Which clearly has not been enforced anything like it needs to be considering the reaction of many people after the issue was raised. Offenders need public warnings by moderators for this behavior so they and others reading the threads know it’s not acceptable, otherwise the situation is going to get worse instead of better.
Well, duh, there’s the guy who decided to bring up old comments about someone saying her breasts looked good in a certain shirt in a new thread about how she thought she met her dream guy, and then all the people who accused her of “asking for it” based upon comments she made in completely different threads (like the one where she mentioned losing her virginity).
And the stalking isn’t anywhere near the full extent of the problem. Harassing comments creating a sexually hostile environment can happen even without the offenders having followed people from another thread and are still inappropriate. Anyone who continues such behavior after being warned that the target is not comfortable with such behavior needs an immediate block, and you’d think it’s the kind of thing we shouldn’t even have to warn people about in threads outside of flirting threads.
If people aren’t reporting posts, the behavior may be under the mods’ radar.
Not really, but who listens to me? I don’t see any need for any mod action for any easily ignored little side comments. With few exceptions on a I’d know it if I see it basis.
I missed this one the first time around and caught it just now as it was quoted. Very well put. What makes a comment (flirt, whatever) appropriate or not is context.
I don’t engage in this kind of behavior, and my respect for a poster dies a little when I see him doing it. However, the solution isn’t a rule, but social response: if every time some crass boor posted a “cite?” about breasts, every offended woman and man responded with, “Gee, how imaginative :rolleyes:” or “what does that have to do with this thread?” or some other public scolding, it would stop. Until now, Tracy Lord was the only one fighting back.
I have to go for the “Don’t feed the trolls” option. Because, if you admonish, then you’re just giving them attention. And if mods get involved, then we’ll have the same fiascos we always have: people getting banned, starting 500 threads about how they’re right or your wrong, or trying to splinter the board again.
We’ve existed for quite a long time without anything being done about this. Why start now in the wake of other decisions that people don’t like?
There are always going to be people that will offend you. It is quite wasteful spending your time worrying about how to stop them from offending you, and just decide not to be offended in the first place. No one can offend you unless you let them.
Please, no. I don’t want any protection. I can ignore them. It’s a message board, it is mixed company, there will always be boors in mixed company. I can live with the boors. If I wanted something different, I would find some place where there are no boors.
Real life contains people like this. I think whatever is necessary is covered by the “don’t be a jerk rule”.
I’m not seeing how a suggestion that people flag an offensive post – which may or may not lead to an admonition, since it’s a judgment call by the mod – will lead to mass bannings or other uproars.
I like Little Nemo’s thoughts but when I discussed reading for context in the other thread, I was told the context was boobs, because she (Tracy Lord) mentioned them.
There were two relevant threads. In the first one Tracy Lord was talking about spilling red wine on a shirt and asking how she could get the stain out. A fair question and if that’s all there was, any sexual responses would have been uncalled for. But in her OP, she said that it was her favorite shirt because it made her “boobs look amazing”. So in my opinion, any comments about her boobs after that were sanctioned.
In the second thread, she started an OP about some guy at work and how she found him attractive and wanted to date him and even opened the topic up to what would be a good dating strategy. So, again in my opinion, the joke that was made that she should wear her favorite shirt that made her boob look amazing was not too far off topic. Because that really is the kind of thing we, both men and women, do when we’re trying to attract the attention of somebody we want to notice us.
Not a longtime poster, but a longtime lurker, and this kind of thing is a (minor) part of why it’s taken me so long to start posting.
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Yes, it bothers me. Mostly because an otherwise “safe” and possibly informative thread is so frequently derailed by internet flirting. And even more than that, any attempt to put things back on track by informing the men that their comments are not welcome results in a profoundly hostile reaction. “THAT BITCH! HOW DARE SHE REBUFF MY FLIRTATION!” There are questions I’d love to ask of the other female dopers, but I’m simply not comfortable doing so in an environment that assumes every reference to breasts is a sexual invitation, and every woman who is not open to flirtation is a monster.
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Not really. If the thread is obviously flirtatious, it can safely be assumed that the comments are lighthearted and all in good fun. There’s a time and a place, and flirt threads are it. Of course there are limits too – if somebody’s just hollering “SHOW US YER TITS” at every plausibly female participant, that’s not cool.
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Warnings, temporary suspensions, bans. As with any other unprovoked, harrassing behavior, it needs to have concrete consequences. If it’s unacceptable to harrass someone over political or ideological differences, WHY is it acceptable because of different genetalia? A woman used the word “boobs” in passing and is now intimidated enough to stop posting – something is obviously wrong here.
If we’re going back there, you left out this thread which happened after the first thread you linked and after the second you linked. In that thread, Tracy Lord explained that her use of what she felt was an incidental description as to why it was her favorite shirt was not intended as a signal.
Although I think she overreacted to the third thread, I can understand her frustration when the ‘joke’ was made yet again by one of the posters she had interacted with in the prior two threads.
Did you read the thread you linked to? It’s actually the middle thread in the exchange, not the last as you state. In it **Tracy Lord **mischaraterizes her OP in the red wine stain thread and mischaracterizes the respose it got. When **dba Fred **calls her on it and later states “Sorry, I disagree, the actual words you used override the signal you claim you to wanted to send,” Tracy agrees. She says “Okay, that’s fair enough. I was trying to communicate how important the shirt was to me by describing all the things I like about it, and I assumed (obviously incorrectly) that those incidental descriptions wouldn’t detract from the main content of my post.”
Could we move all “he said/she said” analysis of threads involving Tracy to the Pit thread in progress? Let’s keep this thread about a general discussion of whether we’d like to see boob jokes dealt with differently than they have been in the past.
ETA: Psiharis, thanks for emerging from lurkerdom to share your thoughts. I hope that we’ll have a better environment for discouraging dumb comments in serious threads moving forward.
Thank you for noticing 
Sorry that’s just Rubystreak and FinnAgain calling eachother names.
And since you bring up Psiharis, do we have any links for that behavior you noted?
As I was apparently the final straw for Tracy Lord (or lit the match that started the fire), I’ll chime in.
It probably would have been more focused for TL to Pit me specifically as opposed to the too-general When is sexism okay?
But then we wouldn’t have this thread/discussion, nor the Pit thread which I have found about 3/4th of the posts to be interesting.
I had a longer post but it was of the sort that twickster wisely noted was more approriate for the Pit thread. But I think this snippet applies:
I didn’t aim be the reason/straw that broke the camel’s back and cause her to leave the SMDB but staying or leaving is her choice, as is choosing the words she uses.
I don’t agree with many of the characterizations that have been made of TL as a person or the imputed reasoning of her word choice, just as I haven’t cared for some of the thoughts or qualities that have been imputed to me.
- “We” can deal with this going forward with the tools already at our disposal: (a) The ignore function in each of our brains, (b) The ignore function offered by the board, and © existing disciplinary methods for true cases of harassment or stalking (which I don’t believe is the case with the dbaFred/Tracy Lord brouhaha). In particular, there should not be different standards based on distinguishing between different “kinds” of threads (“for women”/“for everyone”). Poor or tasteless jokes should not be the subject of disciplinary action or additional rules.
I don’t understand why so many people are saying we don’t need a special rule for this, that making a new rule would cause big problems, etc., when twickster’s OP specifically says that she isn’t calling for new rules.
I also don’t understand what’s so horrible about telling people to knock it off when they interrupt a serious thread with obnoxious/unfunny/offensive jokes. If people don’t like being told to knock it off then they can use the “ignore” function or just learn to tolerate it silently. Or is it only those of us who don’t like seeing stupid boobie jokes all the time that are expected to keep quiet about posts we don’t like?