so let's bring in the aforementioned amanda hess, who's in hartford, connecticut today, and amy wallacewrote a column for the "new york times" on the same subject last weekend. thank you both for coming on. >> thanks for having me. >> amanda, your headline's pretty stark about this being the next civil rights issue. why do you think local and federal authorities and sometimes even some of your own colleagues don't take this kind of harassment seriously enough? >> i think two things are going on. one is that violence and harassment against women has been discounted for many years in a variety of contexts. sexual harassment in the workplace, domestic violence were all sort of dismissed before they became civil rights agendas. and the second part is that we have this idea about the internet that it is separate from real life, even though it is increasingly central to all of our lives, and that idea has persisted and sort of contributed to the problem. >> i wonder if you and also amy would be willing to share an example or two if you can on television of this kind of harassment to give view

amanda hess has written about technology and hollywood. welcome to you, amanda.t kind of thinking is in your view off base? >> i think we have seen women being harassed offline for as long as we've been charting that phenomenon and we have laws to address that. laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and i see no reason why we shouldn't extend those same laws to a similar phenomenon that's happening on the internet. >> that's part of the problem here, right? you receive these threats online. i think this is a story that basically every woman with an online profile can relate to. you receive threats, do you call your local police, do you call the fbi? who has jurisdiction? what is the current legal structure equipped to deal with these online threats? >> as a victim it's confusing to know what to do. on the one hand we have a lot of laws in place that could be applied to online threats. in my home state of california, it's a crime to threaten bodily harm against another person. there are also cyberstalking and cyberharassment laws in many states across the

joining me today is amanda hess, contributor to pacific standard.ere. i want to talk to you about this article and the response you've been getting. >> i wrote this article after i received my most recent sort of bouts this past summer and the threats were obviously distressing. it was an anonymous person on twitter threatening to come to my house to rape me, cut off my head. on the one hand, that's so completely ludicrous thoing say and probably not going to happen, but on the other hand it's so confusing when you receive threats like that because people are telling you don't worry about it, it's just the internet, it's not going to happen. others are saying it's your responsibility to track this person down and to prosecute them and some are saying if it's so bad why don't you just quit twitter. the threats are bad. what's confusing is how to deal with them. >> talking about the gauntlet the women have to walk in order to receive termination services for pregnancy, these are the gauntlets you have to walk on when you log onto the internet. we have