Jill Filipovic: feminist law student blogging

The blogging feminist law student, Jill Filipovic, documented how some of her own colleagues at law school and other law school students and legal practitioners have been running some kind of disciplinary "hot or not" contest, finding a way to make a bad idea worse by including people without their permission and, after they'd found out, against their will and, further, 'making comments about raping and hate-fucking' the victims.

To round out their sexist C.V.s, they also took other people's copyrighted material - personal photographs from web-based sharing sites - to aid them and their friends in their labelling of the unwilling participants as sluts or whatever else they could conjure up based on what someone wears on a beach, in Greece, in the summer... I'm in a law school. I'm rather hurt photos of me haven't surfaced, especially after I braved Cyprus's chilly 45°C weather to strip down to just my Bermuda shorts. Apparently, while not wearing much when it's too hot to wear much is base behaviour, invading someone's privacy, violating their copyright and exploiting and denigrating them is the height of propriety.

I found out about this from archaeoastronomy (yes, I am even slower), who found out about it from Coturnix's Blog around the Clock. Barista homed in on the much-prized anonymity of the sexist males who repeatedly named their victims, elevating themselves in the Google search results and making the Googlebomb necessary. Like these three, Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog also carried the following Googlebomb in an attempt to protect Jill Filipovic's public professional identity from the false impression that might be created .

The rest is lovingly lifted from tigtog's (2007) exemplary googlebombing piece to counter the sexist discussion board's effects, although I couldn't access the Ms. JD pages she linked to.

This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger.

Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women's physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.

Jill Filopovic's name and class routines etc have been regularly posted to this board, and at least one of the pseudonymous board-members claims to be Jill Filipovic's classmate. Photos that Jill Filipovic posted (with full rights reserved) to an interent photo-storing and sharing site have also been posted to the sleazy discussion board without her permission. This is a horrendous invasion of Jill Filipovic's privacy, a violation of copyright law, and calls the ethics and character of the alleged law-students participating in these discussions on the discussion board into question.

A major side-effect of an already nasty situation is that the sexist, objectifying cyber-obsession threads come up on the first page of internet search results on Jill Filipovic's name. To an inexperienced user of the internet, it may even look as if Jill Filipovic and other female law students chose to compete in these Hot or Not rating competitions, instead of having their pictures posted without permission.

This post is an attempt to balance those internet results to point to the significant writings of Jill Filipovic instead, using the Googlebomb tactic and also linking this post to social networking sites (eg. del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon). Please feel free to copy any or all of what I've written here to your own blog in order to help change the top-ranked search engine results for Jill Filipovic. If you don't have your own blog then please at least link to one of Jill's this post[s] listed below at your preferred social networking site and give it the tag "Filipovic" (as well as any others you think appropriate).

I have linked to these sites in this post:
Jill Filipovic's bio page at Feministe
Jill Filipovic's blog posts at the Ms. JD blog
Jill Filipovic's article about these scummy lawschool sleazebags at Feministe
Jill Filipovic's article at Ms. JD: When Law Student's Attack

If any of the other female law students stalked by the same sleazy site wish to copy this text with names altered, you hereby have my full permission to do so. All other rights reserved. (C) 2007 tigtog

Thankfully, the first page of Google hits is almost clean now, so her friends, family, potential employers et al will now find Jill Filipovic, the blogging feminist law student, rather than the co-opted victim of cowardly, mindless colleagues.