Personally the irony for me is that I (a female) have been abused and villified online by females who identify as "feminist" many more times than I every have by someone who identifies as male.

I have also witnessed comments from people who identify as feminists that are abusive and threatening to other female bloggers/tweeters/online personas.

I should point out that this in no way excuses threatening comments that some people have made that have been referred to on that particular hashtag, but rather that, most groups have people who will say pretty awful things to people they disagree with. And it's especially easy to do that from a keyboard with the cloak of online anonymity.

It is indeed. Which is a definite shame. Though I'm lucky in that either I don't post controversial things, or don't get read by the men who like to communicate to women bloggers that they should be raped or assaulted.

Possibly that's because my circle is too small, or that I'm not particularly comfortable in expressing too strong opinions on things. It's certainly put some perspective on my interactions with some climate change deniers on facebook. Been getting plenty of insults and accusations of buying into the 'global conspiracy' but so far nothing nearly as nasty as what these women bloggers have been getting.

And arcadiagt5 I am so glad that you don't get that mindset.

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

Though now that I think back I did get some people try to derail one of the other (male) people more or less patiently trying to explain what the carbon price was by implying they made porn films. (Apparently based on him having had a shirt off in a student film years back). And then after I made my own comments on the science of climate change etc. to implying that I must also do such films.

It's still not nearly as bad as some of the abuse that some of the female bloggers have been getting and mostly so ludicrous an idea that I pretty much ignored it. But it is symptomatic of a similar mindset.

Still more than a little disturbing.

I think that* Whilst the classic misogyny is the most common example of this behaviour, it is far from being the only example.

I haven't been following the #mencallmethings feed in any great detail but there have been complaints that it is obscuring/hiding/minimising the other examples, including race, gender orientation, etc.

I'm inclined to take those complaints at face value whilst hoping that progress on any front of inequality will strengthen the claims on others. This is probably wishful thinking but it's all I've got right now.

*Noting that I have no data to prove this. And certainly not about to pretend to in front of a statistician. :)

I would like to know what proportion of issue is really sexism. (Intrusive brain probes would be fine as a scientific method, btw.) Trolls will try to get a response out of anyone with an insult and obviously will target something they know about the writer and consider will be most hurtful, whether it be gender, race, skin colour, size, whatever. It seems to me that that behaviour is quite different to those who are inherently sexist and hence only ever pick on their chosen target type.

They pick on men too. Usually by using language which implies their mae target is female or equivalent to and then going into the sexual insults. But it is rarer.

And no, you don't get to say 'they're not misogynists, they're just trolls'. They are misogynists AND they are trolls.

But in general these women are targeted with hateful speech at much much higher rates than men. For expressing not nearly so controversial an opinion. For these misogynist assholes the blogger's crime is having an opinion while female.
A male blogger who gets his own share of hate mail has pointed out the difference.

It does appear that the pure, indiscriminate troll is the lesser population. I think they were proportionately greater in the early days of the net, but you got a better class of troll back then.

I'd not seen reference to guys systematically being called by female-specific abusive terms before. (Did using "gay" as a prejorative fall out of fashion already?) So, yes, there is a grouping I'd not realised existed, the misogynist trolls who don't only target women but target men and then refer to them as women in belittling ways.

Thanks ever so much for pointing out that the pool of scum was deeper than I'd first imagined. See, I knew never reading twitter was the right choice.

"See, I knew never reading twitter was the right choice."

I'm with you!

As I noted to Kremmen it depends on what, and how, you use it.

I will admit to, VERY occasionally, glancing at the Great Unhinging that is the #auspol feed. :)

Actually it is fairly easy to avoid the trolls on twitter, and I'm far from being a power user.

Blocking is trivial, and you simply limit yourself to the people you follow rather than searching for / reviewing hashtag feeds. I only looked at this one because I'd been seeing a lot of blog posts on the topic recently, and from a wide range of bloggers.

For the most part twitter is a newsfeed for me, and a source of amusement.

And no, you don't get to say 'they're not misogynists, they're just trolls'. They are misogynists AND they are trolls.

Nicely put.

When it reaches the point of the troll maintaining a parallel blog for the sole purpose of ridiculing each post and/or stalking the blogger (no cites handy but I've seen several examples, including one for Marieke Hardy in Aust), it is pretty much a case of misogny.

And, although it has been somewhat obscured, the same problem does exist for GLBT, skin colour, siez, etc, etc.

Just a 5 second glance over the latest tweets on #mencallmethings is far too depressing.

What the hell is wrong with people that they think they can say this sort of crap about other people and it's okay that they do so?

I simply cannot understand the mindset of men who do this.

And, to be honest, I don't want to understand that mindset.

Quoted For Truth.

Oh that's what QFT is! Thank you! I'd been wondering but hadn't gotten around to looking it up.

Glad to be of service. ^_^

The internet is definitely overly full of 3LAs, 4LAs and 5LAs*, which can make it a tad difficult at times.

(*) Which would be a 3, 4 or 5 letter acronym, obviously. ;)

Especially if you don't necessarily frequent forums where a given acronym is in use.

I'd been seeing it a lot of Pharyngula, along with various in jokes to do with porcupines and winning of internets, but hadn't gotten around to looking up the TLA.

I had to look it up as well. :)

Having just looked it up, thanks for the kind words.

I adore the icon by the way.