Go crawl in a hole. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder that you put there yourself.
Yeah, I remember getting told (by a mod I quite like, no less) to “just ignore” all the Are Africans Congenitally Retarded? threads we kept getting a while back. Really changed my opinion of him and the moderation here in general.
I can see exactly why both black and women posters might “nope!” out of here (love that phrasing!)
And as to the OP - sure, I’ve posted/voted in polls on favourite actresses etc. But Sunny is perfectly right and within her rights to bring up the issue. Cafe front page was looking a bit juvenile there.
And while I knew the board was full of misogynists already, I do find it quite surprising which posters I didn’t have down as MRA nuts have taken this badly.
That’s a real convincing refutation of their argument you have there. :rolleyes:
Go crawl in a hole. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder that you put there yourself.
Like the rest of my critics you have nothing positive to offer. There’s not the least hint of a solution in this thread or the others. I’ve heard the same complaints over and over again, and the increasing distortion of my responses because I point out that the only solution offered is censorship. It’s censorship even if you ask nicely. Once someone has something constructive to say this discussion can move forward. I don’t care if you or anyone else wants to continue along this path, I’m being vilified simply for disagreeing with you and pointing out the over-reach to place blame on anyone who doesn’t jump up and down shouting “Men are evil pigs!”.
Wow. This thread is really interesting. I have to confess that had I not read it, I probably would never have thunk it. That is not to say I haven’t seen instances of misogyny here. I have. But I never thought of it as being as pervasive as many women seem to feel.
I’ll echo what some others have said that I’m not sure what the solution is, but it at least helps to hear someone articulate the problem. To view it on very simple level, as Chronos said earlier: is the desire to eliminate or reduce the number of Ginger v Maryanne threads or increase the number of Brad v Leo threads or something else-- alter the tone of the threads? Well, at least some of us can now be cognizant of the issue. Thanks to the OP for getting the conversation going. I certainly don’t want this place to be a Boys Club!
And a special shout out to monstro. Glad to hear you are in for the long haul. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You’re one of my favorite posters here. Not just because you write so damn well, but I value your opinion. I have definitely changed my views on racial issues in part because of interactions with you (and your sister).
Is this The Pit, or are we all going to have a group hug or something? 
The fact that you can’t deal with people expressing opinions on issues that you disagree with undermines your position WRT the rest of your claims.
In general, being sensitive to other people is a Good Thing. But when you put too much focus on that, some people are tempted to use that as a weapon, and to control other people’s behavior by playing the “offended” card.
Reminding myself of the time I was told by a mod to just ignore racist threads reminded me of a thing I posted then:
This relates to what I was trying to say. When you participate in threads like that, when you declare your crushes, is your mental audience male? I think most of the time, for most posters (including women), it is. We talk the way we would to a group of dudes: there’s an asumption that which actress is attractive/crush worthy is a subject of general interest, but which actor is hot is not . . .That’s a specialty interest, worth bringing up in a thread but not worthy of a whole thread. I’m not saying this makes anyone a misogynist, but it would be nice of people could see it.
Does there have to be a viable solution before we are allowed to even talk about it? You seem to be saying that because one solution is not viable, we shouldn’t even be talking about the issue at all. I honestly don’t know what to do about the fact that the board (and the world) defaults to a limited PoV. But I don’t think it will get better if we can’t even talk about it without having to wade through pages of defensive assumptions about my motives and preemptive refusals to change anything at all.
C’mere you big lug…
Why is this subject only being brought up in the Pit and ATMB threads. Why isn’t it being held in a forum where there’s real moderation? I’m ready to talk to anyone who wants to have a rational discussion instead of hurling invective.
Also, sorry Sunny Daze, I have looked at this thread somewhat as just more attacks on me for simply asking why a thread was closed without knowing about this ongoing controversy, and the mod who closed that thread admitted the warning and closure notice was unclear. I understand the point you are making. I would like to find a solution. I’d go on but I’m just going to get slammed for anything I say here. But I do apologize for lumping you in with others who have nothing to contribute other than complaints and calls for censorship.
Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with “Yes, censorship” as a viable solution. It is exactly the same as the solution we use for outright racism, political speech in GQ, complaints about moderation outside ATMB, etc.
I think it’s offensive to tell women not to click on certain threads. Do you realise how much courage it takes for women to use a computer and participate in a message board?
They have to touch a mouse! Eeeeew!
Since when does ATMB not have any moderation?
Need a safe space, snowflake?
That is a good point. Read my note above, I didn’t mean to sound like that. It is important to bring this subject up. I just got worn down by the baseless criticism I received for innocently asking why a thread was closed and the immediate assumption that I must support the kind of behavior that is being addressed. My responses aren’t about what I support in terms of content, only that I don’t support censorship, and now if I can talk to you or others who are reasonable I’d like to find out what can be done constructively, even if it’s not a simple solution. I would hope we would all be looking in the same general direction even if we disagree on the exact route to take.
Seriously. TP, think about this. Step back, take the temperature of the board here. Take a look at how many people have stepped up, in a forum where they rarely enter, to speak up.
Sunny took a chance with this because she felt it was something that needed to be said. I know for a fact she considered this thread for several days, going from “why bother” to “dammit, I have something to say.” She knew that the first ones out of the gate would be the misogynists telling her that her point was stupid. She called it. I admire her strength and her resolve.
Octopus, Chimera and you have signed on with a wild west saloon mentality telling the women to GTFO of the saloon if they can’t handle the guys talking. Only here, it’s their saloon too. Just step back and listen.
See if you are capable of applying this sentiment to the entirety of the OP and not just a nitpick of one issue that you happen to disagree with.
A small, specific thing that I offer: a dude telling women what real feminists do is never gonna have good optics. There’s plenty of advantages you get in life by virtue of being a dude, but you’re gonna have to suffer under the burden of not getting to tell women what real feminists are like (or at least not getting to be credible when you do it).
If you ever find yourself doing that, take a deep breath and step away from the keyboard. You can call a particular woman an unmitigated buttmunch, a halfwit, a deeply terrible excuse for a human being, a goat-fondler, an annoying clod of septic waste, or any number of other things–and you’ll sometimes be right. But don’t tell her what real feminists are like, man. Just, don’t.
All content is not equal. Some content is banned (Dear Penthouse style stuff, homework threads) and some just gets short shrift here: we don’t get many anti-evolutionists or people parroting Breitbart talking points, and when we do they get mobbed until they quit or get themselves banned. We don’t get a lot of threads on, say, boyband fandom or fly-fishing, because there’s no interest. That’s not a bad thing. The content we do and don’t encourage through participation plays a large part in defining board culture. The idea that, as a board, we have to have to exercise no judgement whatsoever about the kind of content we’re interested in would be a terrible idea if it bore any relation to how things actually work here.
We could be the kind of board that encourages threads where men club together to rank women, or where threads asking for women’s point of view are flooded by men talking about tangential topics. But why would we want to?
I wouldn’t want to be held to a precise quantity, but qualitatively it’s Really Not That Many. The recent spate of thigh-rubbing polls about women are a good example - one was sad, two was weird and by three I was just embarrassed to be reading the forum page. This is, let us not forget, a board where “the smartest, hippest people on the internet” get together to “fight ignorance”. That is of course knowingly hyperbolic and is in any case more a vision statement than reality, by some margin, but how far from that vision have we got when “men ranking women” is even a vaguely discernible pattern of activity?
It’s not just that I don’t want to read those threads. I don’t want to be part of a board where threads like that are even, to pick a number, 2% of recent content. Because “Hey men, let’s judge these women” threads are, bluntly, for sad little wankers. And if I stay out of those threads, that doesn’t really solve the problem that I’m sharing a board with sad little wankers, and that participating in other threads now comes with the risk of dealing with them. Why would I want to do that?
(This doesn’t even get into the issue of what it’s like to be a woman and see a rash of threads in which the men you share the boards with overtly get together to judge women. Can you just imagine? You don’t have to, they’re telling you it feels creepy and uncomfortable.)
Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?
To be even broadly analogous to the male-centric threads in the OP, “white-centric” threads would involve less cream soda and more white people ranking black people and/or whimsical threads about moral dilemmas suddenly veering into lovingly detailed descriptions of lynchings. If threads like that became even a small part of this board, how thrilled would you be by the magnificent “diversity of content” we were enjoying? Not much at all, is my guess.
How is it you think the bolded part came not be tolerated as part of our stated norms? Because for quite a long time “pictures please” *was *the norm. That norm didn’t just happen to change - female Dopers fought long and hard, against some fairly entrenched opposition, to make people realise how divisive and unpleasant those “jokes” were. And when they fought that fight, the opposition was the same: you can just ignore it, different people like different things, it’s no big deal, it’s your problem, get a thicker skin, if you don’t like it just leave. Now we’ve again come to the point where the tone of the boards has become more and more unwelcoming to women, and they’re putting themselves out there to say so. You’d have thought we’d have learned a better way to respond by now.
I can tell anyone I want what I think feminism is, just as you or anyone else can. It’s sexist to say otherwise.
I think the main deficit comes from the moderation. People are not allowed to respond to posts in the manner in which they deserve, so they don’t. In addition, there are thousands of active posters, so having a few active full-on sexists and racists seems small actually.
I have tended to disengage from gender and racial discussions here, both because on the one hand I am restricted to an artificial politeness standard, and on the other, there are too many people who throw about generalizations about white males without offering caveats to respond to all of them.