Women and Online Safety

I picked up Lori Andrews's I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did, somewhat serendipitously the same afternoon I spent reading one woman's unnerving story of her rapist finding her online. I've written before about the benefits of anonymity online, especially for women, who are particularly targeted and even threatened. It's a good read for those of us tethered to our Facebook or Twitter accounts.

I'm not always careful. I've said enough here that I probably could never run for office (at least not in my home state). It's a hard line to straddle for bloggers -- trying to maintain enough transparency that one's credibility isn't questioned, but not so much that everything is there for the picking. I rarely, if at all, write about my family, to the point that in the past I've had people ask -- nay, demand -- to know more about my life, like it's something their owed simply because they read my blog. I find it interesting that the policies regarding internet transparency were drafted by those with the least to lose.

Another interesting statistic, via the book: younger people are more likely to better guard their personal info than those over forty. Ouch. But also we grew up in an era where the internet was a much smaller, more niche thing, where it never felt like the whole world was watching.

Who benefits from a "real names" policy? Surprisingly few.

"Let me tell you this: you are going to be called a cunt. Or, like I was, you are going to be invited to kill yourself because you are a waste of humanity. You are going to be threatened with rape. Your photos, if you happen to be a public figure, are going to be distributed as further proof of your ugliness and in a baffling case of transitive relation, this supposed ugliness is going to be used as proof that your opinion is invalid. If you are queer, your sexuality will be pointed out as a flaw. If you are trans, you will be dehumanized to the point of not being seen as a subject, but as a set of characteristics that third parties are entitled to discuss and speculate about. If you are single, your singledom will be nothing but an affirmation of your character deficiencies. If you are a mother, single or not, you are, of course, nothing but a self serving breeder who should not have public opinions about anything because both you, and your child, are a nuisance. If you are a minority (i.e. not White), your ethnicity will be generalized and used as a stereotype to qualify your opinion. And you will always be a slut and a bitch. Because online, we are all hypersexualized bitches who should just know their places and shut up". -- Flavia Dzodan from Tiger Beatdown

I've been pretty lucky. In the decade-plus I've been online, as a blogger and as a community member, I've experienced very little animosity. I've never been called a cunt (at least not publicly), I've never never been told to kill myself, I've never been stalked. A lot of this I credit to pseudonyms and the relative anonymity that, up until now, the internet provides.

Although I'm fairly traceable -- and have said enough controversial stuff that I probably couldn't run for office and conceivably win --  aside from  my own personal site, and a few others, I use gender-neutral user names. I'm usually thought to be a man, not because I have a "male" style of writing , but because, unfortunately, at a lot of mainstream sites, especially political ones, male is the "default." (Along with straight, cis, white, middle-class -- ya' know, all the things that generally mean your voice will be heard.) The more agency I feel I have, the more comfortable I am in using my own name, but in larger community blogs where the comment moderation is, um, less than draconian, I'd rather not risk my safety.

Geek Feminism put together a wiki  of all the groups who are harmed by a "real names" policy like the ones at Google+. Not surprisingly, it hurts far more people than it benefits.: women, the LGBT community --50% of whom have experienced online bullying, transgender people whose chosen name doesn't match their legal one, survivors of domestic abuse, and so many others. It's a lengthy list, but well worth reading.

I'm all for accountability, but until I see some hard data that requiring users to comment under their "real names" reduces online bullying, I'm can't see a reason to sacrifice one's safety.