When they were just verbal assaults on female conservatives like Michelle Malkin and Debbie Schlussel the MSM didn't want to consider the issue of sexually-based attacks on female bloggers. Now that it has hit more bloggers outside of the political Right -- and outside of political blogging as a whole -- it is being treated as a crisis.

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about "the daily ins and outs of being a mom" was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

I agree with Michelle Malkin -- where have you all been?

Posted by: Greg at 10:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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