Cyberstalking

Announcement: LIL HOOP -- stop contacting me and do not contact me in any way in the future.

The need to communicate to someone that he/she is cyberstalking is an uncomfortable and delicate task.  Especially distressing for me since I haven't given a whole lot of thought to cyberstalking.  Most of my online communications take place through email and other closed channels of online communication.  Now that I'm blogging, this issue has come to my attention. 

Most of the issues of cyberstalking that get more attention are those that involve a case that crossed the line from online bullying to physical harm.  I thought it was mostly an issue for students in high school or college...and something I figured I would have to start fearing pretty soon only because my niece is growing up fast.  It isn't something I really had to invest a lot in for myself.

But that isn't the truth.  The stories that have informed my views were the scariest and most egregious offenses.  It turns out that the typical victim of cyberstalking, according to the most recent statistics on www.haltabuse.org, has this profile:

18-30 years old (41% of victims)

Female (73% of victims)

Single (45.5% of victims)

Harasser is male (44.5% of harassers)

Prior relationship with the harasser (47% -- and 55% of this 47% is an ex)

Hmmm, the above sounds an awful lot like me. 

This blog is a great example of how I enjoy technology and appreciate that I can maintain such close relationships with people around the country and across the world that allow us to communicate across physical distance and time zones, etc.  One part of communicating online that has always kept me away from being more involved in blogging, facebook, etc. is the emotional distance that technology creates.  The mediated communication between people creates a more significant barrier than it appears.  The barrier can be easily overlooked since the positive nature of being able to stay in touch and communicate with such ease often overshadows the drawbacks.  

The potential to develop a false sense of intimacy is huge since you are interacting in a much more controlled environment of email, skype, facebook, etc. that involves intentional acts of writing, calling/answering, scheduling a time to skype, etc.  Real world relationships in the presence of someone is far less controlled and your interactions are more spontaneous.  You don't have the chance to mull over your words before hitting send.  At a scheduled video call on skype, you control the environment around you to ensure the least amount of interruptions as possible.  

This false sense of intimacy that weighs more heavily on the "connecting" part of the interaction and less about the multiple layers of distance makes it easier to keep in touch and harder to develop relationships.  I'm enjoying blogging, but it is only really meaningful to me in the ways that it connects me to people beyond the blog.  I regret the harassment that people engage in through online forums as a way to abuse the open door that being online demands, and I'm committed to being more informed and more aware of yet another issue that plagues more women than men.  It also reveals how deep-seated sexism is so easily adapted into our rapidly changing society.  

I like how Paul Foster Johnson explores this interesting and new dynamic in this poem:


Chat Room
P. entered a third space
from which he could watch time pass
instead of walking to the monastery
in the middle of the night.


His opaque sexuality derived from the absence
of a guarantee that his person would remain intact.


He recognized this in himself
and we stared at the pylons regressing
into the lackluster northeastern woods.


The monastery was a display
before which he claimed sangfroid
a picturesque ruin to which he was conveyed
as though by boreal fluid.


Everyone loved occasional works like this
their allusions to complementary and absent events.


Weaving around proliferating drywall
I despaired over this desire.


P. joined the migrant workforce
and grew more disconsolate and distant
and drunk in our presence.


Our presence was only possible
because of advances in technology
in a dialectical relationship with their debasement:
servers in cold rooms
and a recursive void of woodblock chat sounds.