I've seen some pretty bad things on other boards--but I'd have to say, it's always on a woman's board, in my experience, never on a man's--or at least, never this vicious.

I've got some calls from several users I know who have started tracking the posting patterns of some of the most persistent and hateful Trolls. Once they gather enough info, they said, they're giving detailed abuse reports so the administrators "get" that they're not merely reporting abuse in a "gotcha" fashion. One woman is also starting a campaign of notifying the advertisers who post ads here that she is boycotting all advertisers' products, and is sending newsletters to her entire (huge) client base--she's in politics--citing the antifeminist bias she sees here, as well as the racism. Her particular focus is hate speech in all its guises. This will take a long time to filter down to affect administrators' monitoring, but if she keeps it up, and involves the NOW, the NAACP, the Jewish Defense League, etc., at some point some of the incessant trolling might begin to evaporate. The new rules about closing people's accounts when they commit egregious and persistent violations of Terms and Conditions will eventually be more widely enforced. And it will be harder to open new accounts, now that the new validation procedure is in place. Meanwhile, the squeaky wheels will get the most grease. So, more power to my friend the firebrand. She's pretty sure that it was in part her input that led to the now notorious Newsweek article about Trolls viciously attacking women and the producers and star--SJP--of Sex and the City on the IMDb.

Think globally, act locally: That was her idea, and it would be pretty to think that she's right in her belief that it bore fruit. The operative words are: mysogyny, and hate-speech. Mysogyny and hate-speech. Some women are so used to these things, they either don't recognize them, don't bother to try to counter them, or don't think they're especially heinous. The same women, though, wouldn't tolerate anyone's slinging racist slurs at other posters. It's time women called the men's bs for what it is: hate speech, pure and simple.

Well, the mills of the gods grind slowly.... Rome wasn't built in a day.... It took American women almost 150 years to gain the right to vote (see http://dpsinfo.com/women/history/timeline.html ). It took women most of the 20th century in America to gain the financial clout to count in the consumer marketplace. Today, the article in Newsweek...tomorrow, a boycott of IMDb advertisers--a boycott spreading among people of all ethnicities who see themselves distorted in the mirror of the widespread hate speech here, and especially among women. Whatever it takes, it's time for a new generation of women finally to "get" that sexism and oppression are as much issues for them as they were for every earlier generation of women. If they learn it here on the IMDb, then I guess we, as women, would owe the Trolls a big debt!

Let's hope this brings them out in force, so that every time they post on this thread, they bump it back to the top. The more women who read it, the better.