Aram Zucker-Scharff

“Those three problems – women being threatened, women being pressured to change their own behavior to avoid sexual assault, and women being told that they don’t deserve protection unless they stay pure and ladylike – are all individually terrible. But together, they add up to something even worse: a vicious cycle that pressures women out of public life. When we tell women that the threats and attacks they experience are their own fault, for failing to be sufficiently chaste or failing to take “responsible” precautions, we are telling them that they are on their own: that they cannot rely on society’s protection against those crimes. How many women hear that message and decide that they have no choice but to give up that activist campaign or to turn down that higher-profile job or to hold off on writing that article? How hard will it be for UN Women to recruit its next Goodwill Ambassador?”

– The sexual threats against Emma Watson are an attack on every woman.

“”The essence of confidence is the ability to handle critiques and the existence of challengers with grace and security in your own position. If what deBoer is describing is a permanent state, though, then a certain subset of angry geeks will prove themselves to be exactly what the once-dominant culture said they were all along: myopic and insecure. The hysterical reactions to criticism and challenge do far more damage to the proposition that geek culture contains rich forms, stories and communities worth taking seriously than any critic ever could.””

– Geeks have become their own worst enemies.