Online Harassment and DOS Attacks... This Sounds Familiar...

Last night, Jill over at feministe posted a troubling post. It looks like a number of feminist blogs, including feministe, had been targeted by denial of service(DOS) attacks, and their comments spammed with really disturbing and vile threats. Bloggers were threatened with sexually assault and murder just for blogging about feminism.

In a way, this is a sign that feminism has legs. The vitriol here shows that these assholes are, on some level, afraid. They feminism as a threat to the system that gives them power and privilege. They see bloggers like Jill and piny and the rest that they set out to silence as being the heads of a movement that scares them. They invested time and energy into a campaign to silence the voices of the people that they're worried want to change a corrupt system... they think that feminists want to take their toys away...

And they're right.

Feminism is a threat to assholes like them. As feminists get heard and they push for change, the sort of jerk who would use threats of rape and murder as a means to silence his political enemies is going to find that he has less and less political capital. His views will become more and more unpopular and he will be made to look like the offensive prick that he is. He will lose power.

These sorts of actions- trying to shut down sites that you don't agree with, using threats about rape, threats about cutting someone... murdering them...- it's exactly the sort of thing that happened to Kathy Sierra.

I don't know what else to say, but I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to this, and to say: Thanks to everyone at feministe. You're doing important work, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into running and maintaining an excellent site. These assholes see you as a threat because you are. And I think that the rest of us are better for it.