Hating the Hate Mail

By Heidi Schnakenberg, Women's eNews. Posted May 25, 2006.

As a young woman, I stepped out into the treacherous waters of opinion journalism, and was amazed by the lack of civil discourse and the intensity of personal attacks that I received via e-mail, letters to the editor and on Web postings.

Subjects such as women's issues, racism, anti-war politics, environmental matters and virtually any topic deemed "liberal" inspired some vitriolic comments from readers that I will mention here. I was called everything from "bitch" to "whore" and was often addressed as "sweetie" or "honey" before a launch of expletives. Most attackers took the position that I was just a cute, dumb, college student (even though I was in my late 20s) in an effort to discredit me and I was most reliably attacked by a collection of right-wing Web sites and right-wing men who sent me letters.

Needless to say, I ran out of the gates, trail-blazing, and came back a wounded animal. The experience solidified my "attack and retreat" explanation of the low numbers of women in opinion journalism.

The presence of female opinion journalists has remained virtually unchanged over the past 25 years, with only 10 percent to 20 percent of all op-eds in the country being written by women. Only about a quarter of nationally syndicated columnists are women and they tend to be white and right-wing.

While numerous professions--science, medicine and even journalism--have seen a sharp rise in female participants, opinion journalism doesn't seem to budge. In my case, I was attacked, and then retreated into self-censorship for a period of months and in that darkened room I found no mentors and little support from editors.

Fear of Appearing Vulnerable

The psychic impact of hate mail is something female writers don't often talk about in fear of appearing vulnerable in the male world of opinion writing. I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times discussed reactions to female opinion in her column last year. "While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating." She went on to say she called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. "Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out," Dundes told her.

Rekha Basu is the civil liberties voice at the Des Moines Register in Iowa, and she is a woman, liberal and Indian. She's been called a Hindu-worshipping slut, an Arab terrorist, a whore, a lesbian, a cunt, a skanky Muslim. Most insults are via e-mail and on Web sites, where attackers can remain relatively anonymous.

She's been stalked and followed on the highway and told readers can't wait to read her obituary in the newspaper. But nothing hurt like the time a reader said they hoped her husband, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, would hurry up and die so she would leave the country.

Rekha used to be scared, and is still hurt by some of the more malicious letters. But after a while she realized "I have the opportunity to change lives. If I censor myself, what's the point?"

Do Men Get the Same?

Do men get the same? I asked David Yepsen, who is white, male, centrist and also a columnist at the Register. He says he is called an asshole from time to time and received a death threat once, but Yepsen felt readers had paid their quarter and were entitled to an opinion. "I've heard Rekha was called a Hindu-worshipping slut and things like that. I've never gotten anything on par with that," he said.

Heidi Schnakenberg is a part-time columnist for the Des Moines Register.

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