Thought You Should See This

July 11, 2012

"Civility isn’t fancy-talk for “being nice.” It’s the essential quality we require to live together in complex social structures built on our jumpy, irrational primate brains. Online, where we increasingly live, we need it more than ever."

—

I came across How To Kill A Troll at just the right moment, after reading about a comedy show in which a comedian reportedly called for a female member of the audience to be gang-raped because she dared to suggest aloud that rape isn’t funny. Reading the various responses to this story raised all sorts of questions: just what is taboo these days, anyway? Isn’t crossing the line exactly what the best comedians do? I laugh at completely vile things all the time; is it just because I’m a woman that rape or sexual violence jokes are so utterly unfunny? It’s notable that Xeni Jardin posted a BoingBoing wrap-up of responses to the “rape comedy” story and then remarked, sadly, on Twitter: “Gah. If you are female, and write a blog post about rape jokes being uncool, expect to be told that you should be raped.”

Then I read Erin Kissane’s beautifully thoughtful piece about trolling and the hate spewed at women and minorities of all forms, and was reminded that this is not an abstract issue, nor one that can be got around via critical thinking or philosophical theorizing alone. As Kissane writes: “Online threats derive their force from offline violence. A quarter of women in the US will experience domestic violence. One in five high school girls have been raped or sexually assaulted. By the time they finish college, that number goes up to one in four. And the people who hurt us take comfort and encouragement from a culture of violent threats. “Ignoring them” is not going to do the trick.”

This, in other words, is a real world matter that needs real world conversation and some serious mirror-gazing, as we contemplate attempting to build a society of which we can be proud. Kissane concludes, “Let’s start talking about what it’s going to take to fix this” with some beautiful thoughts about the place of civility and love in our lives and hearts. Designer Jason Santa Maria commented that the piece is “beautiful, sad, empowering, sobering… required reading for humans.” Couldn’t agree more.

[Erin Kissane story via Frank Chimero]

10:12am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxP7zSOP
(View comments)

(Notes: 13)