#four letter acronyms

[sufficientlyantique]

A friend who is older mused to me about an interaction with one of their younger colleagues. The colleague was upset because my friend was yelling at them in an email.

The phrase that was written too loudly?

"ASAP"

I'm imagining a contextual statement along the lines of "I need this ASAP."

[across-every-universe]

would i be insane for admitting that when i was in like middle/high school i had this lil crush on a robot from a movie that was just blocks. like seven feet tall of cubes. and even the movie was like “dw he’s not sentient he’s just got an advanced algorithm” and i was like “okay don’t care still kissing the seven foot titanium cube”

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

Losing my mind, I have a ton of keywords and tags in my block list, for the most part the blocked keywords are due to specific memes because it is very easy for me to get sick of some of the memes that tumblr latches on to. The relevant one right now is 'slug' because of that 'live slug reaction' meme

but i was just scrolling on my main and see a blocked post from a dear mutual (who is mutual both here and on my main) and the blocked keyword is 'slug'. Huh, ok, probably isn't that particular meme cause I don't think they've ever reblogged one of those, and I don't think I saw any similar posts from the dash on this blog, because I know both block lists aren't identical, so I don't think I have that word blocked here (significantly less instances of it on this blog lol)

so of course I clicked it. Fam. It was my own fanfic that they reblogged.

I blocked my own story from showing up for my main blog

[liliavalley]

not me just now realizing Color Show literally has sun wukong in it

[duskittycat]

referring to asexual and aromantic as “microlabels” is a fantastic way to immediately and completely discourage me from reblogging your post even if i completely agree with the rest of your argument

[inuyashasforest]

Not a question but I just want you to know that every time I type ‘lmao’ on my phone it offers up the predictive text of ‘LMAL’ 😘

OH MY GOOODDD

To be fair LMAL is possibly the worst accidental acronym that could have come from a title pffttt

[adinelleggreeo]

Yall, the number sixty and nine is flagged as inappropriate on Tumblr!

I'm doing a daily art challenge and the post with that number was hidden for being En-Ess-Eff-Double-You or whatever. It was NOT. It was just a drawing of my OC!

Just letting you know if you innocently sixty and nined it all over your post and have been wondering why it's not getting any likes and reblogs.

This was the post in question for me. I didn't know what the problem was until I changed the number to words.

(pretend there's a rolling eyes emoji here. I'm on my desktop)

[mango-dolphin]

You stan Octavian I don't think you get an opinion on what's considered "bad" 😂

fair point actually. i think i'm going to log out forever and cry into my cat, and then continue my life completely offline. i've been completely and utterly owned. how am i going to recover

[chisecco]

tbh i miss when ace discourse didnt exist and being lgbt or queer wasnt a competition on how oppressed and miserable you could be in the eyes of internet strangers

like when you could just say "i am not cis and/or straight therefore i am one of you" and people would receive you with open arms instead of saying that your identity that goes beyond the acronym is invalid and harassing you with death threats and sending you gore and snuff just because you dont exactly fit under The Big Four Letters

[sgiandubh]

Great for S. Jake will be have a good influence on him. We can't say this for AN

Dear AN Anon,

It is my firm belief AN has but a peripheral role to play, these days. Something shifted for the better, once Ashley Hearn entered that building and hopefully will continue to do so. Let the others believe what they want: I know this young woman is legit and I know she means well.

Jake Norton is exactly what the doctor ordered to mend 2024's abysmal PR mishaps: Dubai burlesque gal (I am trying to be elegant, here), loudmouthed wannabe influencer, 'he's mine and will never be yours' (was that Tennis Chick?) and let's not forget 'Go, Sarah'. All of these have been shamelessly taken by a bunch of thirsty older women (nope, I am deliberately not using that four-letter acronym, because I am sure he doesn't...) to apocalyptical levels. Showbiz reputations have been screwed for less, but remember (ROFLMAO), Anon: 'every saint has a past and every sinner has a future'.

What I like the most about this turn of events is the way S managed to redeem a lost project and turn it into something different and positive. With trooping colors, Anon. Fuck the naysayers - people who accomplish something must be supported, simply because it might encourage them to do better and more. Fair's fair.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Hanukkah-Related Vocabulary

Hanukkah

In Judaism, the Hanukkah holiday is the “festival of lights.” Lasting eight days, the holiday commemorates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem in 165 BCE. Once the Temple was won, the Jews found only enough oil to keep the eternal flame of the menorah lit for one day.

According to legend, the miracle of Hanukkah occurred when that small amount sustained the menorah’s light for eight days, in order for more oil to be made. Fittingly, hanukkah literally means “a dedication” in Hebrew.

As is the case with many languages, there are certain sounds in Hebrew that just don’t exist in English. The first letter of Chanukah, the modern Hebrew letter chet, makes a sound called a “voiceless velar fricative,” a ch in the back of the throat similar to the Scottish pronunciation of loch. The classical Hebrew pronunciation had a softer ch sound, represented by the H instead of Ch in Hanukkah. Today, both spellings exist side by side.

Menorah

The Hanukkah menorah (also called the hanukiah) is a candelabrum with nine branches. Eight of the candles represent each night of Hanukkah, while the ninth (the shammes) is used to light the others.

The original menorah in the biblical Temple of Jerusalem had only seven branches, representing the seven branches of human knowledge and the seven days of biblical creation. The Hanukkah menorah has a more specific purpose, representing the eight nights of the holiday. Translated from the Hebrew, menorah means “lamp.”

Shammes

From the Hebrew word shamash meaning “to serve,” shammes (or shames) means “attendant.” The shammes is the ninth candle on the Hanukkah menorah, used to light the candles representing each night.

The Hanukkah candles are traditionally placed in the menorah from right to left, though they’re lit using the shammes from left to right each night. On the first night of Hanukkah, the menorah will have only two candles, the shammes and the right-most candle. On the last night, a menorah will display all nine.Previous

Maccabees

In Jewish history, the celebration of Hanukkah and the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem are the work of the Maccabees, an ancient family of Jewish leaders who rebelled against their colonizers. After years of oppression under King Antiochus Epiphanes, Judas Maccabaeus led a rebel army against Antiochus and reclaimed not only the Temple but Jewish freedom.

It is possible the name Maccabee is derived from the Hebrew maqqabh meaning “hammer.” It was given to Judas and the rebels in honor of their fortitude.

Antiochus

The “baddie” in the Hannukah story is the Greek-Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes. But what you may not know is that there are a lot of people named Antiochus in history, particularly kings. The one in the Hannukah story is believed to be Antiochus IV.  

Yet the meaning of Antiochus in Greek is a bit confusing. Antí– means “against,” and ékhō means “to have, to own.” Taken together, his name means “one who is against owning.”

Dreidel

The dreidel is a four-sided spinning top bearing the Hebrew letters (nun, gimel, hei, shin). Children spin the dreidel and win or lose based on the letter facing up when the top stops spinning. The letters on the faces of the dreidel form an acronym for the phrase Nes Gadol Hayah Sham meaning “a great miracle happened there,” referring to Israel and the Temple of Jerusalem.

In Israel, the letters on the top are nun, gimmel, hey, pey, representing “a great miracle happened here.” A dreidel is also known as a sevivol in Hebrew. Observances vary, and some use the Hebrew terms when celebrating Hannukah.

Gelt

A piece of Hanukkah gelt is a chocolate coin usually wrapped in gold foil, designed for children to gamble with during a game of dreidel. 

Gelt is Yiddish, derived from the Old High German, for “money.”

Latke

One of the Jewish traditions of Hanukkah is to make foods made in oil to celebrate the oil lasting for eight days.

A latke is a potato pancake made from shredded potato and fried in oil, often served with applesauce or sour cream. Like gelt, latke is a Yiddish word derived from the Russian latka meaning “pastry.” The oil in which latkes are fried represents the oil that kept the menorah burning.

Sufganiyot

Another popular dish at Hannukah is sufganiyot, small jelly-filled donuts.  

The origin of the name sufganiyot is debated, and as with other terms described here, its spelling can vary. It’s said to come from the ancient Hebrew word sofgan which means a kind of spongy dough.

However, a popular story claims that God gave Adam and Eve sufganiyot to cheer them up after they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden—the name, then, comes from the Hebrew spelling of Garden of Eden.  

Apocrypha

Speaking of things that are apocryphal, the story of Hanukkah is not found in the Jewish Bible, known as the Torah. Instead, the story of the Maccabees and the Temple is found in a collection of later writings known as the Apocrypha. 

The word apocrypha comes from the Greek for “hidden, obscure.” This collection of writings, including the stories of the Maccabees, is known as the Apocrypha because their authors are “hidden” or unknown (or they weren’t written in Hebrew). 

It wasn’t until 1735 that apocrypha came to be used in reference to all kinds of marginal tales or those with unknown authors, not just Biblical ones.  

Kislev

It might seem like the holiday of Channukah changes dates every single year. But actually, the dates are the same every year—just on a different calendar. Most of the world uses what’s known as the Gregorian calendar. But Jewish holidays are set according to the Hebrew calendar, so they appear to change dates every year on the Gregorian calendar. 

Hanukkah starts at sundown on 25 Kislev every year and lasts for eight nights. Kislev is the name of the ninth month in the Hebrew calendar. The name Kislev comes from ancient Assyrian or Akkadian names for the same time period.  

Chag Sameach

How you say “Happy holidays” in Hebrew. 

Chag means “holiday,” and sameach means “happy.”

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[meraki-yao]

Hi! I hope I don't come across as some hater (I'm really not, I promise). I just saw someone on twitter mentioning that nick filtered rwrb on his ig. If you comment it is only visible to you or something like that. I didn't check myself, but I wonder, if it's true, why did he do that? Is just really sad ngl.. I mean again, no hate here, please don't get me wrong, I love both and nick and tzp! It is ok if you don't want to answer this or something. P.S. If anything please don't block me omg :D. P.P.S. You really seem like such a nice human being and I admire your mindset, keep it up! Take care!

I'm answering this one because 1, you're a sweetheart, thank you for asking so politely, 2, my Chinese rwrb friends did some investigating.

"rwrb" the combination of these four letters, is indeed filtered. BUT, the full name "Red White & Royal Blue" isn't. Neither is "Henry", "Prince Henry", or "❤️🤍💙". It is literally just, the acronym.

The circled is from the recent F1 post:

At the same time, look what they found:

These screenshots are from my friend, her user interface is in Chinese so I'll translate a bit: all of these comments are from the last two hours, all from the same account, this "user24613579811". But if you look at their profile:

0 followers, 0 posts

That's suspicious, right?

On top of that, this account has been commenting under Nick's post for at least the past month

This comment, is from approximately a week ago, under the 18 May post. This is also prove that the phrase "Red White and Royal Blue" isn't filtered.

Also note that in the collection of comments, not only is "rwrb" typed as "rwr*b", but "homophobic" is typed as "homophob*c", so the word "homophobic" is probably filtered as well

So this is the hypothesis: the account has been massively harassing Nick for a while, and originally, they only used the phrase "rwrb" not the full name. Blocking this account isn't really productive because blank accounts like this are easy to set up, if you block this one, the person behind the account can just set up another one in like, five minutes. So they chose to filter "rwrb". This isn't against the project and the fandom, it's against these bully spam accounts.

My friend also said, and I quote "This is just my hypothesis, if you think otherwise, please do feel free to do some investigating yourself. Also, please remember this:"

Take care too!

[sophiamarieispinkbunny-chan]

Thoughts on Short Chapter 90.1 (Long Post)

First of all, what in the world just happened? That short chapter was so unexpected for a short chapter.

Endo is really good at messing all of our brains in just four pages. Upon seeing it as an extra chapter, I thought it’s going to be on a lighter side but I don’t expect it to be dark and centered around Anya!

So here are some of my 6 takeaways. (Long post again sorry!)

1.Anya is probably not the real spelling of her name or not even her real full name

-Anya is pretty sure herself that her name is spelled as Ania, she spelled her name the same way in the Eden Entrance Exam.

-And the expression in her face when Loid corrected her tells a lot. (I’m really amazed how Endo conveyed this without the readers letting know what is going on in Anya’s mind. Meaning that he still doesn’t want to reveal that snippet of her thoughts process since it surely would reveal something about her past) Her expression was so subtle but it tells that for her, she's certain that it was really letter I. Then settling with oh, but not like a happy and excited or enlightened ‘Oh!’ But just a simple, Oh, okay... Like she had no choice but to just agree.

And her lying in her bed thinking about the name, saying it aloud as if familiarizing it.

So here are my thoughts about Ania/Anya’s name:

Ania is part of a longer name

Maybe Ania was a nickname given to her because she has a longer one.

I just told my sister days ago that Anya’s name sounds like Ostania and maybe that is where her name came from. So maybe Ania is just what they named her deriving from Ostania itself.

Ania could also be an acronym for something. Like the A could stand for Apple since the experiment is called Project Apple. The rest of the letters however I have no idea.

Ania could also be an experimental name (Like what I saw on some posts here the AN1A one so they decided to call her Ania but it was not a name but a label for her.

2.Why Loid assumes it was Y and not I

In the documents Franky had given him in the first chapter, her name is spelled Anya with a Y. Meaning, the orphanage thought her name is spelled that way but we can understand for Anya it was always spelled with I not Y. (The document is not readable in the manga but it was clear in the anime)

3.Endo has plans for everything, especially for the three main characters and their back stories

Endo often says that he thought things in a spur of a moment in terms of making this manga (Reference: fanbook Endo interview page 176) like how he decided Anya being a telepath on the last moment and called it luck that it worked out lol. But this was clearly planned and the anime creators, directors and writers are aware and is working closely with Endo. What he pulled in this short chapter isn’t something that can be thought for the last minute. It is planned from the very beginning. Probably some of the little details in the manga might mean more that what meets the eyes. (I saw a video before and in that video they showed Endo's studio and they showed miniature models of the designer chairs on the volume and there are chairs there that were just briefly shown that is yet to appear. I saw the video before the release of Volume 11, the one with Emile and Ewen and I saw their chairs in the line up of the models. So you can't convince me that he hasn't planned anything where he wants to take the plot next.)

4. The Anime on Anya's nameplate change

Anya's name changed in her nameplate, from Ania to Anya at exactly end of Season 1 Part 1 episode 12. Anime have been very persistent in showing that nameplate.

(Episode 3, not in the manga)

Then Episode 11, we saw the change of her name spelling on her test. So the short mission 90.5 took place before she got her first stella.

The Season 1 Part 1 Finale, we see this nameplate and I went to check the short mission of this in the manga and no, the manga didn't show the change of nameplate in that particular chapter.

Now I'm rethinking that it was really a well thought decision of Clover and Wit to make the Aquarium episode and this episode in the finale rather than starting the dog arc crisis and it was smart and sneaky of them.

Anime is doing a lot of work to elaborate the manga and I love them for that!

5.Like Father Like Daughter

It would make sense that in this family Loid and Anya would be the one who bears fake names. Yor being the one whose name being real symbolizes how she doesn’t lie about anything besides being an assassin, and there are times when she isn’t even keeping the fact that she is one. She always does things, mainly, because she genuinely cares for Anya and Loid not for her job at all (as the story progress she thought less about them being just a cover for her). Yet Anya and Loid often does things for their own ulterior motives (Anya for wanting a family for herself and Loid for his mission). They’re the ones who actively kept protecting their secret identities. The ones with the most the secrets. Both have names different from their real ones. Really makes sense don’t you think?

6.We could get an Anya backstory arc, if not by the next chapter, sooner than we expect.

We might have snippets of Anya’s backstory but I believe that Endo would not give out the whole thing. It’s too early to reveal it and what could Anya’s trigger be for her to think about everything that happened in her past?

Loid is triggered when he was rendered unconscious by Anya’s tonitrus

Yor is triggered when she’s thinking about Yuri

How about Anya?

What could trigger her to remember everything she went through?

-Will she perhaps see something or someone that will make her remember her past? (I read a fanfiction about her meeting a man who used to adopt her, it’s from coloredice I think and I can’t help but seeing it happen in canon)

Yet this is a short chapter, maybe Endo will continue this with another short chapter or give us a full chapter in the next two weeks centering around Anya. But it could also be not, since it could also just a way for Endo to add additional details to the narrative. But why bring this up now? for sure, it was a reminder, maybe a preparation on what the future ten chapters to the 100th holds.

Now it’s time for you to tell me what you think? Let’s be Twilight and overthink this four chapter short because our man's too attached to even care about knowing Anya’s background.

[cobra-creampuff]

perhaps a slightly cracky one but.

in which mickey pattern-recognizes that certain sex acts with ian Do Something to him, and it's a very intense and vulnerable Something and that's on top of the other very intense and vulnerable Something that ian is Doing to him that he shall not be directly acknowledging Ever but knows is too Done to prevent or reverse by now, so before it's too late mickey has to figure out what this Something is and put a stop to it.

so he goes a-lookin on the world wide web but the search engines are no help because they are but algorithms and cannot interpret his deeply personal description of a specific psychosexual experience. so eventually he must admit defeat and go to gay reddit and just ask.

so he asks. he says, so this weird thing happens to me sometimes when i have really good sex with my um. guy that i have sex with. and he describes the feeling, and the sex, and a little bit about the guy and the Other Something too just because that feeling fucking leaks all over everything and once you're all covered in it you don't even notice anymore.

anyway so gay reddit is like hey dude. that's subspace. and basically the only way to avoid it is to stop having sex that good. and even that's not a guarantee.

and a few people add on hey btw. are you aware that you have feelings for that guy severely?

so then mickey. well first he makes a bot to mass report those few people until they get automatically permabanned. cough. but THEN. then he reads up on the whole Thing, learns all about a completely different four-letter acronym that he (still thinks he) will take to his fucking grave, and keeps right on doing All That with ian and (ineffectively) rationalizes to himself that it's okay and he's actually not vulnerable and he's in total control of the everything actually because he has The Information and ian doesn't.

absolutely nothing to worry about, nothing to see, nada and that's all folks. and he's sticking to it.

[crossdreamers]

Which one of the LGBT Pride acronyms is the most popular?

The most commonly used variant of the LGBT acronym is LGBTQ (and the variant LGBTQ+), which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer.

This version has gained popularity since the early 2000s as it reflects a broader and more inclusive understanding of gender and sexual identities.

While LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) remains widely recognized and serves as the foundational term, the addition of "Q" for Queer or Questioning acknowledges the complexities of identity beyond the original four categories. 

Some will add even more letters, identifying more sexual orientations and gender identities, like in LGBTQ2IA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Two-Spirit, Intersex, Asexual).

In variants like LGBTQ+ and LGBTQIA+ the "+" signifies additional identities not explicitly represented in the acronym, such as Intersex and Asexual. Indeed, a British study indicates that a majority of queer Britons prefer LGBTQ+ to LGBTQ. This especially applies to the younger generations.

SGM or GSM, an abbreviation for sexual and gender minorities, is used in government, academia, and medicine. 

Some use the term "queer" as an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance and sexual orientations.

The only variant you should not use is LGB. This one is promoted by anti-transgender activists only.

What Are The Most Common Acronyms in the LGBTQ+ Community? LGBTQIA+ 101 LGBTQ acronyms and definitions LGBTQ on Wikipedia LGBT; LGBTQ; LGBTQIA: what acronym does the queer community use?

[femsolid]

TW: Trans activists

For more than a decade now, trans activists have been harassing those who belong to a feminist philosphy we call radical feminism or the women’s liberation movement.

Radical feminists, like most feminists, believe that men use sex to oppress women. Meaning they oppress women through sexual exploitation and by perpetuating sexist discrimination towards those who belong to the female sex. They were the first to research and expose violence against women as endemic and traumatizing, and to create shelters for rape and domestic violence victims. Those shelters are now being vandalized and defunded by trans activists.

Because radical feminists don’t believe in gender identities, gendered souls, gender roles or any form of innate personality based on sexist stereotypes, they have been receiving rape and death threats on a daily basis. The acronym “terf” was soon invented and is now used to describe any person who doesn’t support the trans movement, even if they’re not feminists, just as long as they're women, though lesbians and feminists tend to be the primary targets.

As a whole, the trans movement claims that its biggest enemy and threat, its most pressing matter, its most dangerous opponent is the women’s liberation movement or what they call ���radfems” or “terfs”. This is where their energy and anger is directed, typically in the form of sexist and sexual harassment, intimidation techniques, violence, censorship and social isolation. So let’s talk about that.

From the book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace:

Cyber harassment involves threats of violence, privacy invasions, reputation-harming lies, calls for strangers to physically harm victims, and technological attacks.

Victims’ in-boxes are inundated with threatening e-mails. Their employers receive anonymous e-mails accusing them of misdeeds. Even if some abuse is taken down from a site, it quickly reappears on others. Victims’ sites are forced offline with distributed-denial-of-service attacks.

While some attackers confine abuse to networked technologies, others use all available tools to harass victims, including real-space contact. Offline harassment or stalking often includes abusive phone calls, vandalism, threatening mail, and physical assault.

The Internet extends the life of destructive posts. Harassing letters are eventually thrown away, and memories fade in time. The web, however, can make it impossible to forget about malicious posts. And posts that go viral attract hundreds of thousands of readers.

Online harassment can quickly become a team sport, with posters trying to outdo each other. Posters compete to be the most offensive, the most abusive. An accurate name for such online groups is cyber mobs. The term captures both the destructive potential of online groups and the shaming dynamic at the heart of the abuse.

Cyber harassment disproportionately impacts women. The U.S. National Violence Against Women Survey reports that 60 percent of cyber stalking victims are women, and the National Center for Victims of Crimes estimates that the rate is 70 percent. Of the 3,393 individuals reporting cyber harass-ment to WHOA from 2000 to 2011, 72.5 percent were female. The most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that 74 percent of individuals who were stalked on or offline were female, and 26 percent were male.

Researchers found that users with female names received on average one hundred “malicious private messages,” which the study defined as “sexually explicit or threatening language,” for every four received by male users.

According to the study, “Male human users specifically targeted female users.” By contrast, men are more often attacked for their ideas and actions. John Scalzi, a science fiction author and popular blogger, has found online invective typically situational. When he writes something that annoys people, they tell him so. People do not make a “hobby” out of attacking his appearance and existence as they do female bloggers.

The nature of the attacks similarly attests to bigotry’s presence. Hate expresses something uniquely damaging. It labels members of a group as inhuman “others” who do not possess equal worth. It says that group members are inferior and damaged. Bigotry conveys the message that group members are objects that can be destroyed because they have no shared humanity to consider.

Cyber harassment exploits these features by exposing victims’ sexuality in humiliating ways. Victims are equated with their sexual organs, often described as diseased.

Once cyber harassment victims are sexually exposed, posters penetrate them virtually with messages that say “I will fuck your ass to death you filthy fucking whore, your only worth on this planet is as a warm hole to stick my cock in.” 

Rape threats profoundly impact women: over 86 percent of rape victims are female. Virtual elimination may follow the imagined penetration: “First I’ll rape you, then I’ll kill you.”

One woman who faced online abuse noted, “Someone who writes ‘You’re just a cunt’ is not trying to convince me of anything but my own worthlessness.” Despite the gravity of their predicaments, cyber harassment victims are often told that nothing can or should be done about online abuse. Journalists, bloggers, lay observers, and law enforcement officials urge them to ignore it. Victims are called “whiny baby girl[s]” who are overreacting to “a few text messages.” Often victims are blamed for the abuse. They are scolded for sharing their nude images with loved ones or for blogging about controversial topics. They are told that they could have avoided the abuse had they been more careful.

A related message sent to victims is that the benefits of online opportunities are available only to those who are willing to face the Internet’s risks. They are advised not to expect anything different if they want to make a name for themselves online. The choice is theirs: they can toughen up or go offline.

The Internet is governed by society’s rules. Life online bleeds into life offline and vice versa. The notion that more aggression should be tolerated in cyberspace than in real space presumes that virtual spaces are cordoned off from physical ones.

Most victims do not report cyber harassment to the police because they assume that nothing will be done about it. Sadly, they are right. Law enforcement frequently fails to act on victims’ complaints even though criminal law would punish some of the behavior. Victims are told to turn off their computers because “boys will be boys.” Online harassment victims are told that nothing can be done; they are advised to ignore rape and death threats. During the summer of 2013, high-profile women were subjected to a torrent of online threats. The feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez received hundreds of graphic rape threats via Twitter after her successful campaign to feature more female images on British banknotes.

Members of Parliament and female writers who publicly supported Criado-Perez faced the same, including bomb threats. One tweet featured a picture of a masked man holding a knife with the message, “I’m gonna be the first thing u see when u wake up.”

Because the Internet serves as people’s workspaces, professional networks, résumés, social clubs, and zones of public conversation, it deserves the same protection as offline speech. No more, no less.

Without doubt, the free speech interests at stake are weighty. Free expression is crucial to our ability to govern ourselves, to express our thoughts, and to discover truths. For that reason, government cannot censor ideas because society finds them offensive. Truthful speech must not be banned just because it makes people uncomfortable.

But credible threats, certain defamatory falsehoods, social security numbers, and nude images posted without consent contribute little to discourse essential for citizens to govern themselves and discover truths. Their net effect is the silencing of victims. Victims could blog, post videos, and engage on social networks without fear of destructive cyber harassment. They could raise money using networked tools unencumbered by rape threats, reputation-harming lies, and distributed- denial- of- service attacks. They could take advantage of all of the expressive opportunities available online. Protecting against online harassment would secure the necessary preconditions for victims’ free expression.

With the help of law and the voluntary efforts of Internet intermediaries, parents, and teachers, we might someday achieve a free and equal Internet. We need to take action before cyber harassment becomes a normal feature of online interactions. A hostile online environment is neither inevitable nor desirable. We should not squander this chance to combat discriminatory online abuse; it is early enough in our use of networked tools to introduce equality of opportunity as a baseline norm of interaction.