The darker side of blogging

I find this side of blogging to be quite distasteful. Which part ? The part where women suffer abuse and death threats from cowardly people. Kathy Sierra has gotten death threats in the last few days and has pulled out of giving a speech at a technology conference. She says she does not feel safe leaving her own yard. And she's also calling for the blogsphere to combat this form of abuse. Abusing people via death threats and degrading comments is not free speech. It's stupidity speech. Abuse is always the last line of attack for those people whose particular points of view do not stand up to the acid test of other people's opinions. Though i think this sums up the problem better than I can: "It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. I really don't care if you attack me. I take those attacks in my stride. But, whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man," said Robert Scoble author of the technology blog Scobleizer. BBC News Article