This WaPo article and this Feministe post about the same conduct are absolutely horrifying. It is about a law-school-oriented message board on which guys discuss female law school students by name in vile terms, threaten them with physical and sexual violence, and post photos of them in hotness contests without their consent. Meanwhile, the guys remain anonymous. One of the targeted women in the WaPo article, was concerned that the postings about her may have contributed to her failure to get any offers for summer internships despite some pretty good credentials. I think back to when I was a 24 year old law student and if this kind of stuff was posted about me, I would have been absolutely sick. Juvenile rumors about my sexual orientation I could deal with, but public threats of rape? Law school is stressful enough without having to deal with that. Hey, girls, you can draw attention to yourselves by being outspoken in class or getting good grades or getting on law review, but proceed at your own risk. Success is just an invitation for men to publicly malign you. Really, you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Ann Althouse doesn’t see how talking sexual smack about women could possibly hurt their career options. Seriously. Never mind that women have subject to actual and threatened sexual violence and sexual slander as a way of keeping them second-class citizens in all areas of life for millennia. Malicious gossip about women’s sexuality and vulgar and even just plain belittling talk among the guys have been used to define the men as dominant and the women as lesser since women entered the workplace. I believe Mithras can attest to that better than me, because as a guy, he’s heard it. The women only hear it indirectly. If these guys did the same thing within an existing workplace, it would be sexual harassment of a particularly ugly kind. Now please excuse me while I go medieval on Ann Althouse. I am more interested in issues than the people who spout off about them, but Ann Althouse is so self-absorbed, it annihilates her analytical abilities. For example, the really amazing thing about her post is that she goes into how the really bad kind of internet abuse is the kind that she was on the receiving end of. That abuse consisted of, and I kid you not, people on Sadly, No! posting clearly, obviously satiric posts under Ann’s name. And this is what is truly vile, not innocent women (and their prospective employers) having to read graphic posts about how they should be raped and stalked at the gym. In fact, the first category that Ann gave her post? Anti-Althousiana.
... absolutely horrifying.
Agreed. But it's exciting to those people who hate the internet, hate women, and especially hate women on the internet, as Althouse has repeatedly shown herself to be.
(Side note - I normally eschew calling her "Ann", because it would imply I mistake her for a civilized human. She is Althouse.)
(Side side note - how does one pronounce "Althousiana"? My brain wants to make it sound like Louisiana.)
On the substantive issue, can't the targets get the photos of themselves that have been copied from their flickr accounts pulled? Presumably, they hold the copyright.
And - not saying this would be easy - to the extent that false statements are made about them, isn't there a case?
Finally, clearly, university placement offices and NALP need to get on this. Not just a law school thing, either.
Posted by: Mithras | March 07, 2007 at 11:14 PM