Add bullying to the list also. That’s what the pitting of members is, especially the threads that go on for months at a time. The lack of action by the admins is shameful.
I don’t see it as sexist either. It’s the reason we have separate leagues for men and women in the first place.
That’s not what athleticism is generally defined as. It’s not usually confined to any specific sport, but in generalities as to having the physical abilities of an athlete. And some version of agility, dexterity, coordination, etc is often included in definitions where more specifics are gone into. “Energy” is also often referenced, which, IMO, is not the same as strength.
The Pit isn’t going anywhere, way more people want it than don’t. Let it go.
This is my concern against having a rule against sexism - not because I think sexism is OK (I don’t), but because people are so precious and addicted to recreational outrage that any sex/gender-based observation a poster doesn’t like will be accused of sexism.
I still can’t believe we’ve got a messageboard where on one hand we’re wringing our hands going “Where are all the new posters? How long until the boards die out completely?”, while on the other hand we’re saying “Fuck everyone who has an opinion or viewpoint I don’t like, and make it a bannable offence to have that viewpoint, and let’s invent some more rules for a place that’s already over-moderated as it is” and wondering why this place isn’t Reddit 2.0 for some reason.
Mine too. I haven’t voted yet, because while I support the idea in theory, many people seem to have much more expansive definitions of the concept than I do. I’d like to know what exactly I’d be endorsing before deciding how to vote.
And I disagree with @Martin_Hyde; I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have stricter rules in the non-debate forums to make them a safer space, but people should expect to have their ideas challenged in a debate forum, even if that might make them uncomfortable.
Also, I think this poll should be posted in the Game Room as well, since I doubt there’s much overlap between the two forums.
A rule against sexism shouldn’t be necessary for the Game Room. Sexism, like racism, shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere on the SDMB, whatever the forum.
I have to be honest and say I simply didn’t see anything remotely objectionable about the comment that started this whole thing, either - people are really getting upset at someone describing women’s sport as “unwatchable” and instead of going “Well OK, that’s a bit hyperbolic but yes, I take your view that you don’t find women’s sport to be nearly as ‘watchable’ as the men’s counterpart” and moving on, we’re here.
I mean, there’s a pit thread “Air Canada is the worst carrier ever”, a statement that is objectively not true and in the same vein as the comment that started this thread, and at best the OP in the Air Canada thread is getting a couple of gentle disagreements with the idea they might be the worst airline ever. What no-one in that thread is doing is losing their shit over what is clearly a hyperbolic statement, and I’m really not sure why that thread is getting a pass on the hyperbole but the topic in this one isn’t, especially when the view that started this thread isn’t considered particularly controversial by a very large number of people.
If I’d seen that comment before the ATMB thread I probably would have thought it suggestive of a bad attitude towards women on the poster’s part, but not problematic in itself. Apparently the poster has a history of misogynistic remarks and that’s why he got a topic ban.
I guess if whoever started the Pit thread on Air Canada was constantly bashing Canadians then it might have got a different response?
But the poster did get moderated, so what do the people who voted yes to explicitly banning sexism hope the new rule would achieve? What would be different to now?
The poster has a long and egregious history of sexism. Nobody should be allowed to have a long and egregious history of anything vile on this forum.
I think that’s the crux of it. The Dope is one of the last non-shadowy corners of the internet where we slap a veneer on bigotry under terms like ‘sincere beliefs’ and ‘robust discussion.’ A respectable forum for shitty ideas implies that the ideas themselves aren’t shitty.
That’s why, every time topics like this come up, the same posters wring their hands with grave concern about how we’ll be stifling discussion and driving off posters and so on. They genuinely don’t want to take their ideas to the weeping pustule forums of the internet. Those places are for bigots. So long as we retain respectability, we lend it to the ideas and viewpoints of anybody who is allowed to post here.
Moderator Note
While this is clearly a hot button topic for you, it does not belong in every thread. Do not keep repeating it.
You imagined all kinds of qualifiers to a comment that didn’t have them.
He didn’t say “I don’t find women’s sport to be nearly as ‘watchable’ as the men’s counterpart”
He said this.
Re: the OP
This quite nicely fits my position.
What counts as sexism? Either of @Velocity’s statements?
I was called a misogynist by some extremist on Twitter for saying men are stronger than women on average. Is that sexist? Is acknowledging any differences between the sexes sexist, no matter how obvious and well attested?
These sorts of bans are pushed on the pretext of eliminating hate, or vileness, or other vaguely defined notions. Usually they end up banning open discussion and enforcing one ideological viewpoint (which for many of the people pushing them, is in fact the desired outcome).
Not only that, but looking back at old threads, they are frequently a lot quirkier and more interesting than current ones. It’s not necessarily this rule in particular, but tightening up the rules in general seems to have made the board a duller place.
This may be at least in part a matter of definitions.
I went and looked some up, and found significant variation.
@RickJay: let’s take a more extreme case. Suppose there’s a ten year old 4’6" girl who’s highly active, very well coordinated, plays several different sports and all of them very well for her age and size. And suppose a 6’4" 25 year old man who has poor coordination and minimal flexibility, and works out at the gym twice a week because he thinks he ought to, but otherwise moves as little as possible.
Would you say that man is more athletic than that girl?
He’s certainly going to be stronger, and to be able to run faster. But I would say she’s much more athletic than he is.
Yeah, there are nuts everywhere.
No.
Not usually, no. Something like “this study shows that people think men are more authoritative than women, so I’m only hiring men for my sales positions” seems sexist to me, since it brings in existing biases into a study about what people believe, not how people are. Something like, “men are taller than average than women” doesn’t, since it describes how people are, not what people think of men and women.
It gets touchier when you talk about, say, women in STEM fields, because it’s difficult to separate out societal expectations about men and women (and, really, boys and girls, when this stuff is getting taught) from innate abilities.
None of this really has anything to do with sexist comments in the Game Room, of course. I think it’s easy not to make sexist comments in that forum or any forum.
I’m not RickJay, but I would agree that, yes, that girl is more athletic. Even if we took gender out of the equation, most people would rather watch the (relatively) short Stephen Curry play basketball than some 8-foot-tall giant who has no basketball skill.
But this thread goes to show how difficult it is to ban sexism (or other -isms). It sounds great in theory but runs into trouble in practice. You have one side thinking Statement XYZ is sexist and one side thinking that Statement XYZ is just a statement of common-sense scientific reality.
When my wife watches basketball, she likes the teamwork aspect, such as when all when the players work together with lots of passes to strategically get the ball to the basket. I find that kind of boring. I like when the player fights to the basket and slams it in with lots of power, drama and excitement. My wife thinks those kinds of players are ball hogs. I would extrapolate this into how women generally are more about being part of a group while men are more about aggression. So it’s not at all surprising to me that some men will find virtually all women’s sports boring since the women may be using a different strategies and styles of play than the men do. The women are playing to their strengths, which other women likely enjoy watching, but men may not. And men play to their strengths, which other men enjoy watching. But it’s not necessarily the case that one gender will enjoy watching the play style of the other gender.
Did you find any that said “athleticism is being able to excel at one specific sport”?
You just said it can get touchier on certain subjects, and we’ve got people disagreeing on examples right here in this thread. It’s not so easy to ban sexism or other -isms when people can’t agree on what that means.
I’m coming round to the view that anything that should be banned already is banned. I haven’t noticed any particular problem with misogyny on the board since I started posting regularly, certainly not compared to other ‘non-shadowy corners of the internet’ that @Johnny_Bravo claims are better.
If anything there are far too many rules already and they ought to be streamlined, not increased.