Just Another Story I’ve Been Ignoring

The internet is a strange and sometimes scary place.

I don’t really have a conclusion for today’s post, and you should know that up front. I’ve written before about how the assault on women and their rights, both here and abroad, has created in me a certain inability to process the newest of the horrible.

Just another state wanting to strip women of the right control their own bodies. Just another politician huffing on about delicate ladies who need protection from their own emotions. Just Pat Buchanan chuckling about how he hopes we won’t have a female president until long after he’s dead. Just another transvaginal this, conscience clause that, LGBTQ hating pundit hoping the gays die of AIDS. Just another, just another, just another.

There’s a story I’ve been ignoring as Just Another. It’s about a woman only a few years older than me, who runs a blog, Feminist Frequency, about feminism and media and gender and sexuality (which has been on the blog roll on the right of this page for ages). I saw her name in headlines about online harassment, and I shrugged at Just Another example of women being targeted by Reddit douchebags who are irrationally upset that women don’t fawn over them as something (video games? rap music? reality TV? I really don’t know who to blame, here) told them we would.

I finally read the whole sordid story last night, the one I bypassed out of anomie, and I couldn’t sleep. The harassment she has endured is not limited to name-calling, a tactic most vocal, feminist, sexually confident women on the internet have suffered (I’ve even been told I “must have herpes”), but includes targeting her home phone number and address, hacking her website and wikipedia page, sharing violent drawings of her being raped or assaulted, and a video game in which users can punch her in the face and watch her bruises spread:

An image from the game Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian (via The New Statesman)

I just don’t know what to do or say. Donate to her KickStarter? She already met her goal of $6000 (and raised a whopping total of $150,000)*. Write a blogpost to publicize the incident? Done. Cry a little and worry about the future of humanity? Pshaw, I do that every day. Try to understand that the men that created this game and harassed this woman are coming from a place of fear and insecurity? Fuck that shit, they belong in jail.

*You can still donate to Feminist Frequency. I donate to other causes I believe in, right? Why not a blog?

Related Post: Why I believe men belong in the feminist movement.

Related Post: Sex talk in the modern workplace? Banter or harassment?