LINGANTH Digest - 16 Sep 2013 to 18 Sep 2013 (#2013-101)

[Elise Kramer]

Hi Eleanor,

Herring, Johnson, and DiBenedetto's chapter in Gender Articulated,
entitled "'This Discussion is Going too Far!': Male Resistance to
Female Participation on the Internet," would likely be of interest to
you. It describes two situations (one of which involved a linguistics
mailing list that shall not be named!) that are very similar to the
one you describe.

In a more macro sense, some feminist writing on political correctness
(e.g. Deborah Cameron's PC chapter in Verbal Hygiene) touches on a
similar "mainstream culture overreacts to feminist interventions"
pattern.

More generally, "high-school-aged boys responding to mild feminist
critique with astonishingly violent invective" constitutes about 20%
of the internet these days (outranked only by cat videos and
pornography). The case of Anita Sarkeesian is a noteworthy one --
she's a video blogger who critiques gender roles in video games, and
the responses she gets from (some) male gamers have been... vehement,
to say the least. If you Google her I'm sure you'll find plenty of
information about it, since the whole ordeal has been a topic of
discussion on a range of feminist blogs.

Best,
Elise Kramer

-- 
Elise Kramer, PhD
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology
University of California, San Diego

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 9:00 PM, LINGANTH automatic digest system
<LISTSERV at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

>
> Date:    Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:31:56 -0700
> From:    Eleanor Wynn <eleanorwynn3 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: gender in online discourse
>
> I have an interesting and I think unique corpus and would like to see if
> there is a precedent in gender studies for what happened in it. A woman
> provides a mild challenge to someone's assumptions and perspective and gets
> an unusual blast of invective. Borderline professional environment.
> Sustained verbal assault.
>
> Any literature that people can think of to start grounding this in a
> framework?
>
> --
> Eleanor Wynn
> http://www.eleanorwynn1.com/
> http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of LINGANTH Digest - 16 Sep 2013 to 18 Sep 2013 (#2013-101)
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