Thanas wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Block wrote:I'm not disputing that it was illegal or stupid. I'm saying that calling it domestic terrorism is a pretty big stretch. More like criminal harassment.
If it wasn't done by foreigners it was domestic. If it was harassment with a political agenda (such as silencing someone's freedom of speech), then it was terrorism. QED.
FFS by that standard both policital parties in the USA are domestic terrorists.
As
should have been clear, I was referring to the specific actions of the Utah State threat.
If they're committing crimes against someone or threatening to do so, in furtherance of a political agenda, then yes. Yes they are committing an act of terrorism.
Remember, we're not talking about normal protest here. We're talking about a threat to walk into a venue while the person you dislike is speaking and start shooting people. Assault, on a large scale, in the legal sense of the word 'assault,' with a political agenda.
Yes, I think that qualifies as terrorism even if nobody wound up bleeding on the floor.
Jub wrote:No shit, but if this was happening to Joe Noname and not attached to a news story it would be at best a local fluff piece. Instead, because it's happening to women, it's an internet gong show with the victims going out of their way to milk it for publicity.
For one, it wouldn't
happen to Joe Noname as a rule. For another, there is no guarantee of that. Threats against males have become Internet news stories before; these things can go viral very easily and unpredictably.
Why does it bother you so much that a woman is complaining about being
repeatedly threatened with murder of herself and her family, by people who know or could easily obtain personal information about her, as a result of
allegations made by a third party?
What the hell could a person take as better grounds for complaint than that? "An old friend of mine just asserted that I do unethical things, and now people are leaving dead animals in my mailbox and threatening to do drive-by shootings of my home, eh, whatever, it'll probably all blow over." Is that how you actually think?
Have you seen how the average police force handles harassment where a person is physically coming to your property? They show up, ask him/her to leave, and then bugger off again. If the person comes back they might do this a few more times and they could even hold the person for a day or so. After that they kind of stop wanting to dedicate resources to further calls about the issue and suggest you start taking steps to stop the issue.
Yes; and the steps in question are
legal action, with very real potential legal consequences for the person you are trying to protect yourself against.
The point is, harassment isn't a zero-consequence activity for the victim. And it damned sure shouldn't be a zero-consequence activity for the harasser.
And how is making all of this public knowledge helping to de-escalate things so they go back to normal? If these people didn't go out of their way to let the people doing this to them know it was working it would have slowed down and been a non-story by now.
This is like... flamingly blatant blaming-the-victim. It's
HER fault that she complains about grossly illegal and threatening actions, how DARE she speak up and expect people to care what's happening to her?
This reminds me of a quote I read in an article when I looked up "to mansplain" the other day:
Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling -- as though it were a light and amusing subject -- how a neighbor's wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn't trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand....
Even getting a restraining order -- a fairly new legal tool -- requires acquiring the credibility to convince the courts that some guy is a menace and then getting the cops to enforce it. Restraining orders often don't work anyway. Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country. It's one of the main causes of death in pregnant women in the U.S. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible.
I tend to believe that women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on; well after, that is, my birth. And for anyone about to argue that workplace sexual intimidation isn't a life or death issue, remember that Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach, age 20, was apparently killed by her higher-ranking colleague last winter while she was waiting to testify that he raped her. The burned remains of her pregnant body were found in the fire pit in his backyard in December.
So yes, this is a very real issue, that women feel (with reason) that they can openly complain about violence and abuse directed against them, and
no one will notice, or they will be told to shut up because
obviously nothing is really wrong. And then all the men around them will be
shocked, shocked on the occasions where one of the violent creeps actually
does rape or murder the woman who was trying to complain.
It sucks that this is the best option for them, but them fighting a large horde of people with a wide variety of reasons for targeting them (not least of which is the LULZ of it) publicly is a dumb idea.
Why is she more to blame for this than the aforementioned horde?
Broomstick wrote:Jub wrote:Should I feel afraid every time a stranger gets close to me when I'm walking alone at night, or when a less than well kept person approaches me at a bus stop?
Well, if we ever needed proof Jub wasn't a woman (as if that was ever in doubt) there's proof.I'm sorry it fractures your veneer, Jub, but that is EXACTLY the world for the majority of women. Fear of every stranger. Fear of many acquaintances.
Maybe that has an effect on how they view threats, hm?
That's sad, but the reality is I have more to fear on a daily basis than a women does...
Except you're not,
all else being equal. The difference is that males are far more likely to voluntarily associate with more dangerous people and situations, rather than running away, refusing to leave their homes at night, and otherwise engaging in fear-based behaviors designed to protect them, because the only real chance they have of being safe from violence.
If
you personally did all the same things women routinely do to avoid physical violence, you'd probably be at least as safe as they are. But you probably don't, because you have the privilege of knowing that
unless a stranger is armed, they probably can't just brute-force impose their will on you.
and added to that as a male I'm expected to step in and stop fights between parties I don't even know.
Legally, no. Socially, not really.
If you walked past a man beating on a women with out physically stepping in people would call you smart, if I did it I'd be called a coward.
Yes, because
you are in a position physically to do something about it. Unless you're a dwarf or disabled or something, you actually do have the ability to do something to counter the physical aggression of another male. A typical woman does not have that ability.
If that bothers you, well, it's the cost that comes with the privilege I mentioned earlier.
Also keep in mind that while men are more likely to be victims of violence in general, women are FAR more likely to be sexually assaulted, and even today sexual assault can have life-long negative repercussions to the victim.
This part is true, but in the event that I get dragged into a fight I'd (as a larger than average male) have a hell of a time convincing the cops I was just defending myself. I gets even worse if in striking back I injure the other person. Plus police see me as a big guy and are less likely to come to my aid if I do call about a disturbance outside my home.
So you're saying that you feel that having the police doubt you were acting in self defense is
as bad a problem as getting raped?
Jub wrote:It does matter that it's happening to a public figure, just like slander and libel are different for public figures. This is continuing to happen because, rightly or wrongly, people see them as dishonestly milking this and are jumping on the bandwagon to help get rid of them. Their celebrity is the entire cause of this event.
And the fact that assholes "jump on a bandwagon" to illegally harass people is
precisely the problem.
This is the moral analogue of a white mob preparing to lynch a black for being "uppity." In other words, presuming to do or say things that that mob doesn't feel it to be the place of the black to say. This woman was accused of something bad, so people decided to threaten her with rape and murder. And she dares to COMPLAIN about her treatment? That makes her even more uppity and even more of a target!
This is the most ridiculous bullshit I can imagine in the context of a situation like this. Really? You're going to focus on making the victim of the harassment shut up?
Don't equate being harassed to being raped. Being proactive can solve harassment, but when it doesn't going to ground for a bit usually does. It's the exact same as if they were doing this IRL and the police had exhausted their resources in dealing with an annoying but otherwise not serious crime.
In this case, the harassment includes actual threats to commit rape, so there is an equation at work here.
Yeah, there are different social expectations, but that's not really the point. Your statement indicates a general lack of empathy, which is the problem that posters are having here.
I empathize with the fact that these people are in an awkward position. I simply feel that they are over reacting to it and not taking the best steps to resolve the issue. Freaking out isn't the quickest nor the least messy way to resolve this and fighting it isn't likely to have the desired result because, and this might be a shock, nobody off the internet cares about the issue. Laws aren't going to be changed and Zoe Quinn isn't going to be the next Rosa Parks because of this internet war.
One of the issues at stake is whether women have a right to expect to
not be threatened and violently silenced on the Internet.
Apparently you think the answer is "no."
