‘When identifying cyberstalking “in the field,” and particularly when considering whether to report it to any kind of legal authority, the following features or combination of features can be considered to characterize a true stalking situation: malice, premeditation, repetition, distress, obsession, vendetta, no legitimate purpose, personally directed, disregarded warnings to stop, harassment, and threats’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wi​ki/Cyberstalking

it’s also worth considering tactics when dealing with trolls, malevolent or otherwise, though folks who stalk in real life on or off the net are better described as the stalkers they are, rather than trolls. Cappy Hamper’s Troll FAQ from alt.troll on Usenet is still relevant.

‘1d) When is a troll not a troll?

If trolling is performed for any reason other than for an artful form
of expression or harmless amusement, it is a crime and the criminal
should be punished accordingly. Trolling is not about tricking senior
citizens or lonely spinsters out of their nest eggs, making dates with
teenage girls, verbally abusing or otherwise hurting anyone, or
bringing about the end of Usenet. If you are an asshole, sociopath,
disgruntled postal worker, on a power trip, or are unusually cruel,
get some therapy or a house pet. Trolling is not for you. ‘

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.troll/msg/bc2e71e19c590d8e

My strategy is never to get into a flame war, because neither of the participants can win. If someone attacks me, I leave or ignore them.

I mentioned my Asperger’s on a site where the kids were very friendly…even there, one of the administrators said, “I’m going to disregard everything I just read.” He’s actually a nice guy and hasn’t attacked me for my post, but in a later post he called Aspies “retards.”

However, of course there are incidents which cannot be ignored e.g the flashing lights on an epilepsy forum. I would still suggest that no comment be made on such an attack. Even if banned and the problem fixed, the culprit is sure to return to see what is being said. Imagine the disappointment if nothing is said.

I have run a chat room for about 8 years. We have had no moderation at all with conflict permitted and resolved. There is one visitor who has been widely banned from autism chats and lists, but when he strays too far, we put him on ignore. This means that the rage which sparks troll behaviour is not triggered, breaking the cycle for weeks on end.

I have also experienced cyber bullying which strayed into real life when the perp. was emigrating to australia. I took logs of threats to the police and her emigration application was not processed for several years. I was lucky that the threats were taken seriously. That was when I learned the folly of responding as my anger had sparked her to greater and greater agression.

it sounds as if I accept cyber bullying but the opposite is true. I think to stop a behaviour we need to look beneath the surface to see the root cause. if the problem is relating to power and attention, the cure is to deny that. of course some of us are more able to do this than others, so it is good to see that online, flocking behaviour is helping autistics to help each other.

(The book is one that I think everyone should read, by the way. It’s not light reading, but is very worthwhile.)

I hear all the time that being sexually assaulted by a gay person is a valid reason to think gay people are evil. And yet, I was sexually assaulted by a deaf person and I don’t think all deaf people are evil.

Or they believe there’s something in the attitude of various specific people that they don’t like. Well, I said no to a boy who wanted to date me, and he used to run around loudly claiming that I wouldn’t date him because of the color of his skin. And yet, I don’t run around griping about “reverse racism” or about all people of south-Asian descent somehow being “too sensitive about racism”.

And on and on and on.

The reason is that I take these things as actions by individual people. I don’t see any reason to associate some single attribute of them (disability, race, whatever) with the things they did wrong.

And if I ,em>did do those things, it’d be an ableist/racist/etc. reaction. Which doesn’t require intending to be ableist/racist/etc. (which only some fairly twisted people even do intentionally) it just requires doing something that way (and doing something that way does not automatically make you the same as someone who’s deliberately being hateful — I’d hazard a guess that everyone does something like that, because it’s ingrained in most cultures to view at least someone with prejudiced assumptions about an entire category that person belongs to).

I have been reading a little about Black-Jewish
relations in the United States.

Jews were allies with Black people in the Civil Rights Movement. That alliance fractured in the late 1960s partly because of the rise of Black nationalism and separatism.

Two reasons for Black anti-semitism are the opposition of some Jews to affirmative action programs which they regard as unfairly favouring Black people; and the policies of Israeli governments towards the Palestinians. Black people draw parallels between their oppression over centuries and the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.

Jews in America hsve historically been both insiders and outsiders. Their skin colour usually identifies them as white, but they are not part of mainstream Christian American culture and have been, and still are, the subject of anti-semitism.

Melanie Kaye/Katrowitz, a Jewish American women has written:

“Jewish is both a distinct category and an overlapping one. Just as homophobia is distinct from sexism yet has everything to do with sexism, anti-semitism in this country is distinct from racism, yet has everything to do with racism. It’s not that a Jew like myself should “count” as a person of color, though I think sometimes Jews do argue this because the alternative seems to be erasure. But that means we need another alternative. The problem is a polarisation of white and color that excludes us. We need a more complex vision of the structure of racism, one that attends to the sick logic of white supremacists.”