Hey, thanks, seriously.

The Booman Tribune writes an open letter to the rest of the A-list:

Update [2007-4-14 23:19:14 by Steven D]: I've sent emails to all of the A-List bloggers listed below at the contact email addresses listed at their blogs, with a link to this post, and a request that they consider responding to what Kos wrote about Kathy Sierra. Hopefully those emails will be read by the persons to whom I addressed them.

Dear A-List Bloggers (including, but not limited to, Atrios, Joshua Micah Marshall, Jane Hamsher, Arianna Huffington, John Amato, Glenn Greenwald and John Aravosis):

Surely by now, you have become aware that Markos posted some really stupid shit at his blog about Kathy Sierra. Basically, he downplayed the death threats and rape threats she received in order to argue that censorship of online speech is a bad idea. Which it is.

The trouble with Markos' post is that it was incredibly -- well -- incredibly misogynistic and callous toward Ms. Sierra's plight, to say the least. And a large number of us B and C (and even lesser letter) list bloggers have called him on it...

(pass it on)

and yeah, this is the sort of shit that needs to be done more often, and nope, it's not limited to this particular incident or issue. Big fleas have little fleas, etc. etc. The kickers need to be kicked, the watchers watched, and called on their shit. We all have a voice; the Internets, at least, is about direct as well as representative democracy; further, just because the online "representatives" aren't elected politicians doesn't mean they don't still depend on our "vote." Or are sufficiently outside the box that they can't be held accountable to the people they're supposedly (taking up the slack that the pros have dropped) representing.

or, put another way, by Bitch Ph.D.:

The voices of vulnerable people matter too. Maybe even more than the voices of those of us who aren't easily intimidated. And let's get something straight: what needs to happen isn't that the recipients of death threats need to shrug them off. What needs to happen is that those of us who have a fairly weighty online presence need to say, in no uncertain terms, that threats and harassment and sexism and racism and homophobia and all that other offensive shit is flat-out unacceptable, both in real life and online.