in this circle or that one.

So, maybe this seems like an unsuitable cautionary tale for my readership, because we’re what — not THOSE kind of people? Thing is, some of the folks involved in what I went through were the same kind of people, even some of the SAME people, reading right here, right now. We are not somehow automatically protected from these things by hanging out with leftists, or with women, or with other queers, or with “nice” men, or with artists or with authors, or with yellow/red/brown/white/green people, whatever we decide “our” group of safe people are. Sierra was pretty obviously shocked to discover that bloggers-en-large were not “her” people, because she was one of them. I won’t feign any greater sophistication and say that I, too, was shocked, to see “my” sort of people contribute to or enable my online abuse.

Is a lot of that simply, and only, because she is, I am, we are, female? You bet your arse it is. We can deny, deny, deny all day, but the reality stands in pretty sharp relief to whatever persuasive denials we conjure up. We can blather all day about how anyone can find themselves victimized in this way. Certainly anyone CAN; but far, far more often, it is women who ARE.

But anyone can, sure. Just like anyone can start up this engine, too, and keep it running, which is much of why I’m here airing things that are really painful and precarious for me to air, because even the lot of us who think we’re somehow immune to engaging in this stuff or enabling it — even if it’s “just” with our silences — just plain aren’t. Internalized sexism and internalized hate aren’t phantoms or dusty ghosts: they’re exceptionally real. In Kathy Sierra’s case, I think it’s pretty obvious we aren’t likely dealing with people with hidden biases: they’re right there on the surface, and we can probably assume that they know they hold them (to the “wrong” kind of women, anyway — more than likely, plenty of these guys are thought to be perfect gentlemen to the “right” women, the ones who know their place, or their mothers, their sisters, whatever women deemed worthy of their protection and failty somehow) and hold them proudly. That kind of hate is a bit easier to speak to, and perhaps easier for all of us to look at because we can easily exempt ourselves from it, when the hard truth is that not only are none of us safe — particularly and specifically if we are women — but neither are we exempt unless we very mindfully, cautiously and intentionally work to exempt ourselves from it, in every way we can.

For me, there have been a lot of ways I have tried my best to do that, but I think I have some learning to do when it comes to my silences, and how I bridge the gap between silencing something personal-made-public and keeping some privacy, both for myself and for others. It seems to be that it couldn’t have been so simple a set of choices, this thing, as choosing between presenting myself as a victim and just staying silent, that I had other options, but that I just didn’t like what I expected the consequences to be, namely that I’d likely have to deal with a period of even more harassment, stalking and bullying. Given, I think that’s more than reasonable to want to protect yourself from, but at the same time, it calls up other issues: finding it hard to ask for help, for instance, not putting enough value in the power of my own words, having too much concern about looking like the bad guy myself or appearing vulnerable, internalized self-hatred, and, let’s face it, pandering to the status quo just because it’s less of a fricking headache and heartache in the short-term. I’m sure that’s the tip of the iceberg, but I’ve way too much self-evaluation for one week already: being flat on your back sick for a few days leaves too much time for that.

Point is, there’s easily at least something any single one of us can do to work towards not just avoidance of enabling and participating in this stuff, but towards disabling it. Obviously, for some, like those who stalked and harassed Sierra, it goes a lot deeper, when we’re talking about unlearning misogyny and hate that for plenty, just won’t effing ever happen because they’ve no interest in making it happen. Maybe for others, it’s simply finding a reason to learn not to engage anything even remotely like this, and to wield the power of words — like any power — unoppressively and more carefully. Or to make a point of sending complaints to a server when hate speech of any kind is on it. Or to stop freaking denying sexism all the damn time, no matter your sex or how acknowledging sexism makes you feel about yourself or those around you. (And perhaps to also recognize that there’s a whole additional discussion to be had about what is a portrayal of victimhood and what is simply acknowledging that ourselves or others have been victimized, and how colonized even that has become.)

Or to just remember that there is no “game” in any sort of stalking and any sort of abuse, no matter how innocuous a given environment may make it seem, no matter how reasonable a given abuser may make it appear, or how much an abuser may present themselves as anything but, no matter how safe from it any of us think we are.

I’m going to leave comments open for this, but only because I think dialog about the overarching issue is important, and I think that’s all I really need to say to make clear what’s appropriate in comments here and what very much isn’t, given everything else I’ve said today.

filed under Heather Corinna | surviving abuse | women | online life
posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 5:30 pm

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