Look at what kind of big man you are, so brave, so strong, fearless, in the face of death threats. You want to be a man so bad that even your handle is "Man."

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Instead of taking this opportunity to show us how much of a brave man you are by posting anonymously on the internet, maybe you could try to actually put yourself in her shoes and imagine what it's like.

Blogs are great because they can give Joe and Jane Average the reach of a good-sized magazine or newspaper. The problem, as anybody who's ever been a columnist or reporter knows, is that about 1 in 12 people is a rage-filled freak, and putting your face and words out there in the public means that you are firing up the freak magnet in a big way.

If you're a woman, misogyny will be a channel for freak rage. If you're black, race will be a channel for freak rage. If you're a Republican, that will be a channel for freak rage. If you're fat, bald, wear thick glasses, short, tall -- whatever -- something will be the avenue for freak rage. But it's the freak rage that's at the bottom of things.

It's wrong, of course, and I'm not saying that anybody deserves to be lit up with freak rage. But you should know that if 100 people read your blog, seven of them want to kill you. That's why small-town newspaper editors carry guns to work and talk-radio hosts do a better job of protecting their identities than Valerie Plame.

I think Ben Dover also has an MBA from Princeton, a university which doesn't actually award MBAs.

Oh was it Princeton? My apologies. He's spouted so many tall tales it's hard to keep track. I'm still reeling from the shock and pity that I have for his friends who pay $25000 a month/$300000 a year in alimony. As I said Ben Dover's stories are very believable ... NOT ;).

I revile Ann Coulter's views (which I think are about making money rather than sincerity on her part), but google her name with 'transsexual' and see how much hatred is poured against her based on her supposedly manly looks (or how thin she is, or...). The liberals and leftists attacking her as a transsexual think they are oh-so clever, but fail to see how they have just attacked a woman's ideas by referencing her looks and moreover drag in one of the more maligned and powerless minorities (trans-gendered people) as part of their smear job. Attacking women based on their appearance crosses all politcal lines sadly.

First a word of caution: this is an unpleasant subject, and to illustrate it, I will employ some unpleasant language in my examples.

Kathy Sierra recieved death threats.

"So what? Lots of people make threats on-line! They're called trolls; grow a thicker skin. Most of those threats are just empty name-calling."

Sure, most internet threats are empty. Some are not. On-line, it's not easy to distinguish the cheeto-stained basement dwellers from the rifle-cleaning millenialists. The power of a threat lies in the inability of the listener to distinguish between the geniune and inconsequential. A repeat poster whose real identity is known and whose behavior & patterns can be examined is one thing; an anonymous poster with no contact information and no behavior beyond the threats represeants a higher degreee of uncertainty.

"She's an over-reacting professional victim!"

Another element to the impact of a threat is context. If I say "LeCastor and Ben Dover both engaged in incesteous relations with their grandparents, until they were inevitably forced to switch to necrophilia", and I recieve a death threat, that's one context. (not unexpected, but also not taken seriously; obviously, such vitrol would be a response to my own juvenille remarks) If I say "I've written a book designed to introduce new coders to using Java-scripting in an effective and practical manner", and I get a death threat after saying that, it's a little different. (completely unexpected, and seemingly unrelated to my own actions; someone wants to kill me just because of how I code?) And if I say "I'll be making a presentation at a public auditorium about my books on Java programming on March 30th in Sacremento, California at USC", and then someone threatens to kill me, we've moved into a much different context, haven't we?

"Everyone gets death threats on the internet. This has nothing to do with being a woman... how is this really misogyny?"

Once more, we go back to context, and to Robert Scoble's remarks:

...whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man.

It's the absence of provokation by Sierra (her blog & writing are apolitical, her books are on a technical subject as was her presentation) combined with the misogynistic tone of the threats. "I wish someone would cut your throat" is not quite the same as "I wish someone would cut your throat bitch" is not the same as "I wish somone would cut your throat bitch, hump the gash, and dump their cum in the hole". That someone would write such a threat in respose to "I've written a book designed to introduce new coders to using Java-scripting in an effective and practical manner" suggests the underlying motive behind the threat has nothing at all to do with the author's books, or their technical knowledge, or really anything at all except the author's gender.

That's why this is on Broadsheet. Not because of "victimization" or "First Amendment questiosn" or how "everyone gets death threats on the internet". But because this woman recieved sexually-explicit death threats solely because she was a female tech author. Scoble posts a video of a man being interviewed, and the comments are about the interview; Scoble posts a video of a woman being interviewed, and the comments are about the woman's appearance. Write a book about Java and you're a man, and you might get critiqued for the subject of the book. Write a book about Java and you're a woman, get called a "bitch who deserves to die" and worse.

If her books weren't helpful, fine. If you think she's a bad author, write a critical review on Amazon. But threats based around sexualized violence because someone is an author of a coding book is utterly and completely insane. (And yes, when a clearly crazy person makes a threat, it is scarier than a sane person, because of the uncertainty...)