All about the F-Word: FEMINISM vs. online bullying

Today we will be discussing one of the most important F-Words – Feminism. Just to be clear, this word simply refers to general equality (i.e., economic, social, political), as well as overall respect for women’s rights. Largely misunderstood, this term historically resulted in occasionally ludicrous posts, where people outright reject feminism based on the mistaken notion that it refers to more traditional sex roles or that it requires a certain political affiliation, profession, job title, social status, or physical appearance. In addition, people who support feminism, such as a TV-host and writer, Jenna Busch, have been bullied and occasionally even threatened. This post further explores this problem, discusses its psychological implications, and offers some advice to those targeted by online bullying.

Many people, in particular women, who post about feminism or blog about gender equality get harassed and even threatened to be raped or killed. Often, the bullies go as far as to reveal the blogger’s personal information (i.e. doxing) in order to further intimidate them. This is NOT ok. This is the very kind of bullying that the geek culture seeks to overcome. Who better to know all about being bullied and not fitting in than us geeks? Well, it seems that even within our culture, with everything we’ve been able to overcome, there’s still a great amount of bullying and to some extent, it is worse than ever, since online bullying can be harder to get away from than offline bullying.

I am honored to be interviewing Ms. Jenna Busch, a writer, blogger, and co-host of everything geek. This past week, Jenna herself has been subjected to some really intense online bullying due to her support of Anita Sarkeesian, a video game critic and vlogger, who was recently forced out of her home due to particularly harrowing death threats, where Sarkeesian was told that the individual had found her personal home address and the address of her parents, threatening to kill them all. Bloggers big and small, including celebrities, such as Joss Whedon and Jenna Busch herself, posted comments to show their support of Sarkeesian, many of them then trolled and threatened by misogynistic trolls.

Superhero Therapy (SH): Jenna, thank you so much for your support of female geeks. You spend countless hours standing up for equality in the gaming world, as well as other domains of geekdom. Can you talk a little about your mission?

Jenna Busch (JB): I’ve always been a feminist (not sure when that turned into a bad word) and I’ve always been an advocate for women’s rights. It still baffles me that anyone isn’t. When I started my job as a reporter covering pop culture and geekdom (it was my third career), I was one of the few women doing it. Set visits, junkets, video game launches were largely me and a ton of male reporters. The funny thing was, not one of them ever gave my geekdom a second thought. Nor did my male friends growing up. However, once my love for video games, comics, etc. became a matter of public knowledge, I was asked to prove myself over and over again. Female geeks are out there. We are legion, as I said in my initial post about the Star Wars casting, which is where Legion of Leia came from. There is no reason we shouldn’t be acknowledged.

I started the site — movement, actually, to support women in sci-fi and it seems like we need this more than ever now. I want young women to know that they’re not alone in what they love, they have every right to be a geek and ask, as a large portion of the geek population, to see themselves represented in a positive way. I want them to know that we can change things. Did you know that 20% of crowd scenes in film and TV are women? Well, talking about it is changing things. The little girl who came up to me when she found out I was a comic book author told me she didn’t know that girls did that. Well, she does now. Star Wars has a slew of new female characters. However, we have a long way to go, as this week proves.

 

SH: You mentioned on Facebook that over the past week you’ve been attacked and called names, can you please talk about what happened?

JB: This week has been horrifying. Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m used to trolls and I rarely take them seriously. You put a daily show on the web and you get called “stupid, dumb blond”, whatever. There will always be trolls. This week, however has crossed a line, especially the rape and death threats sent to Anita Sarkeesian for daring to let people know the way women are portrayed in video games. What they did to Depression Quest developer Zoe Quinn, between the doxing and threats.

Personally, I’ve seen it all over my pages and in forums. I’ve had to block people from my personal page and Google+. I’ve been called a bitch, a whore and a liar for posting the new statistics that say women are now almost half of gamers. I’ve been told to go fuck myself for posting the video “What if Girl Geeks Acted Like Guy Geeks” and fielded nasty comments for saying that Joss Whedon’s support of Anita was a good thing. When I mentioned that the new Justice League ride promo for Six Flags has five male characters and two female characters and the two females (and two males) were tied up, and wondered about my own negative reaction, I was sent this comment: “The only drawback is how is she gonna fetch my beer and make me a sammich when she’s all tied up? Seriously stop reading into things that aren’t an issue to begin with and stir the pot. Find something creative or inspirational to write about. We already have too many cooks in the kitchen stirring the pot…” And this is just me. This is happening to women all over the place.

Now, insults are a part of the business. I’m pretty thick-skinned about this. All of this is troubling, but not scary. What is scary is that my friends and fellow reporters are being threatened with rape and death (and yes, that’s happened to me as well) and had their personal information put online. It’s awful to have to discuss with my boyfriend what we should do if our address is put online or our friends or family are put in danger because of what I do for a living. Look, I’m not covering war, or religion or politics. I’m covering video games and comics. I just don’t understand the insane amount of anger here. What are they so afraid of? No one is taking their toys away.

 

ST: In your opinion and judging by your observations, would you say that misogyny is increasing or decreasing in the geek community?

JB:I think the people who are misogynists are getting louder and more threatening. Look, I hang out with a lot of male geeks and I always have. Even when we don’t agree, they have never said anything like this. Good, old-fashioned debate is part of being a geek. It’s the anonymity of the Internet that’s allowing these people to rattle their sabers this way. Certain celebrities participating in posting doxing videos on their Twitter accounts isn’t exactly helping.

I was just talking about an incident when I was back in college that I think speaks to this. I had to walk down a street to get to my theater classes every day. I passed a construction site, and I was harassed daily. One day I was on the other side of the street when the guy told me to “smile, baby.” I just ignored him and he said, “God, you’re a fucking cunt.” Obviously I reported all of this. When I was telling a bunch of people back in my dorm, one guy said, “You know, I wish I could do that.” I said, “What?” He said, “Call some bitch a cunt without getting in trouble.” Seriously. Everyone else yelled at him for it, but it says something. I think a lot of these guys wouldn’t do this to our faces. It’s the fact that no one knows who they are and they have a ton of anonymous support. The only way to combat this is to take this, and the threats seriously and have an honest discussion about why this is happening. Is it because we’re in a period of change in the industry and women are now both vocal geeks and half of gamers? Is it fear? Are they afraid we’re going to break into the clubhouse? (We’ve always been here, guys.) Or is this, as I suspect, part of the larger backlash against women, from reproductive rights on down the line?

 

ST: What kind of message do you want to spread to the geek girls who have also been subjected to Internet trolling and threats? Is there any message you want to send to both sexes about how we can possibly work on this issue?

JB: Ladies, if you’ve received threats, the first thing you do is take a screen shot of what was sent, link back to who it was from, either a Twitter account or email or FB post, etc. Take a screen shot of their page and the IP address. Keep a record of these things and report them. Though online threats have often been ignored by the authorities, I don’t think that’s going to be the case anymore. If someone sent a letter to someone’s home with the sort of things that people have been saying to women in the past few days, they’d be arrested. Twitter recently changed its policy after the harassment of Zelda Williams. The other thing is, tell someone. Tell everyone. Make it as public as possible, so everyone is aware. And ignore the people who say (and I’ve gotten a slew of these comments lately), it’s probably just some kid in his basement and he’ll never actually do anything. Maybe it is, but with the level of violence these days, the shooting in Santa Barbara and the current climate of hatred against feminists, it’s not something to take lightly. It’s not okay.

As I said before, there are always going to be trolls, but I think some serious discussion needs to take place about why this is happening before we can change anything. Here’s to hoping we can.

 

ST: Thanks, so much, Jenna! You’re amazing and we love you!

Now, let’s talk about what makes people troll in the first place. Since the internet allows for at least some level of anonymity, what many might experience as a disagreement, can be potentially expressed as a threat due to a psychological phenomenon, called deindividuation. This term refers to someone’s loss of a personal identity (and often moral values) when they are in a crowd, causing them to act more drastically than they would on an individual basis when their identity is known. Since the internet is vast and is perceived to offer a degree of anonymity, people’s aggressive tendencies can become outright violent.

While most people do not resort to threats of violence, it often does not take many comments to ruin our day or make us feel unsafe. Jenna already offered some great tips of what to do if you’re being cyber bullied, here are some more:

1. As Jenna mentioned, take a screen shot of the post or comment
2. Contact authorities if you are threatened
3. Tell someone, a friend, a family member, or someone who’s been through it
4. Blog about your experience –  if it’s happening to you, it’s happened to someone else. Don’t suffer in silence, write about it to reach others
5. Look for people who’ve had similar experiences. When people share painful experiences that they have been through, this can often allow them to feel more understood and potentially allow them to feel better
6. If you’re having a hard time, begin to experience severe depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide, please speak to someone. You can see a therapist or call the suicide hotline (this is absolutely 100% free): 1-800-273-8255

 

COMPASSIONATE SUPERHERO CHALLENGE

Lastly, I would like to invite all of you to become compassionate superheroes. If you see someone being bullied, offer a kind word of support. You don’t even need to stand up to the bully if you don’t want to, just showing your support to the person being victimized can potentially mean the difference between life and death. A warm comment, a smile, a virtual (or a real-life) hug can be all it takes to show someone that you care and can make all the difference. Are you up for the compassionate superhero challenge?