A Conundrum

Earlier today, someone directed me to this article on the online harassment of women. I've been pondering the problem today, and it's a very difficult one.

I'm going to take the author at her word about the scale of the problem. I don't actually know that she's right about it, and as she apparently writes a column about sex, it may be that there is a lightning-rod effect in terms of drawing sexually-aggressive responses. On the other hand, she cites some evidence that backs up her position that this is a problem on the kind of very large scale she's describing. So, for the purpose of this discussion, I'm just going to assume she's completely right about the facts, and consider what might be done about it.

She has several implied measures that she thinks would improve things, all of which prove to be problematic on even a moment's consideration:

1) Police action. The problems here are twofold:

(a) The very scale of the problem defies policing as a workable response. Even with the right tools (see the next point), it would take hours to chase down a positive identification on an anonymous comment left on a blog, or one of these "tweets." You'd have to contact the ISP or online service, get the data, and then do the work of tracking it back to the specific IP address. Then, you'd have to do the work necessary to prove that the individual you're planning to arrest is the one guy who was using that anonymous account at that specific IP address at that moment.

This is all very workable if the problem we're talking about is, say, terrorism. The incidents of terrorism are rare enough that you can run each one to ground. But she's talking about something that, according to her report, happens millions of times a day. If every cop in America did nothing else, the very scale of the problem puts it outside their power to solve. You couldn't even prosecute enough of a percentage to make an impact, so the prosecutions would have to serve as meaningful symbols. But given the difficulty of proving that the IP address ties to a specific person beyond a reasonable doubt, as well as given the possibility of 1st Amendment defenses ("She misunderstood: that was intended as parody, which is protected free speech")... well, you could easily end up losing your meaningful symbolic prosecutions, sending exactly the opposite message intended.

There's a problem with symbolic prosecutions anyway, but if you're going to make an example, it has to work.

(b) As she is herself aware, many of the tools that the police would need to address these issues effectively are the very tools that people are objecting to the NSA leveraging. Now presumably there would be less problem with police doing it, in an open environment of due process and subpoenas. Still, there is a legitimate counterbalancing interest in limiting the government's ability to do what the police would have to be able to do to be as effective as they could be. It may not be the case that there is the political will, or trust in the state, to hand over the powers they would require.

This compounds the difficulty of bringing off effective symbolic prosecutions. You can't afford to lose, because the symbol is all you've got, but you may be denied some of the evidence you require by privacy advocates (and may encounter a jury hostile to police snooping on internet activity, who could therefore find the 1A defenses more palatable than one moved chiefly by outrage at the things said to the women).

2) More female police. There are two problems with this, too:

(a) There's no draft for police. Women aren't choosing to be police officers in greater numbers because that's not what they want to do with their lives. You could make a case that women have a duty to do this, but unless women are persuaded by that case, you certainly can't make them.

(b) Even in the case of the FBI, which works extremely hard to recruit as many women agents as possible, her own evidence suggests that the very high percentage of women (19%) has not led to institutional changes making prosecutions more likely. This may be because the ratio of hot air to serious threats has proven to be so low. Again, we're talking about apparently millions of offenses a day; the actual number of these that turn into physical stalkers or attackers is so much lower that the FBI may be acting rationally in focusing its efforts elsewhere. Compared to their counterintelligence mission, for example, time invested here is much less likely to uncover and stop a serious threat; and if it does, it's a threat to one person, whereas a counterintelligence risk could threaten very many.

3) More female game designers and software engineers. The problem here is the same as 2a: "While the number of women working across the sciences is generally increasing, the percentage of women working in computer sciences peaked in 2000 and is now on the decline."

4) Get offline. This is a solution for the individual, if they're willing to pay the price she talks about in great detail. It's not a solution for the society, unless we want the internet to be a public space like a Saudi shopping mall.

5) Enable software to block hateful messages. As she points out, this will greatly improve the experience for the woman, though it takes a constant effort. However, it doesn't actually do anything at all to deal with the one person who is really a danger.

6) Treat the whole internet as a Title VII area, which is subject to intense Federal scrutiny aimed at preventing harassment of women. This has all the problems of (1), especially because (as the author of the suggestion admits) the real intent is to pressure police into working harder on this problem. It's also not going to improve the underlying tension between the sexes to extend all the pleasures of the office or campus Equal Opportunity Department to all our private internet activity. If anything, I'd think this would increase the number of men inclined to hate and lash out at women.

7) Protect yourself. The author tried to use a protective order, and describes how difficult it was to obtain (and how overwhelmed the courts are anyway). She lives in California, so she can't carry a gun (and perhaps wouldn't anyway); but even if she had one, she would have to wait until she found herself in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to use it. This could solve the most serious aspect of the problem -- an actual assault or rape attempt -- but only for those women who are willing to kill another person. That's not every woman, and that's not their fault.

I would have to say that the best workable solution is some combination of 5 and 7, combined with some efforts by everyone to make clear that this kind of behavior is not acceptable. Of course, aside from deleting comments here at the Hall, there's nothing I can do to actually enforce that. And, also of course, the whole pleasure of doing it is that it is offensive to people. Making clear that it's offensive and inappropriate isn't going to stop them, or even slow them down.

It's a difficult problem, at least for the non-DL-Sly's of the world. I suspect she's got this. But not everyone is like her!

UPDATE: Cathy Young attacks the premise I was granting in paragraph two. She's got a good argument in parts, though in the end I think she is monumentally unfair to the NYT's Douthat. I don't think I agree with his conclusion either -- we need not a new vision of masculinity, but a restoration of the old one -- but it ought to be clear that his position is far better than the kind of attacks that we're talking about here. His final lines are remarkable for their respect for the quality of women's influence, while asserting men's responsibility: "Forging this vision is a project for both sexes. Living up to it, and cleansing the Internet of the worst misogyny, is ultimately a task for men."

He may be wrong about that one-sided responsibility, too. But he's not the enemy of women: if anything, he's erring in the other direction.

10 comments:

  1. Eric Blair9:56 PM

    I think Google is trying to, through their integration of everything from Google+, You tube, the Chrome OS, Gmail and so on, to force users to use their real name, or at least one "ID".

    Most of the grief said ladies get is from anonymous trolls, who do what they do largely because they are anonymous.

    I just saw an item today explaining how the Chinese Government has pretty much shut down dissent on its twitter like app Wiebo (or something like that) by forcing users to use their real name.

    Such a thing here would probably do much to get rid of most of the trolls.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eric Blair9:57 PM

    Of course, it cuts both ways. Lots more self-censoring would probably occur if such a thing was to happen.

    What do people really want?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It could work the other way, too: women could write under pen names. I do, for that matter; always have. It's important to put some distance between your real professional self and what you write online.

    Not for disreputable reasons only! Blogging is a lot like hanging out at the pub with your friends: the company is familiar, and it's often over a few beers, but it's done out in public. You wouldn't want to be called to account for every debate you had at midnight at the Boar's Head Tavern, but in blogging every such remark is archived forever.

    Anonymity is a part of the damage, but it's also a workable solution. It's hard to stalk someone if you have no idea who they are.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous10:19 PM

    *sigh* blog about sex as a female, and see what you get. Dirty responses. Why? Because they think you asked for it.

    Really.

    And, why the f*ck did she get a message in the middle of a night, over a twitter feed? The guy did not wake her up. That was one of her friends. Oh, that was because some fool thought it was important to wake her up over a twitter feed.

    Sorry, guys, my give-a-damn is busted.

    It is just a little bit like watching some idiots try to cause a car wreck.

    Last week I had just turned off the freeway in San Diego, and saw a little black Hyunday with Tennessee plates …. and black, lacy thong panties being dangled out the window. It got the attention of the guy driving directly behind, who pulled out ahead of the car, and waved.

    Then I saw a blue bra being hung outside the window (I was directly behind it, then), and some girl taking off her shirt in the back seat.

    Fortunately both cars turned off, shortly thereafter.

    Girls who behave like that, who get hurt, or who have car wrecks, get no sympathy from me. If you want to cause a car wreck, do it someplace far away from me. If you want to talk dirty online, expect guys to think you want them to talk dirty back.

    Valerie

    ReplyDelete
  5. Google is trying to, through their integration of everything from Google+, You tube, the Chrome OS, Gmail and so on, to force users to use their real name....

    They're also doing it to make it easier for them to troll through your personal data for their own purposes. They've already been caught rifling through your gmail content, for instance, and their repeated security "failures" aren't from their incompetence.

    ...force users to use their real name....

    I dislike anonymous postings, but that's just me. Anonymity also is a legitimate protection for political speech, especially if it's unlikely to be popular with the authorities.

    The 2d Amendment acknowledges our right to keep and bear Arms, a deliberate acknowledgment of our inalienable right to our lives--to defend ourselves (and an acknowledgment of our mutual obligation to defend each other). When written, the Amendment envisioned physical Arms, certainly, but it's really technology agnostic. The Internet, and software generally, can be such Arms. Thus, a knowledge of how to get around on the Internet, how to use it and other software suites for self-protection is just as important today as having a firearm and knowing how to use it always has been. (As an aside, it's about five minutes' work to track an IP address back to its "origin;" it's just not that hard. The problem for law enforcement, though, isn't much of a matter of proving that the suspected miscreant is the one who sent the missive. It's also about five minutes' work to forge an IP address and even simpler just to use someone else's IP address.)

    I picked up all five of Cisco's baby certs for networking--exactly the skills of use here. Took me about a year. I'm no great shakes at that stuff, either; anyone can do that. The security certs that are more advanced are much like getting a concealed carry license for a firearm--it's more training and more knowledge, and entirely accessible for anyone who cares enough.

    The first step of any solution in this context is self protection. When the bad man comes, and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away. At the speed of the Internet, the only thing changes is that the seconds are microseconds and the minutes are milliseconds.

    This lady strikes me as Obama's Julia, wanting to be taken care of. Certainly, she's in an uncomfortable environment. She needs to act, though, not call on authority figures to act for her.

    Lastly, As Grim alluded, she hinted at some solutions. But nowhere did I see her write what a solution might be; what one might look like, if she couldn't think of a solution; or how to go about finding one, if she didn't know even the outlines of one. Nor did she indicate that she'd tried that and failed, so could someone help her develop a solution. All I saw was one long woe-is-me about her uncomfortable situation.

    Eric Hines

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous2:13 PM

    Eric, some of us prefer to be anonymous because our professions and professional organizations frown on conservative politics and/or commitment to traditional Judaism or Christianity.

    As far as sexual harassment on the 'net . . . Unless I am operating in a venue where I know the other participants will act like mature adults, I just assume I'm in the presence of a herd of 13-19 year olds. I've been pleasantly surprised but never disappointed. (I have not had threats made against me yet, however.)

    LittleRed1

    ReplyDelete
  7. "As far as sexual harassment on the 'net . . . Unless I am operating in a venue where I know the other participants will act like mature adults, I just assume I'm in the presence of a herd of 13-19 year olds."

    Exactly this. IF you decide to make Twitter the place you hang out, understand that you are hanging out in a 'club' where anyone can get in and say anything with no real repercussions. I avoid much of the web exactly because the intercourse there is so vile. I come to the hall precisely because it's respectable and I enjoy the discussions. So, I'd say a large part of the answer is a variation on #4- avoid much of the net, and only hang out in places where you know the crowd is decent folks.

    Now, as she's a journalist, I understand this is problematic, but is it absolutely vital that if "Twitter is the place where I laugh, whine, work, schmooze, procrastinate, and flirt. It sits in my back pocket wherever I go and lies next to me when I fall asleep. And since I first started writing in 2007, it’s become just one of the many online spaces where men come to tell me to get out.", then you need to pick a better place to hang out. If you go there for work only, that might be different, but apparently you don't separate your work from your private life and therein lies the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Even were it a necessary part of her work, how intellectually honest would the results of her work be, if she demands censorship in the very thing she's researching, even before she begins her researches?

    Eric Hines

    ReplyDelete
  9. DL Sly3:01 PM

    "It's a difficult problem, at least for the non-DL-Sly's of the world. I suspect she's got this. But not everyone is like her!"

    Wow, what an incredible compliment! Thank you!!

    As to the young lady, and I say that specifically, she will learn over time that when you put yourself out there in this world, you will get the extremes of every type in this world coming out of the woodwork to attack and defend you. Age brings the wisdom to know which of the extremes to accept into your psyche and which to let slide off your back.....or, at the very least, age gives the wisdom to let some time go by between receiving and deciding to reply to an extreme comment.
    This young lady, though, has been raised in the *hive mind* society we have today and the idea of not using those sources of validation clash with the fact that those sources are also the driving factor behind her current state of duress.

    What. to. do......

    I'm with douglass -
    "If you go there for work only, that might be different, but apparently you don't separate your work from your private life and therein lies the problem."

    And with Grim -
    "It could work the other way, too: women could write under pen names. I do, for that matter; always have. It's important to put some distance between your real professional self and what you write online."

    This is why I have used a screenname since making my presence known in the innertubes some 20 yrs ago. Now, do I think much of what I say is so inflammatory as to require annonymity? Shirley not. However, it is very hard to stalk someone when you can't figure out who there are or where they live.

    Again, thanks for the compliment. I'm touched...and not in the way y'all usually think of when I say that.
    heh
    0>;~}

    ReplyDelete
  10. I read Young's essay too, and mostly liked it. But then she's usually more evenhanded and thorough than most other pundits.

    I'll have to read Douthat's essay. This subject doesn't bring out the best in me - I am not terribly patient with women's claims to be uniquely persecuted on the 'Net.

    Men are pretty awful to each other too online. One reason I stopped visiting several conservative sites I used to like is that the guys were so nasty to each other - calling anyone who tried to be reasonable or stand up for any kind of morality "gay, pu**y whipped" etc, ad nauseum.

    That just depresses me so much.

    ReplyDelete