Online misogyny and feminist digilantism

Abstract

This article examines contemporary feminist ‘digilante’ responses to the increasing problem of misogyny online. In particular, it focuses on female gamers and a recent incident in which the Australian gamer Alanah Pearce responded to threats of sexual violence from young male Internet users by alerting their mothers. Pearce’s move was celebrated in international media commentary as the ‘perfect’ solution to the problem of online rape threats. This article, however, argues that while ‘do-it-yourself’ strategies such as Pearce’s have some benefits, unsupplemented, they do not constitute an adequate solution to the broader problem of gendered vitriol online. Further, they comport with a wider trend which shifts the burden of responsibility for the problem of gendered cyber-hate from perpetrators to targets, and from the public to the private sphere. Over the course of this article, I will show that the contemporary problem of gendered ‘e-bile’ has parallels with some key social issues addressed by second-wave feminism. As such, I argue that a hybrid of feminist activist efforts – including a recalibrated approach to collectivism – is required to achieve the legislative and corporate reforms necessary to address the significant social problem of gendered hate on the Internet.

Notes

1. I will not be writing ‘sic’ after grammatical, spelling and syntax errors in cited electronic communications and online material in recognition of the informality and colloquialism commonly found in such contexts.

2. I have previously used the term ‘e-bile’ to describe a range of discourses and practices that have historically been designated via terms such as ‘cyberbullying’, ‘cyber-stalking’, ‘cyber-violence’, ‘trolling’ and, most commonly, ‘flaming’ (Jane 2014a, 2014b, 2015). My case is that a new descriptor is required in order to gather under one heading a variety of denunciatory forms that share characteristic, signal features and so demand a broad field of inquiry. Further, while scholarly coverage of discourse designated by terms such as ‘trolling’ and ‘flaming’ is of enormous assistance in understanding the current circulation of hostile discourse on the Internet, it is also associated with a tendency across a range of disciplines to underplay, overlook, ignore or otherwise marginalize the prevalence and serious ethical and material ramifications of these new media discourses and practices (Jane 2015). As such, my hope is that deploying a new term will assist in underlining the prevalence, rhetorical noxiousness and stark misogyny of contemporary hostility on the Internet and social media platforms.

3. For examples, see: Herring 2002; Herring et al. 2002.

4. Citron, for instance, provides a meticulous survey of the various ways gendered cyber-hate, cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking are trivialized, ignored and sometimes mocked by Internet users and media commentators, as well as by those responsible for law enforcement, policy development and platform management (2014).

5. I acknowledge that terms such as ‘second wave’, ‘third wave’, ‘fourth wave’ and ‘postfeminist’ are contested, imprecise and problematic in their tendency to flatten contexts, universalize women’s experiences and facilitate intra-movement adversarialism (cf. Aronson 2003; Hall and Rodriguez 2003; Gillis and Munford 2004; Henry 2004; Genz and Brabon 2009; Baumgardner 2011; Budgeon 2011). I will, however, use some wave-related terminology because it provides a ‘useful shorthand’ for referencing ‘the broad strokes of feminist history’ (Baumgardner 2011). I use the term ‘cyber feminism’ in the populist sense to describe feminists whose concerns and activist approaches are primarily played out online, rather than in the tightly delineated sense found in feminist theory (cf. Consalvo 2003, 108–109; Nagle 2013a).

6. Quinn’s ex-partner, Eron Gjoni, said later that this suggestion was erroneous. He claimed it had been included in his lengthy blog dedicated to denouncing Quinn because of a typographical error (Gjoni 2014).

7. It is important to tread carefully when making distinctions between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ abuse and harassment. While much recent work in Internet studies rejects the online/offline dichotomy as ‘anachronistic’, given that networked technologies have become integrated in most aspects of daily life (Buchanan 2011, 89: see also Jensen 2011), distinguishing between these domains may still be useful in that it can provide context about particular instances of abuse. Certainly the anonymity and self-publishing opportunities associated with the cybersphere facilitate mob attacks in ways that would simply not be possible offline. There is a risk, however, that attacks which occur online are dismissed as ‘virtual’ rather than ‘real’ and are therefore not taken seriously. Cogent here is Henry and Powell’s case that TFSV can result in embodied harms which may have at least as much impact on a personal as traditional harms occurring against the physical body (2015).

8. The canon of feminist literature outlining these issues is too vast to list here. Chris Beasley does, however, provide a useful survey of feminist theorists which have drawn attention to the way mainstream social and political thoughts have legitimated the subordination of women in social and political lives (1999). Women, for instance, have been frequently presented as ‘partial beings’ and ‘helpmates’ in that they are defined in terms of men’s needs regarding pleasure, provision of services, child rearing and so on (Beasley 1999, 6–7). Carole Pateman’s work is also instructive in terms of providing an overview of the exclusion of women from the public sphere (1989; cf. Carver and Chambers 2011), while Susan Faludi provides one of the many accounts of the various ways women are controlled, shamed, silenced or otherwise shut down if they are perceived to be, for example, ‘loud and self-determined’ (1993, 92–93).

9. ‘Hacktivism’ – a portmanteau of ‘hacking’ and ‘activism’ – refers to the unauthorized access to and disruption of computer systems in the name of socio-political agendas.

10. ‘Scam-baiting’ is the practice of turning the tables on Internet scammers by scamming them back (cf. Rosenbaum 2007; Tom 2008).

11. A ‘denial-of-service’ (DoS) or ‘distributed denial-of-service’ (DDoS) attack results in a computer or online network becoming unavailable to users.

12. A similar dynamic has been observed by Mary Beard who critiques media narratives that recast the troll as an ‘errant son’ and their target as a ‘scolding but forgiving mother – a Penelope who chastises Telemachus for being rude, then patiently teaches him the error of his ways’ (cited in Mead 2014).

13. With regard to whether Pearce’s use of Facebook and Twitter constitutes a private or public act, I acknowledge the liminality of cyber domains in that they involve, as Lange puts it, the ‘publically private’ as well as the ‘privately public’ (2007). I am still designating Pearce’s actions as being primarily ‘private’, however, because they were prosecuted by her sans institutional support.

14. Indeed, Gjoni has justified his public character assassination of Quinn on the grounds that he was not being vindictive but, as a survivor of her ‘emotional abuse’, simply wished to protect others (2014).

15. An example is the vicious vigilante campaign of on and offline retaliation directed at Lori Drew, a woman whose online hoax was linked to the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier (Collins 2008).

16. While definitions of ‘trolling’ vary, in this paper, I am using the term interchangeably with ‘e-biling’.

17. ‘Don’t feed the trolls’ is the idea that ignoring Internet provocateurs will deprive them of the attention and reaction they crave, and will therefore result in their retreat.