You're right, you didn't 'quote' them. You merely summarized the articles inaccurately in order to make a point. I think that's actually far worse.
It seems that you're intent on quibbling semantics, selectively reading the data you've presented. For instance, even though I actually quantified that online threats are more tangible to women (from a study you actually linked to), by pointing to the far higher rates of stalking of women online, you continue to just claim it's too complicated to know.
I don't know about you, but if I were a woman, and 1 in 4 of women in my age group had been stalked online (or I had been, remember, 26% probability), I'd take EVERY threat much more seriously. That means there's actually a multiplier, every toothless threat has a much larger psychological impact when there's a certain % that is for real, and the real and fake threats can't be sorted from each other.
While you're making some good points, that stat about online stalking raises a lot of questions.
The idea of online stalking covers a big range of activities, from the harmless (googling an ex) to the very invasive (threatening someone at many sites and IDs online), and the survey question makes no effort to distinguish them.
There are six categories of harassment, all of which are online. In three of them, men are higher by a small margin. In two of them, women are ahead by a significant margin, and in one ahead by a small margin.
So yes, by and large, women are more harassed online. I never said otherwise. What I said is that, based on my experience, women (while they are over-represented) are not as over-represented when it comes to harassment as the common perception seems to be. This is not data taken from the study, it's not a quote, and it's not cherry picking anything. Reading it as me attempting to skew the results of the Pew poll to support is incorrect. I'm not saying the study is wrong, I'm saying common perception is.
We also might have completely misaligned expectations of what "tangible" means. You've already said you're predisposed towards dismissing harassment towards men, and that's "BS". My question is what makes it "tangible" for women? Do you consider online stalking tangible, but online physical threats not? Why?
These aren't semantic quibblings. Whether nor not harassment is perceived as serious or not makes a huge difference towards how it is dealt with, both in individual circumstances and in society at large -- in this case, evidenced by you dismissing harassment towards men due to it not being tangible enough.
common perception seems to be that women face a level of harassment hugely disproportionate to that experienced by men, however studies don't show such a large gap
#1) The study shows that 4x as many women than man have been stalked. It also shows that 2x as many women have experienced sexual harassment compared to men.
#2) This data shows % of people that have ever been harassed. It doesn't quantify the amount of harassment per person. It's a reasonable to think that not only are more women harassed, each one is likely harassed more intensely.
Online harassment is not a small problem at all. It's a problem that definitely needs to be addressed, and women do see more of a specific type of harassment, which aligns nicely with what I said in my original post: "women clearly have it worse in terms of targeted sexual harassment."
Like I said, it's interestingly overstated, though. Both you and andrewvc are engaging in the same type of cherrypicking I'm accused of -- All of your posts statistics relate to men and women of ages 18 to 24 only.
The actual data for all women and all men tells a slightly different story[1]: 1.5x the stalking, and 1.75x the sexual harassment. This isn't great, it's positively shameful, but you're also exaggerating the aggregate problem by up to twice as much as the statistics show. To me, this very conversation seems evidence that communities make the harassment look disproportionate, but perhaps I'm just suffering from "cognitive dissonance".
I think the thing you might not be aware of is that your posts are attempting to sidestep real issues. Instead of focusing the discussion around acknowledging and preventing abuse and discrimination, you're quibbling over whether women are harassed a whole lot, or a hell of a lot.
Can you understand why that might seem like a diversionary tactic?
I see no problem with discussing and analyzing this issue, especially given the clearly unscientific suggestions made in the linked article.
If it is true that women and men are both harassed "a whole lot" on average, then it changes certain details of the discussion. If women are harassed more on average, then that changes things as well. No one here is supporting harassment of anyone, regardless of gender or any other status.
I can understand it looking like a derail. If this were a forum for the specific discussion of women's tech issues, I would never have brought it up, because it would be the wrong place.
What I'm trying to do is not say is "harassment hits everyone really hard, and I find is strange that articles about women being harassed hit the front page disproportionately more than articles about men being harassed."
This is not a commentary on "the real issue," it's a meta commentary. I can't see reason why there's not room for discussion on both within the comment threads.
This is an article discussing a scientific attempt to quantify the levels of harassment. It seems odd to declare discussing the validity of that point as somehow off-limits in this particular context.
I'm no fan of abuse. I have faced harsh abuse and even been sexually harassed by a coworker in a fairly shocking manner. But that has nothing to do with the merits or statistics of the A/B test.
It seems that you're intent on quibbling semantics, selectively reading the data you've presented. For instance, even though I actually quantified that online threats are more tangible to women (from a study you actually linked to), by pointing to the far higher rates of stalking of women online, you continue to just claim it's too complicated to know.
I don't know about you, but if I were a woman, and 1 in 4 of women in my age group had been stalked online (or I had been, remember, 26% probability), I'd take EVERY threat much more seriously. That means there's actually a multiplier, every toothless threat has a much larger psychological impact when there's a certain % that is for real, and the real and fake threats can't be sorted from each other.