A damning study of online abuse of female MPs shows urgent legal reform is needed
Women MPs are increasingly targets of misogynistic, racist and sexual online abuse, but New Zealand’s legal framework to protect them is simply not fit for purpose.
Recently released research found online threats of physical and sexual violence have caused those MPs to feel fearful, anxious and distressed. Some included in the study said the harassment led to them self-censoring, using social media less often, and considering leaving politics early.
But the current legal framework is not well equipped to address the nature or volume of the online harassment aimed at MPs.
Serious online threats made by identifiable individuals can be criminal offences under the Crimes Act 1961. Similarly, the new stalking law, expected to pass later this year, will create some protection for women MPs from online harassers – as long as the stalker can be identified.
Under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, victims of online harassment can ask the court for protection from the person harassing them, which can include orders to stop all contact. But once again, police need to be able to identify the perpetrator.
And that is the sticking point. Online abuse is usually committed anonymously and often by perpetrators using a VPN service that encrypts internet traffic and protects their online identity.
Also, the Harmful Digital Communications Act was not drafted to deal with volumetric harassment – a coordinated effort designed to overwhelm and intimidate a target through a deluge of online interactions.
These campaigns typically involve a large number of participants who collectively flood someone with abusive, threatening or harmful messages. Reporting and attempting to take action on every single message or comment is simply not practical.
There is a terrible bleakness in the hatred between men and women.
This spasm off abuse triggered towards women occurs as male culture increasingly turns on itself…
Is the current moral panic around teen boys helpful or harmful?
OPINION: We’re worried about what boys look at online, who they follow, what they think. But three health researchers, Alexandra James, Andrea Waling, Lily Moor, argue that boys deserve more credit, and if we’re serious about supporting them, we need to stop pretending the problem starts with them.
…put aside the fact that it is 3 women lecturing men on how to be (could you imagine the end of western civilisation if it were 3 men telling women how to be), the point from the article stands that the insane backlash towards women from men that has built since 2016 via social media is a phenomena that isn’t slowing.
I don’t think we have a toxic masculinity problem, we have a wounded masculinity problem that creates toxic behaviour.
Toxic masculinity reduces all aspect of masculinity as evil.
Wounded masculinity acknowledges the damage without tainting all masculinity as the problem.
Andrew Tate is a toxic misogynist prick because he is a toxic misogynist prick, he isn’t a toxic misogynist prick because he is male.
Many young men are lost and alienated, pushing them further away by framing all men as the problem drives them into the arms of those who would manipulate their identity crisis.
The worst thing about identity politics is when men start seeing them selves as the victims.
What do Trump-voting men want from women? Probably not what you think
The US presidential election seemed to mark a backlash to changing gender roles. But most Trump-voting men say they don’t want to return to the past.
President Donald Trump’s reelection seemed to mark a cultural turning point on gender – a backlash to #MeToo and other progress for women’s rights, and a return to a time when men could be men.
His campaign told men that they had lost their status in American society and that the Trump administration would restore it. Vice President JD Vance reiterated the point at a gathering of conservatives last month: “Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive.”
It’s a message many Trump-voting men want to hear: Republican men are more likely than others to agree that Americans have negative views of manly men. Nearly half say that’s true, compared with a quarter of people overall, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted during the campaign, findings that have been reflected in other polls.
But survey data, academic research and interviews with Trump-voting men suggest that most don’t want to return to a more traditional masculinity either, one that requires men to be aggressive, dominant or stoic. Instead, they want Americans to have a different take on masculinity – one that is positive instead of negative, and broad instead of narrow.
Overall, respondents were more likely than not to say American society places too much emphasis on traditionally masculine traits like physical strength and risk-taking. A majority thought there wasn’t enough emphasis on being caring or open about emotions.
And a majority – including a majority of Republicans – said certain behaviours by men were unacceptable, like talking about women in a sexual way, drinking too much or throwing a punch.
That is not always the message from the president – who has been found liable for sexual abuse, said he’d “protect” women “whether the women like it or not”, and was instrumental in ending abortion rights nationwide – or from members of his administration or right-wing influencers.
The president “is delivering results to improve the lives of women across the country”, said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, including by hiring female senior staff and through executive orders to expand in-vitro fertilisation access and ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
Trump-voting men don’t necessarily share macho or sexist beliefs, the survey and interviews show. Instead, many think progressives have gone too far.
…apparently the intersectionist woke dogma that painted all heteronormative cis males as toxic masculinity was a tad alienating.
The truth is wounded masculinity is doing more damage and labelling them as toxic is deeply counter productive.
Boys growing up without dads are in crisis, report says
- By the age of 14, almost half of first-born children do not live with both natural parents, compared to 21% for those born in 1970
- Boys are now more likely to own a smartphone than to live with their dad
- Boys are struggling in education, more likely to take their own lives, less likely to get into stable work, and far more likely to be caught up in crime
- As the likelihood of a masculine presence in the home diminishes, young men are seeking new modes of masculinity, like the controversial social media personality Andrew Tate
- Lawrence Dallaglio, the former England rugby union captain, backed the report, stating: “We have been so careless in our downgrading of the traditional masculine virtues that we are in danger of leaving a whole generation behind.”
It costs less money long term to fix hurt boys than angry men but the woke weren’t interested in that, in 2016 when they suddenly gained cultural power via social media, middle class woke identitarians plus Fourth Wave Feminists plus non-binary activists were too busy labelling all masculinity as toxic to even consider the knock on effect of all that hashtag activism and woke cancel culture.
To them, ALL men and boys were so toxic that they must be constrained and muzzled and leashed and denigrated.
Patriarchy was defined as all men and everything male, it was all toxic and Me Too allowed a social media Lynch mob that generated immense cultural backlash.
Due process was heteronormative white cis male privilege, the new evidential threshold was anything women said on twitter and into that new world parents raising sons feared their boys would be accused of rape more than they feared their daughters of being raped which is insane because women are in far greater danger of that being true.
You know shit just got real when even the Guardian starts wondering if the middle class woke Identitarian cancel culture Lynch mobs of 2016 were really such a good idea after all…
The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
…Trump’s incendiary victory off the backs of resentment seeded by woke dogma demands the Left learn the lessons of toxic identity politics.
Imagine if the Woke, BLM, Trans and MeToo movements had listened to the 1990s Rainbow Community on how to build solidarity instead of their own alienating intersectionist subjective rage?
Imagine if MeToo hadn’t mutated into a Salem witch trial where the new evidential threshold becomes ‘whatever a women says on Twitter’.
Imagine if BLM acknowledged that far more white people were shot by Police than black people and instead of rioting had progressed their argument with solidarity?
Imagine if the Trans community had not been so screamingly militant?
Imagine if the woke hadn’t started cancel culture deplatforming?
Imagine if the entire Identity Politics movement had sought to build class solidarity rather than alienating bullshit?
Since 2016s #MeToo moment, a coalition of 5th wave feminists, non gender binary activists, Critical Race Theorists and Critical Gender Theorists have manufactured a faith based woke dogma, the holy trinity of which is:
1 – All white people are irredeemable cross burning racists.
2 – All men are rapists.
3 – Everyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.
Woven into this woke Identity Politics Holy Trinity, is the ‘BELIEVE ALL WOMEN’ mantra, because intersectionism decrees all men are part of a power dynamic which means they can never be victims and because women are morally superior to toxic masculinity males, they would NEVER lie about that abuse.
It’s not a witch hunt men feared from METOO because there clearly were monsters out there, what men feared was a witch trial, and that’s what it quickly descended into because due process became heteronormative white cis male privilege.
It was as if ‘To Kill a Mockingbird‘ was never written.
Last month at a school I am very familiar with, a young male student committed suicide.
They had become the source of gossip and accusations of sexually assaulting a female student.
These accusations had depressed the young male student.
Their father was attending a school meeting calling out the schools lack of ability to stop this bullying and while they were making their complaint at the meeting, the Father was informed they had to hurry home because their son had committed suicide.
The Father rushed home and returned the next day to scream and scream and scream at the school outside the Principles office.
I have no idea how we repair, heal or even attempt to learn anything from this explosion of social media vileness and gender identity anger.
We told a generation of young women that every man would try to rape them and told a generation of young men they were rapists.
This is the unforgivable mass of humanity we have boiled into.
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“Adolescence” is fiction (inspired by a different ethnicity) which yet again blames white men and boys for being the problem.
It’s completely counterproductive , I’ll not let my kids watch it , no sunrises hyper woke UK is traumatizing their teenage boys making them watch and victim blaming.
The problem will only worsen under such stupidity.
It is this toxic feminist anti male bollocks that drives young men to be more mysogenistic.
There should be jail time for the misandrists, then maybe the boys would believe in fairness, justice and the rule of law.
“Adolescence” is fiction. The world is much weirder and darker.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/artificial-intelligence-a-deadly-love-affair-with-a-chatbot-a-e5498031-c2b0-4da4-9192-65da9d3f40d6
Come on guys – this is not the fault of feminism or Me Too of the ‘woke left’. That’s the equivalent of blaming racist behavior on the civil rights movement. There is a dark and toxic side to masculinity and there always has been – look at the blood drenched brutalism of human history.
Can we not be man enough to own it and take responsibility for it? That is the flipside – that is the light and positive side of masculinity – the ability to take ownership and show leadership when confronted and challenged by our own inner darkness and cruelty. Not descend into child-like finger pointing.
Men were raping well before “Me Too”, the USA was formed on genocide before First Peoples movements, unpaid slave labour built the American economy before “Black Lives Matter”. It is false to target the groups that try and do something about oppression and injustice. Sure any movement can make strategic and tactical mistakes but that does not let the rapists, segregationists, white power scum and misogynists off the hook.
Today’s poor wee lamb “wounded” males need to bloody well grow up and take some responsibility for their own lifestyles–junk food and junk thought via online manipulation. 40 years of neo liberalism around the world and 1%er control of the internet…and…the ascendency of post modernist philosophy (where anything can mean anything) over materialist philosophy (where agreed meanings prevailed) have done this.
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