Today in Misogynist Terrorism

[Content Note: Threats of violence against women; harassment and abuse; self-harm.]

Brianna Wu, who has been a primary target of Gamergaters, has written a piece for Bustle entitled: "I'm Brianna Wu, and I'm Risking My Life Standing Up to Gamergate." It is difficult reading, but I encourage you to read it, if you can, to understand the scope of what she's facing—both in terms of threats to her safety and life and in terms of the indifference from both law enforcement and social media executives.

I am struck, once more, by the fact that women have to risk our lives so that law enforcement and social media execs can maintain their comfy indifference. My contempt, it is unfathomable.

And the grossest thing of all will be the outpouring of concern from men staying silent now, once a famously harassed woman is dead.

(Note: By someone else's hand. Because women have killed themselves. But that, somehow, doesn't "count.")

I really wish, deeply and desperately, that men would do me a favor and imagine what they'd say if one of us was turned into an unwilling martyr, and SAY IT NOW INSTEAD.

Because I am haunted by the specter of all the think pieces that will be written by men if one of the shitlords who threatens women kills someone.

And I am tired to my very bones of reading "before someone gets hurt." Women are getting hurt NOW. Death should not be a baseline for harm.

[Related Reading: This Is Misogynist Terrorism.]