A hostile world for women
I have been talking mainly about the subtleties of gender interactions on the net, focusing especially on how women in relatively tame Internet environments are faring as they confront stereotypes and find ways to interact in their own styles. The Internet, however, is home to more hostile environments, and some of them make women particularly vulnerable and uncomfortable.
The MUDs, for example, are populated mainly by males, especially younger ones. The evolved culture emerges as the combined effect of the MUD programming and the MUD's demographics. I described in a previous chapter how MUDs can encourage achievers, socializers, explorers, and killers. In her research on MUDs, Lori Kendall finds that the environment can still be very enticing for women, and some make their marks as strong, independent, and savvy players. But the worlds can be discouraging to others. As happens often on the net, particularly in the less settled psychological spaces, women wind up in the category of newbie. They are usually the target of more attention, and they frequently get more assistance from the male players. This trend fits well into the gender stereotype of men as the knowledgeable experts and females as the dependent newcomers.
Women also can be targets for online sexual harassment in some net environments, especially those in which anonymity and nicknames flourish, and social interaction is the main focus. Women who use nicknames that suggest the female gender might receive some unwelcome attention in the synchronous chat rooms, for example.
Sometimes the harassment goes much further, as it did for Stephanie Brail, who became, as she describes it, the Poster Queen for the online harassment issue in 1993. The incident began when she was participating in a Usenet group called alt.zines about homegrown, underground publications and one woman in the group requested some discussion about Riot Grrls zines. Riot Grrls is a political movement of young punk postfeminists who stress "girl power," sisterhood, pride, self-respect, and outspokenness. The movement was inspired by all-female bands such as Bikini Kill and the Breeders, and it often elicits intense reactions from males. That certainly happened on this newsgroup when men started posting vehement objections laced with obscenities. Brail was incensed at the reaction and jumped in. "I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I felt I had to speak up, largely because a few men were telling us women to sit down, shut up and go away."
The harassment began in earnest as anonymous emails began appearing in Brail's electronic mailbox. The assault escalated as reams of pornographic text were delivered, and the anonymous harasser - who called himself "Mike" - rambled on about his motives and intentions. He faked some posts to other groups to make it look as though Brail had written them, and he sent her email address to people on alt.sex.bondage so they would start contacting her. Meanwhile, Brail was having a difficult time coping:
Was incredibly paranoid. I made sure the doors to our bungalow were always locked; I practiced self-defense. When a male friend called us and left a prank message, I thought Mike had found our number and I panicked.
Eventually, Mike's finesse with anonymous email messages failed him and Brail identified his true Internet address. She forwarded one of his messages to him without comment and the harassment suddenly stopped. Although shaken by the experience, Brail did not leave the net in disgust. She said, "That's when I decided I wanted to get more women on the Internet, to even things out." Soon after, she founded her own Web consulting business whose purpose is to support and promote women who strive for success.
The fallout from this kind of harassment is that women are not entirely comfortable in some online environments, even in a relatively innocuous place like alt.zines. Of course, anyone can be harassed, and men, women, and children can all be either victim or victimizer, so this is certainly not exclusively a problem for women. In an environment in which contention can flare up so quickly, where it is so easy to misinterpret people's remarks, where anonymity and physical distance provide protection from counterattack, online harassment is more likely. It is also much harder to track down, given the ease with which people can veil their identities on the net.