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Hate mail (as electronic, posted, or otherwise) is a form of
harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral r ...
, usually consisting of invective and potentially
intimidating Intimidation is to "make timid or make fearful"; or to induce fear. This includes intentional behaviors of forcing another person to experience general discomfort such as humiliation, embarrassment, inferiority, limited freedom, etc and the victi ...
or threatening comments towards the recipient. Hate mail often contains exceptionally abusive, foul or otherwise hurtful language. The recipient may receive disparaging remarks concerning their
ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
,
sexuality Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied wi ...
,
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...
,
religion Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, tran ...
,
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be d ...
,
political ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
, sense of
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
, or sense of
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
. The text of hate mail often contains
profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, ru ...
, or it may simply contain a negative, disappropriating message. Senders of hate mail normally send anonymous letters or pose as someone else (either a different or fictitious individual) in order to avoid being identified and tracked down, as the nature of some hate mail would inevitably result in criminal charges if the sender was identified.


Notable examples of hate mail

Hate mail has frequently been issued to footballers and managers by fans of rival football teams, and also by their own fans who are dissatisfied with the performance of an individual player, manager or the team.
Neil Lennon Neil Francis Lennon (born 25 June 1971) is a Northern Irish football coach and former player. During his playing career he represented English clubs Manchester City, Crewe Alexandra and Leicester City. Lennon moved to Celtic in 2000, where he ...
, the former
Celtic F.C. The Celtic Football Club, commonly known as Celtic (), is a Scottish professional football club based in Glasgow, which plays in the Scottish Premiership. The club was founded in 1887 with the purpose of alleviating poverty in the immigran ...
manager, received hate mail including a package containing a
nail bomb A nail bomb is an anti-personnel explosive device containing nails to increase its effectiveness at harming victims. The nails act as shrapnel, leading almost certainly to more injury in inhabited areas than the explosives alone would. A nai ...
from
Rangers A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...
fans. Two men were jailed for five years in April 2012 for sending a nail bomb to Lennon. The parents of 10-year-old Holly Wells, a
Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to th ...
girl who was murdered along with her friend Jessica Chapman in the highly-publicised
Soham murders The Soham murders were a double child murder committed in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England on 4 August 2002. The victims were two 10-year-old girls, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Aimee Chapman, who were lured into the home of a local resident an ...
in August 2002, received several letters shortly after their daughter's body was found, accusing them both of being involved in the murder of the two girls. They also received several letters with content including that they "got what they deserved" for allowing their daughter to play out on the Sabbath. Other letters with sexual content referring to the possible circumstances of her death were also written. The parents of Sarah Payne, who was murdered in
West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...
in July 2000, received an anonymous letter while she was still missing, accusing her father and grandfather of having murdered her. After Sarah's body was found, her parents also received letters berating them for allowing Sarah and her three siblings to play unsupervised on a beach. Her mother,
Sara Payne Sara Jane Payne, MBE (' Williams; born 1 March 1969) is a British media campaigner known for her campaign for parents' right for a controlled access to the sex offender registry, spurred by the murder of her daughter Sarah in 2000. Biography ...
, now a child protection campaigner, closed her
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, an ...
social networking account in November 2014 following a long campaign of abuse by trolls, which included allegations that she had made a vast amount of money from her media work and was "glorying in a lavish lifestyle" as a result, suggestions that
Roy Whiting Sarah Evelyn Isobel Payne (13 October 1991 – c. 1 July 2000), was the victim of a high-profile abduction and murder in West Sussex, England in July 2000. Her disappearance and the subsequent investigation into her murder became a prominent c ...
(convicted of Sarah's murder) was innocent, threatening messages from Twitter users claiming to be paedophiles, and remarks about the death of her former husband Michael from an
alcoholism Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomin ...
related illness the previous month.


See also

*
Death threat A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a dea ...
* Flaming *
Hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
*
Hate speech Hate speech is defined by the '' Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thou ...
*
Obscene phone call An obscene phone call is an unsolicited telephone call where a person uses foul or sexual language to interact with someone who may be known to them or who may be a complete stranger. Making obscene telephone calls for sexual arousal or other s ...
* Poison pen letter *
Fan mail Fan mail is mail sent to a public figure, especially a celebrity, by their admirers or " fans". In return for a fan's support and admiration, public figures may send an autographed poster, photo, reply letter or note thanking their fans for t ...


References


External links



The Forensic Linguistics Institute


Scholarly articles

* *


News articles


"Jewish activists opposing the Israeli government's policies face intimidation and harassment via email and on the internet."
''
Guardian Unlimited TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...
'', 19 January 2004
"Racist Hate Mail Found In Durham Mailboxes"
WRAL-TV WRAL-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the Research Triangle area. It is the flagship station of the locally based Capitol Broadcasting Company, which has ...
, 10 October 2006 {{abuse Postal systems Hate crime Abuse