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DQ News: Death Threats and Hate Crimes, Attacks On Women Bloggers Escalating

I’m going to tell you a story and it’s very, very important. Please read it, all the way through. Women’s lives are at stake.

Once upon a time, there was a website. We’ll call it Mean Website 1. The owner of this website didn’t seem to like me very much. As a successful woman on the internet, this is hardly surprising.

The comments on Mean Website 1 got a little out of control, and people said some Not Very Nice Things. Because I am a woman, naturally these Not Very Nice Things quickly degenerated into attacking my sexuality, my sexual organs, and my ability as a wife and mother.

This is a well-worn path when attacking women online. We are not attacked based on our success, but on our suitability for sexual intercourse.

(Successful men are generally accused of being gay. Apparently a lot of people think that’s a bad thing. Clearly they don’t watch Queer Eye.)

At one point, a commentator told the website owner that they had a group of people “waiting in ambush”. The website owner said he would be “interested” in meeting in person to see what they had in mind, and provided multiple ways to get in touch with him to arrange a meeting in his home state. (That’s generally not a good sign.)

As the comments got progressively more vicious, one of the commentators suggested the website owner get in touch with a known hate blogger. (We’ll call this one Mean Website 2.) The owner of Mean Website 1 hadn’t heard of Mean Website 2 and thought it was the best thing since toast.

He got in touch with Mean Website 2 and encouraged his readers to do the same, saying, “I wait with bated breath” for what would happen next.

Well, folks. A lot happened next.

Mean Website 2 got pretty excited. The owner submitted an article for Mean Website 1, and not content to leave it at that, started his own hate campaign on his own website.

First it was about me.

Then it was about my business.

Then it was about my sexuality.

In an act of startling coincidence, my site got hacked. Google “ittybiz” around that time and you wouldn’t get me. You would, interestingly, get Mean Website 2. Funny how that works.

While this is a tragedy against womens’ rights, this is pretty normal stuff online. You should have seen what happened when I made the front page of Digg, back when people used Digg. Owwie.

But I was okay with this, because I have a strong support network, and when I chose this path, I had a fairly clear idea of the consequences. I chose to be a semi-public figure.

I just didn’t expect the death threats.

Wait a second. Death threats?

They decided I had to die.

I got a death threat.

I got another death threat.

And then I got one telling me that if I went to a popular blogger’s conference in November, they would find me, they would kill me, and they would kill everyone around me.

I then found out that the website owner had sent me a harassing email a few days earlier, ending it with “I guess I’ll see you around”.

As a reasonably prominent female face on the internet, I always knew the day would come when it would get very, very ugly.

I guess that day is here.

I got myself to a safe place, and I’m okay, for now. But I am very, very concerned about what happened next.

As the comments started to escalate on Mean Website 2, one reader expressed pleasure that the website owner was attacking a woman, inferring he hoped there would be more. The owner’s response:

“Oh and also … some other “real women” should be thinking hard right now about their actions. Because I really like to give group discounts … because of how fond I am of people working in groups.”

A few days went by, and the death threats started coming. Working in groups, indeed. And in his next post, about professional bloggers in general, the owner wrote:

“Everyone hates you! They’re coming for you … and this time they’re serious.”

He has already started harassing a few of my colleagues and judging by the overwhelmingly positive and inflamed reaction he’s getting from his audience, he’s not going to stop. More women are in his sights. It seems he has a list, and his mob is eager to see whose names are on it.

Here’s why I’m telling you about this today.

A few years ago, a wonderful woman and prominent tech blogger named Kathy Sierra was driven offline because the the readers of a hate website called MeanKids decided SHE had to die. In a substantial media circus, it was determined that the primary reason the MeanKids site targeted her was because she was too nice. It annoyed them. They threatened to kill her. They posted pictures of her with a noose. They said they were waiting for her at her next conference.

She stopped blogging. Eventually she got rid of her Twitter account. She cancelled speaking engagements because she was afraid she would be murdered. It seems that as soon as a woman is popular enough to be noticed, someone decides it’s time to play dirty. (In the midst of the media attention, they took the opportunity to post obscene and harassing photoshopped pictures of Robert Scoble’s wife at the same time.)

These people think that if they scare the women of our community enough, this will stay a secret, and their misogyny and violence can snowball. This seems to be a group attack, and here, their details are FAR more specific than they were in the Kathy Sierra case.

This is being planned, and planned thoroughly.

These people are escalating, and they’re looking for a success. Hate bloggers claim innocence because they are acting within their First Amendment rights. But their mobs look up to them, and the mob mentality that they are stoking is escalating.

I am being stalked. People want to kill me. They want me to be afraid.

These people are planning a hate crime, and they are relying on me hiding in silence to succeed.

And, yes. I will hide. But I will not be silenced.

I have devoted my life to making sure you can bring your kids to Disney World and send them to college and pay for their overpriced weddings, and hell if I’m going to stop now.

Because this isn’t about me. I have the resources to protect myself. I have the support of a strong community with loud voices and far reaches. I have a contact list full of experienced friends who can give me crash course media training at 11 o’clock on a Sunday night.

This is about innocent women bloggers getting attacked for trying to make a go of it online. This is about all the people who are petrified when they get hate mail and don’t know who to ask for help. This is about smaller bloggers, and newbies, and women just finding their voice.

They don’t have what I have. They don’t have YOU. And they need you today.

What you can do:

Today, I’d like to ask you to do a few things for me.

First, please share this. You know how.

Second, do something amazing today – write, create, share – and do it as loud as you can.

WE know we can never be silenced. Now it’s time to show THEM.

They will not stop me. Don’t let them stop you.

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