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Misogynistic comments and the Guardian

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News story from the Guardian, 15.1.11

Has anyone noticed that when a feminist piece appears in the UK newspaper, the Guardian, that the resulting comments can be extremely misogynistic?

An example is today’s thought provoking piece by Suzanne Moore, which argues that feminism has been ‘dumbed down into politeness and party-political promises for far too long’.

The male comments following the piece are quite offensive and display an alarming level of anger against women that I find very worrying.

Or is it just me?

  1. It’s not just you. I have had to force myself *not* to read any comments attached to an article due to the anger they generate!

  2. No its not just you. In Australia the tabloids are full of vitrol like that everytime something with the tiniest whiff of feminism is published. Very frustrating.

  3. This issue was discussed in detail at the UKFeminista Summer School with Hannah Pool and Kira Cochrane who have both written for the Guardian. Both women expressed concern at the level of misogyny in the comments. One even said that at times she comments on feminist articles under a male pseudonym and has noticed that there tends to be much less vitriol directed towards her when she appears to be a man compared to when she argues the same points as a woman. Both also encouraged people to jump straight into the comments as soon as an article goes up as often the first few comments on an article can set the tone for the rest of the thread. I think the consistency of the anti-feminist attacks shows clearly that there is a deliberate attempt to discredit and bully feminist authors. I also suspect there are commenters using a range of sock puppet accounts to make it appear that the backlash is more extensive than it really is.

  4. Thank you for all your comments.

    F – it is a pity that we cannot depend on thoughtful comments in a newspaper like the Guardian

    Jenny – I visited Sydney last summer and loved it, so this is very disappointing

    Kellie – Yes, I am beginning to believe that it is an orchestrated attack, and I am saddened that the Guardian do nothing to enforce a policy of fair comment. But hey it their readership – I have already stopped buying the Guardian for this and other reasons and I am sure I am not the only woman to do so.

    Finally, one of the things that really worries me is that this is the Guardian – I kind of assumed that the type of men that read the Guardian would be more inclined to be pro-women’s rights, so it is even more disturbing that they are not.

  5. Jackie Patiniotis says:

    I have noticed the almost knee jerk reaction of male commentators to pieces written from a feminist perspective in the Guardian. It is almost as if they are waiting for a ‘feminist’ piece to appear so they can lash out at the author. I find it very depressing and disheartening as like Jane, I had assumed male Guardian readers were more enlightened with the ability and willingness to understand that women still do not have equality in UK society. There seems to be an almost desperate attempt to try and argue that we are all equal now, and that raising issues relating to women’s inequality is special pleading and women claiming victimhood. The worst aspect for me is that whenever there is an article written by a woman about violence against women and girls, there is an immediate “what about men?” response from a lot of male commentators, without any gender analysis or even acknowledgement of the ubiquity and severity of male violence against women. This flies in the face of the facts – but these men seem to be in total denial. I think this is another kind of backlash against women in general, but feminists in particular. This has made me wary of the Guardian. I dont really read other papers but I would be interested to see if there are similar comments made about feminist articles in different newspapers, but then, I don’t think there are many other newspapers that print articles by feminsts so its probably not something that can be assessed.

  6. It’s not just you. I tend to avoid reading the comments on such pieces because they only upset me. I know ignoring these things doesn’t make them go away, but people that express such attitudes aren’t that easy to have a rational debate with often! I’m sure some people just troll the internet in order to leave various inflammatory comments on articles.

    I really enjoyed Susanna Moore’s piece today for the record!

  7. Agree. Brilliant original article btw. But yes, there are a lot of people making vitriolic comments. It’s not just feminism though. I wrote a guardian article a couple of years ago as a lesbian author and got an incredible backlash. My publishers were happy because it mean the book got a bit more promotion, and I quite enjoyed the banter because I waded into the comments as well, but a more shrinking violet might be put off writing for them.

  8. It’s not just you.

    The Guardian should have renamed that section Misogyny is Free ages ago, because of the free rein they give to woman haters. Awful place,

  9. msvirago says:

    I read comment is free all the time, but I don’t comment other than on feminist pieces and I agree entirely that those articles are swarmed by misogynists and men who fear we may actually make progress towards substantive equality. Whilst it is a hostile place to comment I don’t think that should stop us, there is power in lots of us going there and supporting each other.

    I also think we must make the distinction between those that read the Guardian newspaper and the online guardian comment is free – which has a world wide readership and attracts many who would never actually buy the Guardian.

  10. vicki wharton says:

    I think the Guardian comment section actually reflects pretty accurately what men in today’s society think of women, most of whom are just too scared to come out and say it without the safety of the anonymous internet. Certainly if you look at their leisure pursuits and the media they buy into, most of it is openly woman hating and sexist – and in the same way that you could fairly safely assume that if you found a man that spent most of his free time trawling internet sites looking at pictures of black people being beaten and whipped whilst dressed as slaves you could concur that he was a violent racist, I think it is fairly safe to concur from the media they use that today’s men are largely violently sexist. Certainly whenever I speak about feminism to the husband’s of fairly pro feminist women, they become rude, dismissive and aggressively closed to discussion.

  11. I contacted the Guardian for comment and received this from Chris Eillott, the Readers’ editor, and apparently we have ‘battle through’ any unpleasant atmosphere in the hope that thing will change. Can anyone tell me what the MRA is?

    Dear Jane
    I wrote an Open Door column –
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/10/dearth-comments-women-print-online#start-of-comments – about the lack of women writing in print and online that became more a debate – a reasonable debate – about the difficulties women facing when posting on the Guardian. It received over 750 posts. Many of the posters are in Suzanne’s thread too. I know that Natalie Hanman, who edits Cif, has worked hard to encourage women to battle through any perceived misogyny on
    the site to bring about a site that more women want to visit. I think she believes it is important to get into the debate, no matter how tough, to create a different atmosphere. Some of the posters on your threads say they are surprised that people who read the Guardian can hold those views but posters don’t have to be – and obviously are not – all Guardian readers in the sense your posters think of them. It is an aspect of the web that you attract people who come through surfing or the monitoring of a particular issue, they may have no deeper relationship with the paper. I am not trying to distance the Guardian from the fact that we allow them to post, just explain an interesting phenomena that you don’t see on a letters’ page. The Guardian has excellent moderators who work hard to ensure posters stay
    within our community guidelines and in time if women will stick with it that atmosphere will change. Banning the MRA would be a mistake in my view and the view of those who run Cif.

    • Not sure but think it might stand for Men’s Rights Activists. Well done for writing to the Guardian about this and also for extracting a reply that was more than two lines long. I think this is really important because by doing so, you’ve helped draw their attention to it again as a result of which maybe their moderators will become slightly more active in their moderation.

  12. vicki wharton says:

    I also wonder why, if their editor is writing about the fact that so many commentators are logging openly sexist comments which is against their guidelines, why he is not doing something about publishing such gender hatred considering the furorer that was made about the BBC giving Nick Robbins space … or is it that women are less human than black men and so therefore anything goes as long as it’s only perceived as being hate driven by women, not men.

    • Yes, good point. Maybe we should think about how to respond to what he says as it doesn’t really add up. And I also wonder about how “tough” he thinks you have to be to participate in this debate. Personally I don’t think it should be about toughness, but about whether people are prepared and willing to engage in rational debate.

  13. I agree it should not be about toughness. That implies that it is the misogynists who set the tone of the debate and women should have to weigh in to the debate on those terms. Many women who may want to comment on Guardian articles about violence against women may be women who have been damaged by male violence. It is very intimidating to enter into a debate when you know you run the risk of being attacked by an aggressive misogynist. It is for the Guardian to set the parameters and ensure the debate is civil and rational, otherwise the voices of people who are victims will remain silenced.

    • Maybe I should get back to him and say something along those lines?

      • vicki wharton says:

        Go for it – it was exactly this type of verbal aggression that ended up with a law outlawing media pieces that incited racial hatred – because of the recognition that what the media publishes has a direct effect on making racism seem acceptable and that freedom of speech (to discuss ideas and concepts rationally) was not freedom to abuse which is to use personal, hostile and derogatory comment to silence another person. Most of the CiF pieces are personally aggressive towards any women that express pro equality views – which therefore makes them sexist as they are anti equality, anti debate about equality without resorting to personal insults in the way that the National Front used to shout at black people about having ‘thick lips and looking like monkeys etc’. This man wouldn’t recognise sexism if he tripped over and impaled himself on it!

      • Please do get back to him with our views Alison. At the moment CIF is a hostile place for women to engage in discussions about women’s inequality, which means women may avoid expressing views and are therefore in effect excluded from the site. I think the problem is a lot of people do not equate sexism to other forms of social oppression, such as racism. The myth that women have won equality seems to permeate these debates, although the comments of the misogynist contributors show very clearly that sexism is alive and kicking.

        • You could also send him a link to this page so he can read all of our comments and get a flavour of what people are thinking. I particularly agree with the argument that freedom of speech is not freedom to abuse. A number of the CIF commenters who strongly disagree with a feminist approach do so very coherently and with rational argument. They are often the most anti-feminist but they are the least offensive. It’s the ones that just throw up sarcasm and personal insult dressed up as what they think passes for wit that derail and undermine the content of women authors. It baffles me that they are allowed to continue doing this. On my own personal blog I once wrote a piece that got a bit of media attention an therefore had a lot of traffic and a large number of very offensive, personal comments. I refused to publish a few based on my own comment policy and I had a couple of men who were outraged, demanding that I publish their comments and threatening to ‘expose’ me if I didn’t. They actually thought I was committing some sort of crime, merely by sticking by my own comment policy which is designed to create a safe space for open discussion of feminist issues. There is a culture online that anyone should be allowed to say anything – I think every online publication has a choice to make about the kind of space they are trying to create for all readers. Currently the climate at CIF is oppressive and unwelcoming for women. They should address this.

          • Dear Reader Editor
            I’ve just sent this e-mail to the Reader Editor at the Guardian. It will be interesting to see what comes back:

            Jane Osmond, one of the co-editors on http://www.womensviewsonnews, wrote to you recently about the extent of the misogyny on comment is free and asked for a reply that we could publish on our daily women’s news service website. You kindly obliged.

            She then posted your reply which has prompted further comments. In particular, our readers were intrigued by your remark that it can be “tough” to get into the debate. Personally, I wasn’t clear how “tough” you think women have to be in order to participate in a debate on Cif, nor indeed why “toughness” is the measure to be used.

            It seems to us (readers and writers on WVoN) that relying on a yardstick of “toughness” allows the misogynists to set the tone, against which everyone has then has to measure up. Surely this defeats the whole point of having a comments policy and moderators to moderate what goes up on the site.

            As another of our readers commented, many women who want to comment on articles about violence against women may be women damaged by male violence. To then try to enter a debate with high levels of anti-women verbal aggression (which would not be tolerated if it was based on colour or religion) is further damaging to those women and extremely intimidating for the rest of us.

            No one is objecting to a rational debate, nor are we as feminists suggesting that everyone else should agree with us. But we are asking the Guardian to set more stringent parameters so that the views aired are views which are rational and coherent and with which we can engage. Sarcasm and personal insult are not helpful.

            Given that you purport to want more women to engage in debate on Cif, might we suggest that these simple (but effective) measures would set a totally different tone and you are therefore much more likely to achieve your aim than if you continue to allow these anti-women views to be printed.

            I look forward to hearing from you.

            I then added the link: http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/01/misogynistic-comments-and-the-guardian/

  14. vicki wharton says:

    Well said Alison! Very measured response considering the scale of ‘toughness’ we’re up against. I’m now off down the gym to enroll in a course of kickboxing and cagefighting to up my own personal level of toughness!

  15. Will be very interested in the reply to this – thanks to Alison for pursuing it.

  16. I haven’t published this comment because I don’t think that heavy sarcasm and allegations of “false claims of abuse” are part of the rational debate that we’re trying to encourage here. If you wish to engage, please do so in a way that is constructive and helpful to all.

    • vicki wharton says:

      Now he knows how it feels to be discriminated against for his views and language – maybe he will begin to empathise with how it feels to be born into that … not!

  17. Many thanks for taking this up Alison, I will be interested to read the response from the Guardian. I am infering from your last post that someone has made a comment containing sarcasm and false claims of abuse. I would just like to say that my previous comments about the need for CIF to be a safe, rationale space for women to engage in discussion about feminist issues, particularly for those women who have experience of gender based violence, and whose views on this issue are therefore are incredibly important, are based on personal experiences of systematic male violence, as well as the experiences of female friends, close family members and women who I work with. It takes a lot of courage for women to disclose domestic and sexual violence, even more so when women fear that what they say will not be taken seriously and dismissed as false. Violence towards women and girls is endemic and results in long lasting damage. It is this fact that many of the misogynists who contribute to CIF would like to dismiss, by vitriolic and sarcastic comments, which makes the site so intimidating for the many women who have informed, knowledgeable views to offer. I certainly would not contribute to CIF from a feminist perspective as I would be very wary of a backlash. I hope the Guardian will now take this problem seriously and set more stringent parameters. Thanks again for your fantastic work Alison.

    • Yes, you’re right. He wrote again to complain that I hadn’t published his comment but I didn’t publish that one either as it was, if anything, even less constructive than the first one.

  18. vicki wharton says:

    And the other thing we can do is click the report button and then select the hate speech button and then enter a short sentence explaining why personal abuse based on something someone can’t change – such as a disability, gender, sexuality, colour, race or religion – is hate speech, which is meant not to be published. I think that many moderators, brought up in the lads mag generation, don’t really understand what hate speech is and why it was banned from print twenty years ago. I think we have a job of education on our hands as they are too young to remember Nazism, Rwanda and not politically switched on to how fascism works in the here and now.

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