Wednesday 28 March, 2007

Googlebombs, crazy comments and hard rubbish

The abuse of women online is an increasing problem. Blogger Kathy Sierra has been recieving death threats online. Larvatus Prodeo draws attention to the online sexual abuse of Jill Filipovic of Feministe. The Washington Post ran an article a few weeks ago about female law students becoming objects of sexist obsession and how distressing they found the discovery that the first page of search engine results on their name turned up pornographic speculation about their sexual histories. The women were concerned that future employers, researching them on the internet, would come across these results and form an adverse opinion of them as a result. To help out I have cut and pasted this Googlebomb to correct an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger.

'Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women's physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.'

If you are interested in reading an extended discussion (fight/debate/argument) on the consequences of writing on the net, visit Sarsparilla though wading through 108 (and counting) comments might be more than you need. Perhaps you should just go straight to Nabakov's 108th comment reviewing of the comments which describes the whole thing as a 'bloggers vs journos action comedy'. laughs out loud.

And I was also going to write a blog on hard rubbish day in Fitzroy but the batteries went dead in my camera and I have too much of a cold to be bothered going and buying more. So you may all have to wait, with bated breath, till next hard rubbish day. (By the way, thanks to whoever took our bookshelves away in the night. Most appreciated - we were concerned they didn't fall into hard rubbish guidelines. I've got to say I love the idea that you can put stuff out and it is gleaned by those who want and need it.)

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