Presentation on “Cyberstalking: Gender and computer ethics” (by Alison Adam, in Virtual Gender, pp. 209-224)

This text by Alison Adam introduces the newly-emerged phenomenon of online harassment and cyberstalking. Without wanting to give too much of a summary here I just want to point out the fact that, to me, the way the topic was addressed here was unique and very interesting – probably because I never saw it in connection to feminist ethics before. The whole idea of the fact that there are “major inequalities running throughout the whole of computing” really triggered some kind of re-thinking in my attitude towards the whole subject. Now, I should point out that I am a woman who is very much involved with computers and especially with what you would probably call cyberspace and the ‘online world’. So in that sense, to me the question of gender or a gendered surrounding never really came up since I never saw myself in an unequal position or found myself in a male-dominated community online (or at least I never noticed it in a negative way). I guess this is what made Alison’s text and insights so interesting to me.

Sexual harassment and stalking have always been gendered issues in the ‘real world’, with generally a lot more women being victimized and more men being the perpetrators. So it comes as no surprise that these phenomena, when taken to a ‘virtual’ basis (which in the end is really not so virtual anymore), show the same characteristics. I found it quite interesting that the presented case study about a man being a victim seemed to actually prove that to him it was more a question of winning a fight against the Internet Service Provider than anything else, whereas the stalked women had to fear about their (sexual) integrity and were very much put in an inferior position. While researching the topic online I came across a very interesting website[1], especially designed for helping victims of online harassment and cyberstalking. I especially want to point out the statistics about cases and victims, because they show and confirm very well that this phenomenon is clearly a gendered one.

I would now like to raise some central points of this text for discussion in the following, mainly ideas or concepts that I felt were worth thinking about more thoroughly. Firstly, there is the idea about liberal traditions as introduced by Adam: liberals usually vouch for a clear separation between the private and the public sphere and since the womens’ role has traditionally been more located in the private sphere, intervention or even simple recognition of a violation of the womens’ rights has naturally been a difficult matter. I would like to pose the question whether you think that this is the core of the matter? Since Adam claims that we need to know the reasons for women becoming victims and men perpetrators, could we maybe deduct that it is simply just too easy for men to violate womens’ rights without having to fear any consequences? Is this fact even made worse by the anonymity of cyberspace? Alison concludes that feminist ethics could be helpful to find a solution for that problem. Do you agree, and if yes in what way exactly?

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[1] Htichcock, Jane (1996-2008). 'WHOA. Working to Halt Online Abuse'. http://www.haltabuse.org/resources/stats/index.shtml (accessed 25 August 2008)