A really fascinating scholarly article on "trolling" of online feminist spaces

quote:

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When women gather online, and especially when they attempt to discuss feminism, they are not uncommonly the target of negative attention from individuals, mostly men, who feel threatened by or otherwise uncomfortable with feminism. The literature on disruption of online feminist spaces dates back to the early days of computer-mediated communication research. Balka (1993) traces the history of four feminist forums from the 1980s, all of which experienced some degree of male harassment. Ebben (1994) describes the evolution of the soc.feminism newsgroup on Usenet, which was started in response to an earlier incarnation of the newsgroup (soc.women) having been taken over by men, and which itself has subsequently been taken over by men posting anti-feminist and misogynistic messages (Sutton, 1994). Collins-Jarvis (1997) documents the crisis that befell Comserve’s Gender hotline when several males began bombarding the forum with anti-feminist messages, causing female subscribers to flee the group, and the forum eventually to be shut down. In a similar vein, Reid (1994) reports an incident on a MUD for sexual abuse survivors, in which a male-presenting character with the name “Daddy” traumatized the community by shouting graphic descriptions of violent sexual acts to those present on the MUD.

In the interests of insuring a space in which women feel safe to participate, feminists online have sometimes taken the separatist route of excluding males from participation. Hall (1996) describes the practices of a women-only discussion group for lesbians and bisexuals, its reasons for not allowing men, and the challenges it faces in enforcing its women-only policy. The women-only policy of Systers, an online forum for women in computer science, is explained and justified by its founder, Anita Borg, in Camp (1996). Herring et al. (1995) suggest that women-only groups, regardless of whether they discuss feminism, are a reaction to patterns of male domination in mixed-gender discussion groups on the Internet. Women are discouraged from participating in computer mediated communication (CMC) by men posting more, longer, and more aggressive messages (Herring, 1994; Herring, 1999; Herring, Johnson, & DiBenedetto, 1995; Kramarae & Taylor, 1993; Spender, 1995), and by complaints that women are dominating the conversation even when such is not the case (Herring et al., 1995). Women-only groups create environments in which women can speak and be heard on topics of interest to them. At the same time, such groups are controversial: They risk being exclusionary and thereby provoking further male resentment (Hall, 1996), and they can become “ghettoes” in which women’s online presence is marginalized relative to the Internet at large (cf. Herring, 1994).

As an alternative to excluding male participants, some women-centered groups respond to disruptive or harassing behaviors by implementing participation policies that make it more difficult for future disruption to occur. Thus the Gender hotline re-opened with a moderator who now filters all messages received before posting them (Collins-Jarvis, 1997). The MUD for sexual abuse survivors described by Reid (1994) implemented a process of identity verification, and disabled the feature that allowed users to communicate simultaneously with everyone in the MUD. Other groups introduce a policy that allows disruptive participants to be banned from the group, as occurred in the present study.
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The literature about on-line harassment underscores the tension between libertarian and communitarian values, in that harassment often arises in spaces known for their freedom, lack of censure, and experimental nature (Brail, 1996; Dibbell, 1993; Reid, 1999). Herring makes an explicit connection between on-line harassment and libertarian values in a study of gender harassment, noting that "[t]his 'rhetoric of harassment' crucially invokes libertarian principles of freedom of expression, constructing women's resistance as 'censorship'" (1999, p. 151).

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[url=http://rkcsi.indiana.edu/archive/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.html]Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum[/url]

If you read further down, you'll see the case study of this guy, "Kent" and the stuff he was writing to the forum. I read a few of the posts they highlighted and thought, that guy would've lasted about 10 posts on babble. Maybe.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]