Thanks for the explanations. I certainly think diversity of the moderating crew can have an effect on how that stuff is handled.
Another problem is that when a discussion about inequities towards women came up(rape, discrimination etc.), invariably men would rush in to take over the thread with claims about how males have it just as bad, if not worse.
Please report that when you see it. Especially in GQ, P&E or GD.
This is specifically a rules violation now in GD and P&E. Covered by the part below.
I know…but I’m just bringing up that it used to be a recurring problem that certainly did its part in driving a portion of posters away.
Oh, certainly. To be clear, I was referring to times when it has been reported and handled by the mods. And it’s much appreciated.
We are agreed on that point. I think lot of these calls are context - based. I’m just glad to have moderators who are more sensitive to these issues.
To clarify, reference to hotness (in either sex) may be relevant in fields where that can be a job qualification, such as movies and TV. In other contexts it could be moderated.
Wow. Glad I wasn’t around for that.
I am sorry to argue, but I (the poster in that thread who objected to his language, though I don’t think jtur88 noticed or cared) don’t think “the very definition of hate speech” is “demeaning and devaluing.” There is a distinction between bigoted expression and hate speech - all hate speech expresses bigotry, but not all bigoted talk is hate speech.
Hate speech is much worse than asking the one woman in the room to get the coffee, or referring to adult women as “girls” - as demeaning and insulting as such things are. Hate speech encourages violence against a group based on their gender, orientation, religion, or identification of a similarly oppressed class.
Sez Wikipedia:
Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation”.[1] Hate speech is “usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation”.[2]
IOW, I think “the very definition” of hate speech is that it encourages others to be hateful and violent - which is even worse than simply being dismissive, as jtur88’s language was.
^^ Thanks for posting this - i completely agree. I almost addressed it earlier but thought I should stick to one issue at a time. And no matter how I worded it, it sounded like I was making excuses for jtur88.
I am not saying you are wrong, but I am a Charter Member, and i dont remember anything at all like that. I am sure something along those lines must have occurred but it couldnt have a big deal or I would have noticed. But some things stick with some posters more than others, I am Captain Oblivious sometimes.
I crossed the line once, some female member complained no one ever flirted with her on the boards, so I posted "how yew doin’? and she thanked me. Today, that would be a no go.
When it was “just harmless fun”, sure, it was Ok. But harmless fun sometimes (too often) gets ugly and I think the board is a better place now.
Yeah. Saying she is really good looking or a male is very handsome- they choose a life in the spotlite. So OK. “Hot” or even “sexy”, maybe, in context.
It really sounds like you’re telling me I am wrong. I’ve been a member of this board since 2007. And considering that I was posting compulsively in those threads for years, I know that I’m not wrong. I know that I’m not imagining the countless women who PMed me about how afraid they were to push back on the most ignorant things posted, because the general tenor in those threads was men dominating the conversation about sexual assault and ignoring whatever women had to say about it. I’m grateful to those men who spoke up for us tirelessly. @Jimmy_Chitwood and iiiandyii come immediately to mind. They are fucking warriors. But more or less it was like screaming into an empty void.
What posters on the Straight Dope often forget, or maybe don’t care about, is that sexual assault is not an abstract concept to many women. It’s a lived experience. I often encouraged the exchange of research and posted multiple cites in support of my arguments, which were roundly ignored (not that ignoring cites is unusual on the Dope) but the difference is many people speaking casually or carelessly or downright viciously about an issue that directly impacts a significant contingent of its members. And no matter how many times the truth was presented to them, they refused to acknowledge it.
Like i said But some things stick with some posters more than others, I am Captain Oblivious sometimes. I certainly dont remember anything being labeled as “Rape Month”. I’d have to see a cite on that.
But if you are saying some male members of this board were pigs back in the old days, and treated rape too lightly or did victim blaming, I will agree- I called out quite a few for victim blaming. But “Rape Month” as something semi-official? I guess I took that month off.
(and I was called out for Victim blaming once as I linked to a Retired FBI Agent website that did mention- along with a host of good advice- “dressing sexy” as something to avoid. Mind you- I didnt say that, he did, but…)
Oh. No, it wasn’t official at all. It was just something we said because we were sick of the subject. Four threads pop up on sexual assault, “Oh, I guess it’s Rape Month again,” that kind of thing. And during the Celebrity of the Week is Alleged Perverted Creep era, you couldn’t even avoid it in Cafe Society. I don’t know if v bulletin had this function, but I enjoy the ability on Discourse to make threads disappear.
The version of vBulletin we were on did not have the Hide the thread option. It should have as it is a very nice feature.
But now we have it Hooray! (though I can’t use it ironically enough)
It wasn’t even semi-official. It started, I think I recall as a wry joke/black humor on the sudden profusion of tangentially related topics on rape (and profusion maybe meaning 3-5 in a few week window) that popped up one year. I think in a Pit thread. Something like - “What is this, rape month?” That the threads came up was undoubtedly uncoordinated, one just begetting another as so happens when a topic comes up on a general interest message board.
Then when we got anther flurry months later, might have been a year, might have 8 months, might have 14. Something. And again with the Rape Month comments. And yeah, many people were not best pleased with the discussions that ensued.
Bro, you were around. This is ATMB and I don’t want to be perceived to be attacking you, because it is not my intention (particularly after being summoned here by Spice_Weasel saying something nice about me: thanks <3), so I’m not trying to dig up old threads.
But I have a weird sensitive memory about this particular subject, and so I’m real surprised to see you post this. If you don’t recall being actively involved when there was a big, like yearlong kerfuffle in a series of threads about the way posters here treat women when issues of rape and harassment and rape culture come up, I don’t think it’s because it escaped your notice at the time. I think you are just not aware that that whole forest amounted to a traumatic and consequential period for a lot of people; you were all up in the trees at the time.
Ah, Ok, that makes more sense then.
Indeed I did see a few "Celebrity of the Week is Alleged Perverted Creep" threads- I do try to avoid them.
Yeah, well it is fairly well known I dont follow the Pit.
So sure it could have been Rape Month and Pervert Week, and Dingleberry Day there, and I would have missed it. I did notice Asshole Year however…it seems to occur annually.