Gender-Based Online Harrassment

Markos on Kathy Sierra and female bloggers being harassed and getting death threats:

Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said "death threats" don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said "death threats".

After all, nothing brings out the crazies like tech-talk. And besides, she probably made it all up anyway.

...Email makes it easy for stupid people to send stupid emails to public figures. If they can't handle a little heat in their email inbox, then really, they should try another line of work.

I mean come on, if you can't handle your address and social security number being published along with threats of rape, hanging, suffocation and death--you're a fucking whining baby.

But even women who don't put their pictures or real names online are subject to virtual harassment. A recent study showed that when the gender of an online username appears female, they are 25 times more likely to experience harassment. The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that female user-names averaged 163 threatening and/or sexually explicit messages a day.

Implying that women are "whining" about harassment or violence against them and mocking them for taking these threats seriously is just such a sexist cliché.