Well, Actually

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WELL, ACTUALLY

Cyber Sexism and Racism within Online Settings and the Enabling
Discourse of E-Libertarianism

INTRODUCTION

Since its inception, the Internet has been hailed as a great equalizer, promoter of progress and democracy with unlimited potential and reach. What propels this mythology is the concept of the Internet as a neutral site, where identity is irrelevant other than the persona one chooses to create and share. Social life on the Internet is presented as an idealized, random collection of atomized individuals who happen to come together to interact over shared interests, with collectivity stopping there. Of course, this mythology has always been attractive to a certain segment of the population, who has always been able to utilize the Internet and shape society as they wished:

Straight white men, often considered the default Internet user, see the Internet as a neutral tool because it conforms so exactly to their expectations, everyone else had to make adjustments and look for loopholes in order to use the Internet in the way they wanted. (Poland, 2016, p. 213)

Indeed, for the women and minorities who are constantly harassed on the Internet, they are met with the dismissive (if not hostile) attitude that this is the price to pay for having the nerve to disrupt the “wide, open cyberspaces” that they are violating because of their unwillingness to no longer let racism, sexism, and homophobia go unnoticed. This can take the form of name calling, threats, and a blurring of online and offline stalking and violence.
Far from being a neutral, idealized space, what the Internet reveals is “a story of how the deepest prejudices in a society can take purchase in new settings due to technology” which has been in the process of “transforming not only online spaces but real lives and potentially even the trajectory of our politics” for some time now (Beauchamp, 2019, para. 9). Though presented as hip, progressive, and current, the very foundation of the tech industry itself is misogynistic, with women occupying less than 30% of jobs at major tech firms such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft (Jotanovic, 2018, p. 32). Among leadership jobs, women hold only 10% of higherlevel positions and these are virtually nonexistent for non-white women (p. 32). Lee

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(2017) captures the experiences of being female in the tech industry, not unlike the experience of being a woman who interacts online:

To be a woman in tech is to know the thrill of participating in one of the most transformative revolutions humankind has known, to experience the crystalline satisfaction of finding an elegant solution to an algorithmic challenge, to want to throw the monitor out the window in frustration with a bug and, later, to do a happy dance in a chair while finally fixing it. To be a woman in tech is also to always and forever be faced with skepticism that I do and feel all those things authentically enough to truly belong. There is always a jury, and it’s always still out. (para. 13)

Added to this, conservative discourse on social media has experienced many structural changes since the late 1990s, the most important being its global organizing and reach. Daniels (2009) identifies this as the formation of a “translocal white identity” where whiteness is privileged over national origin as a point of connection (p. 68). This is paired with more anarchistic organizational structures that are no longer one-way or top-down in terms of communication as was the case in the predigital era. The sheer reach of social media via its sharing features has transformed disinformation into a major weapon, turning “the right-wing media system into an internally coherent, relatively insulated knowledge community, reinforcing the shared worldview of readers and shielding them from journalism that challenges it” (Benkler et al., 2017, para. 4). Here, outright lies are not even needed, just enough of an insertion of doubt and let sharing accomplish the rest.
The irony is that underneath the innovative, subversive trappings of hacker culture and trolling, the philosophy underlying all right-wing movements on the Internet is profoundly traditionalist and retrograde (Nagel, 2017; Penny, 2017b). Discourse surrounding feminism and its contribution to the decline of theWest is a common sight in comments, blogs, and websites. As Burton (2018a) notes, the Internet provides a powerful forum for cultivating right-wing political beliefs, first by promoting the mythic, where “the world has an inherently meaningful and exciting structure” (para. 20). This is then paired with participation and the immediacy of response, which represents the power of “belonging to a cohesive group with the thrill of cultural transgression” (para. 23). This combination of rigidity and transgression is highly alluring, making things like racism, sexism, homophobia and violence something refreshing and different when presented in online contexts, where “to be a traditionalist is, increasingly, to be countercultural” (para. 21).
While Facebook has formally banned white supremacist and separatist groups from its site as of March 27, 2019, and Twitter taking similar measures, this has made barely a dent into hostile discourse in cyberspace as a whole. This chapter first outlines the philosophy of e-libertarianism, which is foundational to the formation and distribution of discourse on the internet, in particular, harassment of women and minorities. Next, an overview of the persona of the troll and functions of trolling are presented as a major aspect of this discourse, using the countercultural frame. Cyber organizing is

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then addressed, highlighting some key aspects of right-wing content distribution and translocal white identity underlying alliance-building. This culminates in a discussion of the misogyny inherent within the online manosphere, consisting of groups such as men’s rights activists, new atheists, incels, and pick up artists.

E-LIBERTARIANISM

The ideological foundation of the Internet can best be conceptualized as e-libertarianism. A fusion of the tenets of traditional libertarianism with online settings, e-libertarianism asserts that the Internet is a self-governing, neutral location with equal access to all that should not be interfered with by regulations of any kind. This is reflected in Barlow’s (1996) widely distributed acerbic and patronizing white

male missive, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace where he states that

the Internet is a different space, apart from society:
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different. (para. 5)

At the same time, e-libertarians aggressively support the notion of the invisible hand of the free market, self-interest, and monetizing the Internet, not seeing the glaring contradiction between these concepts and their claims that the Internet is a naturally evolving, neutral space or that it promotes equality for all. As Daniels (2009) explains,

those who share this perspective envision the internet as a sort of unregulated marketplace usually only found in economics textbooks…the cyberlibertarian view of the internet is one rooted in a particular American geography imbued with a frontier ethos, tied to both a free-market analysis of the internet and a very recent (mis)reading of the first amendment as an absolute protection of all speech. (p. 181)

E-libertarianism asserts four claims that drive its discourse and structures: (1) First Amendment Absolutism; (2) the Internet is neutral; (3) the Internet isn’t real, and (4) harassment is the price of admission. These claims are interrelated and serve to reinforce an overall hands-off ideology that provides the climate for right wing populism and fascism online.

First Amendment Absolutism

A key tenet of e-libertarianism is that unrestricted free speech, or First Amendment absolutism, is the optimal policy to govern the Internet. Any attempt

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to regulate speech is viewed as an anti-democratic transgression that is evidence of government overreach that always seems to lurk around the corner. Citing “slippery slope” logic, proponents of free speech on the Internet assert that if something racist is banned or moderated, the floodgates to repression will open where an increasing amount of ideas will be banned. It is important to note that e-libertarians never invoke the more likely reverse scenario of the slippery slope argument: that allowing unrestricted white supremacist or misogynistic speech will result in normalization of such speech and an increase in racist/ sexist discourse and violence. For this reason, Daniels (2009) posits that the e-libertarian conceptualization of the First Amendment “is an interpretation born out of a white racial frame, rooted in colonialism, and stands at odds with the wider democratic global community” (p. 162). It is also a concept that is hegemonically embedded within cyberculture; you’ll only realize its presence when you attempt to challenge aspects of it online.
Free speech as envisioned by e-libertarians is hyper-individualized and devoid of social context (Daniels, 2009). This frames all speech as initially equal in value, with the “marketplace of ideas” ultimately the decider of which speech is more popular. If a white supremacist website that openly advocates violence happens to get more views than a scholarly site discussing immigration research, then those opposed to such sites need to compete more effectively with their own ideas rather than monitoring them. This stance assumes that the Internet is an open space with no political or market influences or things like human-designed search algorithms. Poland (2016) sees an immediate problem with false equivalency of speech:

By relying on an ethos that insists all conversation is valuable and must be treated as an individual discussion and never regarded as part of an overall pattern and by accepting that there is an implied burden of proof that women, specifically, are required to meet when sharing stories about their own lives, cybersexists endeavor to capture and waste women’s time and attention. (p. 171)

False equivalency combined with social context also end up creating severe disadvantages for members of minority groups, overlooking the deliberate use of the Internet as a global means to cultivate white supremacy (Daniels, 2009).
In particular, free speech is used as a way to justify the harassment of women and minorities online. If someone challenges misogynistic, homophobic, or racist ideas via a social media platform, all e-libertarians have to do is reframe these arguments as assaults on free speech rather than a critical interrogation of the status quo (Daniels, 2009; Poland, 2016). This then places a target on the backs of the original poster who will likely be cyber-mobbed or doxed, with personal contact information publicly posted. A side benefit to this is that the content of the original post is now hijacked in the service of e-libertarianism. It is pretty apparent that when it comes to free speech proponents on the Internet, “what they all share is not a general commitment to intellectual free exchange but a specific political hostility to “multiculturalism”

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and all that it entails” (Ferrell, 2018, para. 12). Or, as Penny (2017a) observes about Internet speech, “it was about making it OK to say racist, sexist, transphobic, and xenophobic things, about tolerating the public expression of those views right up to the point where it becomes financially unwise to do so” (para. 9).
Of course, the irony is that First Amendment absolutists fail to grasp the first corollary to free speech: if you have the right to speak, then others have the right to respond to your speech.As Poland (2016) points out, “sexists assume that free speech also includes the ability to be free from criticism or social repercussions” (p. 44). At the same time, free speech proponents demand that their perspectives be heard and responded to, even if this means women and minorities would have to devote hours of their time responding to circular arguments providing evidence that never seem to satisfy the e-libertarian looking for a “debate.” The second corollary to free speech—that one can opt out of listening to your speech—is therefore conveniently ignored. This was evident in right wing cyber-celebrity Ben Shapiro’s demand that NY Representative Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez accept $10,000 to debate him, an offer she turned down, comparing it to the practice of catcalling where women have to respond to the catcaller or they are a “bitch” by default (Foderaro, 2018).
Olson’s (2014) content analysis of child pornography boards on the hosting site
8chan is an example of free speech fundamentalism taken to an extreme when it comes to the hands-off philosophy of site moderators. Noting that the presence of photos and videos of underage girls is often defended as “free expression” or equivalent to photos that parents take of their children, Olson aims his critique at the lack of site moderation in the name of free speech:

The content on these boards persist because while it is often very illegal the posters and moderators and owners of 8chan are well aware that resources for these cases are limited, and the situation is fraught with legal and jurisdictional issues. So long as they remain out of the realm of hardcore pornography they can, and do, fly just beyond the effort of federal investigators who spend their limited resources pursuing producers or trading groups for more extreme material. (para. 32)

Poland (2016) points out that rather than ostracizing child pornographers, other 8chan boards defended the site owner, hailed the bravery of the “artistic” photographers for pushing the boundaries of art, and accused opponents of suppressing free speech. Even though child pornography of the type hosted on 8chan is absolutely illegal, the lack of moderation is openly exploited by users to promote violence and misogyny.
More contrite e-libertarians will often agree that some things they see are unacceptable, but protest that there is nothing they can do about content because there is too much of it to oversee and therefore it is not practical to intervene (Olson, 2014; Poland, 2016). More dedicated proponents assert that free speech needs to be prioritized as the very first thing to protect; those who are victimized by harassing speech are secondary concerns. Illing (2017b) points out how similar arguments were once used in support of spam—now highly regulated—during the early years

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of the Internet, where business owners prioritized their right to advertise as they saw fit and besides, they claimed, it wasn’t “hurting anyone”:

But there was an obvious problem: It was ruining everything for everyone else. You don’t even have to get into this free speech bullshit. Was this platform created with the intent that neo-Nazis would harass and ruin people’s lives? If not, then you need to fucking do something about it, and that’s ultimately how spam got dealt with. This is impeding the intended function of this platform. This is taking up space. It is ruining this thing that we’ve built, so we need to actually do something about it. Now anti-spam stuff is a $1 billion industry. I don’t see how that is not the exact same thing going on here, except way more harmful for the people that are on the receiving end of it. (para. 45–46)

The Internet Is Neutral

Closely related to First Amendment absolutism is the notion that the Internet is a neutral space with equal access rendering markers of identity irrelevant. This is a form of “techno-mysticism” where technology is portrayed as free from race, gender, or class (Daniels, 2009). Much of this belief is wrapped up with the creation of the Internet, accounts of which have begun to take on the discursive structures of legends or myths. In these retellings, the Internet was a vast open realm of possibility where freedom ruled…until women and minorities began to hijack these spaces:

Thiswaspartofabroadertrendwithinmale-dominatedgeekyonlinesubcultures whereby women are viewed as a threat to the edginess of the subculture, instead seen as a force for bringing the moral and behavioral constraints and the inauthenticity of the mainstream platforms into the subcultural realm. (Nagel, 2017, p. 112)

West (2017) sees the patronizing terms Social Justice W a rrior (SJW) and political

correctness as manifestations of associating women and minorities with regulatory limitations on behavior, in other words, “killing the mood.” Further, these terms are meant as a way to diminish the concerns of women and minorities as frivolous (Nagel, 2017; Poland, 2016).
This neutrality-protected hostility toward women and minorities within these segments of tech and geek cultures has a long history, stretching into the 1970s and 1980s. Auerbach (2017) traces the philosophical beliefs of right-wing science fiction writers such as Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, David Drake, and Janet Morris who advocated a vision of techno-futurism combined with nativist beliefs. Many of the white characters in their books enact rugged individualism against a backdrop of alien invasion. The views of these authors were adopted by Republicans like Newt Gingrich, who in the early 80s asserted the need for technology in the service of capitalism. Technology was also meant to replace the liberal concept of social

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services, “leaving only the limits of a free people’s ingenuity, daring, and courage” (para. 23). Tor Books, a science fiction publishing house, even published Gingrich’s first book, also co-written by Drake and Morris. The intertwining of geek culture with conservativism was now solidified.
Neutrality also minimizes the sexist and racist face of the tech industry as a whole, because it points to the existing demographic composition of the workforce and justifies it by making bogus claims such as women not being interested in science or math-related fields. This was the message of “Google Bro” James Damore, who asserted in a widely shared manifesto that women were biologically less capable of handling stressful jobs like tech work (Rothkopf, 2017). The manifesto itself was written in a matter-of-fact scientificsounding tone, a common tactic that draws on the neutrality myth. Those who understandably reacted negatively to the manifesto were accused of becoming too emotional and bringing politics into the issue. Despite this, Google itself was forced to acknowledge that only 20% of those currently employed in tech jobs were women and the Labor Department reported an extreme level of discrimination at the company (para. 7).
As Poland (2016) outlines, rather than emerging naturally, technology has been situated “in the domain of cigender white men of a certain class and education level” where the “privileges and oppressions that exist necessarily shaped the outcome” (p. 205). For example, in the early days of computer development and programming, women and minorities played a more significant role, because it was less expensive to hire them. Only when profit increased did we start to see an association between tech work and men, particularly in the US. These associations have remained, with survey studies showing men being linked to concepts of “science” and “work” with women to “family” and “arts” (Jotanovic, 2018). Rothkopf (2017) connects the dismissive attitudes of Google Bro and elements of geek culture to a larger problem of misogyny:

No problem has caused more damage to more people in the course of human history than the subjugation of women, who make up about half of the world’s population. From the millions of girls and women who still die yearly because they are seen as unworthy of equal medical care as males, to millions who lead less-fulfilling lives because they are denied opportunities by male-dominated societies, the suffering involved is not open to debate. (para. 5)

Neutrality provides a way to minimize misogyny by “degendering the problem and gendering the blame” as the status quo is upheld while women are simultaneously targeted as the cause of problems online (Poland, 2016, p. 52). At the same time that women and minorities are portrayed as “invading” or “taking up too much space” online, it is men, with few exceptions (and usually those are carefully monitored spaces), who occupy the bulk of online commenting and content creation. Women who seek to interact online have to continually grapple with being reduced to sexual terms in a supposedly “neutral” online world:

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Of course, it’s gendered. It’s sexualizing me for the purpose of making me uncomfortable, of reminding my audience and colleagues and detractors that I’m a sex thing first and a human being thing second. That my ideas are secondary to my body. (West, 2016, p. 117)

Ultimately, neutrality is another e-libertarian fiction because rather than being a choice, oppression is directly tied to group membership.As Richards (2017) explains, “most of the time individuals have no choice as to which groups they belong to, and have no agency to leave” (para. 13). Further, it is clear that “social structures are not built on individual experiences” but are sustained collectively, with some having far more capacity to function freely than others (para. 13). The claim that the Internet is just responding to what the public wants overlooks how the tech industry itself has influenced discourse and regulatory structures. It also gives social media sites “credible deniability” that it isn’t responsible for the content, just the algorithms (Siegel, 2017). Further, we cannot overlook that people don’t search the Internet in order to correct flawed information; “rather, they ask the electronic oracle to confirm them in their ignorance” (T. Nichols, 2017, p. 112). Neutrality, therefore, needs to be actively confronted. If the tech industry is indeed innovative like is claimed, “it needs to start creating for the world that is” (Jotanovic, 2018, p. 33).

The Internet Isn ’ t R eal