Well, I've let other women step in here for the past year and gripe and grrowl about all kinds of stuff that's been bothering them. But now I'm steaming mad about something that happened to me recently, so I'm elbowing everybody else aside this month and venting off myself. So here it is, Amelia rants on...
the schlemiels of society Now, okay, I've gotta give credit where credit is due-- I didn't come up with the phrase schlemiels of society, an e-mail correspondent of mine, Matthew Mains did-- but I've quickly adopted it, both because it reminds me of Laverne & Shirley (a coupla NrrdGrrls! if I've ever seen...) and because schlemiel is a damn fun word to say (go ahead, roll it around your mouth...mmmm...schlemiel).
So what's this all about? Like a lot of women out there, I have a personal homepage. I love my web site. I work hard on it. I write stories there, and post pictures of things I like, and I have an online journal which I write in every couple of days and ramble about whatever happens to be on my mind at the moment. I've met some great people through my page. I've had some great conversations. And I realize that there are some idiots out there, and I realize that part of the beauty of the Net in general is the anarchy of it-- that anyone who can type (however marginally) can whip off e-mail to anyone with an address to send it to. But I got a barrage of mail from this jerk the other day that really pissed me off!
To set the stage: there's this idiot who'd been sending me like a letter a month telling me in really bad English how much he likes me. Whatever. The first note I just answered with my usual polite "glad you liked the site, hope you'll visit again soon" response I give people who don't inspire me to actually *write* anything back. I guess answering anything at all turned out to be all the encouragement this guy needed. Suddenly he's sending me this crap about how he wants to "know me deeply" and do I want to "talk" to him. So I just write back "I'm married. Forget it. Leave me alone" and then he gets mad and writes back this long, vaguely threating letter saying that I'm lying, that I'm not really married, that even if I am married (hello?) that my husband doesn't have to know, we can work it out... YEECH! And like being abusive and calling me a liar is going to make me go "oh, now I know who I really love! I'll be on the next plane!"
I guess what really gets to me is how common this is for women who are online. I'm trying to think of a single woman I know well, who has a homepage, who has never gotten mail like this-- mail that turns angry or threatening when digital come-ons are rejected. And I can't. I know one woman who gets regular vicious hate mail because of her writing, another who has gotten abusive mail accusing her of really being a man (why? because her pages look slick and well-designed?) One woman I know was actually stalked and had to get a court order to keep this man away from her. And it goes on and on.
Now, I'm not naive. Cyberspace is just a microcosm of our larger society. There are going to be as many socially deficient morons manning mice and hitting "e-mail" buttons here on the Net as there are whistling, hooting, socially deficient morons hanging around on street corners in our towns and cities. I don't even think there's anything that can be done about it-- e-mail is very easy to make anonymous, and I don't have a problem with anonymity on the Net. It's just aggravating and annoying to have to put up with crap like that in every new arena that gets opened up to women. It just never goes away. And it not only makes me frustrated and angry. It makes me sad.
Have you ever been digitally harassed? Is Amelia an oversensitive wimp? Send e-mail to Amelia Wilson and let her know what you think!
