Do you remember when you and your friends were young and, assuming you drank then, still experimenting with alcohol? You started to find out what kind of drunk everyone was. The giggly one, the flirty one, the one who always ended up crying, the one who’d try to start fights… (Note: always drink responsibly.)
There’s a phenomenon where those behaviours would get rationalized in one of two opposing ways. There’s “they’re only like that when they’re drunk,” implying that it’s not the person’s fault, but rather due to alcohol’s magical personality-changing properties.
Or, on the flip side, there’s the idea that alcohol “lowers inhibitions,” a solvent to dissolve layers of social conditioning (and cowardice?). It reveals what the person really thinks and has wanted to say and do.
There’s another social phenomenon involving alcohol and opposing excuses as well. When women are abused or attacked, alcohol is frequently used to excuse the perpetrator’s behaviour or to blame the victim. Or often both.
But there’s something else you could swap out for alcohol in all those scenarios. It’s widely accessible, yet governed by poorly enforced rules. It can bring people together, but as often as not it’s used irresponsibly and results in hurting ourselves and others.
Some believe it has magical powers affecting identity. It’s a catalyst for bad behaviour that in turn encourages even worse behaviour. And it results in rampant abuse of women, for which they are then blamed.
I speak, of course, of the internet.
The internet’s magic personality-changing powers come from our perceptions of anonymity, or just certain effects of distance from others. In not looking others in the eye, sharing a physical space or knowing each other’s names, being online serves as the alcohol-like solvent to social inhibitions.
At its worst, it erodes the idea of shared humanity, legitimizes our hate in whatever direction we choose to spew it, provides us belonging, support, and a notion of shared community – no matter how toxic the cause it’s dedicated to – and gives us free rein to say and do things online that we’d never say or do in person.
Or so we thought.
Unfortunately, an ever-growing body of evidence is showing that internet cultural influences are spreading all too frequently into the “real” world. The virtual realm we created is now more of an incubator, and causes very real harm.
There’s a line I heard in a story on The Moth podcast a few years ago, and it’s stuck with me.
“The internet hates women.”
Adam Savage, of Mythbusters and other fame, had to have The Talk with his kids, because at age 10 they had already done rudimentary online searches for porn. There was a very key point he needed to get across, and that phrase was the crux of how he chose to do it.
Were the internet a person, the things said and done on it, where women are concerned, are really NOT okay. And by choosing to associate and interact with the internet, it will influence you in ways that are not okay. I recommend the whole story, which you can listen to here.
If you’re a woman online, there’s a scale of abuse you can expect. Even if you’re not remotely involved in porn.
The more visible you are, attracting attention, using your voice, having opinions – so commonly journalists, academics and similar public figures – the more abuse you will get.
The more representative of LGBTQ+ communities (particularly presenting as other than male/masculine), the more abuse you will get.
The more racialized you are, the more abuse you will get.
The more visibly your appearance represents a religious, cultural or ethnic group, the more abuse you will get.
The more male-dominated the field you study, write about or work in, the more abuse you will get.
The more political your job or career aspirations, the more abuse you will get.
And on, and on, and on. Mix and match as applies to you, since abusers online are more than happy to combine rape threats with anti-Semitic slurs, death threats with transphobic hate speech, doxxing with Islamophobia, or whatever is trending on a given day.
It’s become pretty standard for women who have the audacity to speak or work online to “have their ethics questioned.” (Read: be deluged with threats and abuse.) But hey, this is the world of tech, we worship innovation. Why reactively attack women online for perceived transgressions when you can proactively hunt them?
What better use of “innovation” than to protect men from women’s supposed duplicity...
Additionally, deepfakes are mentioned in that Vice article. (I’ve talked about them previously as well.) The two technologies – facial recognition AI and deepfakes – could be combined online not only to stalk and “reveal” women, but to create fake content purporting to “star” them, then out them to try and ruin their lives.
Makes mere revenge porn with the posting of intimate photos seem almost quaint. What a time to be alive.
Twitter has long been a favourite playground for online abuse. Amnesty International published excellent multi-chapter coverage on the platform’s long-running issues with toxicity, abuse of women, and the choices management has made that have allowed it to become and remain that way.
(A note about the Amnesty International piece: trigger warning for violence, abusive language, sexualized, racialized, homophobic, transphobic abuse, and more.)
It’s not just Twitter, of course. I know women who have had their Facebook accounts suspended for reporting abuse. Abuse that they’re reporting TO Facebook, that is happening ON Facebook. The abusers never seem to violate community standards, though.
As for YouTube, they’ve done a bit of a “hold my beer” when it comes to attacks and prolonged campaigns of abuse. This Twitter thread outlines the experience of one content creator (who is a man, but who happens to be gay). There’s the TL;DR version here. (Note: has swearing.) I’m sure Anita Sarkeesian could weigh in with some experience on being a YouTuber as well.
So, my fellow internet creators and citizens. When are we going to admit that it’s not the booze talking? When do we admit that the internet is the way it is because we built it and that’s the way we are? In software speak: works as designed.
When do we not just admit, but own, that the internet hates women, and so many additional people who don’t deserve it? Actually, screw this “we” nonsense. Men: you built it, and you broke it. And the technical debt you’ve accrued? It’s hurting and killing us here in the real world, and there is no respawn.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached at @melle or me@melle.ca.
