First, you seem to think that this is a double standards issue. That the problem is that men are being oppressed and women are being let off. That’s not the problem here. The problem is not that men are being told they can’t tell sex jokes and it wouldn’t be solved by saying that women can’t tell sex jokes either. The problem is that anyone is being told that sex jokes are off limits.
Second, you seem to feel there are some sexual comments that are not offensive because they’re “complementary”. Saying a woman is good looking and you’d like to fuck her is just as offensive as saying a woman is too ugly to fuck.
Idle Thoughts, thank you for sharing your comments.
A question or two…
Do you think the comments twix moderated were derailing a serious discussion?
Do you think the topic of that thread was a serious topic?
Do you think the comments modded were misogynistic?
As a woman I bristle at true misogyny on this board leveled at other posters but the sophomoric titty humor doesn’t really bother me. I understand that there is going to be a feeling out period, but is it really that hard to distinguish between comments aimed at posters vs those made at women at rallies and is it that tough to distinguish between misogyny and the immature-ish poop, pee, fart, titty, dick jokes?
Well, you could also address the fact that I provided quotes where you pretty much said that this is not the same old no-hijacking policy. Or that you did in fact say, explicitly, that posters’ dislike of/lack of comfort with certain statements was why mods were cracking down on those types of statements.
I mean, if we can’t have a discussion about this in a straightforward manner, and we all have to pretend that this is really about the no-hijacking rule, then we might as well just quit now because the gods themselves contend in vain with such semantic gaming.
You’re conflating disparate facts. First, it is a double standards issue since the only drive is to ‘protect’ women from being offended. Second, nobody is being “oppressed”, and the real problem is that it’s an awful policy and not merely that it’s a double standard. Although, of course, it is a double standard.
Of course Offenderati can find just about anything to be offended about. But no, I’d wager you can’t come up with any metric with even a passing resemblance to rationality whereby a woman or a man telling someone of the opposite sex that they’re sexually appealing is, necessarily, offensive. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, some women and men enjoy being hit on in an explicit manner. And some enjoy the same semantic content put across a bit more subtly. That puts paid to the claim that compliments of a sexual nature are somehow universally offensive.
As for the idea that I just don’t “get” your position, I understand it perfectly. It just happens to be wildly wrong. Find me one woman on the planet who reacts to her partner telling her “Darling you look at beautiful as the day I met you, kiss me!” the same as she would if he said “You ugly cow, I can’t believe I ever stayed with you, you disgust me!” .. well, find me that woman, and I will show you a raving lunatic. But maybe that’s my problem, maybe having taken to dating sane women recently has skewed my perceptions. The women I tend to date? If I said “Hey, you look awesome!” their response would be something like “thanks!” and not “You fucking sexist pig, I hate you!!!” (Can’t say enough about the benefits of dating sane people… )
No, I “get” the position quite well. It’s puritanical in a particularly unpalatable fashion. It’s sex-negative in a rather unhealthy manner. It’s quixotically dictatorial as it attempts removes agency and personal choice from individual human relationships and attempts to enforce what is and is not offensive or attractive to disparate people. I get it, I just don’t agree with it, due to how awful and wrong it is. But yes, I get it just fine.
This is, luckily, not one of those issues where understanding a position means one agrees with it.
Excellent post again, completely bullshit moderation, and I’m bloody offended at how a small, vocal minority have managed to get TPTB to enforce their position. What’s worse is that the mods refused to participate in or resolve the earlier threads on these issues.
Slightly unrelated observation: This pandering to vocal minorities is pretty representative of how much public policy gets made.
Some? Sometimes? Other than the “sorority email rant” thread and the “crucifix-pubed pope” thread, has there been any other incidence of so-called misogyny moderation? Because, if those are the only two examples of such moderation since the uproar, a few things become pretty clear:
There really is no pervasive misogyny problem deserving of changes to the already broad moderating and posting guidelines.
There is currently a “Red Scare” like atmosphere where some people are so eager to identify and root-out the “rampant” misogyny, that they are starting to imagine it where it doesn’t actually exist.
^^^ Or, some people are simply using the mania as a convenient excuse to stifle speech or speakers that they dislike or disagree with. (which is even worse)
Instead of attempting to “moderate” this mania, the people in power are either pandering to it and encouraging it, or else falling victim to it themselves by letting their imagination see it where it does not exist.
If there is a desire to curtail the occasional **actual ** incidents of misogyny, the current irrational, over-reactive approach is 180-degrees counterproductive to the goal of getting people to understand, acknowledge and cooperate to alleviate any legitimate concerns. Consider picking MUCH, MUCH more clear examples of misogyny - it should be easy if the problem is remotely as pervasive as the furor has portrayed it to be. As it is, I don’t think you could have picked two *worse *examples of “misogyny” to make into the case law.
(All that said, I do appreciate hearing at least some mods’ unvarnished, pre-mod-loop-consensus opinions, with at least some acknowledgment of the stated concerns.)
I praise the moderators for not handing out warnings in the OP’s linked thread. Kudos. I am not bent out of shape by attempts at calibration, if that is what they are.
This is a pretty good proposal, I think. Back in the neighborhood, if you told a guy, “Hey, bend over and drop trousers: I want to see your sphincter: I think you’ll like that,” you would be at risk of requiring extensive dental work. Similarly, you didn’t ask to view a woman’s genitals or secondary sex characteristics in the public square if you didn’t care for promptly delivered knuckle sandwiches. It just wasn’t done. I think we can have similar guidelines in most forums here.
That’s a pretty bright and rather enforceable line, methinks.
Does anybody want to go beyond that though? I think the Giraffe proposal merits additional attention.
I go a little beyond
Also, can we agree that some of the humor in the OP’s linked thread was retarded? There’s a newspaper article about a nudist incident and somebody says, “Pics or it didn’t happen!” Hilarious and I mean that sarcastically! That joke was old (i.e. bad) when they were drawing antelope in caves, never mind after the advent of digital photography.
Now I recognize that some posters like to act like dirty old men in trench coats with impulse control issues. There should be scope for that. But there should also be tolerance for lobbing Mr. Rolly at those sorts of remarks. And if a poster says, “Hey, don’t get sand in your nether regions”, well that violates the Good Neighbor Guideline for Anatomical Evaluations. Which warrants a warning after a suitable phase in period.
I see that Little Nemo expanded Giraffe’s criteria as well. A fine and constructive effort.
Because, of course, if someone says they’re offended it’s always and necessarily because they’re “Offenderati”, rather than because their feelings have been hurt. In fact, people don’t really have feelings and even if they do, it’s impossible to genuinely hurt them. No one, in fact, has ever been truly upset, or angry, or ashamed because of what other people say to or about them, ever. They just make it up.
Or alternatively, maybe there are some Truly Offended, whose feelings we need to take into account. Maybe they use the same words as Offenderati, but the Chosen Few can, after much meditation on the Secret Way, tell the Truly Offended from the Offenderati. Tell us, oh wise one, what is the secret?
(Bolding mine)
Wait what? When did this become a conversation about what partners say to each other? Why are you talking about this?
If you want to hear from women who are genuinely offended at **strangers **or **acquaintances **talking “positively” about their looks (you know, something actually germane to this conversation), I can show you thousands. (You could also read, and try to believe, the women of the Dope who have said this explicitly, mind).
www.everydaysexism.com was set up in the UK a year ago; it simply asks women to tell the stories of when they have faced sexism (or misogyny) in ordinary everyday situations. The volume of responses has been astonishing; what women have to say was, for me, eye-opening and distressing.
Or was it really? No-one else can tell, but maybe you can let everyone know if I really was upset to find out that life for many women is full of incidents like this:
It took me less than ten minutes to find those quotes. And they’re jsut from the US version of the site, to avoid any suggestion of cultural barriers. As far as I can see, “compliments” like this really do upset women. And it seems perverse to pretend they don’t.
Or at least that’s my take on it. But just to help me out, perhaps you could show me which of these quotes come from a “raving lunatic”. Or give me some other reason to dismiss these experiences. Perhaps these women are lying about the way this makes them feel? Or perhaps they are being honest, but they’re just irrational - and basically wrong - to feel that way?
For men who are interested - and I genuinely recommend this - the Everyday Sexism twitter feed will give you a (new) insight into what women have to deal with day in, day out. @everydaysexism
…this thread right here being exhibit A. I’ve never seen so many people wanting to take their balls and go home over such a trivial issue. Seriously, being kept from saying crude things about a woman you don’t know causes you such vapors? The solution isn’t for the mods to mollify your absurd worries about how you’ll never be able to tell a joke again; it’s for you to put the back of your hand on your forehead and wail, “Life is misery!” and then get over yourself.
Measure for Measure presents a much more measured response, one I can get behind.
Another ‘if it’s bad IRL, then let’s ban it here’. :rolleyes: No woman posting here has to deal with jokes they don’t like, there is a real easy solution for the problem.
As one of the posters moderated, I just wanna point out that I’ve learned my lesson. From now on, women who wear a pope hat, shave a cross into their pubes, and parade bottomless whilst handing out rubbers, will be afforded all the dignity and respect their actions demand.
While you’re discussing it, perhaps you could also discuss this piece of moderation on your part.
In an MPSIMS thread in which the OP described the woman’s fashion choices as:
You’re going to have to tell me in what way Jack Batty’s post was inappropriate in order for me to be able to even attempt to get a handle on what’s going on here.
[QUOTE=Idle Thoughts] FinnAgain, a lot of your points in that post can be summed up with one answer:
The SDMB has always modded comments that could (or do) cause hijacks to topics.
[/QUOTE]
All that is needed is a brief explanation on how jokes about pantsless women in pope hats handing out condoms are a hijack, or might cause a hijack.
Because God forbid a serious topic like that should get hijacked.
This new “rule” is too subjective to be applied consistently by the moderators, especially considering how much difficulty a couple of them have consistently applying the existing rules.
On the other hand, if you guys keep narrowing what’s permitted here, it’ll soon be utterly unlike the board that drew us all here in the first place, and it’ll motivate us to find someplace else.
Given that plenty of women have already said that they’ve taken breaks from the board due to the ugly behavior of too many posters here, and that there are other women who didn’t say that because they’ve left permanently, my tiniest violin in the world will stay in its case.