Fark to make misogyny a bannable offense
Article on JezebelRebecca Rose
JEZEBEL
Rebecca Rose
Filed to: MISOGYNY
SEXISM
ONLINE
CYBERBULLYING
HARASSMENT
COMPUTERS
TECHNOLOGY
FORUMS
COMMENTING
FARK
DREW CURTIS
Hell yes. A major online community is cracking down on instances of abusive language towards women and guess what? It's a really big fucking deal and you should feel good about it.
Today Fark announced it would add misogyny to its moderator guidelines. For those who aren't familiar with the site, Fark (founded in 1999) was one of the first major link aggregators. They also just became one of the first sites of its kind to outright ban misogyny in comments. Let that sink in for a moment. They're doing what many other sites have said is virtually impossible because of technological reasons or because of it would cause the absolute goddamn collapse of all civil liberties and free speech or something. But Fark.com founder and site admin Drew Curtis said fuck all that noise. He just laid some serious smack down in the battle to stop online harassment of women. In a message posted today on the site, Curtis got real about the Internet's problem with women:
...if the Internet was a dude, we'd all agree that dude has a serious problem with women.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Gosh, wouldn't that be something!
the correct way to go, but unlike EarlG, I believe that posting on DU at all is an act of feeding trolls.
There were a spate of questions recently in ATA where DUers asked whether their DU contributions were used for DI. The admins kept saying that they are two different companies. However, the two companies profit the same people, and those are the people who refuse to support in any way the women who support them by posting in their sites.
All these posts lately that describe the mechanism of domestic abuse seem to have eerie parallels with the treatment of women on DU: the women keep thinking and hoping that things will get better, and genuinely have affection for the abuser. The abuser says things like "why do you make me abuse you?" which is the same sentiment as what EarlG said in that linked comment. The women are told they deserve what they get and it is their job to take what the man dishes out (which is not that far off from "all these abusive posts against feminists are useful because the rest of us learn so much, and it is your job to take the abuse for our benefit."
The abuser gives a lot of lip service, but refuses to make any changes. The abused women think about leaving but never do. Which is how things go on DU.
In the past, I gave the admins as much benefit of the doubt as I could. I assumed their decisions were made from a profit motive, and women on their sites were simply collateral damage to that. Now I see I was mistaken, and they are holders of the very attitudes we are trying to fight. I am pretty sickened that I ever contributed money to them.
It's not aimed at you specifically, Squinch, and I'd welcome hearing the opinions of other female DUers. You said:
My question is what changes (and I mean specifics, not merely 'I want an end to misogyny') need to be made at DU? I'm not looking for names of DUers as examples, but more things like 'if someone were to turn up in a thread and say something like:.....'
Maybe my opinion as a woman, a feminist, and a DUer since 2002 doesn't count, but Skinner and EarlG are no more misogynists than they're anti-semites or Islamophobes, and I mention those two forms of bigotry because I've been aware in the past some DUers have accused them of being those things. I've been on MIRT many times since DU3 started, and they've nuked misogynists along with other bigots that make an appearance at DU. The MIRT team's been nuking a repeat offender who zeroes in on feminists pretty regularly this term. Do you think admins who are misogynists would let misogynists be nuked or nuke them themselves?
In the case of what happened over at Discussionist, four separate juries voted unamimously to hide those posts. Then before either admin arrived, the troll had created a sock-puppet, which was an instant nuke. I've seen accusations thrown at them that if not for the sock, the troll would have merely had to sit out a time-out, which Skinner corrected when he posted over at Disccussionist about it.
http://www.discussionist.com/?com=view_post&forum=1025&pid=2966
Also, EarlG was *not* blaming the DUer he replied to for what the troll posted. He was correctly pointing out to her saying: ' I would like to see misogyny taken seriously by the admins here at a DU, and make this a place where women can post without this crap.' that she'd brought 'this crap' to DU and it hadn't been here before that...
The thing is that 'this crap' wasn't posted at DU. It was posted on another site, and it was brought to DU by the person who was demanding EarlG make DU 'a place where woman can post without this crap.' Which is what he pointed out when he said: 'But the only reason this crap is here is because you posted it here. It wasn't here until you did that, was it?'
Try signing up for MIRT next term, Squinch. It gives an insight into how DU works when it comes to dealing with trolls and disruptors and as it did with me when I first joined MIRT, you get to see firsthand that the admin aren't sitting on their hands and letting bigots rampage through DU. They catch up to them sooner or later
Sometimes it's good to take a break. I've done that before. Yr voice is one I'd be sad to see go, as even when we disagree (and I can only think of one feminist-related thing we disagree on) I've found what you say worth listening to and thinking about. 
