Online Hate
Some time last year, I read a book about Japan that I really enjoyed. It was written by Anna Sherman who had been born in the US and who had moved to Japan around the time I moved to the US. I wanted to send her an email and let her know how much I enjoyed her book. Having produced a large amount of writing myself, I know how good it feels to receive such emails, especially when they come out of the blue.
I started looking around for a contact address, but I was unable to locate one. If I remember this correctly, there might have been a very indirect way to send something to the publisher first. But I had no trust in my message actually being relayed. So I gave up. On Twitter, I wrote a short tweet along the lines of "Read a wonderful book and wanted to congratulate the author. But unfortunately, I couldn't find her email address." There was a resonse that opened my eyes. The response dryly noted something to the effect that if you're a woman online, making your contact data known isn't a good idea.
At the time, I knew of the fact that women face abuse online. But I hadn't made the larger connection with something as basic as making one's email address public (or not). I mostly thought that was reserved for celebrities or famous artists. Over the years, I have received a fair amount of nasty emails. So I'm no stranger to this world. But it's one thing to be a male photo critic online, and it's quite another to be a female... anything really: journalist, politician, ... How do I know this?
You want to watch this documentary about hate directed at women online. It's multi-lingual, with English subtitles available. I was able to watch it from the US without any problems (a VPN should get you around possible region problems).
The documentary makes it very clear what's happening on the internet when women voice their opinions. The abuse I have had to endure isn't remotely comparable to what many women have to live with. My experiences are mere trifles. As unpleasant as some of them were, nobody has commented on my body type or on my sex life or on any of the things that mostly male well-off middle-class trolls direct at women (don't believe the "mostly male well-off middle-class trolls" bit? watch the documentary!).
I don't know how we allowed ourselves to have the internet turn into a hate machine. It's not like abuse didn't exist before. When I first started to be online (in 1993), I realised that some of the message boards that I had got access to were filled with abuse. This is so long ago that I don't remember much. But I am pretty certain that the abuse was fairly restricted to a small number of groups (this is maybe comparable to the situation on Reddit today). It was a bit like German Nazis: there were small numbers, but they stayed in their sorry little holes -- instead of marching around proudly and openly like they do today.
After I started blogging, I initially had comment sections. But at some stage, that became too much for me. There was a small number of people who would comment on everything, and they usually did it very aggressively. I didn't want to engage with that. Being told many times that you're just an idiot who doesn't know anything gets old pretty quickly. I didn't want to start monitoring comment sections (which is what most organisations have to do now), because I didn't (don't) have the time for that. So I disabled comments.
Over the years, people used to ask me why I didn't have any comments. People don't ask this any longer. I don't know whether this is because they know that I don't have comments or because they've figured it out themselves, given that the nastiness has now become a part of our daily lives on social media. Social media have amplified the problem and greatly, greatly emboldened the trolls.
Now that the US had a troll for president, the floodgates have fully opened. Troling has become a widely accepted practice. This would be pretty bad for our society and political life. But as the documentary makes very clear, the bulk of the burden falls on women. The documentary does not dive into the abuse the LGBTQ community has to deal with, and it mentions in passing the role of skin colour and religion.
The women in the documentary are mostly based in Europe (there's one Australian researcher). But I'm pretty sure you could make the same or a very similar documentary about other places.
Thus, if you're a heterosexual (white) man, you should find the time to watch the whole film. There are a lot of aspects covered, and there's a lot to learn. To hear these women speak of what they had to go through -- jobs lost, joy lost, the worry over raising a child, ... -- that was really, really sobering.
Change will only come if we all step up and make it stop.
If you witness abuse online: do something!
Unrelated, Bryan Formhals reminded me that I should plug my recent articles here. Bryan has a lot more experience with the business side of the web and how to go about it smartly (btw, you can hire him!). So he's probably right. Here goes:
I've done quite a bit of writing about aspects of recent German history, using photobooks as jump-off points. I used Eiko Grimberg's new book to discuss memory culture. I discussed some of the weirder aspects of Nazi Germany by reviewing a book about Thingstätten. And Yana Wernicke and Jonas Feige's new book allowed me to dive into Germany's colonial past and how that connects with the mediocre technocrats that rule the country now.
I'll mention some of the other recent articles next time. Gotta save some material, right?
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg