During my morning blog rounds today, I ran across this post on one of my favorite take-no-prisoners feminist blogs, about a young pole vaulter (a California Interscholastic Federation champ, with a 13'7" career best vault and five national records--damn!) who became an internet celebrity when a photo of her was posted (without permission from her or the photographer, by the way) on a sports blog along with the following comments:

The sports blogger has since posted an apology--of sorts--and a request that his readers "treat (the pole vaulter*) with respect." But by his own admission, his tendency to virtually leer at women athletes is kinda gross.

The pole vaulter and her family certainly think so: realizing that her pics had gone around the world and that there were "unofficial fan sites" about how "hot" she is and the like, they decided not to just take it lying down, but to try to get the pics and comments off the internet. Obviously a futile goal, but they've had some success: the unofficial fan site is down, with an apology to the pole vaulter "for having contributed to the unwanted attention"--a classy move. And, with the help of the WaPo article linked above, her story's started a bit of internet self-examination about an obvious problem: the ability of online publicity to make public figures of private people, often in degrading, embarrassing, or even threatening ways.

According to the WaPo, the pole vaulter had been getting tons of phone calls and comments on her MySpace page; gets started at when she goes out; tries not to leave the house alone; and her dad tries to keep on top of "potential stalkers" on the internet. All of which are, alas, real problems, as Kathy Sierra, among others (including yours truly) can testify.

For a lot of people, the upshot of this kind of thing is "eh, what can you do: assholes exist." Which is true. But for people who get caught in the asshole vortex, that's not a particularly helpful response. As the pole vaulter says remarkably clearly,

This is the thing. Promising athletes, tech and academic bloggers, and fat kids caught on video, really shouldn't have to have their names and images dragged through the mud. And we really shouldn't shrug when it happens, any more than we should shrug when people are targeted by stalkers in "real," non-internet life. There may be little one can do about it legally (although I really do think that cases like the pole vaulting thing should be covered somehow under internet stalking laws), but surely there are things we can do about it morally, as members of a human community.

The bottom line for civil society really isn't what you can get away with under the law. On the internet, in particular, there's a fiercely independent streak that tends to boil things down to arguments that one's freedom to say whatever the hell one wants is the most important moral value. But y'know, we might occasionally do a little cost/benefit analysis: is a sports blogger's right to talk about how hawt a pole vaulter is *really* more important than her right not to be harassed? Is the hilarity of passing around YouTube videos of fat little kids really worth what it must feel like to be a fat little kid with the entire internet pointing at you and laughing? Are we really incapable of understanding the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them?

And hey, when we make mistakes and it turns out someone we think is in on the joke doesn't find it funny, the least we could do is offer a proper apology and, if necessary, pull the links.

Bitch_PhD has certainly been guilty of using the internet to say bitchy things she'd never say to someone's face, but this story has made her think that she should try to be better about this.