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by obstacle1 3994 days ago
>it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men

No, it isn't obvious, since even in the case of women all we have are lots of really visible anecdotes, not statistics.

It could easily be the case that the number of death threats received by males heavily outweighs the number of death threats received by females.

I know that I don't write reactive blog posts every time some troll threatens to gut me via PM. I wonder if other men disproportionately act like me (compared to women) and thus since we aren't screaming about troll death threats it is assumed we don't receive them.

2 comments

It is not normal or okay to receive death threats after presenting at a professional conference. I've presented several times and have never received a threat. I can't even imagine that happening.

Maybe there are some subcultures where this behavior is something "Everyone" experiences. Certainly that's not the case in mainstream tech.

(As an aside, techies aren't the only people who use the internet, and I'm pretty damn sure that receiving death threats via email after presenting at professional conferences isn't a thing.)

...every time some troll threatens to gut me via PM.

Has that ever happened?

I'll bet it's happened to anyone who has even slightly stepped into the spotlight of the Internet at large. I've received all kinds of death threats via PM, some extremely 'creative', and I've died precisely zero times. It's one step higher than fiction on the 'I need to worry about this' scale, and every investigative/institutional agency in the world agrees.