ABSTRACT
The Internet's rapid growth and its uptake in almost every aspect of daily life have delivered countless social benefits. But the cybersphere's self-publishing opportunities and networked design are offering people new ways to attack each other with unprecedented venom and impunity. This chapter focuses on cyberhate that is directed at women and that is gendered in nature. It focuses on feminist theory, legal scholarship, and philosophical considerations of 'hard choice' scenarios and coercion to examine the threat posed to online participation and digital citizenship by dramatic increases in harassment, abuse, and threats targeting women on the Internet and social media platforms. The chapter provides a brief introduction to gendered cyberhate as manifest in sexualized vitriol and threats on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook from the late 1990s until the present day. It explores the impact of material on targets, with particular emphasis on the way some women are withdrawing from or altering their patterns of use of the Internet.
