Declining female membership, in and of itself, is not the issue I care about. The culture of the board is what I care about. Declining female membership is a symptom of the culture problem. Right now we are discussing this issue, but is not the only issue to be, or has been, discussed. I do think that the “female unwelcoming*” culture is more pervasive, as it rears itself across many different threads, and requires a more complex and nuanced solution.
Making this board feel welcome to everyone is. I am equally appalled by “racial IQ” threads, anti-trans language, anti-Semitic or anti-muslim language, etc. Fixing board culture may result in higher membership of people who are of color, international, LBGTQ, atheist, muslim, Jewish, female, and that’s great, but increasing enrollment is not my goal, per se.
*I have yet to find a good term to describe this. I don’t like “male-centric”, misogynistic, but I can’t find a way to describe it that doesn’t sound wrong.
For what it’s worth, I’m going to go on record as another woman who hates the illustrations on the main page. I hate them so much that I stopped reading the column years ago and only interact with the message board. If the column were to cease to exist but the message board remained, I wouldn’t even notice.
Lt me try to help then. Apply the *probative vs prejudicial test *that judges like so much when ruling on admissibility of evidence issues. It appears the approach that the staff is talking is more of a balance the rights of all. That won’t work, because the relative discomfort it allows to a larger group vs a single poster’s right to post.
I think ITD’s response to this thread is a decent model for one improvement that can be made. A completely unnecessary reference was made to race, and it was immediately closed - no warning, no “let’s try to keep things on track”, just a “we don’t need this shit here” closing.
If the mods started to treat threads that unnecessarily objectify women the same way, it might help a little. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it’s one step toward setting a better culture.
For me, I participate most in GD and Elections so I think my exposure where some of the incident examples are located is lower. I like to argue/discuss current events, etc. and the social aspect is not as high a focus for me as it is for others.
I heavily favor the ability for open discussion about any topic. Ultimately in the marketplace of ideas we should expect good ideas and good arguments to win out. That only works if the marketplace has a certain critical mass and this can be thwarted if the environment is unwelcoming enough to drive membership and participation below that critical mass. The question is really how to balance the fact that uncomfortability may cause declining participation and an openess to any topic will inherently cause some uncomfortability. So in my mind it’s not necessarily a bright line rule, but how to best strike that balance.
That was a fantastic read. I did not realize that as women were starting to use the internet to organize and fight against misogyny, the misogyny was taking every opportunity to fight back.
Unfortunately these cases aren’t usually as clear cut. It’s a tough line to walk- let individual personalities and posting styles be, encourage a lively board, while dealing with these extremely nuanced issues.
And we’re figuring out on the fly with each case having it’s unique twist.
Like fighting ignorance, this will also take time.
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.
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 agree- it was a tough one to moderate. My goal was to nurture the germ of an idea while publicly acknowledging the gratuitous pieces- not ignore or sweep them under the carpet. To say more directly “this thread has lousy parts and we don’t like that”, while encouraging the type of diverse discourse that is good.
I’m tying to keep a tight hold on that line and will close it if it becomes a problem. That said, I think a good discussion is emerging.
If the board becomes too uninteresting it will die a natural death.
On the other hand, if it becomes overbearingly offensive then those in power that could have done something are implicit in its death.
That’s not really my experience, sometimes politeness is enforced at the expense of honest debate, but I’ve elaborated on that at length elsewhere, so no need to hijack here to do it again.
I like the free association of ideas here, even when those ideas are repugnant to me. I view them as an opportunity to fight ignorance. However, sometimes the sheer volume of responses that seem hostile to women is overwhelming. (See recent threads on sexual assault, workplace harassment, etc.)
I’m also troubled by a bias that’s more subtle. It seems to me–and I have no stats for this–that when a Doper is known to be a woman, her responses are more likely to be ignored or dismissed.
I have no solutions, by the way. Just adding my voice t to the chorus.