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.
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".
[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/pi_2...