This article posted today on The Guardian picked our attention: Death and rape threats against women continue to proliferate on some of the world’s most popular social-media sites. The perpetrators must not be allowed to think they have the right to continue.
Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a collection of over 10,000 women’s daily experiences of gender inequality, writes:
Just over a month ago, while doing research for a book about sexism, I opened an internet browser, typed “chat rooms for kids” into Google, and clicked on one of the first links that appeared. There was no registration process, no age check – I just typed in a made-up username, and immediately chat windows started appearing on my screen. Within seconds I had over 10 messages, almost every one of them reading: “ASL?” I wrote back: “What is ASL?” The answer came quickly: “Age. Sex. Location.”
The rest of the story is very puzzling, and free speech is in no way justification when it comes to online abuse against women.
