The Online (and Offline) Misogyny Blues

So I've been reading about the whole Kathy Sierra debacle this week. Frankly, I wish I could say I was surprised to read about vicious insults and threats hurled at an online personality but, well, I've been online too long to be shocked by users' bad behavior. I think the only aspects of the situation that surprise me are that anyone could get so pissed off at a software programmer and that there has been such a stir online in Sierra's defense. It's much more difficult offline to get dozens, if not hundreds, of people to rally to your support if you've been subjected to threats on your life or sexual well-being.

Joan Walsh at Salon.com has an interesting piece today about the misogyny that seems to rage on this here Interweb. She points out that not only are women subject to sexist bullshit but that men who get on their readers' wrong side are often subjected to implications that they're gay. As if that were the worst thing in the world.

All this misogyny and homophobia seems to be the product of less-than-burly men using the mighty shield of online anonymity to vent their inner frustrations and insecurities. I assume the "less-than-burly" part because one, if they were really manly men they wouldn't feel the need to spew vitriol on total strangers, attacking their sexuality in one way another; and it also seems like if they're so tough they'd be doing things like caber-tossing, tuning up their Harley-Davidsons or walking uphill pulling a semi truck for charity instead of sitting at their computers thinking of the crudest thing they could possibly say to someone they've never met.

In her piece today, Walsh cites a thread of insults that came in response to an interview she did with Anne Lamott, a former Salon.com columnist:

But boy, there were plenty of insults, and most of them had to do with us as women -- as mothers, as sexual objects, as writers, as professional women in the world. To boil it down, we're wrinkly old hags (even though Lamott said my neck looks good! WTF?); we're narcissists and bad mothers, and worst of all, for writers, we're really bad writers, and terribly stupid. But mostly we're just bad women. Bad, bad women. And did I mention ugly and wrinkly?

How immature is that -- calling a couple of writers "ugly and wrinkly," as if that had anything to do with the quality of their work? It sounds as stupid as if I were to say something like, "OMG Mister Male Blogger, you suck 'cos you have a BALD SPOT! EEEEEW!" Who above the age of 13 thinks that's funny and sporting? (But then I forget -- men grow more distinguished as they age, whereas women only become "wrinkly old hags" -- a theory that has abounded in the world since well before the birth of the Internet.)

Those who argue against Sierra say it's a matter of free speech for people to comment however they like online. And while insults are certainly free for the throwing, threats of sexual or non-sexual violence aren't protected speech in American reality, virtual or not.

Some of the responders to Walsh's column today argue that men are often objectified and insulted online as well, and I don't doubt that's true, but I tend to side with her, and with Sierra, simply because I still see sexism abounding offline as well -- particularly in the realm of live music.

During South By Southwest, one local news organization had this appalling headline over a short blurb on its Web site: "All-Female Rock Band To Play At SXSW" -- as if women in rock-'n'-roll were still a sort of novelty (never mind The Supremes, The Ronettes, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Joan Jett ... do I need to go on?). On top of that, my best friend -- a singer-songwriter -- told me last week that in six years of booking gigs for herself as a solo act, the band she used to lead and the band she's in right now, she has never seen a venue where a woman is in charge of booking the bands. It's not that female acts never get gigs -- we've got Terri Hendrix, Cheryl Murdoch and Patrice Pike, to name just a few outstanding female musicians -- but it seems like women aren't in charge of all the business behind the music, and that's kind of an important thing to have some control over. It's like the old issue of there being so few black quarterbacks in the NFL.

On one hand, I like to think that the news headline & my best friend's experience might be anomalies -- after all, I'm in Texas, and we're not the most socially progressive state in the union. On the other hand, we're in Central Texas -- Austin and San Marcos -- which is the "progressive" part of the state, allegedly full of free-thinkers and intellectuals (aside from most of the people you'll find in and around the State Capitol). If the attitude toward women here is basically to pat them on the head & notice that it's cute that they're trying to play rock-'n'-roll, I shudder to think what female musicians in more socially conservative areas have to go through.

I don't usually consider myself a feminist -- just as I've known men who were chauvinist pigs, I've known women who have fit the stereotype that chauvinist pigs carry around in their heads -- but the Kathy Sierra situation has inspired no small amount of sympathy and an awareness of how much it still sometimes sucks to be a woman.