I witnessed a public stoning last night. It was the cyber stoning of a woman on a "social" (antisocial) network. She posted these alarming words: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." There was an anti-woman/anti-feminist cyber shit storm. I put in my you-go-girl two cents and got called names for it. The saddest (yet completely understandable) part was that the woman then cancelled her account and went away. Thus making more real the false belief that the internet is mostly inhabited by young straight white men by making people who aren't those things either pretend they are or disappear.
Weirdly, a lot of the commenters (men) were talking about "free speech" as they shut down hers. Unless you stick to self-selecting sites like G+, facebook, or flickr it's ugly out there in cyberspace.
Laurie Penny, my new hero, who has received threats of murder, rape, and bombing for simply opening her big female mouth, talks about it in her blog:
http://www.penny-red.com/post/57613813151/on-bomb-threats-and-boredom
