# Lower share of female regulars. What to do? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 7, 2018, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612 "2018-06-07T16:44:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/221 "2018-06-10T11:20:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Did you read the OP, with its clear evidence for just that fact? How can you still be JAQing about that, pages later? > [@MrDibble](#): > > Polled reality is the only possible reality in this case - the mods don’t have magic tools to guess the gender of each poster. Only polls will tell us anything about the question you re-asked - polls that have been done. > > Something dealt with later in the thread - again, something you’d have noticed if you were actually interested in the conversation happening. octopus is interested in reality octopus isn’t:( ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/222 "2018-06-10T11:36:58Z")
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooH w d I stp my cmpputer frtm repeatedly pressinf the 0 key?fuck this ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/223 "2018-06-10T12:06:42Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooH w d I stp my cmpputer frtm repeatedly pressinf the 0 key?fuck this 1. You can try repeatedly pressing the key to see if that works it loose. If that fails, you can CAREFULLY lift up the key and pop it off. Clean the area under the key with alcohol and a Q-tip. If all else fails, place the keyboard upside down in the top drawer of your dishwasher, make sure the heat cycle at the end is turned off, and wash it without soap (also be careful to wrap the cord up around the keyboard so that it can’t fall down and get caught in any of the dishwasher’s moving parts). Give the keyboard a couple of days to thoroughly dry out before using it. Also note that while this usually works well with typical keyboards, it can damage wireless keyboards and keyboards with fancy displays in them, and even a regular keyboard can melt if your dishwasher happens to get too hot (most don’t, as long as you turn off the heat cycle at the end). 2. Please note that a stuck O key does not force you to click on “Submit Reply”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/224 "2018-06-10T12:17:15Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > I’m curious as to why there USED to be more females on the boards. _Something_ must have changed. Was the tone of the Boards different somehow when more females were on here? Were topics different? We’ve been looking at what some women–those few of us on this thread, who might or might not be representative–think the issue is _now_. > > But dammit, something was working back then. It’d help a lot to know what that was and how and why it changed. Could we start by getting observations from current female Dopers who were on the SD boards then? I think we had lower expectations. A lot of us accepted “boys will be boys” and understood that the internet was a boy’s space: girls were allowed, even welcome, but we understood that we were to take the role of the single girl character in a kid’s TV show: the token representative, providing a valued perspective, but an outlier all the same. You’ve seen reference to the great “no boob jokes” debacle. I think this was 7-8 years ago? Anyway, a bunch of women asked if we could start moderating “jokes” in serious threads about women’s issues. At the time, it was absolutely expected that if you started a thread asking about breast self-exams, someone would pop in and say “I’ll examine 'em for you!” or if you were asking what sort of top you could wear under a suit jacket to flatter a large bust, you’d have posts saying “I’m gonna need pics. Lots, from different angles”. This went on for YEARS and the women of the board just rolled with it: the internet is for boys, what do you expect? Anyway, when we finally brought it up and asked for a rule that posts like that be moderated, you would not believe the uproar. Some male posters got it right away and were totally supportive, but there was a significant number who said it would be the end of the world, that those jokes were an essential part of “board culture”, that women were being too uptight and couldn’t take a joke, that it would have a chilling effect on speech everywhere. Now that seems ridiculous. We made the change, it worked out fine. But I really think it shows that it’s not that the board has gotten worse, but that women have started to have a greater sense of being entitled to have an opinion about the tone. And what a lot of women have done is simply leave and find places that have tones they like better, and there are now plenty of those to choose from. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/225 "2018-06-10T13:55:31Z")
I’m late to this discussion, but I’m a woman who posts here and I’d like to add some thoughts anyway. Sorry it’s long. Anyway here goes: 1. I’ve never seen the cartoons y’all are talking about 2. I have never felt overwhelmed by sexism on this board. But > [@Aspidistra](#): > > … > I’ve never felt Out Grouped on the grounds of being female,… I have. And it was in one of those threads, like “Betty vs. Veronica”. And it wasn’t because I found the topic offensive, it was because I looked at the survey, and there wasn’t any option relevant to me. And I commented on it, and I was told, “if none of them are relevant, just don’t click on any of them”. Maybe that’s a minor issue, but if it comes up a lot, I feel invisible, or like no one cares that I’m in the room. How about if the survey was something like: > [@](#): > > Who do you think is hotter? > Betty > Veronica > I’m not into women > Ugh, I never liked either You can ask the same question but recognize that there are other people in the room, and even act like you might care about it. > [@CarnalK](#): > > I fail to see how an anti-bigotry rule could be applied to almost any of the example threads in Sunny Daze’s Pit thread. A Betty v Veronica thread isn’t bigotry. “What do women think about Hooters?” isn’t bigotry. Right – I don’t think the issue is bigotry per se. I think it’s that sometimes women feel like they aren’t welcome as part of the conversation. I think that’s (potentially) easy to address, too, with a little bit of thought. > [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > In the current thread about **“When a beautiful woman starts at work… what have you seen?”** I was not happy with the moderation, but I don’t honestly know what more can be done. It’s a shitty thread, and as a woman, it _does_ make me uncomfortable, but it’s not over-the-line overtly misogynistic, and I can squint and see that there is a germ of a subject for discussion there. The thread would have been better received if it had been titled, **“When an attractive person starts at work…what have you seen?”** rather than something with a sub-text of, “Tits - hurr durr,” but that’s not worth warning or closing a thread over. It’s just (as I said in that thread), a fantastic example of the tone problem we’re having here. Yes, this is exactly the same thing, and I’m late to the game, but Im recommending exactly the same solution. Questions can be posed in a way that includes women. But they often aren’t. > [@Bone](#): > > We’re not 4chan or reddit, but the guiderails that are in place are primarily to encourage and foster discourse. The fact is that encouraging a wide range of discussion means that some of it will be uninteresting and some will be offensive. Is it acceptable that some amount of discussion will be offensive? That’s a question in my mind - what level is that where it is okay then flips to not okay? I propose a new guiderail – discussion can be offensive, but it should be framed in a way the includes everyone as a valid respondant. That’s not going to salvage “here’s all this evidence that black people are dumb”. It’s certainly not a cure-all. But I think it is a start, I think it would help with a lot of the things that have bugged women, and I think it’s something that can be acted on. Moderation is hard, and actionable guidelines are helpful. > [@MandaJo](#): > > … > My suggestion would be that threads like that be shut down immediately, and the OP invited to re-open a thread asking the same question without the “flavor text” that dehumanizes women (or whatever group). No warning, just “The way you phrase this makes it sound like women are just things in your hypothetical. If you’re interested in talking about whether sex, housework, or cooking is more important in a marriage, please open a new threat and write it in a way that assumes everyone in a marriage is a person”. I like this, too, and think it’s closely related to my suggestion. I do think you want to be careful about shutting down threads that weren’t STARTED that way, though. Thanks for reading. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/226 "2018-06-10T14:55:03Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I think we had lower expectations. A lot of us accepted “boys will be boys” and understood that the internet was a boy’s space: girls were allowed, even welcome, but we understood that we were to take the role of the single girl character in a kid’s TV show: the token representative, providing a valued perspective, but an outlier all the same.\ Very much this. I’m a 51 year old woman; I’ve been experiencing overt and subtle sexism my entire life. I didn’t even consciously notice it on these boards until **Sunny Daze** started her thread, and then it was like she opened my eyes - “Yeah, there IS a problem here, and no, I DON’T have to just roll my eyes and ignore it!” Us older ladies can thank the younger ones for that - we get so used to just ignoring things that we stop noticing them, and that doesn’t help anything get better. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/227 "2018-06-10T15:03:26Z")
Do any of the women on this board want to become moderators? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/228 "2018-06-10T15:15:36Z")
Of course, there are times when you do want to solicit information from a group that isn’t “everybody”. “People who have had kidney cancer – please tell me your experience” But I would suggest that when one is only/mostly interested in the responses of a subset of the population: 1. They should say so explicitly 2. Majorities should be sensitive to excluding minorities. “People with kidney cancer” isn’t a majority. It’s unlikely that anyone will feel excluded from the board as a whole due to running into that request. “Straight men” almost certainly ARE a majority on this board. If you want to start a lot of threads that ought to begin “straight men, what do you think about…”, then perhaps you have a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/229 "2018-06-10T15:17:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Do any of the women on this board want to become moderators? I have a few suggestions I’ll pass along to Ed next time he calls. He can coerce them into volunteering. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/230 "2018-06-10T15:18:33Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Do any of the women on this board want to become moderators? Is that how mods get picked around here? 😉 I suspect you don’t want people who WANT to become mods, you want people who are WILLING to become mods. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/231 "2018-06-10T15:21:35Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Is that how mods get picked around here? 😉 > > I suspect you don’t want people who WANT to become mods, you want people who are WILLING to become mods. Are there any women here that are willing to become mods if asked? ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/232 "2018-06-10T15:24:02Z")
_silent room_ Come on, who would volunteer for the abuse ATMB rewards mods with? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/233 "2018-06-10T15:25:50Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Also, as an aside: > > After two decades of steady moderate obscurity, finally, my chance at immortality! _Shame_ on the past twenty years! FWIW I think you’d be a great mod if there was an opening and interest on your part, not by virtue of your gender but with your gender informed perspective an added part of the complete package. The fact that your perception filter is more tuned to the filter of other “hippest and smartest” women of the internet than is the filter of many moderate and well intended male Dopers, that you hear signal when, I for example, would perceive noise, or as you put it, the Peanuts adult “waa-wa-waaa-wa”, is a just a big plus. If asked would you serve? As to other comments - **octopus** , I don’t think it is possible for moderation to be completely transparent. Deciding what is too offensive, too jerky, too whatever, _currently_, is a subjective call, and it always will be, has to be. When the calls seem wrong no doubt posters will bring concerns to this forum and mods will, as they do now, let us know it is their call to make but still at least listen to the concerns expressed. **puzzlegal** , personally I think the drive to make all polls all-inclusive gets silly. Let’s imagine a poster was interested in finding out, trying to make one up here, say for whatever reason, how many women here have competed in sports at college level or above. Do they need to make a poll that includes: “Male and not college sports”; “Male, played college level sports” “Woman now but was male in college and played sports”; and so on? Sometimes the subject of interest is _not_ everyone. A poster interested about how people deal with gynecological matters does not need to include responses I can respond to and a poster interested in how men deal a diagnosis of prostate cancer and which treatment (or no treatment) option they went with does not need to include options for women or even men who have not had prostate cancer. (Which doesn’t mean women cannot participate in the thread - “my husband had prostate cance and together we decided that the risk of fecal incontinence was better than the risk of impotence” or whatever.) ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/234 "2018-06-10T15:40:15Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > \ > **puzzlegal** , personally I think the drive to make all polls all-inclusive gets silly. > > Let’s imagine a poster was interested in finding out, trying to make one up here, say for whatever reason, how many women here have competed in sports at college level or above. Do they need to make a poll that includes: “Male and not college sports”; “Male, played college level sports” “Woman now but was male in college and played sports”; and so on? > > Sometimes the subject of interest is _not_ everyone. A poster interested about how people deal with gynecological matters does not need to include responses I can respond to and a poster interested in how men deal a diagnosis of prostate cancer and which treatment (or no treatment) option they went with does not need to include options for women or even men who have not had prostate cancer. (Which doesn’t mean women cannot participate in the thread - “my husband had prostate cance and together we decided that the risk of fecal incontinence was better than the risk of impotence” or whatever.) This trying and failing to make a reductio ad absurdum argument. The idea of making polls more inclusive is to try to make _ **men** _ stop making things entirely about _ **themselve** _s excluding women. Almost always in a _ **sexual context** _. Can we just work on that one? The examples you cite would not be affected. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/235 "2018-06-10T15:59:27Z")
I get the point though. If you’re polling women, all too often we get an ‘I’m a dude’ option, which isn’t necessary and should be left off. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/236 "2018-06-10T16:05:13Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I get the point though. > > If you’re polling women, all too often we get an ‘I’m a dude’ option, which isn’t necessary and should be left off. And far too often the dudes respond when the option isn’t even there. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/237 "2018-06-10T16:07:38Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Of course, there are times when you do want to solicit information from a group that isn’t “everybody”. > > “People who have had kidney cancer – please tell me your experience” > > But I would suggest that when one is only/mostly interested in the responses of a subset of the population: > > 1. They should say so explicitly > 2. Majorities should be sensitive to excluding minorities. > “People with kidney cancer” isn’t a majority. It’s unlikely that anyone will feel excluded from the board as a whole due to running into that request. “Straight men” almost certainly ARE a majority on this board. If you want to start a lot of threads that ought to begin “straight men, what do you think about…”, then perhaps you have a problem. Sorry to have missed this on preview. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/238 "2018-06-10T16:11:16Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > … > **puzzlegal** , personally I think the drive to make all polls all-inclusive gets silly. > > Let’s imagine a poster was interested in finding out, trying to make one up here, say for whatever reason, how many women here have competed in sports at college level or above. Do they need to make a poll that includes: “Male and not college sports”; “Male, played college level sports” “Woman now but was male in college and played sports”; and so on? > > Sometimes the subject of interest is _not_ everyone. A poster interested about how people deal with gynecological matters does not need to include responses I can respond to and a poster interested in how men deal a diagnosis of prostate cancer and which treatment (or no treatment) option they went with does not need to include options for women or even men who have not had prostate cancer. (Which doesn’t mean women cannot participate in the thread - “my husband had prostate cance and together we decided that the risk of fecal incontinence was better than the risk of impotence” or whatever.) I moderate a different board where that’s the norm. Not for reasons of sexism or generalized inclusiveness, it just evolved that way. It’s not burdensome at all. It’s usually one additional option, like “other”, or “I like to vote in polls”. > [@Chimera](#): > > I get the point though. > > If you’re polling women, all too often we get an ‘I’m a dude’ option, which isn’t necessary and should be left off. I would argue exactly the opposite. You see that men don’t like to be left out by this practice. Or that poll-makers think it would somehow be awkward to exclude men. Guess what, other people don’t like to be left out, either. Especially because there are so many male-oriented polls here, women feel excluded from the sausage club. Y’all want to talk about how hot Betty is, and don’t want to be bothered to think that there are women (and gay men) in the room, too. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/239 "2018-06-10T16:17:51Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I moderate a different board where that’s the norm. Not for reasons of sexism or generalized inclusiveness, it just evolved that way. It’s not burdensome at all. It’s usually one additional option, like “other”, or “I like to vote in polls”. I really hate that. It wrecks the poll percentages for the sole purpose of letting people view the poll results without an extra click. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612/240 "2018-06-10T16:19:12Z")
And just stylistic comment. The tendency of some here to look for the worst possible interpretation and automatically post in a “the problem is **men** ” manner is unfortunate. There is room to apply the cliche of disagreeing without being disagreeable. **puzzlegal** demonstrates it well, for example. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lower-share-of-female-regulars-what-to-do/815612.md?page=13)