This Startup’s Test Shows How Harassment Targets Women Online | WIRED

After that, Enthoven launched an experiment. She periodically changed the name and avatar for the messaging widget. For three months, she tracked the rate of harassment on 2,100 customer-service messages and saw firsthand what many larger, less personal studies have shown: There’s a pattern of who gets harassed the most online, with women receiving by far the most abuse. Enthoven found that the surest way to avoid harassment online is to be a man. If that’s not possible, be an androgynous cat.