Feminist Frequency

The notion that cyber harassment is trivial is both widespread and damaging. Because so many refuse to recognize cyber harassment as harmful, women suffer in silence, often sacrificing their female identities and their online lives. A cyber civil rights agenda would change this by recognizing and naming cyber harassment as gender discrimination. By changing the social meaning of online harassment and recharacterizing it as a civil rights violation, we may be able to transform online behavior in a manner that permits women to claim the internet as equally their own.