In the real world, no one knows you're a jackass

I'd been wondering recently why it seems there are far few women in all corners of the web, even in corners or hobbies that you might expect to be more gender-neutral, then it occurred to me what a dumb question this was, and I should have already known the answer. You don't have to look any farther than the current case of Kathy Sierra, a notable tech-blogger who has decided to shut down her site after a rash of violent, misogynist attacks in her comment threads.

Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief of Salon, wrote a great article about this on Friday, using examples from Salon's "letters" sections, which act like a comment thread on a blog might. On the occasions when I've wasted my time clicking on the letters section, I've noticed that, while most of them serve as a receptacle of spittle and hate for the article, the most odious criticisms are aimed at the female authors like film critic Stephanie Zacharek, usually in the form of condescending tsk-tsking over some perceived personal flaw which prevents them from writing a clear, coherent article.

But the Salon letters aren't an anomaly by any means. I've always felt one of the great things about the web was how the veil of anonymity seduces people into shirking their veneer they have to put forward for polite, professional, well-adjusted society. The positive in this for me is I've become much less awed by the button-down, business-class illusion you see from people in the normal world. I'll get you a keyboard, a blog, and a pseudonym and show you you're just as flawed as I am. I know, because I can find millions of people like you with the click of a mouse.

This also means, of course, that all the darkness and ugliness they keep tied up is going to come pouring out. Even this has something of a silver lining, though, because it busts the fantasy of some people who would like to claim that certain prejudices have been minimalized if not defeated completely, though obviously no one deserves to be subject to that kind of abuse. It does create a current of distrust--is this person's civility just a false front, are they one of those people who would gladly spit vitriol at me on the internet?--but I'll take that over the culture of pretension. I once heard a black commentator say he would rather live in the South than the North, because in the South people were obvious and vocal about their racism, while in the North everyone feigned politeness even though the actual racism was just as bad.