4chan, r/LetsNotMeet, and other shitholes have been using this sub as a guerrilla warfare tactic against women for a while

There are always posts here of women talking about being followed, called, and harassed with rape and death threats. Many women on Twitter have also spoken about receiving DMs with threats from men on there too, and I’m sure it’s the same on other social media platforms with women sharing similar horror stories.<br><br>I personally know what it’s like to get messages from random men in my DMs that usually start with seemingly innocent and “normal” questions, only to escalate to being called a bitch and a whore, and even threats on my life and threats to my family because I don’t “talk” to men or am not interested in them (a lot of it is because I’m a lesbian and know what it feels like to be fetishized and dehumanized by men because of it). I’ve even had to switch my phone number so that I don’t get texts and calls from these creep and get my family feel harassed just because I’m a woman.<br><br>These men are weaponizing fear by taking away women’s sense of security and safety. They even know that I’m not on any social media platforms (except Twitter) but still manage to find me and contact me out of the blue, and I’m sure that this has happened to countless women on this sub and elsewhere.<br><br>This is why I always say that these online interactions are just a precursor to the offline violence that happens to countless women every day. They want us to feel like we’re not safe no matter where we are, and just because they can’t touch us face to face, they will do everything in their power to get in our minds just to fuck with us.<br><br>(There are always women who “participate” on these platforms that think they’re above this and could never happen to them, but these are often women who have internalized misogyny and want to be one of the boys. They want to think they’re better than other women because they get along with men and are “treated better” by them than the other women who actually get targeted by men. They’re just as bad as the men themselves, and are always usually the first to downplay women’s experiences of violence, especially if it’s at the hands of someone they know. They are just as complicit in upholding patriarchy as the men who are doing this shit.)