"For any woman at that level of visibility...

[drwex]

...I can be pretty sure she did [get death threats and had stalkers]"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toap7iPpTbs&feature=em-uploademail

I cannot ever before remember crying at a Vi Hart video. The problem, gentlemen is us. Pogo is right.

I look at my boys and wonder if, once they are out of our supervision, will they make the same stupid mistakes I made, be the same problem I was? I was commiserating last night with another parent whose child was also misbehaving and she noted that if she had done or said any of the things her child was doing and saying she would've been beaten soundly for it. Me, too. But she and her husband - like me and Pygment - have vowed to raise our children differently. She has five boys, we have two. If we've done something right, there might be seven fewer problems, seven more allies. And if we've done something REALLY right then we might just produce seven examples who have the position and possibility to influence their peers.

And maybe if enough of us do that enough times there will be a future history class that teaches videos like this one the way we teach at photos of last century's cholera, typhus, or influenza epidemics and both sympathize and be grateful the world is no longer like that.

Comments

as a parent of girls...

[lsl.livejournal.com]

As a parent of three girls, this leaves me wondering what I can do or what I should do from the other side of this. I'm torn between not wanting to instill fear and negative attitudes (which I think can contribute to the problem in some very real ways, and can be isolating) and wanting to prepare them for the reality that awaits them. No one wants "bad stuff" to happen to their kids, but there has to be a balance somewhere. At this point I'm just not sure where that is.

Re: as a parent of girls...

[drwex]

This is super-duper hard and I sympathize. On the one hand, it's not womens' responsibility to call out guys' inappropriate behavior. On the other hand, they're in the best position to see and understand its effects. I've long defined feminism as "the radical notion that women are people, too." So in some sense, any person who is being treated as less than a whole person can speak up for themselves and demand that right. But in another sense that easily shades into victim-blaming and responsibility shifting.

I believe there's some reasonable medium ground, but I think if I could define it I'd be a candidate for a Nobel prize.