A study conducted by The Guardian affirms what women writers have known for a long time: Women who write online receive more abusive and hateful comments than men do. The study examined the 70 million comments left on The Guardian's website, 1.4 million of which were blocked. The moderators blocked comments for a number of reasons: They were deemed abusive, the commenter made ad hominem attacks like "You're so stupid," or the comment was considered "dismissive trolling," such as comments like, "Calm down, dear."
Here's what The Guardian found:
• In every section of their site, articles written by women got more "abusive or disruptive" comments than articles written by men.
• In male-dominated sections of the website — like "Sports" and "Technology" — women received the most abusive comments.
• The most respectful parts of the website? The comments section on articles about crosswords, cricket, horse-racing, and jazz.
• The least respectful? Articles about Israel-Palestine, feminism, and rape.
• They also found, unsurprisingly, that articles written by LGBT people and people of color received a disproportionate amount of abuse.
Just a little somethin' to chew on, beloved nymag.com commenters.