A sociologist would probably carefully observe statistically the behaviors of men and women and note any patterns or characteristics of a social group, or compare two or more social groups together. That said, I wonder if a sociologist has observed any behavior of deviance among men and women and note the similarities and differences.
I am not a sociologist, so my anecdotal evidence (that is, merely casual observations in one’s environment without careful and thoughtful analysis), if I provided any, would not be helpful to this discussion at all. So, I refrain from adding them to avoid embarrassing myself. I do have some questions, though.
Do women tend to be more respectful, well-mannered, more obedient than men? (I am thinking of Virginia Wolf’s the Angel in the House, even though that is a 19th century phenomenon.)
Do men have a greater tendency to be troublemakers than women?
Please don’t treat this as a sexist question! I do not intend to be sexist here!
It can’t even be determined unless you reduce the scope to something like 21st century USA or something similarly restrictive. I’d suggest this belongs in a different forum.
ISTM from my experience at school and Uni that, to paint with a broad brush, girls are more likely to be looking for approval from authority figures, and boys are more likely to seek it from their peer group. And I do think that to some extent this carries through to adulthood.
As always, though, there’s more variation within genders than between. There are certainly plenty of modern women who like to stir things up and buck the system.
Well, it depends on what you mean by “troublemaker”. Who’s a worse troublemaker; a boy who gets into arguments & fistfights, or a girl who spreads nasty gossip? Males in many ways tend to be showier than females; so if you mean “makes a spectacle of himself” when you say “troublemaker”, then yes males are generally going to be worse.
Males are also more likely to be investigated and arrested for crimes, and more likely to be convicted. For that matter, I’ve read that it’s pretty common for men to willingly take the fall for crimes that their wives/girlfriends/whatever have committed. And for that matter there’s the problem that a lot of “troublemaking” is perfectly legal.
Troublemaker: anyone who faces punishment from an authority figure
On a forum, a troublemaker would be the banned member who willfully disrupts the forum, disobeys or disrespects administrators and moderators, and/or do other undesirable, socially disapproved activities.
If that is the case, then there ought to be an issue of men’s rights. From what you have posted, it seems that males are more likely to be convicted of crimes they do not commit, and allow the female criminals to walk away free.
I must add that the reason why I started this thread was that I previously asked Marley23, the administrator, about the gender proportions of this website. The administrator replied: “I’m sure SDMB posters are male, but we don’t have hard data on gender ratios or how many men or women post in any particular forum. I’ve banned my share of people and most of them have been male, but we’ve banned some women, too. I do sometimes use the generic he because saying ‘their’ about an individual bugs me. But if I’m talking about an individual poster and I’m not sure about that poster’s gender, I won’t assume the person is a man.” So, I merely made three assumptions from that reply:
There are significantly more males than females on the Straight Dope.
Female members are less likely to break the rules and more willing to cooperate.
Marley23 has banned members who just happened to be male. I am not sure if that hints at the general population of this site.
The assumptions may result in having more males being banned by Marley23 than females. On the other hand, an administrator/moderator may ban more members who just happen to be females than males.
I will narrow down the scope to the Straight Dope Message Board, an American forum. And I hope that the administrators/moderators can answer the question. Though, I could look at everybody’s threads myself!
In that case, using ‘he’ or ‘she’ to indicate the gender of a member or a banned member would depend heavily on the experience the administrator/moderator has with the member in question. Sometimes, a member may willfully disclose his or her gender, and the other members would use that self-identifying gender accordingly. In real life though, the member’s gender may be the reverse of what the member truly said, and such a lie would depend on personal security and privacy for the individual, and the desire to remain anonymous as much as possible. It is worth noting that, even though the New York Times describes Wikipedia as having a ‘gender bias’ simply because there appears to be more males than females, one cannot be sure with certainty, because those who are appear to be male on their Wikipage may actually be female. Hence, there may not be a gender bias at all; it could be an illusion.
I’ve heard quite a few parents, especially mothers, who say that boys in the first few years (and beyond) are a completely different animal than girls - much more rambunctious, adventurous, troublemaking, aggressive, whatever the adjective you want to use.
Like every statistic, this does not imply an absolute rule. Yes, the type of trouble females can cause may be different than with males. (nothing like a good cat fight to bring out the animal in women…)
Just to note that, while I’m pretty sure that the majority of active posters on SDMB are American (and the board is, of course, hosted in the U.S.), there are an awful lot of non-U.S. posters, as well.
The problem I have with anecdotes like that is how the parents can make it come true. As an example: a kid comes home covered in dirt. In some households, the boy is greeted with something like “You must have had some adventure to get that dirty,” while a girl is greeted with “Oh no! Your dress is dirty!” Given that response from a parent, it is likely that the boy will continue to get dirty and the girl will stay inside and play with her dolls.
It goes beyond just that. Sometimes the boy is dirty because the girl in the nice clean dress dared him to do something. Who’s really the troublemaker in that case?
Given that you have so drastically narrowed the scope of the OP, I think the best course is to close this thread and ask you to start over. In any case this question is not suited to GQ.
If you really want to ask this about this board, you may start a thread in ATMB. However, I will say in advance that I don’t believe we have the information available to answer the question. First of all, while I have the impression that we have more male posters than female, there are many posters who don’t indicate their gender. And while I also have the sense that we ban more males than females, we don’t have any way to determine if that percentage is different from the general ratio on the board.
If you want to ask the more general form of the question stated in the OP, the appropriate place would be Great Debates.