Gendertrolling

Characteristics:

1. Gendertrolling attacks are precipitated by women voicing their opinions online.

- Women who voice women’s rights, supporting other women, or simply for their race and ethnicity are targeted.

2. They feature graphic sexualized and gender based insults.

3. They include rape and death threats, often credible ones, and frequently involve real life targeting, which adds to the credibility of the threats.

- Threats include language that are intended to scare, intimidate, upset, or worry the targeted groups.

- “Doxxing”, which means that their personal information (home address, home phone number, social security, or other personal identity), heightens rape and death threats because the extensive research that the troller went through to post the information shows the commitment of the troller.

4. They cross multiple social media or online platforms.

5. They occur at unusually high levels of intensity and frequency (numerous messages or threats per day or even per house).

6. They are perpetuated for an unusual duration (months or even years).

7. They involve many attackers in a concerted and often coordinated campaign.

- Shortly after being “doxxed”, the individual can start receiving phone calls from numbers they do not recognize which adds to the many attackers characteristic.

History:

Systematically targets women to prevent them from fully occupying public spaces. Gendertrolling is a relatively new kind of virulent, more threatening online phenomenon than the generic trolling. It is not only done to simply upset the targets of the trolling, but to also express sincere beliefs held by the trolls.

Gendertrolling arises from areas of misogyny that condone harassment and the mistreatment of women. Some may consider gendertrolling to have some of the same effects as actual physical mistreatment of women. From online rape, to death threats, online mistreatment of women may have the same emotional effects as domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Distinction from generic trolling: “Trolling” arose in the 1990s, from internet studies scholar Whitney Phillips, as “disrupting a conversation or an entire community by posting incendiary statements or stupid questions on a discussion board… for [the troll’s] own amusement, or because he or she was a genuinely quarrelsome, abrasive personality.” Their motive is to arouse a strong reaction from their chosen targets. Phillip describes that most trolls are “white, male, and somewhat privileged.” While generic trolling is done more to arouse reaction out of the intended target audience, gendertrolling does not only this but also expresses beliefs held by these trolls.

See “Characteristics” of specific features of gendertrolling. One of the differences between generic trolling and gendertrolling is that gendertrolling “systemically targets women to prevent them from fully occupying public spaces.” (Mantilla, 569)

Examples:

• #GamerGate:
  • Although primarily taking place in the video game community, its effects have reached far beyond videogamers
  • Event stemmed from Zoe Quinn's video game Depression Quest, which is a text based game that depicts a young adult's experience with depression
    • Avid videogamers did not like that this game devaited too far from "more customary video game subjects and formats"
    • Game initially got good reviews, but some gamers got abusive and created a blog post claiming Quinn was "corrupt" and who "slept her way to positive reviews"
  • Attacks on Quinn came from 4chan, Reddit, YouTube
    • Attacks on Quinn's character as well as anyone who supported
    • Attacks in the form of death threats, rape threats, hacks into her Skype account, doxxing her by publishing her home address, telephone number
  • Journalist Anna Merlan concludes that the motivation underlying GamerGate is misogyny and trying to drive women out of gaming
  • GamerGate extended to Brianna Wu, a game designer who creates video games with female protagonists
    • Threats were escalated and Wu no longer felt safe in her own home and fled
      • Gendertrolls tried to access her financial information, impersonated her on Twitter, emailed misinformation to journalists using fake email addresses
  • Attacks no longer "about the video game" but simply taking down any woman who spoke out during GamerGate and was associated in the gaming world

Responses:

Solutions: