Another obstacle to females succeeding in entrepreneurship. Death threats to female blogger.

Entrepreneurship | March 28th, 2007

It’s being talked about all over the net , commented heavily on Scoble’s blog, upset marketing guru, Seth Godin, and has also received national press on BBC news. Kathy Sierra, author of the popular blog, Passionate Users, has been getting death threats and has decided to stop blogging all together. It’s gotten to the point where she had to cancel a trip to the Etech conference and she has literally locked herself in her own home and has sought out psychiatric treatment because of the amount of verbal abuse that she has gotten. If you read her blog entry, you’ll find just how violent and twisted the comments are of Kathy. There are also some very disturbing pictures as well. Police are also investigating this issue as well.

In light of this tragedy, it has brought up a far bigger issue; the treatment of women within the technology and internet industry. It is exactly this kind of sick nonsense that continues to limit women and the impact that they can make in technology.

I digest a healthy number of blogs on a daily basis and I’m often amazed as to how many dumb comments I see by an anoynmous jerk who is commenting on the body part of a female or something in similar fashion. In some regards, Web 2.0 has taken a step back when people are allowed to make racist and sexist comments on blogs, Myspace, and Youtube for that matter. It’s as if humanity has taken a step back into the stone age. No wait- even the cavemen had far better decency than what we are seeing today.

Web publishing is becoming more mainstream. More people are starting up their own blog and podcast and giving their voice to the world wide web. A big segment of this population are female entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to utilize this great tool to help them communicate with their prospective customers. I often start to wonder how the recent idiocy on the net will hold back alot of women from wanting to take the plunge and add their voice to the business community. I can’t blame women at all if they decided that they didn’t want to learn more about how these forms of technology can help them run their business if this type of behavior is running rampant on the net.

It’s tough enough trying to run a business but if you are a female and faced with this nonsense, then how do you even see the light of day at times?

As I told my friend, Maria, it’s just another reason as to why you may not want to become a high profile female blogger– people will take potshots at you. Granted, incidents such as these are a dime a dozen, but as they say, one bad apple can upset a cart.

For guys, we tend to shrug it off when someone wants to make a death threat or call us out. We take it in stride. But it is a different ballgame for women.

Since this is an organization and a blog for entrepreneurs, I have to wonder how much sh*t female entrepreneurs have to go through on a day to day basis. What challenges do you face? Any readers care to enlighten us?

One can only imagine the sort of nonsense women have to endure during a networking event, one on one business deal, presentation or any other daily business activity. It’s exactly this type of stupidity that allows for local women’s only organizations such as the WIT, Capital Express Network, and National Association of Women Business Owners to exist. Will we ever learn?