First, thank you, Manda JO, Sunny Daze, and puzzlegal for your responses to my question about long-time female Dopers. I found them enlightening, and I notice they changed the focus of the discussion.
I’ve felt this, too, and I think it’s part of the whole issue of dismissiveness. There are plenty of male Dopers here who aren’t dismissive, but it’s predominant enough to have become part of the STMB culture. And this particular issue, at least, can’t be corrected by Mod action alone. It’d help if others, male or female, jumped in to point out when a post has been ignored or female poster has been treated dismissively. If we’d done that all along, maybe Eva and Una would still be here. It’s not just that MODS didn’t speak up enough; it’s that NOBODY did. I sure didn’t.
One other point: I view Sig’s illustrations in context. I have old Straight Dope books compiled from Cecil’s column in the *Chicago Reader *back in the Seventies, and Sig’s stuff has been in there all along. His cartoons are caricatures stylized a little like the Robert Crumb “Keep on Truckin’” characters–kind of Thirties cartoons meet LSD, but with a smart-ass edge. They’re not too flattering to men, either. They’re not my thing, but I’m not offended. I have no idea, though, if they drive off potential posters of any gender.
And some of us understand that there are some circumstances where men are at a disadvantage (child custody during/after divorce, as just one example), both historically and in the present, and have spoken up for them. I don’t recall being subject to abuse for doing so. What I do recall is when “some people” dismiss the concerns and/or wrongs experienced by women or minorities or minority women by going “But-but-but - men are at a disadvantage in A, B, and C categories so white/male/heterosexual privilege doesn’t exist ever anywhere!!!”
In other words - people with agendas often don’t communicate or listen well.
I know Una is insanely busy what with having a career, a marriage, and a LOT of outreach and helping the trans community where she lives… she only has so much time and energy and when it comes time to trim things down to maintain sanity and get enough rest… well, you cut loose those forums that are less welcoming/more stressful/more frustrating. I miss Eve and Luna’s contributions, too, but I understand why they don’t post here.
That’s the thing, CCitizen. There might be an occasional asshole woman who feels like making a crack or doubting that it happened, but the worst comments (thankfully not here) are generally from men, who think I’m weak for admitting it, or allowing it to happen in the first place, or any number of stupid assed comments about me deserving it. Or how they would have used violence to stop it from happening to them. :rolleyes:
Because yeah, that would go so well. :smack:
But the others in this thread are right, that saying “But men have it hard this way” or “men are subject to abuse too” is distraction and an attempt to change the subject. The only place it is a reasonable remark is if someone in the thread is claiming that men don’t have it hard, or that men are not subject to abuse. And even then it shouldn’t be a way to change or diminish the original subject.
I caution my fellow posters that dismissiveness is one of many tools used in the fight against ignorance, at least in GD. I recognize that reasonable expectations are different in other forums.
Speaking personally, quite a few of my posts have been ignored. Furthermore, poster attention isn’t necessarily correlated with post quality - in fact it’s generally the opposite, right? At any rate, methinks the topic of dismissiveness deserves its own thread some day.
The thread was originally about putting more restrictions on Privileged Oppressors posting on SDMB. How is it possible to claim that a thread about putting extra restrictions on Privileged Oppressor members does not concern them?
Definitely, the Moderator’s decision is the law for any forum or Social Media. If the moderators decide to incorporate gender-specific rules, then so it will be.
It’s not that they are only unflattering to women: it’s that the images of men exaggerate all sorts of features for humorous effect–but for women, it’s always butts and boobs. It’s like when he’s drawing a woman, the only parts he’s really focused on, the only interesting parts, are butts and boobs. They are drawings by a man for men.
I feel you are intentionally misreading this. In particular, I don’t think any of the suggestions made have been gender specific. “Don’t talk about people as if they are objects” (“choose one…”, rather than, “which is more attractive…”) is not a gender-specific rule. There’s a gender-specific perceived problem, which is that posters are more likely to objectify women than man, but the suggested rule has nothing to do with gender. “don’t barge into a thread that isn’t relevant to you and make it all about you” isn’t gender-specific, either.
Same with all the other suggestions I’ve seen.
There are already a lot of rules here putting restrictions on oppressors (privileged or otherwise) such as “don’t be a jerk”. I don’t see it as a bad thing to put some checks on oppressors to reduce the amount of repressing they do. Do you?
I am solidly in favor of the Mando Jo rule. I think it would help a great deal. I also agree that it needs to be shut down only if the OP itself is setting things off on a bad path. Differentiating between “tone” modding and “Official Warning” modding is also a great idea. Obviously, it also needs to be allowed to ramp up into a Warning if it happens multiple times though.
In general, I think misogyny needs to be treated with the same seriousness as racial prejudice. Somebody gave an example of the response they wished they’d gotten from the mods about a misogynistic post. With an expression of concern and an invitation to please report such things. I can’t find it now; it may have been in one of the other threads.
I know I am often wary of reporting posts, and at times have worried that I hit that button too often. I’m still not clear on what constitutes Jr. modding, or when someone is trolling vs threadshitting. I think we’d all like to feel the invitation to be a bit vigilant about misogyny on the board for a bit, kinda like those “enforcement weeks” that the police do occasionally. Nobody enjoys it, least of all the cops, but it has a way of reinforcing the rule of law in our heads throughout the year. And it would open the field for the mods to explore the lines of what they want to address, and what should be allowed to slide.
I don’t think the problem is bawdiness or prurient posts. Women can participate in,
and enjoy bawdy humour. It’s misogynistic posts that are the problem.
The Mods have the power to alert Cecil to the way it’s being received, surely? And would not have that power unless somebody finally broke down and mentioned it?
OK then, let’s review:
If this is not intended to assert that the entire discussion is too burdensome and we should stop thrusting this and other such burdensome discussion upon the board, then please clarify. What did you mean by it?
Does anybody know when it was exactly that we opened up the board to Google searches? I think there was a big cultural shift right after that. It wasn’t too long after I joined though. My sense is that it was when the seasonal “School’s out, here come the wanker trolls” started.
Of course, it’s also how some of my favorite posters found us, so, I’m not suggesting we should go back to the dark side.
Because we didn’t pipe up right away and say “Yes, we want you to let us know whenever that happens because that is also wrong.” And because we didn’t, they began to feel the need to defend their concerns, which are valid.
Your post is a perfect example of a shutdown. It drips with sarcasm about what is a valid and painful issue, leaving the poster feeling that their input is unwelcome.
It’s not a competition. And I do think it’s an issue if he feels insulted or demeaned for his job. I agree that it’s a similar sort of discrimination that gets ignored on the board and should be reported and modded more aggressively.
I do realize that his very own post is about him not getting upset about it. But if another person who works a blue collar job comes through as a newbie and sees that, they’d be a heckuva lot less likely to come back.
I don’t want to turn the board into a liberal upper middle class bubble space. We need diversity if we’re going to have useful discussions. That means treating everybody with respect.
Objectification and being subject to aggression are separate issues. They can coincide, but usually they don’t. This thread is mostly about the former.
fwiw, I’ve read nearly as much aggression aimed at women than at men in the pit, but maybe that’s mostly one female poster. I don’t spend a lot of time in the pit, though.
No. This is wrong. It’s completely wrong - wrong on its face, wrong in it’s message, and wrong for this thread. If you feel you’ve been mistreated somehow, then feel free to start a thread to discuss it. But I question whether this thread is the place for historical drudging of slights long past. I actually don’t question - I know it’s not. This thread is about steps we can take going forward.
Says you.
That’s basically just you saying no evidence would work for you then. Like I said, polling is the one of the only lines of *evidence *that would address the issue. Only other one I can think of is a compendium of last posts by women, saying the reason they’re leaving is the hostility here.