Dispatches from the Blog Battle Zone

Threats against a prominent female writer reflect the worst of online discourse. But is speech any more hateful on the Net than elsewhere?

by Catherine Holahan

When computer programmer and author Kathy Sierra began blogging about technology, she fully expected to see comments critical of her ideas. What she didn't anticipate were online posts advocating her murder or sexual assault against her.

Sierra, co-author of the Head First series of computer programming and Web design books, is hardly a polarizing figure. In addition to being a blogger, she's a frequent speaker at tech industry conferences, discussing such topics as the value of face-to-face discourse in an age of digital communication and throwing Web design parties to generate new ideas. "This is more than just random mean criticism," says Sierra. "This crossed the line."

Flaming Trolls

Certainly, negative comments about public figures—be they politicians, celebrities, or prominent business executives—are nothing new. However, the anonymity of the Web, coupled with the recent explosion of online tools that enable anyone with an Internet connection to publish opinions, has made online public attacks and threats against individuals even on the periphery of public life more common.

There's a lexicon emerging around it. Cyberbullying is what Web surfers call it when young kids, particularly teens, are harassed in Web chat rooms, ridiculed on Web sites, or made fun of in online videos posted to public sites such as Google's (GOOG) YouTube. A March article in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences found that young girls are particularly vulnerable to the practice.

When referring to deliberately hostile and insulting comments on blogs and message boards, it is called "flaming." Among bloggers, people who post comments, seemingly for the sole purpose of upsetting others, are known as "trolls." "There are a group of people who feel like it is their job to make you feel bad or attack everything that you say," says Robert Scoble, author of one of the top 25 most-read blogs on the Internet, who rose to prominence by blogging about former employer Microsoft (MSFT). Scoble promised to take a week off blogging in support of Sierra. "It kind of comes with the territory of being a blogger," Scoble says of online vitriol. "But once in a while, it goes over the line."

Gender Rage

Women, it seems, often bear the brunt of over-the-line comments, say Scoble and other bloggers. Those who opine on the Web are subject to having their intelligence insulted or being called expletives by those who disagree with their posts.

But negative comments concerning women on the Web frequently have a sexual undertone as well that can transform comments from dismissively offensive to downright intimidating. "You don't have nightmares about people saying you're an idiot," says Sierra. "You have nightmares about people saying, 'I am going to slit your throat, I'm going to kill you, and, by the way, there's sex involved.'"

The reference to sexual assault adds a level of violence that Sierra says is scarier than someone saying, "I think someone should push you off a bridge." Both are threats. However, the former involves a level of rage specifically directed at a person because of gender.

More Misogynistic?

Sierra canceled an appearance at O'Reilly Media's ETech conference in San Diego after seeing the threats. She also called the police. Punishments for death threats vary depending on the severity of the threat, how it was made, what state it was made in, and the position of the person against whom it was made. Some states consider it a misdemeanor; others would impose jail time and steep fines.

Other women bloggers say they, too, have noticed a difference between the way women and men are discussed on the Web. Elisa Camahort, co-founder of BlogHer, a community for women bloggers, says body parts and sexuality are more frequently included in criticisms aimed at women, particularly prominent women, on the Web. "I think a woman is subject to certain kinds of comments that men wouldn't get," says Camahort.