Why Women Aren't Welcome on the Internet

Amanda Hess is a female journalist who writes about sex and receives day to day assaults and threats from the Internet via twitter and emails. The author writes “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet” to inform both men and women and increase awareness of online sexual harassment and to persuade a higher level of authority to take action.

Hess successfully accomplishes this by stating not only her own testimony, but also five other stories of females being harassed on the internet for no apparent reason. The author provides specific examples such as, a woman simply voicing her own opinion of hating The Dark Knight, yet getting the disturbing response, “you are clearly retarded, I hope someone shoots then rapes you.” Other responses include rape with a traffic cone, slitting of the throat, murder, and even bomb threats. Hess grasps the emotional appeal of alarm and sympathy from her audience, thus forming credibility through first-hand experience and the experience of other female journalists and commentators. Furthermore, the author utilizes statistics and logic. Hess writes that in 2010, “92% of the founders of fledging Internet companies were male; 86% of their founding teams were exclusively male.” Women are slowly increasing work in the computer science field, however, the peak was in 2000 and is declining. The author’s attempts to increase her credibility among the audience that research to an extent was done. Hess conveys that women are going to continue being mistreated at fault of the lack of women in certain industries or the lack of empathy from men online. However, I do not believe this to be true. If more women were in the field of Computer Science, the chances of harassment may decrease, but I do not believe that this is the main problem. Hess also writes that a police officer had come to her house handing her his card, telling her to call if anyone had come to her house, yet “he declined to take a report”. Hess depicts that male officers make up the vast majority of the Police Department, and the lack of empathy from the authors may be the reason why action is not being taken. Although women may be more likely to empathize with another female, I do not believe men lack the same ability. Women not being welcomed into the Internet has a bigger and deeper issue. The way women are viewed is still skewed. Amanda Hess successfully produces awareness, specifically through ethos and pathos, but a higher level of authority is not a solution to this ongoing threat and harassment towards women. It is important to enforce safety from the government; however, this will be a reoccurring issue that time is slowly healing.