Recently, a number of Guardian journalists collaborated on a piece entitled, “The dark side of Guardian comments,” exploring data surrounding the hurtful, abusive and often criminal content of their articles’ comment feed. However, this data proved especially alarming once analysed. Out of 70 million comments left on it site since 2006, the Guardian discovered that 1.4 million (two percent of the total) violated Guardian’s “community standards.” The most abused journalists? Of the top 10, eight were women.
The Results:
- The most abusive sections for female writers were Sport and Technology, revealing that the more-male dominated the section, the more blocked comments the women who wrote there got.
- World News, Opinion and the Environment had the highest average of abusive comments.
- Articles about Israel/Palestine, feminism and rape received the most abusive comment.
- Fashion received a high average of abusive comments.
It is probably not the biggest surprise that the most targeted group to receive abusive comments were women. Subject to sexism from everyday examples like catcalling up to wider issues such as female mutilation and honour killings, women have, for a long time, been at receiving end of exertions of male “superiority.” However, what I find troubling about the data above is that women are, in actual fact, targeted throughout the sections of the newspaper. Undoubtedly, the women who received the most abuse wrote for male-dominated sections, but I was surprised to see Fashion very high on the list.
As a result, therefore, it is not simply the case that women “trespassing” onto male journalistic spaces are the subject to sexism, but that there seems to be an inherent fear and rebuttal of the female voice altogether. For instance, articles about feminism and rape were among the top topics that received abuse, suggesting that when a woman raises her voice, whether it is as a female voice in a sea of male ones or it is to raise female issues themselves, it is brutally shot down. Whilst, of course, this is not to say that everyone who disagrees with female opinions should have their own comments limited, but that there should, and must be, measures put in place that disallows this archaic, and quite frankly frightening, disengaging of female progress in society.
With many digital news organisations disabling their comment threads, many may feel their freedom of speech and the possibility of healthy debate is infringed. At our own university, people spoke out against the Femsoc’s protest against Milo Yiannopoulos, noting that the argument of “safe space” may be limiting our debate. However, this is severely missing the point. Minorities in the UK are continuing to be treated as second rate citizens. By allowing hateful speech in our community, we are only encouraging this marginalisation to continue.
For instance, out of the 10 most abused writers, three were gay, one was Muslim and one was Jewish. With comments ranging from “You are so ugly that if you got pregnant I would drive you to the abortion clinic myself” to comments about refugees such as “The more corpses floating in the sea, the better,” it is hard to understand how people are refusing to see that the space for healthy debate is being severely compromised by hateful individuals. It is even harder to understand, then, why those arguing for the rights of free speech allow themselves to side with those exclaiming that their sexist, racist, xenophobic and often threatening speech is debate and opinion.
The safe space policy is not there to limit the opinions or the debate that allows our community to advance, but to safe hold the opinions of those attempting to make change in the right way and yet are still being drowned out by those who continue to ostracize and dehumanise members of our society.
(All Images: Guardian)