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Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web.But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms - a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.•More technology newsA 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males.
A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women.
The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it's been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online ha...
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