You wanna know how often the voice of reason has to tell everyone it’s the voice of reason?
It’s just as often as folks who aren’t racist have to tell everyone they’re not racist, and folks who are smart have to tell everyone they’re smart, and folks who are funny have to keep insisting that they’re funny.
It’s bwana octopus to you.
come on dude, we’ve been through this - bwana octoputz.
I’m willing to compromise. Told you LHoD, voice of reason here.
In my opinion this is how respect works.
Step 1: Unknown person is treated with vague decency until data is provided.
Step 2: Unknown person acts like a racist, sexist, moronic fucktard.
Step 3: Known fucktard gets no respect.
To actually get respect, a person actually has to earn it, by demonstrating them to be a consistently decent, respectable person. A person doesn’t get respect by default.
(Also I automatically have decreased respect for any person who is afraid of the letters “cfku” in any order. That’s not anything personal, mind you; I just don’t think actual adults should be scared of mere words.)
As for the actual thread topic of making this a nice, receptive environment for women…I don’t know how to do that. I don’t make sexiness rating threads, but I also have no way of making them vanish. The best I can do is to have no effect whatsoever on how female friendly this site is: I can either make it worse or refrain from making it worse, but I can’t make it better. It makes me feel a little sad sometimes.
Actually, LHoD and Tripolar both have shifted towards the center here. It’s your turn. It won’t hurt. Admit that you want to help make things better by listening.
One of the ways we make it better is by having this conversation. I don’t have all the answers. The only conclusion I’ve come to so far is that if the OP asks for answers from women then men should probably not answer, unless the answer is directly relevant such as “my wife says that…”.
I do indeed tend to reduce my participation in the board when the subject seems to want to exclude me from the conversation. (The notable exception being when a person is witnessing in GD, in which situation I feel they are begging for my helpful input.)
Er, I won’t ask women to follow my example of self-exclusion, though.
I did listen. But my solution leads to ad hominem attacks. Sad.
What is wrong with women or whoever posting and participating in what they wish to post? Yes, if this place turned into Penthouse forums or Stormfront or WorldStar I’d be vocal in resisting that change. But a few adolescent or sexual threads isn’t that off putting.
Obviously, offense is in the eye of the beholder and is in my opinion subjective. Some of the goofy pit rules are subjective. You can’t prove one is right or one is wrong. But I don’t think a forum needs to be free of potentially offensive content. I do think it’s nice if content is appropriately contained and moderated so people’s expectations of a thread or a sub forum aren’t too far out of congruence with reality.
The weird thing is, a truly offense free forum would probably impact me the least. Get rid of the Pit and all offensive threads? Go for it.
Last month or so there was a thread in IMHO about attractions at Disney, and there was some talk about the atmosphere and the little Disneyfied details that people encounter on a trip. I said I was with my daughter one day in Magic Kingdom, and a garbage can rolled up and starting chatting with us. The OP said, that’s no way to talk about your wife.
Not thrilled about bringing that up here, as I have nothing against the poster in question, but for those who need visuals it is a handy example of a point at which I now feel awkward participating (I was the wife in my story, see) and I should have just skipped it, and *now *what do I do?
Also, since this is a kind of appreciation thread, I’m a longtime fan of yours. Please join the others on the podium.
Posters, male and female and other, already post and participate where they wish. But that’s not the issue. I think a lot of folks see this board kind of like I do – as a sort of community meeting place, like a neighborhood pub. If I started to see my beloved neighborhood pub becoming populated by people who loudly use racial slurs and brag about abusing women (or maybe it had always been like this to some degree, but it was more visible now, or maybe just more visible to me now), without being challenged or criticized by the staff or other patrons, then I might speak up and say “I love this bar and I think y’all should speak up to make sure it doesn’t become a shitty and unwelcoming place” to the staff and patrons in addition to criticizing those who spew bigotry.
That’s how I see this thread.
Well, witnessing belongs in the same category as flat earthers, and 9/11 truthers. It falls to us to discuss the situation and have fun while doing so. 
Octo, The OP isn’t asking for a remedy here. She’s asking whether a specific activity is healthy for the board. Any remedy, if there is one, would probably be in the form of a gentlemen’s agreement. (sorry, gentlepeople’s agreement)
Guys (I use the term as a non-gender-specific reference), if 8 pages hasn’t taught you how to how to deal with **octopus **by now, let me offer some advicefrom a highly-esteemed pianist / saxophonist combo.
Yeah. A Betty vs Veronica thread isn’t abusing women. Skald and his surprise hypotheticals have an appropriate rule that I supported.
What I’m seeing is a loud and organized in-group that would like to bully and insult others into silence and/or acquiescence. Where this in-group can decide who and what can be offensive and how while arbitrarily piling on convenient targets of ridicule and derision. I say call the bluff.
They use words like misogynistic or bigot, not as accurate descriptors, but as a cudgel to shut down conversation and put the target on the perpetual defensive. The tactics are transparent. Thankfully, we aren’t subjected to a double standard in the pit and we can respond appropriately.
If they were sincere the thread would be in ATMB and would contain some actionable solutions. Smart Aleq inadvertently tipped the motivation. Now it’s time for the obfuscation to commence.
Unfortunately, that kind of “look,when I poke the clicky thing my fingers make marks on the little TV!” post is endemic to this board, and not limited to threads about women. Not everyone has to make their little marks in every thread, and sometimes it’s OK just to pass over a thread and think, “Yeah, I can’t really add value to this”.
It would be appropriate for ATMB if new rules were being proposed. But no new rules are being proposed – this is about board culture, and a call for awareness and even action from other posters (i.e. try to post fewer things objectifying women or otherwise likely to be unwelcoming or hostile to women, and call out others who do so frequently or obnoxiously), but not a call for bannings or censorship or the like. It’s not a clear line, and it’s the kind of discussion that is likely to sometimes be contentious or worse.
And that’s okay – sometimes discussions should be contentious, or sometimes even worse, and the Pit is appropriate for such discussions.
As long as you insist on believing that they’re being dishonest, it’s easy to dismiss their concerns and suggestions. But that’s a choice you’re making, and it’s not one you need to make.
This post has stuck with me. One reason is that I did not know all of these posters are black. I’m sure that there are other people of color on the Board who have not identified as such. I am also certain that there are people here who are not male, but are assumed to be, who are not traditionally-gendered, but are assumed to be. As to the why of that, sometimes the Internet makes it easy to make assumptions. As Manda JO pointed out earlier, our default filter - all of our default filters - for understanding unknown internet strangers is “heterosexual white male”. Here at the Dope it may be “relatively educated, likely-Liberal, heterosexual white male”, but that is where all of us start our interactions. Since many of us are not white males, that common ground doesn’t really exist. The persistent belief that it does can be alienating and divisive.
I think that this thread has sparked some interesting discussion. It remains my hope that discussion will help us move forward to better understanding of each other.
Last post before I have to cook dinner and do some cleaning.
Opinion 3! A small amount of subjectively distasteful content is something we all need to deal with. We don’t need crayons, Play-Doh, or sky screaming because different people want to discuss different things. And finally if the amount currently in existence is too much bring it up in ATMB and ask for more content restrictions. But threats probably won’t work .
Sadly, all too many of our ‘conservative’ members eventually show themselves as racists, and we get regular influxes of them. Some of them are smart enough to not use the wrong terms and instead rely on dog whistles, but I can certainly emphasize with minority posters here who have to see this shit on a regular basis.
No sympathy for the racist conservatives feeling like we’re running them off. WE ARE.