Blogger Threatened Because She’s Female

You may have heard about this in the news already and I have debated about posting this for over a week now, but I just can’t ignore it anymore. Popular blogger, Kathy Sierra was the target of a personal attack and death threats on the Internet that has brought her dynamic writing to a screeching halt and has her living in fear, afraid to even go outside her own home. I can see no other reason for this attack other than she is female. The kinds of threats that she has faced both publicly in forums and in her comments and privately in her personal email are disgusting and hateful. The perpetrator(s) involved gives no reason for their hate, but continues to spew lewd commentary and post photo-chopped images of Kathy that are quite disturbing. If you want to read the full details and read some of the comments, you can visit Kathy’s site but be warned the images are graphic and the threats are highly descriptive. Is it dangerous for women to blog on the Internet?

I think one thing that truly bothers me about this whole issue is that the men on the forums where some of the images originally showed up did absolutely nothing to try to stop it from happening. I would go so far as to compare it to being gang raped while others just stand around and watch. This leads me to believe that this happened to her because she is a female. I have two theories behind my thoughts. First, how many women do you know who would take the time to photoshop nasty photos of a guy and/or bother to threaten him sexually. Yes, women do threaten men verbally, but do they threaten to assault them sexually? No. This is happening to Kathy because she is female. My second theory is that among many (not ALL) men, this is accepted behavior. And even among the men who do NOT condone this kind of behavior, the incidents are often overlooked as “harmless” and the women are told to grow thicker skin. Yeah right. Let’s post some skewed images of some of the men involved here and see how they like it. ;)

To Kathy Sierra, and all other women in cyberspace, this is not harmless “fun”. This is completely appalling and justice must be served. Kathy was not a threat to anyone nor was her blog taking on any type of controversial topic. Kathy was just a random target of a psycho – or even a teenager out looking for some attention. I am doubting the teenager connection because a teen would have blown his cover by now by bragging to friends. This appears to be the work of a sick and twisted adult.

Now Kathy lives in fear. She does not know who her attacker is or when they may strike next. This is not free speech just because it is the Internet. If someone threatens me on my own front porch, I can have them arrested, yet if they do the same thing or worse on the Internet, apparently it is ok. What kind of message are we sending here?

Kathy – here at Girls Can’t WHAT? we support you and your family. You are in our thoughts and prayers. Your life has been turned upside down and it stinks. Please know that your message and your story will not go unheard. This could be a stepping stone to change the world in some way. Perhaps it will rally people to be intolerant of anyone who posts threats instead of letting them get away with it. Perhaps forum admins and moderators will be less lenient in what they approve.

Am I promoting censorship now? No, absolutely not. But when people are physically threatened to the point of stifling their creativity and paralyzing life as they know it, then action is required to remove the threat. Let’s use some common sense here. If it were your mother, wife, sister, daughter or friend, how would you want the situation to be handled? Just remember – everyone is someone’s daughter.

And by the way, I encourage you to visit Kathy Sierra’s site and read some of her other material. It is a gold mine of information on a lot of different topics. I hope to see Kathy writing again soon.