Dangerous Neighborhoods: Cyber abuse, harassment and threats: Women online.

Posted on October 11, 2016 | 1 Comment
BY Emma Rosenthal

A constant work in progress, new material to be added until the abuse stops. 

Most recent update: December 18, 2019

Most people when abused, cyber stalked, harassed and bullied, quietly go away. This makes it easier to start over. There is no trail of them making a fuss. Fewer people will know about the abuse. Because abuse attracts more abuse. Once you are marked as a target there is a popular notion that you brought it on yourself, that there must be some truth to the accusations, that you are an easy mark.
I am not a good victim. I go down screaming. I leave nail marks in the wall. I spin the wheel of the car to escape. I write about it. I will tell the story. I want my victimization to be known. I want those who read this language to be warned. I leave a map so others will know where it is safe to tread. I do not give my abuser the luxury of moving on, not that easy.
I am disappointed in many people who run away. Who do not talk down the abuse, who pretend it is not their comrade or their community. Who participate in the illusion that it is ever about the victim or their reaction, or that this is at all personal.
There are models of community accountability. Public ostracism, threats and character assassination is never acceptable. We must start to understand too, that when one person is targeted, none of us is safe. Bullies will choose the most vulnerable, but that doesn’t make the online abuse any less a community issue. Supporting the victim is a collective responsibility. Failure to do so is a collective failure.
Abusers that go unchallenged will continue to abuse, will gain power each time they are allowed to get away with the abuse.
 Those committing character assassination must hurl accusations they know are not true. If they were true, one could rebut, respond, make amends, demonstrate accountability. This would not serve the assassin. For the assassin it is important to destroy the opponent, not change them. A series of false accusations, to which the accused can’t honestly confess is much more powerful in providing the illusion that the person under attack is not willing to dialogue, not willing to take responsibility. But one cannot be responsible for the false accusations hurled at them, like stones at a stoning. It is the fault of the one who throws.
In our on line lives, proof is so much easier than in our analog world. Before believing an abusive tirade or an underhanded compliment demand proof. Don’t go along for the ride. Accountability requires evidence. Make them show receipts.
#notyourvictim #stillpondering #selfreflection #whototrustwhotoletgo#dontbettsonit #seehowididthat? #tothevictorgoesthelie #seehowididthat #yourfriendshaveyourbackandtimeforlunchtoo  #silenceiscomplicty

Image of a tweet: TEXT: Franchesca Ramsey‏Verified account @chescaleigh 22h22 hours ago More the level of vitriol, hate, harassment & misogynoir I receive hosting a 101 comedy series on racial identity & pop culture speaks VOLUMES 44 replies 343 retweets 1,565 likes Reply 44 Retweet 343 Like 1.6K

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https://twitter.com/chescaleigh/status/851075406400802816

LINKS: (Most recent additions listed first, so that readers who have visited this post before, can find new material at the top of the list. Articles are not in chronological order, but rather the order in which I encountered them.- Emma)

  • “Emma Rosenthal & Andy Griggs are once again under attack by those who don’t support their work in Palestine solidarity.As owners of DragonflyHill Urban Farm, they recently experienced a barrage of 1 star reviews from over 1700 people who had never been to DragonflyHill Urban Farm but were upset with a review left by DragonflyHill Urban Farm on an Amazon page.
    People who had never been to their urban farm pretended they had, making claims about filth and vermin, others claimed that the hosts discriminated against Jews and Iraelis. Others wrote hate speech and threats, while others simply posted in their 1 star review Am Yisroel Chai  in both Hebrew letters and in transliteration (Long Live Israel.).  (How the hosts could have had so many Israeli & Jewish guests and were simultaneously discriminating against them, is a mystery best solved in the conclusion that it just isn’t possible for this small business to have even had 1700 clients in the course of 2 days, especially considering that their Aibnb profile provides 275 reviews collected over a 2 year period. (Airbnb reviews can only be left by people who have stayed with the host through Airbnb. Facebook reviews have no similar burden of proof. Anyone can post a false review. )” https://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/blacklist-remake-white-supremacist-zionist-bedfellows/
    Blacklist Remake: White Supremacist & Zionist Bedfellows
  • https://dragonflyhill.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/dragonflyhill-urban-farm-targeted-for-our-defense-of-palestinian-human-rights/

    DragonflyHill Urban Farm Targeted for Our Defense of Palestinian Human Rights

  • At the same time that DragonflyHill Urban Farm came under attack, with much of the attack focused on Emma Rosenthal, a Jewish woman with a conspicuously Jewish last name, a similar attack was waged against Reem’s Bakery in Oakland. Both DragonflyHill Urban Farm and Reem’s Bakery were accosted with hundreds of false reviews. Reem reports that she was also subjected to a barrage of threatening phone calls.
    “The bakery’s positive depiction of her has spawned a controversy as summarized in this sharply worded op-ed in J., the Jewish News of Northern California. In the piece, venture capitalist Daniel Frankenstein criticized Assil’s decision to feature a mural of Odeh. A series of coordinated Yelp attacks followed, in which users claimed there was blood in the bakery’s dough and an open endorsements of terrorism on the walls.”
    https://sf.eater.com/2017/6/23/15820576/reems-arab-bakery-rasema-odeh-oakland-controversy

    Updated: Tensions Rise Over Mural in Arab Bakery

  • “Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the historic Women’s March on Washington, has over 221,000 followers on Twitter. And she bravely shared a disturbing hate-filled email to her enormous following. In the email, the writer said he hoped someone will rape the former executive director of the Arab American Association.”
    http://metro.co.uk/2017/07/10/muslim-activist-shares-disturbing-rape-threat-email-she-was-sent-6769385/

    Muslim activist shares disturbing rape threat email she was sent

  • “In 2017, it is Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer who argued her Muslim faith could be feminist, and wrote a Facebook post on Anzac Day about remembering other people fleeing from, and suffering as a result of, wars today. Some of this is provocative. Not ill-intentioned, but ill-timed. But hardly incendiary. You’ll hear similar ideas about how to remember war debated among students and veterans alike.
    The reaction has been lacking in all proportion and reason. In the past few weeks, a crowd bearing torches have gathered in the town square and jabbed fists in the air: Deport her! Sack her! Run her over! Shut her down! Seize her passport! Shut the gates! Pull up the drawbridge! Front-page stories, editorials, polls, a clogging of social media arteries.”
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/yassmin-abdelmagied-the-latest-woman-to-be-roasted-on-the-spit-of-public-life-20170714-gxb6qh.htmlYassmin Abdel-Magied: the latest woman to be roasted on the spit of public life
  • “A lot has been written about the consequences of doing activism online, particularly if you work in the feminist space. Too often, these testimonies or complaints are dismissed as the rantings of oversensitive baby-women. We provoke it, we’re told. Some of us are even accused of courting it, laying traps to ensnare the splendid chaps who wouldn’t normally dream of dropping by to talk about the various ways you should be beaten or violated but who just couldn’t resist telling you this one time how your face looks like a bridge fell on it.”
    http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html
    Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online

  • ““We want to make the internet safer. The people who are disproportionately impacted by harassment are women and particularly women of color. Those voices are systematically harassed and over time they’re excluded, because they have to go out and take care of themselves,” says May. “There’s hope out there in believing that strangers give a shit about you, they’re not just out to harass you.” ”
    https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/new-website-helps-bystanders-support-victims-online-harassment
    A NEW WEBSITE HELPS BYSTANDERS SUPPORT VICTIMS OF ONLINE HARASSMENT

  • “More people are finally taking notice of the abuse. But there’s still a dearth of discussion on why it’s happening. The culprit isn’t anonymity, often the go-to answer for why the Internet can’t have nice things. Instead, it’s believing in the exceptionality of the Internet—and online gaming—that allows the abuses within, and it is enabled every time someone utters, “It’s just a game.”That phrase is the machine to which oppressive power dynamics are the ghost. How many times have you heard someone say “It’s the Internet; you shouldn’t take that seriously”? This kind of thinking supports the idea you can do anything you want with no consequences, when in all actuality, virtual actions like sexual harassment, stalking, abuse, prejudice in all of its forms—racism, sexism, transphobia, or all of the above—do have consequences.”
    https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/game-changer-0  GAME CHANGER WHY GAMING CULTURE ALLOWS ABUSE… AND HOW WE CAN STOP IT

  • “For months, trolls have harassed other people involved with Ghostbusters—they were immediately out in force when director Paul Feig announced that he was filming last summer, harassing Feig for daring to remake the classic film with an all-women cast. But the onslaught of racist and sexist hate that people directed at Jones is unparalleled compared to what other cast and crew members received. In an industry where Black women seldom land starring roles in major releases—a mere 10.8% of speaking roles go to Black characters—it’s demoralizing to see Jones targeted in this way when she should be celebrating instead.”
    https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/trolls-target-leslie-jones-ghosbusters-racist-abuse TROLLS TARGET LESLIE JONES OF “GHOSTBUSTERS” WITH RACIST ABUSE

    • “All we do by feigning ignorance is allow the propagators to move on to another target (as one friend said), fester and lash out harder, continuing to believe they’re invincible.Leslie’s approach was to showcase the hate she was receiving, encouraging people to actively call out and address the hate groupies. I think we need to consider doing this proactively rather than waiting for things to boil over. As several have said—including Leslie—the majority of people online aren’t bad but the bad ones are the loudest.
      If we can make our love louder and show the racists, bigots, sexists, and all the rest that we’re not letting them dominate our discourse, we can make real change. We can prevent more of these hate campaigns. We can drive the bad out and refuse to let them profit off of their message.
      But it has to start now, and it’s going to take more effort than just reacting.”
      https://www.amalanetwork.com/2016/07/19/gamergates-war-against-ghostbusters-and-leslie-jones/   GamerGate’s war against Ghostbusters and Leslie Jones
  • “On Thursday, Ioffe answered a phone call from an anonymous caller who played a Hitler speech. She received another call from “Overnight Caskets”. On Twitter, users posted photos of her face superimposed on a mug shot from Auschwitz. The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site, attacked Ioffe in a blogpost titled: “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian Kike Julia Ioffe in GQ!””
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/28/julia-ioffe-journalist-melania-trump-antisemitic-abuse

    Journalist who profiled Melania Trump hit with barrage of antisemitic abuse

  • “It is not hard to see that a society that tells us to just “get over” being called an “ape nigger” because it’s “just the internet” would also be perfectly fine telling us to “get over” slavery because it’s “in the past” and to “get over” the murder of black people by cops because “they should have complied.” It is not hard to see that a society that tells us to “get over” being told that someone hopes we “are raped to death” because it’s “just the internet” would also be perfectly fine telling rape victims to “get over” their rapes because it’s just “boys being boys.””
    https://theestablishment.co/we-shouldnt-get-used-to-online-abuse-9c97340278e4

    We Shouldn’t Get Used To Online Abuse

  • “Lewis-Hasteley has also been surprised by some of the reaction to the growing campaign to protect women writers from this verbal abuse. “Someone asked me if I didn’t realise that I wasn’t really going to be raped. But the threat of sexual violence is an attack in itself, and some commentators have their Facebook pages searched, and their home addresses tracked. It’s a real feeling of being hunted by these people.”” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/05/women-bloggers-hateful-trolling Women bloggers call for a stop to ‘hateful’ trolling by misogynist men
  • “The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer published a list of more than 50 Twitter users who had expressed fear about the outcome of the 2016 election, urging its readers to “punish” them with a barrage of tweets that would drive them to suicide.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/10/white-supremacists-urge-trolling-clinton-supporters-suicide/93617792/
    White supremacists urge trolling Clinton supporters to suicide
  • “Gaming communities are mourning the death of prominent transgender game developer Rachel Bryk, who committed suicide on April 23.  Bryk, 23, was plagued by chronic pain, which she told friends was a result of rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. She took her own life by jumping from the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan to New Jersey, something she discussed on social media platform ask.fm in the days before her death.Over the past two years, Bryk had become one of the most prominent game developers on a software project called Dolphin. She was well-known for her work on Gamecube and Wii emulators—her favorite being Pucca’s Kisses. Despite her beloved status in online gaming communities, Bryk commented on a popular 4chan forum that she was withdrawing from various sites because she suffered constant, trans-phobic harassment. After her death, word quickly spread throughout these communities, and forums were flooded with memorial posts in her honor, and tributes to her work and collaborative nature.”  http://www.vocativ.com/culture/lgbt/transgender-developer-rachel-bryk-commits-suicide/
    Online Troll Urges Game Developer Rachel Bryk To Commit Suicide

  • https://mic.com/articles/144228/echoes-exposed-the-secret-symbol-neo-nazis-use-to-target-jews-online#.IxDNSqLMQ
    Echoes Exposed: The Secret Symbol Neo Nazis Use to Target Jews Online”  (It should be noted that many Jews including this writer, have owned this identifier. That’s MS (((Emma Rosenthal))) Thank you very much)

  • “This is gaslighting on the macro-level, and it permeates subtly through the internet and into professional spaces. The dismantling of trust in terminology, lived experiences, and scholarship are devastating blows to many who are trying to survive slow violence and build thriving, successful careers and existences.” https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/flickering-the-gaslight-tactics-of-organized-online-harassment Flickering the Gaslight: Tactics of Organized Online Harassment

  • “It’s time we discussed the radicalisation of angry, young white men in a similar way. The manosphere gave us Elliot Rodger. He was a regular on the forum “PUAhate” – populated by bitter men who had tried the techniques advocated by so-called “pick-up artists” to attract women and failed.Reading through the posting history of individual aliases, it’s possible to chart their progress from vague dissatisfaction, and desire for social status and sexual success, to full-blown adherence to a cohesive ideology of white supremacy and misogyny. Neofascists treat these websites as recruitment grounds. They find angry, frustrated young men and groom them in their own image. Yet there’s no Prevent equivalent to try to stamp this out.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/15/alt-right-manosphere-mainstream-politics-breitbart
    We need to talk about the online radicalisation of young, white men
  • “One floor of the school’s dorms held the fraternity Kappa Alpha Order. She noted that the way to spot the floor was every window held a Confederate flag.“Those flags never let me forget that I was not wanted at any point in history, not then and not now, not in my temporary home, the place where I slept, the place my mother was spending her hard-earned money to send me,” Clayton said.
    After writing the wrenching article, someone sent her a link to an opposing article written by someone at the school calling her a liar. They said the discrimination conservatives face now comes at the hands of those seeking “diversity,” which “is an attack on whiteness.”
    Not long after, she found out about Adkins posting an article about attacking non-Republicans on the website she works for. It even references her experience. He claimed that within his first week on campus he’d already made enemies simply because he was a Republican.
    “After I wrote the piece that I wrote I was v worried about people not believing me,” Clayton wrote on Twitter. “I was flat out called a liar by some. I was called a liar by people who went to school with me, people who saw that sh*t happened. So, I worried about not being believed [sic].””
    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/buzzfeed-writer-responds-in-horror-after-trump-fan-who-once-attacked-her-online-hacks-student-at-her-alma-mater/ 
    Buzzfeed writer horrified to learn that Kentucky machete attacker was her online troll

  • “Twitter, for the past five years, has been a machine where I put in unpaid work and tension headaches come out. I write jokes there for free. I post political commentary for free. I answer questions for free. I teach feminism 101 for free. Off Twitter, these are all things by which I make my living – in fact, they comprise the totality of my income. But on Twitter, I do them pro bono and, in return, I am micromanaged in real time by strangers; neo-Nazis mine my personal life for vulnerabilities to exploit; and men enjoy unfettered, direct access to my brain so they can inform me, for the thousandth time, that they would gladly rape me if I weren’t so fat.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/03/ive-left-twitter-unusable-anyone-but-trolls-robots-dictators-lindy-west
    I’ve left Twitter. It is unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators

  • http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/health/teen-suicide-cyberbullying-trnd/index.html?sr=fbcnni120216teen-suicide-cyberbullying  
    Teen who was relentlessly bullied kills herself in front of her family
  • “These ruthless attacks and harassment go beyond personal disagreements. The language used in these attacks are often deliberately chosen from the pool of women-focused, racial, or gender-identity based slurs. This affects not only the person targeted but also the bystanders, creating a chilling effect for women thinking of participating in public life. In an article on Mother Jones, Jaclyn Friedman, the executive director for Women, Action and the Media, says “The idea that a social-media network should be entirely neutral is a myth, [n]eutral platforms are only neutral for straight white dudes. These companies need to make a decision: Do I want to be making a money off of a platform where abusers and harassers feel more comfortable than the abused and harassed?”The irony is that while those flinging these insults or participating in harassment cry free speech as a justification, they limit others in their ability to speak freely.” http://www.policymic.com/articles/6…
    6 Insidious Ways Social Media Can Be Used to Silence Women
  • https://vimeo.com/44544403
    Ill Doctrine: Why I Will Feed The Trolls If I Damn Well Want
  • https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/1050620138361443/
    Watch men read the hateful tweets that female sport writers deal with everyday     -Moderators have the obligation to forbid this abusive behavior, delete it, and ban and block the abusers. This is not free speech, this is abuse and harassment. Free speech is their right to create their own venue for this crap. This includes activists in our own spaces, groups, pages and walls. NO ABUSE.
  • Hilde Kate Lysiak, a 9-year-old reporter who wrote about a suspected murder in her small Pennsylvania town, has defended herself after some locals said a young girl should be “playing with dolls” and not covering serious crime: “If you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computer and do something about the news. There, is that cute enough for you?”
     https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/06/nine-year-old-us-reporter-defiant-after-critics-say-go-back-to-playing-with-dolls

    Nine-year-old US reporter defiant after critics say ‘go back to playing with dolls’

  •  “She had been getting bullied for a long time, to the point where the happy, bubbly girl that I knew changed,” she said. “They hacked into her email and they created a Facebook page and they massacred her.” http://thegrio.com/2015/03/06/mother-bullying-online-teen-suicide/  
    Mother Says Cyber-Bullying Drove 14-Yr-Old Daughter To Suicide
  • “73% of women have experienced cyber violence, according to a new report “Cyber violence is just as damaging to women as physical violence, according to a new U.N. report, which warns women are growing even more vulnerable to cyber violence as more and more regions gain internet access.”
    http://time.com/4049106/un-cyber-violence-physical-violence/
    U.N. Says Cyber Violence Is Equivalent to Physical Violence Against Women
    http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/cyber_violence_gender%20report.pdf
  • “Ignore the barrage of violent threats and harassing messages that confront you online every day.” That’s what women are told. But these relentless messages are an assault on women’s careers, their psychological bandwidth, and their freedom to live online. We have been thinking about Internet harassment all wrong….None of this makes me exceptional. It just makes me a woman with an Internet connection. Here’s just a sampling of the noxious online commentary directed at other women in recent years. To Alyssa Royse, a sex and relationships blogger, for saying that she hated The Dark Knight: “you are clearly retarded, i hope someone shoots then rapes you.” To Kathy Sierra, a technology writer, for blogging about software, coding, and design: “i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.” To Lindy West, a writer at the women’s website Jezebel, for critiquing a comedian’s rape joke: “I just want to rape her with a traffic cone.” To Rebecca Watson, an atheist commentator, for blogging about sexism in the skeptic community: “If I lived in Boston I’d put a bullet in your brain.” To Catherine Mayer, a journalist at Time magazine, for no particular reason: “A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10:47 PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROYING EVERYTHING.”
    http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/01/amanda-hess-why-women-arent-welcome-internet
    Amanda Hess: “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”
  • https://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/flaming-women-personal-attacks-on-listserves-and-the-penis-proletariat/
    Flaming Women: Personal Attacks on Listserves and the Penis Proletariat
  • “”Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing: you can survive it,” Lewsinsky said. She said her role in a presidential sex scandal turned her into “patient zero” for online bullying, and that she was branded “a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, ‘that woman.'”
    Cybertrolls increasingly target women
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyberbullying-cybertrolling-increasingly-target-women-monica-lewinsky-ashley-judd/ 
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