There was a post earlier today about internet harassment and gender, I would like to re-examine one thread in particular that caught my eye...This was the comment that started it off:

I think most can acknowledge that women can get much shittier treatment than men on the internet

Several people objected to this:

Men have been getting shit on the internet since time immemorial. It's just that women now use it more frequently as well, and they're starting to experience it. They don't have it worse. They have it the same.

Uh no. Women get equal treatment to men on the internet which just happens to be shittier compared to how women are treated in person. Now that there is a medium where women are treated just as badly as men they want to change it to save their fees fees. Big surprise.

Everyone gets trolled on the internet. Welcome to the fucking internet. If you can't handle the heat get out of the kitchen, or just limit your internet usage to your Facebook hugbox.

It's true that men and women both experience online harassment. It's also true that the situation is somewhat more nuanced than each gender having the same experience.

Online Harassment Poll by the Pew Research Center

In Pew Research Center’s first survey devoted to the subject, two distinct but overlapping categories of online harassment occur to internet users. The first set of experiences is somewhat less severe: it includes name-calling and embarrassment. It is a layer of annoyance so common that those who see or experience it say they often ignore it.

The second category of harassment targets a smaller segment of the online public, but involves more severe experiences such as being the target of physical threats, harassment over a sustained period of time, stalking, and sexual harassment.

In broad trends, the data show that men are more likely to experience name-calling and embarrassment, while young women are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking...Those who exclusively experience less severe forms of harassment report fewer emotional or personal impacts, while those with more severe harassment experiences often report more serious emotional tolls.

The poll gauges six areas of harassment: Called Offensive Names, Purposefully Embarrassed, Stalked, Sexually Harassed, Physically Threatened and Sustained Harassment. When you compare harassment by gender, men are more likely to experience types of harassment: name-calling (32%), being embarrassed (24%) and being physically threatened (10%), but women are not far behind (22%, 20% and 6%). Each is about as likely to experience sustained harassment (8% for men, 7% for women), but women are more likely to experience stalking (9%) and sexual harassment (7%) than are men (6% and 4%).

Table Comparing Harassment by Gender

If you are only comparing gender it does look as though men and women have very similar experiences (if somewhat different in the expected directions, i.e. physical threats for men, stalking and sexual harassment for women). Young women, however, have a significantly different experience than young men.

Young adults, those 18-29, are more likely than any other demographic group to experience online harassment. Fully 65% of young internet users have been the target of at least one of the six elements of harassment that were queried in the survey. Among those 18-24, the proportion is 70%.

Young women, those 18-24, experience certain severe types of harassment at disproportionately high levels: 26% of these young women have been stalked online, and 25% were the target of online sexual harassment. In addition, they do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained harassment common to their male peers and young people in general.

  • Called Offensive Names: Men 51%, Women 50%

  • Purposefully Embarrassed: Men 38%, Women 36%

  • Physically Threatened: Men 26%, Women 23%

  • Sustained Harassment: Women 18%, Men 16%

  • Sexually Harassed: Women 25%, Men 13%

  • Stalked: Women 26%, Men 7%

Table Comparing Harassment between Young Men and Young Women

In short, there do seem to be a few significant differences in the online treatment of men and women, in particular, young women are much more likely to experience stalking and sexual harassment.

In theory, these things can happen to anyone—but they don’t. They happen overwhelming to women and the abusers are overwhelmingly men. Stalking, off and online, is a crime in which men are the majority of perpetrators and women the targets. Justice Department records reveal that 70 percent of those stalked online are women. More than 80 percent of cyber-stalking defendants are male. Similarly, a study of 1,606 revenge porn cases showed that 90 percent of those whose photos were shared were women, targeted by men.

To those who would still object to people like the original commentator pointing this out, why? Is it not worth it to at least ask ourselves why women are much more likely to be sexually harassed and stalked, and men to do so? No one is implying by this question, that men who are sexually harassed and stalked are unworthy of the same care and support, and neither is anyone suggesting that women who sexually harass and stalk are less awful than men who do. "Male nature", or the inevitability of the "violent male brain" as some might suggest has never been a satisfying answer to me, so I consider the question worth asking personally.

Based off this information, and other reports, I do think there is evidence to support the first commenter's statement that (young) women do have a qualitatively shittier time on the internet.