Women don’t have a monopoly on online harassment. Men in a Pew poll reported higher rates of harassment than women in 4 out of the 6 categories mentioned, including physical threats. Women did report sexual harassment and stalking more than men.
Overall 44% of men and 37% of women reported being harassed. So who exactly is “privileged”?
Thank you. When I was more outspoken I got my share of death and castration threats.
Internet is a horrible place. Internet is a wonderful place.
Relevant article I just saw this morning, although it was about a year ago:
In the battle of Internet mobs vs. the law, the Internet mobs have won, Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post, February 17, 2016.
Discusses the massive harassment (rape threats, death threats, revenge porn, doxing, etc.) that some people (mostly females, with particular references to Gamergate) – Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, et many al have had to put up with – and the near total impotence and disinterest in law enforcement in dealing with it. Zoe Quinn managed to get prosecutors to charge her ex-boyfriend, but gave up and dropped the case when she realized that any victories would be pyrrhic and would just bring out massively more harassment, just like chopping heads off the hydra.
Threats? Hell yeah. You don’t get to do that, it isn’t “just a joke”.
Nonsense, he was just the next guy to get hit in the head with a stone.
Just occurred to me: why is the subject line apparently trying to put “authors” in some special-protection privileged class, making them too good to be insulted like us proles?
Way back in the dark ages, I faced sexual harassment and discrimination everyday. I was told my place was in the home, I was passed over for promotions because I was just going to get pregnant and quit any way. I was told women can’t handle it, we were the weaker sex, that we just weren’t strong enough. We were moody and irritable, prone to hysteria and fits of crying.
Make it illegal to insult women (authors)? For real? Sure, let’s just prove that those assholes from the past were right, that women can’t handle it.
Way back in the usenet days, on a couple of the funky subdomains I haunted, there were people who would post their poems and then claim they were “published authors” because their stuff was now “published” on usenet. Then they would act all haughty and arrogant and claim to be subject matter experts who you dare not question or insult because THEY were “published authors” and you were not.
Unfortunately, there are people like that, who seem to believe that writing and being an author is some high noble thing that makes them a better class of person than us proles. You know, the Comic Book Guy, but for literature. 
I wish i could insult the OP in this thread. You know, to prove a point. Alas, im stuck commending the OP for living basically for free, all the way thru his mid-forties. High five Cyb!! 
Only insults done in chalk should be illegal.
In some countries, including the UK, there are also laws against inciting racial hatred. You’re not allowed to spread inflammatory rumours about an individual for the purpose of spreading racial hatred, for example. You’re also not allowed to make racist websites, or racist public speeches.
Insults are legal, and every Homo Interneticus is used to them. Threats like “Pay for my internship or else” are illegal.
In USA Freedom of Speech is the law since 1776. But in UK there is no such law.
Pay for my car insurance, cyborg! Or else…:mad:
Just to be clear here, these are insults:
These are threats, and should be treated as criminal acts, even on internet comment boards:
How did “identity” enter into it? You’re tossing in a concept there that has nothing to do with my response. The OP had nothing to do with “identity,” it had to do with an **author **being insulted because of what he or she had written.
The whole point of my response was that laws against the expression of ideas are (in the US, at least) in violation of the First Amendment. The whole point of having freedom of speech is that some people are going to say things that offend other people - and that speech should be protected. We don’t need a Constitutional Amendment to allow us to say things that everybody wants to hear.
Unfortunately, we have turned into a society in which college students have become “snowflakes” (to use the popular term) who lose their minds if someone writes “Trump 2016” in chalk on a sidewalk, and who demand that they be protected from expressions of thought with which they disagree. These kids, unfortunately, are the leaders of tomorrow, and they are a generation who believe that ideas they disagree with should not be permitted to be expressed. I can already smell the tyranny in the air.
By the way, I’m not saying that there are not the usual exceptions to the rule of freedom of speech; yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, inciting a crowd to riot, things like that. I’m talking about the free expression of ideas, even unpopular ones.
“I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” - attrib. to Voltaire.
No, it should not be illegal. In a free society, you may insult anyone you like, including best-selling authors, movie stars, captains of industry and the President of the United States. It might be rude, it might be in very bad taste, you might thereby be reveal yourself to be an asshole in doing so, but you have that right.
“Attributed to” is a little suspect in wording, it was by Evelyn Beatrice Hall. I’ll trust Cecil to think up an appropriate punishment for you.
She was writing about Voltaire, so I’m sure Cecil will be lenient. Even my 1980 edition of Bartlett’s attributes it to him (with a footnote mentioning Hall).
Credible (assuming that’s what you meant) being the key word. Saying “I hope you get raped” over the internet is nasty and mean and vulgar, but not a credible threat. Tracking someone down in their personal life and taking pictures they don’t know you’re taking of them and emailing the pics to them with the message"soon you’re gonna take it from me, whether you want it or not" is a credible threat.