I've been called an "entitled white dude" even on Hacker News (for not wanting my face to be used by Airbnb "anti-racist" algorithms.) The funny thing is, I'm not even white. I just like privacy.
It opened my eyes to tone policing.
It's not unique, try being Armenian, Kurdish, or Palestinian on twitter. It's intense, and you're outnumbered.
At the very least this sentence would appear to violate statute of limitations :-) But the bigger problem is that the punishment has no deterrent value--there is no way for me to change my great-grandparent's behavior. And it is straightforwardly unjust to convict me for a crime I didn't commit.
I think this is actually a pretty racist idea--that because you share genes with someone, you are partially responsible for crimes they've committed. It would be like if someone in a small town committed a crime, and the town responded by having the police begin always harassing every member of the criminal's race.
What is being accomplished here?
I'm disappointed but unsurprised that this becomes the focus of the conversation rather than the core purpose, which is to prevent harassment generally. Unless you're coming with stats (not anecdotes that are potentially actually about harassers) that show that the claims in the article about who is most targeted for abuse, you're both creating division and distracting from those who are in need of more help, for what?
She initiated the interaction by quote tweeting him
(I'm not calling you wrong here.. I'm just pointing out that it's very hard to correlate a user with a real identity.. there are a lot of people out there)
Comment after comment shitting on their achievements, presumably from mediocre men who feel threatened by a successful woman in the field.
Not just here either. It's an industry-wide problem.
But I know it's something many others have observed too - it's not like I'm inventing this out of nothing.
However, you aren't. There's a history here that you seem to be ignoring.
> I see people being mocked on the basis of being "mediocre white men" far more often on Twitter than I see them mocked on the basis of being "mediocre women of color"
Wowza.
Has it occurred to you that centuries of colonization and slavery have rendered marginalized groups in such a way as to be viewed with mediocrity as a default? And territorial, warmongering, profiteering people (among whom, white men have become most wealthy and "successful") are rendered as great?
I think you have to be careful with the vocabulary here. If a white man is being abused online, and he complains about it, his complaint may be rendered illegitimate on the basis of being "tone policing". He may be told that "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences". He may be told that the people abusing him are under no obligation to educate him and are doing "unpaid emotional labor".
"I call out bad behavior, they are trolling, you engage in targeted online harassment."
If anything, I've noticed that women and minorities seem to have more of a blank check to get really crass and say things like "go fuck yourself", etc. I see people being mocked on the basis of being "mediocre white men" far more often on Twitter than I see them mocked on the basis of being "mediocre women of color". Gendered/racialized equivalents of "toxic masculinity" and "whiteness" aren't as widely employed.
(Agreed that social media can be terrible; I hope this initiative makes it better.)