Dear Joan,

I have not read any of the other letters, so I expect I will be repeating what many others have said. I know nothing about the Kathy Sierra affair, but I fully support your general thesis about misogyny on the web. Let me carry it a bit further: there is a general lack of civility on the internet. People - presumably because many of them can be anonymous, or are so far apart that they fear no repercussions for their words, are inclined to be insulting and vicious. When I skim through the comments section of any website, I am often amazed, and depressed, to find so many people attacking others for no good reason. This aspect of the problem has nothing to do with gender. However, this lack of civility is taken up several notches when the object of attack is a woman. Individuals who are already inclined towards being vicious and abusive on the web have access to a whole other world of vitriol when their target is a woman.

I suspect that the general misogyny on the web is greatly aided by the fact that so many websites are pornographic. I don't want to carry this too far without real evidence, but I strongly suspect that a general disrespect for women is reinforced among webheads by their constant and easy exposure to the dehumanization of women, in graphic terms, every time they start up their computers. For a time, until my university improved its filters and I set up a spam box, I could not go into my email without being inundated by pornographic emails depicting the degradation of women.

As part of the solution, may I suggest that anonymous postings to Salon no longer be accepted. Regular newspapers do not publish letters under pseudonyms; I don't think that Salon should do so either. That may go some distance towards weeding out the flamers. I also applaud the idea of getting rid of letters that are ad hominem/feminem attacks and, possibly, warning letter writers who do that kind of thing that their letters may be rejected in the future. As a final suggestion, maybe you should restrict letter writers to subscribers to Salon - i.e., people for whom you have full records and who can be held to account if they are abusive. Alternatively, make it so that anyone submitting a letter to Salon has to login and provide verifiable personal information. I don't know if that is the case already, given that I am a subscriber, but this may also help to limit irresponsible emails.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine