Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault needs to go back to the 1950's where it belongs.
No, in the vast majority of cases they don't. Trolls gonna troll, sorry. I'll bet we can count on one hand the number of times Internet death threats have led to actual deaths.
There's a reason authorities don't investigate or prosecute stuff like this.
>This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault
Sorry, what? How is a death threat sexual harassment?
It's simply not normal to have to read email threatening you or making sexually harassing statements. No one should have to put up with that. The fact that you seem to think that this is normal is deeply concerning to me. If you regularly receive harassing messages, that's not okay and I'm really sorry. I'm really glad that you're apparently able to handle that without lots of mental anguish, but it's not something we as a society should shrug off.
> How is a death threat sexual harassment?
Please read the linked post. If you can't find the instance of sexual harassment in the author's blog post... god help you.
If you think abusive behavior is OK, show some courage of your convictions and just say it outright. Don't sit here playing word games that make you look like a coward.
I don't think abusive behavior is OK, I just don't think Internet PMs or e-mails even register above 1 on the 10-point scale of things that are abusive. Sexual assault at a conference is reprehensible and must be dealt with; abusive private messages are an uncomfortable consequence of participating in an anonymous distributed network.
How do you know there are no real-world consequences? You're just gonna assume it's some 14-year-old kid trolling you and not one of the many insane people in this world who might actually do something? Based on a hunch?
Based on evidence and reasoning through probability. Thousands of Internet trolls send tens of thousands of death threats every day. On a given day, the probability that even one of those death threats is acted upon is a sliver greater than zero. As in, maybe there are one or two cases per year worldwide where a troll brigade carries out some real-world action corresponding to its threats. Though even that, I suspect, is an overestimate.
This dismissive attitude is part of the problem.
This is false-equivalence horseshit. It may also happen to men, but it happens a couple of orders of magnitude less. I've spoken at a number of conferences and never received anything like this. If you talk to prominent men and women in tech about their experiences, they get radically different levels of abuse.
Also, Internet culture is not something that has been going on for thousands of years. It is entirely new. So either a) this should be a pretty easy fix, or b) it's actually part of something bigger than "Internet culture".
Tell that to Val Adams or other women who have been sexually assaulted at tech conferences.
> and it happens to men too
My mistake. I thought you were serious, not that redpill was leaking.
I don't know who you're talking about and curiously neither does Google. This comment appears to be the only mention of 'Val Adams' to ever appear on HN.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're above making up names in hopes that nobody will check your references. Could you provide a link detailing whatever incident you're talking about involving Val Adams?