When we talk about hate speech or rape threats within the context of cyber harassment of feminist writers, we usually assume that the attackers are anonymous or pseudonymous accounts, and usually assume that the attackers are male. Sometimes, those assumptions are not accurate. One of the people who went to jail for harassing Caroline Criado-Perez in 2014 is a young woman. Feminist writer Laurie Penny is currently being harassed for not entirely against a “Fuck off tory scum” graffiti on a “Women of World War II” memorial, not just based on her objection to the Conservatives, but on the memory of her grandmother (as far as I can tell.) While her stance is certainly debatable, valid criticism is once again paralleled by abuse. Not only by angry right wing eggs/pseudonymous men, but also by very public (but also angry right wing) Katie Hopkins.
One of the things I argue in my master’s thesis is that cyber harassment in form of rape threats and sexist/racist/heterosexist/… hate speech isn’t necessarily a question of men v. women, but often is a question of certain political position vs. a violent backlash to both political position with the addition of certain assumptions about gender and whether it is legitimate to use sexual violence as a tool.
Thoughts?