Violence in any form is still violence
At the risk of making the understatement of the century, I’ll press forward anyway: the internet has provided us with the most comprehensive information tool imaginable. But, along with that best goes the worst. Some people use the guise of the internet to bring out their most evil, yes, I mean evil, sides. One of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users, began receiving some pretty horrific comments on her blog (see Kathy’s post yesterday for details). These comments escalated into obscene pictures and now death threats. This is unacceptable. Violence in the form of sexually explicit comments, frightening twisted images or actual threats of physical injury or death are all violent. Violence is any unwanted act of power intended to cause harm or fear. This is my definition but in checking with dictionary.com, their definition seems pretty similar.
All too common are images of women in magazines or even television or film where the women are represented as objects (not a body but simply legs or breasts), animals or as the victims of violent actions. 
If this doesn’t sound familiar, check out Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Images of Women. or just take a more critical look at the magazine ads that you enter daily. The ways that the women are portrayed in the media, I believe, contributes to the entitlement of violence that pervades some of the worst internet users. But, I think that what we can do, where we do have power, is to stand up and declare the unacceptability of any violence against women-whether online or in “real life”. The more people who support action in order to combat this kind of degradation and discrimination, the more likely actions like those taken against Kathy Sierra will diminish.
What do you stand up for?