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 ...

, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating 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 ...

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. It can be described as the ...

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 pr ...

, 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 ...

, or sense of

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, Epistemology, knowledge, Ethics, values, Philosophy of ...

. 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, wher ...

, the former Celtic F.C. manager, received hate mail including a package containing a nail bomb 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 Counties of England, 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 North ...

girl who was murdered along with her friend Jessica Chapman in the highly-publicised Soham murders 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 a ...

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, 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, and ...

social networking account in November 2014 following a long campaign of abuse by

trolls A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human be ...

, 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 (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. Predomina ...

related illness the previous month.

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 h ...

, 10 October 2006 {{abuse Postal systems Hate crime Abuse

Notable examples of hate mail

See also

References

External links

Scholarly articles

News articles