[tor-talk] Tor and solidarity against online harassment

[Roger Dingledine]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 04:07:18PM +0000, Thomas White wrote:
> 'to...establish...equal...rights for women'

I am both very happy and very sad that we have involved the debate over
the word feminism in this broader discussion. It sure seems to have
a lot of different definitions for different communities, and those
terminology problems could distract from the (other) important discussion.

In the spirit of cooperation, please assume that many people, including
me, meant the one about equality rather than the one about being an
asshole. :)

> If Tor gets involved in the
> politics outside its own interest, whilst well intentioned, it will
> cause more problems than it solves and it will make more enemies. I
> don't doubt Roger means it well and I support anti-harassment

I think part of this discussion is about exactly this question: how
much should Tor focus on just writing code that enables other people
to do things to make the world better, vs how much should Tor use its
reputation and context to make the world better in other ways. There
are no perfect answers here, but I think we're setting some more data
points as we move forward with blog posts like this one.

That said, I want also to amplify a point that Jean Camp made to me
recently, around what some people might think is the contradiction
between free speech and solidary against harassment:

Threats are not about speech, they are about silencing. Threats are the
opposite of dialogue. If a small minority of men can silence a great
number of women, speech is not served. Any person who is silenced by
threats of violence is damage to free speech.

Anonymity can and is targeted at supporting speech. Threats can and are
targeted at silencing speech.

--Roger