Can we finally get some clarification on what's "misogynistic" and off-limits now?

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First there’s a threadabout a highly-profane and insane email sent out by a sorority member. A few jokes were cracked, and mod intervention made it clear there were new policies or standards here. Were the jokes off-topic? Were they sexist? Were they just too sexual? Too juvenile? Or what? An ATMB discussionensued, but many, many questions were left unanswered by the PTB.

So was the defense of the mod action that the author of that crazy email didn’t say anything overtly sexual, and to offer any comments that made mention of her sexuality were completely misogynistic and inappropriate? Was that why a mod stepped in? Or was the defense that the comments that received mod attention were just too off-topic for a MPSIMS thread? Was the defense that that sort of humor was juvenile and should be stopped because we should somehow just be more mature than the rest of the world? I DON’T KNOW! Mods just stopped posting in that thread and never clarified anything.

Now a threadabout a woman who walks around naked from the waist down and hands out rubbers in a parade. And more mod intervention.

So a pantsless woman handing out birth control is also exempt from joke comments? Is it, again, because any sexual comments are misogynistic and inappropriate? It can’t be because the situation in question (a half naked woman handing out birth control) doesn’t have sexual connotations. It does. Double entendres are out now? Puns are out? Making fun of someone (who happens to be a woman) who puts themselves in an absurd public situation is “sexually shaming” her? “Sexual shaming?” Seriously? Or is just making any comment about any woman’s anatomy or sexuality with humor attached verboten around here now? Is that standard going to be applied to humor-laced posts made about a man’s manhood as well?

So at the end of the day, are we just trying to mod away juvenile humor because it offends some people on this board? Or are we trying to mod away humor that is directed toward a woman simply because she’s a woman and has woman parts? Or is the goal to keep all threads, even in MPSIMS, completely on topic?

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Jesus christ. You know what’s more offensive than “misogynistic” posts? Moderators who have no god damn clue what the word “misogynistic” means, and what that terms actually encompasses.

Horrible examples, horrible moderation, and a horrible precedent for this board. But despite this, clarification is greatly needed as it’s **abundantly ** clear that misogynistic posts aren’t the ones actually being moderated.

By the same token, shouldn’t calling posters 12 year olds be considered an insult? Actually, no, because that actually would match the offense in question.

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You have got to be fucking kidding me.
(Or, wait, fucking, for a straight guy like me, requires that a woman be involved. I’m being “reflexively misogynistic”, aren’t I?)

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Lets just make a No Joking rule and be done with it.

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You’ve got to be joking.

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This new “rule” definitely needs to be clarified. The moderator ruling in both threads, but especially in the latter, is completely ad hoc and inexplicable.

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For what it’s worth, I agree that the board seems to be enforcing some new standards and it would only be fair to tell people what those standards are. Broad definitions like “don’t be a jerk” or “don’t post anything offensive to women” doesn’t really give us enough guidelines.

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And even then, where do you draw the line between “offensive to women” (like maybe try not to use the word “Cunt” like you’re Paulie Walnuts) and “offensive to A woman”. I think right now there are a very vocal handful of easily offended lady-folks here that have deemed themselves arbiters of what is and isn’t offensive to their entire gender.

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Perhaps the policy against misogynistic comments could be restricted to posts directed at other posters? That seems like a fairly straightforward policy to define and apply. Something like: “Please keep personal comments directed at other posters respectful outside of the Pit; unsolicited commentary about another poster’s gender, race or sexuality may be subject to moderation.”

Hopefully the women of the SDMB will correct me if I’m wrong, but it seemed like the original complaint primarily focused on sexist posts directed at female posters, not any and all posts that could be viewed as sexist.

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I have to say, this sort of thing strikes me as incredibly petulant. Seriously, you’re incapable of making a joke that isn’t predicated on leering at women? Because if you can make jokes without telling everyone that you’re sexually attracted to women, then you shouldn’t interpret the rule as you have.

The woman in question wasn’t using her nudity to attract men. She was using it for another purpose. This seems ridiculously obvious. Seeing the thread as an occasion to tell everyone that you find women attractive is pretty lame.

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Unless of course the ruling isn’t about the smokescreen of “misogny” and is, instead, about, misandry. Misandry to the point where male sexuality itself has to be properly approved and vetted by women, first, or else it’s offensive. And, naturally, a story about a woman who was half naked, with her pubic hair deliberately shaved into a design to attract attention, who was handing out condoms, is obviously totally non-sexual and only a, a, a… man might be interested in such a thing.

Assuming that this is what they’re aiming for, it’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen and a true triumph of Victim Culture over rationality and decency. We have two general options, when a comment is made about a non-Doper and people find that comment offensive: we can expect people to have the wherewithal to realize that they are not special, wonderful snowflakes whose every emotional whim must be catered to by the Universe itself… or we can tell people that being “offended” is the quickest route to power and influence, and just whine about how annoyed you are by something and you’ll get your way.

But hey, if we’re going down the route whereby anything said about non-Dopers that might, potentially, offend some-but-not-all-women is verboten? Let’s break open the action! I personally find stupidity to be roughly as offensive as a wet, reverberatingly loud fart in a crowded elevator. Surely that means we can start banning morons now, right?

Why, we could even add a second button next to the Report Post button. We could call it something like the “Help, This Post Hurt My Feelings And I Have A Constitutional Right To Never Read Anything I Don’t Agree With!” button.

Because yeah, what could possibly be amusing about a half naked woman, half dressed as a major religious leader, with her pubic hair shaved in the shape of that religion’s holy symbol, handing out condoms? Why, it’s hardly noteworthy. And any man who made a joke about said half-naked woman, surely, must be a leering creep. The only proper response to a half naked woman is to inquire about various local sports teams, yes? Some folks here seem to have a rather odd understanding of what’s reasonable…

Yes, a comment about how sexuality is perfectly natural and sexual pleasure is a good thing. And a comment about how absurd, uptight, irrational views which seek to make sex and sexual pleasure somehow verboten or shameful shouldn’t be countenanced.

Methinks some of the Offenderati missed that point by a significant margin.

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Doesn’t matter. She wanted to be leered at. She could have had bottoms on and still handed out condoms. So jokes about leering at her do not seem out of place.

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Only for those without good breeding.

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I never got an answer to this in the other thread…

Note that one of those links is a female poster commenting in a sexual way on a picture of a male in his underwear. Twickster’s latest modding fiasco refers only to male comments about women. If this ridiculous “paradigm shift” continues, it needs to go both ways.

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The new standard seems to be that posts that are directed against women in general are also, by default, directed against the women that post here. And, in the reverse of this, that a post directed at a particular woman (like the CMU student who went naked in a parade) is, by extension, directed against women in general.

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When I first saw the title of the OP, I thought, Really OP? Do we have to have yet another thread about this?! Then I read the latest moderation in the “naked Pope” thread the OP cited, and was amazed to see an example of moderation even more ridiculous than the example in the “sorority email” thread.
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Seriously, mods, do we have to have yet another thread about this, again?!
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This. And I thought that this was the general consensus reached the last time we had this thread.

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The rule is simple and has been explained clearly to my satisfaction. Don’t make sexual comments about women, especially as jokes at their expense. Don’t go into a thread about a woman complaining about swollen breasts asking for pictures. Don’t go into a thread about a woman being upset at her sorority and make a joke about sorority girls being sluts. Don’t go into a thread about women walking around bottomless with crosses shaved into their pubic hair handing out condoms and make fun of her brave, wonderful methods of encouraging love safely.

Really don’t even think about women if you can help it but if you do, think of them as living breathing people who don’t want to be sexually maligned and that a joke about one woman applies to all women just like a joke about a guy guy applies to all gay guys. Which is why as a gay man I always take offense to people making fun of another gay man even if is nothing like me and deserves it!

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If only there were some sort of fallacies that could describe that thinking. Perhaps something about composing and/or dividing things. Ah well, guess it’s a rational view after all.

What a female chauvinist pig! We all know that sexuality is dirty, shameful and must be kept secret. Truly shameful, in this day and age, to admit to finding a member of the opposite gender sexually desirable. Why, a woman thinking that she can talk about finding men desirable, and doing so in public none the less?!?
She should be banned, if not hunted down and eaten by wolves.

Unless of course it’s really about how we should just hate the [del]sin[/del] sexual behavior and not the [del]sinner[/del] sexuality. About how we’re perfectly okay with [del]homosexuals[/del] men having the, ugh, urges that they do, but really it would be much better if they just didn’t ever act on them, or at least if when they did they’d do it in private, out of our sight, so we don’t have to look at their shameful, shameful nature? And really, would it be so hard for them to try [del]liking women[/del] not liking women?

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Then the rule itself is sexist.

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<quietly begins packing bindle>