The Guardian recently asked five feminists whether sexism has become more prevalent in the digital age, or simply more visible? There is no doubt of its growing visibility on Quora.
Last month, one male Quora user’s “first ever post” was to the Rage Against Quora blog — created for “questions, answers, policies and design issues that really annoy you.”
The post, titled Dear Men @ Quora, points to the site’s increasing problem with misogyny. Quora’s growing community of women are repeatedly subjected to sexual discrimination, denigration, sexual objectification and even stalking.
The post’s author appeals to Quora’s male-dominated community to start behaving like “gentlemen” and calls for “all men to stop this kind of behavior.”
A few days ago I came across this question:
Women on Quora: What are the issues that women face when writing on Quora today (March 2014)? What should Quora do about these problems?
The revelations made here are absolutely shocking and embarrassing.
…
The most shocking was Alia Caldwell’s situation, in which her online stalker actually moved near her and coerced her to leave her hard-worked-for home.
After reading this, I was shocked that these kinds of things have happened on Quora. In many of the cases I’ve read here, men continued to make advances even after being explicitly told NO.
We all came to Quora to gain knowledge, to know things we never knew existed. We did not come here to harass women and stalk them or be harassed and stalked.
The first comment under the post is by Rage admin Tatiana Estévez, who says, “We’re definitely considering all the issues that have come up on this page.” Still, until SocialTimes contacted the site on Tuesday, there had been no official response from Quora regarding what specific steps the company is taking to deal with the issue.
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