On AlterNet: Hating the Hate Mail. It’s all good, so you should just go read it now. But if you want to know what it’s about, an excerpt:

The psychic impact of hate mail is something female writers don’t often talk about in fear of appearing vulnerable in the male world of opinion writing. I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times discussed reactions to female opinion in her column last year. “While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating.” She went on to say she called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. “Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out,” Dundes told her.

Any woman who writes or blogs on political (not even necessarily feminist!) issues can tell you all about this. I doubt men are as often targeted with threats of violence just for being men. Hate mail I’ve gotten when presumed to be male has been bad too, but not nearly on the same level as I get when I make my sex clear.

I think this relates to the article on women being disproportionately harassed online. It’s the same attitude, coming from the same place. Just being a woman is enough to make you an appropriate victim (after all, how many female rape victims are presumed to be “asking for it” simply for wearing certain clothes or being friendly, things which are simultaneously promoted as somehow intrinsically”feminine”?), but if you’re a woman and you dare to have an opinion… WELL.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Gender and Sex, Random, Society, Writing.