Jaclyn Friedman has a terrific piece in the online edition of Bitch Magazine on cyberharassers and anti-feminist trolls. The problem she outlines is a serious and familiar one, and the solutions are excellent. A must-read in the feminist blogosphere.
Frankly, I think “the best defense is good tech” should be the #1 piece of advice. In the physical world, learning self defense is great for the self-confidence, but in the end most of you guys are still bigger than most of us. When it comes to technical hackery, our disadvantage is pretty much cultural and/or self-imposed. We don’t choose the CS classes, we don’t choose to become excellent programmers, hackers or crackers, and those choices are mostly cultural. In parts of Asia and the Middle East, computer science is actually considered a “girly” major. Being technologically competent and self-sufficient is, imho, a feminist issue, and one which I hardly ever see addressed on feminist blogs (if anything I sense a distrust of tech as a masculine sphere, which frustrates me).
Not that I advocate sinking to the level of Anonymous, but wouldn’t we feel better knowing that we could manage a DDOS attack on some of these trolls if we wanted? That the thing stopping us from doing it really is a sense of decency, not a lack of know-how?