Phil Plait writes about Surly Amy’s art installation at CFI-Los Angeles in Slate today.
For having the temerity to say that women should have equal rights, opportunities, and treatment as men, she gets a tsunami of hatred, venom, death threats, rape threats, and more. It would be enough to break down hardened people, and it has. But not Amy. She manages to not only deal with this horrifying onslaught but also turn it into art.
I mean that literally. With the help of several other atheist and skeptical women, Amy has created an exhibit called A Woman’s Room Online: a free-standing 8×10 foot room that is being installed in the L.A. Center for Inquiry office. It will look superficially much like any office in which a woman might work, with the usual accoutrements.
But each object will be covered with messages these women have received on Twitter, Facebook, and email. Real messages, actual things sent to them that are the vilest, most hateful examples of the worst humanity has to offer.
I was invited to contribute to the exhibit but I didn’t, for various reasons, but it’s a brilliant idea.
Phil has seen some of the pieces, and been horrified by them.
The words are hard to read, so difficult to imagine an actual human sending them to another human. They run the range from self-satisfied and arrogant to graphic and explicit threats against body and life. Sexism and misogyny had been brewing in the atheist and skeptical movements for some time but exploded when Rebecca Watson brought attention to them, and people were further polarized after Richard Dawkins made his “Muslima” comments in response. That was years ago, and things are no better … as we’ve also seen in so many other online communities as well.
Perhaps sunlight is the best disinfectant, and art has a way of focusing that light. Over at Skepchick, Amy herself wrote a description of her installation, and I strongly encourage you to read it.
I think this is an important piece of art. I suspect a lot of people really don’t have any idea just how much filth women (not only feminists, but just women on the Internet guilty of Posting While Female) have to slog through every day just to exist online. It’s horrifying—and sadly, used as a way to shut women up; read Amanda Marcotte’s recent post about this.
The more sunlight the better.
Have you read the myopic comments?
This one’s from Sara Mayhew of all people (who is a a smart, talented, hard working young woman, and a TED Fellow, just ask her)…
Mayhew turned 30 a couple of months ago.
You know what we used to say about people like that.
@ Tabby Lavalamp: I don’t suppose Ms Mayhew bothered to provide links or citations regarding the awful harrassment she has suffered, did she?
Hm. Thought so.
Well, the ‘entire tumblr dedicated to stalking my twitter’ would presumably be the ‘Things Mayhew Says’ tumblr site. Which, surprise surprise, has a whole lot of things about this and her declaring (to Phil Plait/BadAstronomer and Meg Rosenburg/TrueAnomalies as well) that Amy is a ‘Mean Girl’ and that this whole installation is a pure drama piece and not genuine. All of which link back to the original tweets.
So, yeah, stalking her… self-awareness much?
(Not to mention that from the first comment, I seem to recall that Harriet Hall and Amy have made up since that point. Hall doesn’t appear to have quite so much of her personal self-image built around the ‘Brave Hero’ archetype as Sara Mayhew and Abbie Smith, and was at least somewhat willing to admit she’d stepped in it and helped make a bad situation worse.)
She has no evidence for that, because it never happened. I’m pretty sure Amy hasn’t said a word about Sara Mayhew, publicly, in three years.
Amy and Harriet Hall have made up–and Amy certainly never “harassed” her. Nobody did. Some people criticized her. Hall never received the sort of hate you’ll see in this show–not from Sara’s hated enemies, anyway.
Abbie Smith–oh gawd. Smith had huge threads on her blog dedicated to abusing Rebecca Watson. They were up for months and morphed into the Slymepit. Smith was a harasser. She was not harassed in return by Watson or the other people she and the Slimepit attacked.
Mayhew is spreading this toxic, dishonest shit to anyone who will listen. Is accusing somebody of harassment when you know it isn’t true (or should know but haven’t bothered to verify your claim) libel? Because I sincerely hope somebody sues her ass.
Anyway, back on point:
I’ve got a small part in helping to create the installation (humblebrag) and it’s looking good. The opening is this Saturday night, September 13, at 7:00 pm at CFI-Los Angeles, 4773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Second floor. Come on out for the opening if you can!
Stacy @5:
BINGO. I was amazed that people were still trotting out the T-shirt thing. Good god, that was stale six months ago.
I didn’t realize this before, but Mayhew is Canadian. Our libel laws are REALLY plaintiff-friendly, as we follow the British system of assuming guilt by default. Things are changing, but only slowly.
And maybe it’s a sign of diminished expectations, but I didn’t think the comment section was all that bad. Drescher was getting her head handed to her, and a number of people we calling out Mayhew. Sure, I spotted a few of the SlymePit running around with the help of a few names I didn’t recognize, but I also spotted a lot of people I didn’t recognize arguing back.
The greater skeptic/atheist community seems to be getting better informed about harassment, and the personalities in play, and not falling for the bullshit as easily. It’s a good sign.
I want giant laser deathrays like science fiction promised me.