The Problem with Newspapers Is, They Don’t Have – Uh, What IS Their Problem
A passage from the NYT today, corrected for accuracy and proportion:
Menacing behavior is certainly not unique to the Internet. But since the Web offers
the option of anonymity with no accountabilitya measure of physical distance missing from interactions in what netheads call “meatspace,” online conversations areoften more prone to decay into ugliness than those in other mediafar less likely to lead to violence than arguments in bars, on public transportation, or in traffic. “Let’s face it,” said [smarter people than the Times bothered to talk to], “while there are certainly bad incidents from time to time, you’re far safer getting into an argument online than at your office, in line to grab that last Wii, or at a busy intersection. It’s work to hunt someone you don’t like on the ‘net down and kill them. Even very angry people usually can’t be bothered. Most assaults and even murders are the result of poor impulse control, and people standing right in front of you have much less time and space to control themselves when you tick them off than someone online does.”“I wish people would spend even more time online than they do,” said some cop somewhere who’d bothered to think things through for a minute. “The police would have a far easier time.”
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
April 9, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Close to perfect.
Comment by Nick Kasoff —
April 9, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
Of course, there is never a conversation in the Times which decays into ugliness. That would be because the Times doesn’t have conversations, it is a great big overfed monologue.
Nick Kasoff
The Thug Report
Comment by Leonard —
April 9, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
Go read the feminist blogs if you want more about this issue. (Feministing, Pandagon, probably others are running with it.)
I tend to agree it’s a tempest in a (erudite famous privileged female) teacup. But I’m not famous. Nor female. It may be that I’m a pig.
I’m sure it’s still a problem for female bloggers as far as it goes. So, if they get famous enough to draw the inevitable trolls… they do need to edit their comments. Yes, this is unfair. But they certainly don’t need Jimbo Wales to give them permission. Just grow some ovaries and do it on your own say-so. Or just turn off comments altogether.
If a blogger gets famous enough, then she may need to adopt software to democratize moderation. (Ref: Slashdot.) Or, again: just turn off comments altogether.
The technological solutions exist. To the extent it’s a real problem, it’s mainly a matter of deploying those solutions. But it does require that female bloggers facing vexing email/comment problems to accept the fact that they face an environment that is distinctly, and unfairly, more harsh than that faced by their male peers.
Male “privilege”? No, But advantage; power: yes.
Comment by Daniel DiRito —
April 9, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
Where is my Easter Bonnet?
While some may see the blogosphere and the behavior of its participants as a new phenomenon, it isn’t difficult to find an appropriate predecessor model. That model is found on the streets of any metropolitan area and it is called traffic and the prevalence of road rudeness…or in its extreme…road rage.
Granted, personal attacks and snark on the internet are not likely to lead to fatalities, but if computers had wheels, it certainly would.
The problem on the highway or the internet isn’t going to be resolved through a badge system. Did anyone attend Easter mass yesterday and witness the value of symbols…no not the crucifix behind the altar or the statue at the entrance; I’m talking about the pretty new Easter outfits…complete with bonnets and bow ties. These are the outfits worn by the same people who also attend Christmas mass every year without fail…and then get into their shiny clean vehicle and race out of the parking lot without ever yielding to the old woman walking to her car that is parked in the back row because she forgot that it was Easter Sunday and foolishly arrived at the same time she does each and every Sunday.
Read more on the relationship between blog civility and Easter Bonnets…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Comment by Jackmormon —
April 9, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
Male “privilege� No, But advantage; power: yes.
Wait, I’m not understanding this distinction. Care to explain?
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Sure. “Privilege” is an advantage or power granted by (and enforced by) the state, to a person, class of people, or corporation.
This is, of course, unfair. To the extent that a privilege is unneeded for the functioning of the state, it is (arguably) wrong. And we thus generally oppose privilege. For example, it used to be the case that only white men with property were given the vote. Blacks used to be legally segregated. In feudal times into early modern, the aristocracy was held to a different law than the commoners, so that, for example, a lord was legally entitled to strike a vassal who refused to make obeisance (i.e. doffing a hat).
Historically, over the past 2-3 centures especially, most privilege has been abolished, or generalized to the whole mass of the people (and thus become a right or an entitlement, depending on whether it is a negative claim against, or a positive claim on others). This was part of the great project of the Enlightenment.
The left has appropriated the term and essentially redefined it to mean any advantage, particularly social advantages. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. But I’m a stickler for using words precisely, and this particular usage offends me since it moots a useful word without adding a new word to replace it, thus decreasing the set of things we can talk about with precision.
Men are privileged in the leftist sense, meaning, they have certain advantages. For example, because we are on average physically more powerful than women, we are more able to walk around the streets, especially at night. Because men tend to be sexually attracted to women only, we don’t need to fear much about rape, at least outside of male-only environments. Or again, because we tend to be the propositioning sex, men don’t need to worry much about pushy women pestering us for cyber sex. All of these things (and many, many other such) would be considered “male privilege” by modern feminists.
Comment by Barry —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:38 am
Leonard, IIRC the issue is specific threats to female bloggers, not uncivil comments.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:46 am
Specific threats to female bloggers are bad. I was talking to Megan McArdle last week about how I always had trouble believing she got the amount of “hate mail” she talks about when I hardly ever get any, until I remembered, “Oh right. Sexism.”
Comment by Dave W. —
April 10, 2007 @ 10:01 am
Definitely works for me & Ray Ray.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2007 @ 10:33 am
Barry, specific threats are bad. General threats are bad, too. I’m not sure if we’re agreeing or not.
What I think Jim is getting at, and certainly what I am saying, is that while these things are bad we need to place them in context. Online threats are preferable to real-life threats. Online threats also have technological solutions: not perfect, but they can help. For those that remain, I rather doubt there’s much anyone can do about them. There are some problems which people just have to live with. This may be one of them.
But the “issue” here, at least to some people, is larger than just emailed threats. Read Valenti’s piece in the Guardian. She’s talking in very general terms about the internet. She’s talking about harrassment of various kinds on the web, email, blogs, “online forums”, IRC (though I don’t think she knows that).
Comment by Walt —
April 10, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Leonard: That’s not what feminists mean by privilege.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
Walt, what do you think feminists mean by privilege?
I just googled “definition of male privilege”. Nine hits; one of which is a well-known feminist blog, Alas, with an article entitled The Male Privilege Checklist. I invite the fair-minded reader to evaluate if you think the woman who wrote it thinks of privilege as I suggested. The items I listed above, are #8, #7, and #5 on her list.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
April 10, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
In Kathy Sierra’s case, she was receiving really ugly death threats — e.g., photoshopped pictures of her gagged and in a noose. She (quite properly) contacted the police, and I hope they arrest whoever sent her those messages.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Wow, that’s awful. Yeah, book the bastard.
It does show that existing law is adequate to many more internet situations than some pundits and politicians acknowledge. If someone sent her such pictures via snail mail or courier they’d merit the same level of response.
Comment by Mona —
April 10, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
I’m so conflicted about this topic, i.e., whether sexism drives some of the hatred toward some women in the blogosphere. Part of it a visceral rejection of screaming “sexism!” on my own behalf, and detesting those who work hard to assert victim status over what I deem to be de minimis “injuries” from “sexist” commentary or behavior.
However, a gay, male, libertarian friend of mine — who tends to see these things the way I do — recently emailed me opining that some of the loathing of me from the right, and the over-the-top bile directed my way, is the by-product of the things I say coming from, as he put it, “an entity with a vagina.”
I’d have never said that. It makes me uncomfortable to even think about claiming that belief because of that whole aversion to victimhood-seeking thing. But I suppose I should consider that there might be some truth to it.
Comment by Walt —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
Leonard: Sorry, I meant to write a real comment, but I submitted a one-liner instead. But screw it. Reading your comment again, you have clearly assigned yourself property rights over the term “privilege”, and your complaint is mainly you bitching “you kids get off my damn lawn,” and it’s not even your lawn. I don’t see a productive conversation coming out of this.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
You’re an interesting test case, Mona. You and I aren’t directly comparable in terms of comment tone here for a couple of reasons: 1) The site has self-selected for people who can stand me; 2) My besetting vice is glibness, while you err, when you err at all, on the side of sweet, sweet shrillitude! (And I commend you on this!) And of course, nobody doesn’t like Alex – he’s Alex!
But I have thought about comparing you and Matthew Yglesias on one dimension, which is that you’re both repentant Iraq hawks, and both of you, from time to time, get shit for not having “figured it out sooner” or whatever, from the left – you here and Matt on his own site. And what I sometimes ask myself is, Does the criticism on that score specifically of you here vary in degree or kind from the criticism of Matt on his site. And I don’t think so. But maybe I’m wrong.
Meanwhile, Jeff Goldstein is more vicious in his attacks on you than on me, but some of that may be Old Pals Act stuff – because Jeff and I are both first generation warbloggers, we have a mutual history dating from a time before rancor; so maybe his heart just isn’t in it.
The real test case would be to put me in front of an instinctively hostile crowd like the Inactivist readership and see how reactions would compare. (For reasons already discussed, we can’t use Alex . . . )
So that’s a lot of saying very little. But it’s what I got.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
Walt, “my” definition of the term is hardly novel — it’s just the meaning that was widespread up until, I don’t know… the 60s or 70s, is my guess. And for that matter, it’s still the first definition found in many dictionaries. Check m-w.com, and check wikipedia.
That said: you’re damn right — get off my damn lawn! Goddam meddling kids!
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 10, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
Seems like the lexical equivalent of pixelbitching, Leonard. I absolutely grant you the etymology, but ordinary language and simple definition in other online dictionaries (American Heritage, Dictionary.com) make clear the multiplex senses of the word.
And the thing is, it’s a side issue. We know what feminists mean when they use the word privilege. We could call it “clasquethorp” or “vugkiln” but we’d still have the thing itself to embrace, reject, qualify or expand.
Comment by Leonard —
April 10, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
You too! Get off my lawn!
“Pixelbitching”? … OK, I looked it up. No I don’t think so. I’m not using a obscure meaning here – I’m using the #1 meaning, or perhaps #2, depending on where you look.
Pixelbitching? The body is right in the middle of the 20×20 room!
And yes, it’s a side issue. Discussions often slide. But the key thing here is that I expect people to reject privilege, on the whole, while I expect them to tolerate, if grudgingly, most vugkiln. This is why two words are needed. Libertarians should be particularly aware of this problem.
Comment by Mona —
April 11, 2007 @ 7:33 am
Yes, but it goes well, well beyond Jeff. For one thing, one of the pro-war, Islamofascistnazi-hating neolibertarians I co-blogged with at Inactivist once angrily advised me that my tone and substance were unacceptable because Inactivist “is not highclearing.” This same individual, however, subsequently and with others at QandO has lamented that I will be the destruction of poor Jim Henley’s blog — Jim you see, is at least an interesting read, even tho it was once suggested that my shit belonged here.
But all that said, they are not remotely more vicious toward me than they are toward Greenwald, and a significant part of their disgust with me is my association with him. Greenwald is bombastic and shrill as well, but that all decorates some awesome analytical abilities. I’m more purely polemical on the same issues than analytical, but in any event, I am not hated in any more depth or degree than he is.
The hatred may come out in some sexist-type rhetoric, just as Greenwald inspires some to get homophobic. But those are just rhetorical weapons resorted to because we really piss them off, and not because of sexist or homophobic sentiments yearning to break free — I think.
As for you, you have not made it a point to constantly zero in on neolibertarian and allied spewings, and hold them up for ridicule and/or denunciation. Having once resided in those ranks (but I’m 90% sure I never self-identified as a “neolibertarian,” but I may have breifly when the term first came out — I honestly do not remember), my change of political posture began to manifest there and was not well-received for very long, and it outrages me not that people disagrreed with me, but that they think merely remaining silent about, oh, torture or Executive law-breaking allows them to say: “Who me? I never supported torture or breaking the law!” As they spend much of their time supporting a regime that does these things and attacking that regime’s critics.
I have contempt for them, and don’t hide it. That will piss people off, and I don’t think it is sexist for them not to like that.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 11, 2007 @ 7:39 am
Then my work here has not been in vain!
Interesting response, in toto. Thanks.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
April 11, 2007 @ 8:17 am
I’d compare Mona to John Cole, when it comes to being ranted at by people still keen on the war, and I think that Mona does get poo flung at her that John doesn’t.
(Rest assured, I am not suggesting (or at least not trying to suggest) that Mona is really a pre-Bush Republican or that John is really a middle-of-the-road libertarian. Just using the one issue.)
Comment by Dave W. —
April 11, 2007 @ 9:36 am
(For reasons already discussed, we can’t use Alex . . . )
Ray Ray rawks!
Comment by Avram —
April 11, 2007 @ 10:43 am
Leonard: evaluate if you think the woman who wrote it
That “woman” is a man, Barry Deutsch.