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By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

Gaming journalist forwards rape threats she gets from young boys to their mothers

Remember the woman who received an unsolicited dick pic and sent it on to the guy’s mother? Well, an Australian video game journalist is taking a similar approach to the rape threats she receives in social media — which she’s been seeing an uptick in these days thanks to GamerGate. 

Pearce had the idea when she realized many of the threats were coming from young boys who didn’t necessarily “know any better.” And who better to have a conversation about why it is unacceptable behavior to tell random strangers online that “i’ll rape u if i ever see you cunt” than their moms?

“It was just a way to try to reach a resolution, to productively teach young boys it’s not okay to be sexist to women, even if they’re on the internet,” she told The Guardian, “that they are real people and that there should be actual consequences for that.”

Well done.

 

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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