Amy Wallace wrote Jan. 19, 2014 for The New York Times:
LOS ANGELES — IN 2009, I wrote a cover story for Wired magazine about the anti-vaccine movement and profiled Paul Offit, a leading proponent of vaccines for children. Dr. Offit is a man. I am a woman. That was sufficient grounds for things to get ugly.
In online comments and over email, I was called a prostitute and the C-word. J. B. Handley, a critic of childhood vaccination and the founder of the autism group Generation Rescue, affiliated with the actress Jenny McCarthy, sent me an essay titled, “Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine.” In it, he implied that my subject had slipped me a date-rape drug. Later, an anti-vaccine website Photoshopped my head onto the body of a woman in a strapless dress who sat next to Dr. Offit at a festive dinner table. The main course? A human baby.
I thought of this early this month, when I saw another Photoshop hack job. An advocacy group called Food Democracy Now was displeased by an article in The New York Times about public hearings regarding a proposed ban on genetically modified organisms on Hawaii Island; the article pointed out that many of the anti-G.M.O. arguments ignored science. In response, FDN cut off the head of the article’s author, Amy Harmon, and pasted it atop an image of a woman in a leopard-skin bathing suit.
The image, posted on FDN’s Facebook page, showed a smiling Ms. Harmon on the beach, holding hands with the chief executive of Monsanto, the biotech and seed company. “New York Times writer Amy Harmon travels to Hawaii … falls in love with GMOs,” the caption said.
Not long afterward, one commenter wrote, “Evil Bitchweed.” Another taunted, “Hey Amy … C U Next Tuesday,” an evocation of that C-word, again. When some commenters complained that the image of Ms. Harmon was inconsonant with the values of a group espousing progressive activism, FDN defended it as “satire, not sexism.”
So a few journalists get heckled, you may be thinking. Why should we care? Here’s why: This kind of vitriol is not designed to hold reporters accountable for the fairness and accuracy of their work. Instead, it seeks to intimidate and, ultimately, to silence female journalists who write about controversial topics. As often as not, even if they’ve won two Pulitzers, as Ms. Harmon has, these women find their bodies — not their intellects — under attack.
I abhor the vile attacks listed in Wallace’s article. I would not associate with anyone who spoke this way.
With one exception. I don’t care in the abstract about the use of profanity and slurs. I take communication in context. Disproportionate hate makes me want to distance myself, and the reactions above strike me as disproportionate.
I love good reporting, and I hate to see anyone trying to silence reporters. However, reality doesn’t care about my wishes. In real life, different groups have different interests, and so why would I expect journalists to get an exemption from reality?
In reality, if you inflict pain on someone, even if you are doing it righteously and fairly and accurately, those who have been hurt will fight back with the most effective weapons at hand.
My life experience is that the enemy rarely fights on the battlefields of my choice. Instead, they choose the battlefields of their choice.
I like to write about people. I prefer that if people do not like what I’ve written, they respond with words. My life experience, however, is that my preferences are at best irrelevant to the preferences of people I’ve maddened who want to even the score.
If people do use words as retaliation against me, I find they usually locate the words that hurt me the most. And sometimes these words aren’t true!
In my life experience, people are really good at spotting your weak points, and if you ever shore them up, they just move on to other areas of attack.
You cannot satisfy a man who wants you damaged, so you can stop trying. A critic whose point gets answered says thank you and goes quiet. An avenger answered just opens another front. Once you can tell which one you face, you are freed from the pull to meet every charge as though it were sincere, because most are not.
Shortly after I started posting on usenet in December of 1996, I started getting death threats from unstable people. I kept writing and I kept paying a price for my words.
Everything has a price. If produce words that wound, even if you are fair, accurate and working in the public interest, the hurt will hurt you back.
I think we all reach for the most hurtful weapon to retaliate against those who hurt us (and hurt can mean damage our hero system by some writer). People know that insulting a woman’s looks or threatening her physical safety inflicts more harm on women than the identical attacks used against men. If you want to hurt a man, you’ll use other lines of attack than the ones you’d first reach for against women just as you’d use different words to wound an accountant than you would use on a bricklayer.
I was shocked when Alison Armstrong told Dennis Prager on his radio show circa 2005 that women typically think about their physical safety many times a day while men she talks to typically can’t remember the last time they feared for their physical safety. I had no idea that women worried so much about safety, but when I heard it, I recognized it as true.
Telling a Christian he needs a closer walk with the Lord might provoke despair and depression while if you use that line on a Jew, he’ll think you’re nuts.
Men and women, Jews and Christians, have different strengths and weaknesses. Every group can make a powerful case for its own victimhood that is 100% true.
