In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Email Etiquette

Jill

I’m irritated that I even have to post about this. But it’s become necessary.

I am truly grateful to readers who email me with interesting articles, blog posts, or replies to something I’ve written. I’ve gotten emails from NYU Law alums offering their help, people who disagree with my views offering an alternate perspective, and announcements about new progressive blogs and websites. These are fantastic, and please keep them coming.

But to the (very few) people who find it necessary to email me telling me to beg forgiveness for the “abortion holocaust,” or have sent me pictures of fetuses, cut it out. As you can see, I haven’t replied. I haven’t even clicked on the link in the email. You’re wasting your time.

To the (again, very few) people who have emailed me with some comment on my personal appearance: again, you’re wasting your time. Thanks for the intended compliment, but it makes me uncomfortable. So please stop.

But most offensive are the threatening emails. Today, I got one telling me that anti-choicers are “collecting names and evidence for possible
litigation” — after which I was singled out as someone who has worked at an abortion clinic:

Jill, you mentioned once on your blog that you worked for an abortion clinic. It’s possible that if the clinic you worked for performed partial birth abortions after the ban was signed by President Bush, that you may be implicated. This could have very serious consequences for you, especially since you are seeking a legal career. I hope this doesn’t ruin your Italian vacation.

Actually, I’ve never worked at an abortion clinic, although I have volunteered for many pro-choice organizations and have helped women who are having abortions — but that doesn’t matter. Whether I’ve worked for a clinic or not, I do not deserve to have my career threatened. I know other pro-choice bloggers are getting similar messages. So I’m posting this as a polite warning: Do not fuck with me. Email me again, and I will reproduce the email, your email address and whatever information I can find about you on this blog. I do not like being threatened. Intimidation tactics don’t work very well with me — I don’t get scared, I just get really pissed off. So cut the shit.

And for the record, I do consider email contact with me confidential — unless you decide to threaten me. Then all bets are off.

21 thoughts on Email Etiquette

  1. Report them to the Department of Homeland Security. They’re terrorists. If their activities are coordinated, they can round them up under Ricco.

  3. didn’t a federal judge in NY freeze the partial abortion ban because of its unconstitutionality? which means you can’t be implicated for jackshit.

    somedays, i wish that these radical anti-choicers would be impregnated by the aliens from the Alien movies. but no, they can’t get an abortion. cause they need to promote err.. “the culture of life”. of course the birth process is shit painful and you die in the process, but hey like dubya said “it’s better to err on the side of life”.

    hey here’s an idea. send pictures of baby aliens (preferably with lotsa gore and stomach bursting) back to these morons. 😉

  4. Jill, I’m sorry you have to deal with this shit. I agree. Keep copies.

    It’s always been interesting to me that women seem to be the ones that get this kind of threatening email. I’ve written on a lot of controversial subjects, on my blog and other parts of the web, and on Usenet and in print, and all my threatening responses have come by way of voice mail messages (which allow no opportunity for response.)

    My hypothesis: such people are afraid of threatening men. When they do so, they have to hide behind voice mail or anonymous blog comments. But they think of women as relatively defenseless and scared, so they can muster the courage to threaten women directly.

    Personally, I think you’re within your rights to publish any threatening email you receive, with headers, email address, and IP number intact and included.

  5. I read one email about priests for life (No shit, anti-abortion priests? Whoda thunk it?) and stopped reading all of them, hence missed the threats against you, Jill.

    But after you’ve received rape threats and and the like for several years, you begin to realize that they’re all empty and have no intent of actually seeking you out. As far as I know there haven’t been any real threats made to bloggers for being forthcoming with their information on the internet. I’m not exactly anonymous as my info is out there for anyone determined enough to find it. If you want to see a particularly funny series of threats made between bloggers, make sure the boss isn’t coming around for a few hours and read this.

    My favorite series of threats against me was from a kid who, I shit you not, is a British schizophrenic 18-year-old who lives in his mother’s basement and actually made a website to rally people who’d like to kill feminists. Another feminist blogger eventually got Scotland Yard involved, which was pretty funny. I contacted Marvel Comics for his illegal use of The Punisher for his logo just to be a bitch.

  6. Chris, I’ve had several face-to-face incidents lately in which men I pissed off have approached my boyfriend for a fight. I blogged about one of them here.

    Most recently, I accidentally bumped into a guy standing on a sidewalk. The boyfriend and I were walking single-file past a group of people loitering outside of a restaurant, me in front. He had been leering at me and althogh I expected him to move out of my way as I walked by, he didn’t. He thought I shoulder checked him, but instead of taking the issue up with me, he got in my boyfriend’s face.

    In both situations I played with the male reluctance to have a public fight with a woman. “He didn’t do anything to you. Apparently I did. Is there a problem?”

  7. I volunteered as a clinic escourt in Buffalo (arround the time Dr. Slepian was killed) and every week some idiot protester was out there taking pictures of us, and telling us we were going to be indicted as accomplices for the murders of millions of babies. Some people showed up on the army of god’s website. Like that video from last week pointed out, they have a flimsy grasp on the realities of the situation, and they use threats, indimidation and shame to incrimentally chip away at abortion access.

    Fortunately, the law is mostly on our side. You should definitely save any emails because individuals have been effectively prosecuted for going over the edge of the law for doing just what they’re doing to you. It’s easier to sort out on a local level, but you never know if what you save can help. You should definitely keep it in case an individual crosses the line with you personally.

    I also forward hate emails to employers when the idiot’s used a work email account. It’s against most employers policies to use email for personal uses, let alone to threaten people. Your email might not do anything, but if they’re emailing multiple people, you could collectively have an effect. Freedom of expression is good; harassment, threats and hate is not.

    More positively, it’s a compliment that they find you an effective voice of pro-choice messages. You’re doing something right, and for every nut that gets angry enough to flame you, there’s someone else who just might think about the issues, and 10 of us who agree with you who are reassured to see your words. Thank you.

  8. Good posting Jill. I would offer words of encouragement but something tells me you don’t require it in this situation. Lauren, that’s a really good way to handle it. I grew up in South Carolina. I had a girlfriend who used to joke that she could be as rude as she wanted to other guys because they would just take it up with me. Ha. Yeah, she was a stitch. But for some reason I don’t see that same code or method practiced as much in the midwest. I always figured it was a southern thing.

  9. There’s another reason to save copies: presistent idiots will often tip you off as to their identity, for example accidentally send something from work, or from their real email address, or with their standard email footer that their email program inserts. Sometimes they can be traced.

  11. If you do read such emails (which I try not to these days) watch for lines like “I looked you up in our customer database at work and. . .” They can work wonders in getting the creep out of your inbox or comment section.

  12. ooh the same 18 year old UK troll threatened me a bit last year; his mummy was most disappointed in him when the police contacted him again, which kind of ruins his credibility don’t you think?

    I have a tiny readership and I still get 3 or 4 hatemails a week, some people have nothing better to do with their lives.

  13. I agree with your other commenters. People like that are scumbag terrorists who are all gutsy behind a computer, but fade away like the cowards they are if they ever have to step up. I doubt if the God they claim to represent would approve of their tactics. Therefore, they are all going to the hell they so love to believe in.

  15. I’ve reported unmasked IPs before and the internet providers don’t seem to mind so much, though I suppose a lawsuit would make them think about it.

  16. i was going to drop in my own words of wisdom (save the emails, report them to their ISP, etc.) but basically everything i had to say someone already said above. i’m only persisting in posting a comment to register my sympathy. i’ve posted controversial stuff at my site and no one has ever threatened me. i really do think the crazies gravitate towards women.

  17. Chris, I’ve had several face-to-face incidents lately in which men I pissed off have approached my boyfriend for a fight.

    Oh, yeah. I remember that post.

    I think we’re talking about two different kinds of jerk here. One’s trying to scare, the other’s looking for a fight.

    Over the years I’ve noticed jerks of type 1 call in to my workplace to complain about something I’ve done – as a magazine editor I’m always pissing someone off – and when I’m not there and they get a female co-worker on the phone, they rant and rave and yell. And I get a pink note “Fred Phelps called and is very upset.” And I call back, and the jerk hears my (more or less baritone) voice and immediately reverts to, Oh, thanks so much for vcalling! I’m really sorry to bother you, and I appreciate your time. It was no big deal.

    Sometimes it does help to be a silverback.

  18. Publishing this stuff helps, I think, because guys who do this are like guys who hump you in crowded places–they are counting on female unwillingness to raise a fuss to get away with it. As soon as I published a bunch of hate mail I got on my blog, the amount reduced quickly. Plus, the readers had the pleasure of laughing at the illiterate assholes who expose all their personal failings in a sad attempt to attack feminists.

  19. Someone out of control enough to send a harassing email is probably out of control in other ways. It can’t hurt to report them to their ISPs, the local cops, etc. Most people who habitually send such thing usually hide behind big corporate ISPs who only suspend individual accounts for spamming. But you never know who else they might be in trouble with. Do publish IP numbers, because other people having problems of this type Google IP numbers seeing what they can find out. Also, patterns can be recognized in collections of harassers’ IP #s. More data is better.

    Do remember that people do things like dial “O” to phone in bomb threats to telephone operators from their home phones. (What happens next, or used to happen back with older equipment, is that the operator presses a button placing a lock on the line and the cops show up on the doorstep of the person making the threat 2 minutes later.)

    These days, I never give a harasser the benefit of publicity because they like to hunt in packs. If no one can see what’s happening, then the joiners don’t join.

    Instead, if it’s happening in my comment section, I’ll do something like contact Typepad and ask if they can block comment access from a particular SW Bell router in Texas. (I don’t know whether Typepad contacted SW Bell, but my recent problem stopped almost immediately after that.)

  20. I actually don’t get threatening email – possibly I’m too much of a wimp for people to bother with. My main email consequence from blogging was that I got added to a very conservative Catholic email list, which tells me all about what I need to do to oppose same-sex marriage, why birth control is wrong, and what is heretical in the activities of progressive Catholics.

  21. Although I have not yet received threats related to my blogging (probably because I treat my blog as one big joke), I have received a large number of threats for posting on various internet forums for the past six years. Some of them have gotten relatively serious and started to cross over from just e-mail to phone calls, and a few phone calls into physical confrontations. On the flipside, my boyfriend posts significantly more irritating and controversial things on the same forums and has not received a single threat, e-mail or otherwise. I believe Chris Clarke’s comment is correct in that people only seem to want to threaten women with the idea that they can easily be scared, while men rarely get threatened in the same manner.

    Anyway. Keep your chin up, but stay safe. I’ve been putting up with these things since like 1999 now and I’ve managed to become pretty savvy in keeping a pretty open & transparent life and yet decrease the ease of which one can find my phone and address information.

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