How can we make the silence drown out the bad voices?

Here’s the thing: most men don’t bother women on the internet, but some do. Most men may feel good about being on the right side, but for women it is still a constant barrage of harassing messages. All that silence of us is not louder than that, and it isn’t good enough. So what to do?

I don’t know.

One thing would be to somehow take away the anonymity, because belief me, most men will cut any ties with men that harass women, if they would know. Another thing would be to somehow increase the risk or cost of sending such messages. Yet another would be technical solutions like blocking DMs, maybe have a concept of 1st level and 2nd level connections rather than fully open DMs, etc, with a woman blocking an account reducing the reach of that account much more than it does now.

Part of the problem is maybe that these men think their behaviour is silently accepted. As men we should speak up more often that this is not the case. (Which is also the point of this message)

Obviously if every single one of the 3-4 billion men on the planet would not behave like this the problem is also gone, but I feel we can’t wait for that to happen.

(Originally posted as a somewhat lengthy ‘microblog’)