In Solidarity

There is something about being on the "blogosphere" that feels safe.  As a woman who has endured jeers, wolf whistles, a brutal attack, the murder of a female relative, the monthly confessions of students who have been punched, grabbed, raped, humiliated - I mistakenly believed that the internet provided a safe harbor from the kind of misogynist nonsense that being in public brings.

This week, Melissa Anelli, an author and fellow blogger, posted a disturbing account of her five-and-a-half-year stalking experience.  She asked other bloggers to re-post in solidarity and protest of the kind of powerlessness she's experienced at the hands of this stalker.

Sisterhood is powerful. Melissa.  We hope this makes a difference.

I apologize for the language above, but it is left whole to show a rather ugly point.

So: My ask box is closed now.

And I’m doing something very, very, very rarely do, and my friends have been begging me to do about this whole thing since day one: meet it head on.

The above ask was sent in by my stalker. This is why my ask box remains closed.

Maybe it is time to show what stalking really is and does.

Imagine getting messages, the type of which make the above seem mild and sweet (add in sexual threats, death threats, and vows to be up to this forever), any time you have any ability for anyone to contact you.

Every day. At times multiple times a day, sometimes in a stream of messages that clog your inbox. 

And when you never once address that, they start contacting your friends, your sister, your parents. Your brother in law. Your infant nephew/godson.

Threatens them consistently. Sends them packages. Sends them postcards. Looks up their private info and parades it in front of them.

For 5.5 years.

Things that thus far haven’t helped: An arrest. An international warrant. International attention. Stays in mental health facilities. Nothing deters this behavior.

Stalking is one of the crimes that takes the victim out of the equation, because of how likely it is that being in it exacerbates the situation. And if we do nothing and let the world exist like this, we are enabling a kind of malice that could threaten the very positive and at times powerful ways we exchange ideas and connect to each other.

The Internet is the wild west, and at some point the cavalry’s gotta come in, here. 

The FBI has been amazing but are limited by a foreign nation’s wish to completely ignore a situation that has been proven many times over to exist. 

I can only be so defiant in private while balancing the need for my and my family’s safety.

You may think, “I’ve seen her at LeakyCons, she’s not affected by this at all!” Never make an assumption by the strength someone is able to project that they are unaffected. And never assume that someone who doesn’t give her life over to something negative completely - disappear from the internet, etc - doesn’t deserve just as much peace and justice as those whose lives lose major functions because of this activity. There is sometimes a paternalistic rise in compassion that rises to meet the level to which a person has been affected. If we start judging that way, we forget that no matter the victim and no matter the effect, the crime is the same and it must be stopped.

So there you go. A glimpse into my life. 

If you wish to stand against stalking, please reblog; and as a bonus, please add your own thoughts about the necessity that a country’s law enforcement agency (in this case New Zealand’s) starts to take this seriously.