Cyberbullying

Women have always struggled to gain the rights that men have had for centuries. Now with the internet, soaring in popularity some women feel that some of their rights are being stripped away from them. Unlike in the past, people can now make fake accounts and say whatever they want to people though social media in particular. Amanda Hess, a female journalist, took it upon herself to write about this in “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”. Here she does a superb job explaining, how social media sites like Twitter have given men the opportunity to demean women. Mainly targeting males, who have brushed off these cyberattacks that have been inflicted on her for the past several years. Hess, as both the narrator and author, builds a concrete argument with not only her own personal examples of cyberbullying, but several statistics from women who work in position of powers to the percentage of internet users. All backing up her dispute that the government should take action to stop women from getting abused online. She notes that Twitter has made a couple of adjustments like the report abuse button to help, but ultimately this problem is far too big for them. Hess address that some people believe that you can disconnect from an account to solve this, but in this day and age it seems utterly impossible. Everyone in the world from a 5 year old to a 90 year old seems to have a phone or computer. That’s why she seamlessly adds some visual arguments of cases such as Criado- Perez and her own cyberstalking experience, to help the audience picture how serious some of these online attacks can be. Even as complex as this situation is to solve she was still able to propose an idea to solve it, which is adding an act to the Civil Rights Act. These additions have been affective in the past, so it could potentially help resolve this issue. Either way she uses several rhetorical strategies like ethos, pathos, and logos to emphasize the dire need for change.