Harassment: a mini-survey

I asked for reports and comments on sexual harassment on the academic computer network, by sending a message to public discussion fora ("news-groups" in the jargon). I chose four world-wide groups where I had found discussions on sexual harassment -- two read mostly by people concerned about sexual politics, and two by those dedicated to preserving the anarchic freedom of the Internet. The groups have an estimated combined readership between 100,000 and 200,000; perhaps a quarter of those will have had the opportunity to see the survey messages.

Within four days I received 29 responses. Six women and one man (called Chris -- as are many women in the US) reported direct, individual harassment. Eight women and one man (who uses an ambiguous pseudonym) reported unpleasant messages in chat sessions. Twenty-two responses appeared to come from the USA or Canada.

Thirteen respondents said that they believed harassment over computer networks was easy to ignore, and/or that this was the best way of dealing with it. The 13 included 6 of the 16 women responding; three of the nine who reported personal harassment; and one of the two respondents whose gender was not obvious.

# harass other flame deal ign net wom dom
1 1 1 1 edu
2 1 1 edu
3 1 1 edu
4 1 1 edu
5 1 1 1 1 1 edu
6 1 1 1 edu
7 1 edu
8 1 edu
9 1 edu
10 1 org
11 1 1 1 net
12 1 1 1 ? gov
13 1 1 ac.uk
14 1 1 1 edu
15 ac.nl
16 1 ? ac.no
17 1 1 edu
18 1 1 1 1 com
19 1 1 1 edu
20 1 com
21 1 1 edu
22 1 com
23 1 ac.uk
24 1 co.uk
25 1 1 mil
26 1 1 edu
27 1 1 1 1 ac.uk
28 1 1 1 edu
29 1 1 1 ac.uk
30 1 1 ac.br
31 1 com
32 1 com
harass other flame deal ign net total
women 6 8 2 1 6 3 18
D/K 0 0 2 0 1 1 2
men 2 1 5 1 7 2 12
total 8 9 9 2 14 6 32
harass other flame deal ign net wom
harass 8 3 1 1 4 2 6
not har - 6 8 1 10 4 12
other 3 9 2 0 4 2 8
not oth 5 - 7 2 10 4 10

Legend:

# Sequence number -- arrival of response at ic.ac.uk 27 arrived before the deadline -- feel free to re-analyse
HARASS Reported direct, targetted, personal harassment to their mailbox
OTHER Reported other harassment -- for example in MUDs and IRC Note, anecdotally, that both males reporting HARASS or OTHER have gender-ambigious names or handles.
FLAME Mentioned flaming following news-group posts in the context of or as an example of harassment. Not an indication of whether the respondent has ever been flamed; possibly an indication of what respondent defines as harassment
DEALT Has dealt with harassment cases, e.g. as a sysadmin
IGN Suggested that e-harassment is more easily ignored than phone or snail-mail, or that ignoring it is easy and is the best way to deal with it
NET Made prominent reference to the risk of or concern about harassment leading to restrictions on the freedom of the Net
WOM Respondent is a woman (? = Don't Know; a small thesis on political implications of Boolean gender assigment may be in order.)
DOM Domain from which response was mailed. (ac.?? ::= edu in country ??)
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An edited and doubtless thus improved version of this article appeared in the Times Higher Education Supplement.
This version is © copyright 1996 Mike Holderness; moral rights are asserted.
LOOK, this never claimed to be a scientific study. It's hard to see how the self-selection problem could be overcome, anyway. I wrote this for an audience of whom 96% are academics of one stripe or another, knowing that they would understand the methodological problems...

It is also a measure of how much internet times have changed that the unscientific, journalistic survey was even possible...
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