In this thread about a billboard, Diosa seems determined to derail the thread and denigrate the people participating.
In post #22, Vinyl Turnip calls her out for it, and is subsequently taken to task by Ellen Cherry for possible Junior Modding (fair enough).
But she then continues with this:
Now, while I don’t agree that VT was going all JM in his post, I do agree that he should have reported it rather than confront DB the way he did.
BUT, EC seems to be endorsing the idea that DB is well within her rights to threadshit because, ya know, the Gynocaust and all.
I don’t think this is a healthy attitude for the SDMB to have.
If someone starts a thread about something they like, (let’s say a thread called “Zydeco Appreciation Thread”), am I now free to go in that thread and denigrate the people posting there for their taste in music and their desire to speak openly about it?
What about a post about gay rights? Could I go post in that thread making sarcastic remarks about the morals, maturity etc. of the people posting there in support of gay rights?
Ellen Cherry’s Moderator post seems to say this, and I don’t think that’s the way the SDMB should be.
No problem with the moderation in that thread. I endorse Diosa’s sentiments and Vinyl’s jokes - both of them! I would oppose a warning, but that didn’t happen. The OP in the linked thread is lame, IMHO.
I’m not too keen on pant-pant-drool-slobber-woah-what-a-babeohramano! threads (at least at this message board), but see no reason to have them prohibited necessarily. But I think commentary on them should be accepted. Sort of like giving the thumbs down to dumb jokes is.
For completeness, I’ll concede that the male brain (or my male brain at least) does find images of attractive women in bikinis to be surprisingly striking, even if I’ve seen them 20,000 times before. It truly never gets old. But there’s something somewhat distasteful and frankly embarrassing about expressing too much enthusiasm for it in public. I don’t question the sincerity of the MPSIMS OP -such images can indeed be mind altering in varying ways- just the lack of discretion. Sort of like telling your own pet joke over and over again that the bulk of your audience finds retarded.
There are all sorts of things people don’t like. Do we get to threadshit in all those threads, or just ones where men are talking about sexual matters?
So people can threadshit if they find a topic distasteful? I don’t like American Idol. Am I free to mock the people posting in those threads, or only if they’re men talking about an attractive woman? It’s rather obvious that, at this point, some mods have some weird personal attachment to playing out some sort of Feminist Crusade via their moderation duties. People are allowed to post off color threads, even classless threads. The assumption is that if you don’t like it, you don’t participate. Not that you threadshit and then the mods back you up because you were stickin’ it to the Patriarchy.
I don’t see it as a political issue. I see it as setting the tone and taste of this message board. When the areas get grey, you permit a limited amount of self-policing via member commentary. It’s not that hard.
Letting the Offenderati decide what content other people read is not a good policy. Going into someone else’s thread and berating the posters is not good policy, it’s being a Jerk. Yeah, even if the person is giving some grief to men expressing sexual thoughts.
The moderation was awful. The explicit reasoning given was that women can threadshit to their hearts’ content in any thread that men are saying sexual things about women, in some sort of ‘revenge’/‘comeuppance’ passion play. It’s not even terribly difficult to see if this is sexist, poor moderation, as Ellen admitted her reasoning (proudly, oddly enough).
There are plenty of topics people don’t like on the Dope. Should the next MPSIMS thread about a religious ceremony that someone enjoys be free game for, say, Der Trihs? As I see it, if religious people demand to be able to babble and rave about their Magical Space Daddy, all over something as mild as a Bar Mitzvah, then atheists ought to be able to voice their weariness about it.
Right?
There’s zero grey area. I mean, the solution is complicated and terribly difficult to implement, I’m sure. But, if people really want to, I’m sure they can manage to not post in a thread whose very existence they don’t like. It’s not grey. People who threadshit because they don’t like the topic of a thread are being Jerks. They should be moderated, not given carte blanche to threadshit.
Indeed.
If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
If you really don’t like it and it gets your dander up, don’t threadshit.
If you really don’t like it, it gets your dander up, and the urge to threadshit is overwhelming? Start a Pit thread.
If you really don’t like it, it gets your dander up, and the urge to threadshit is overwhelming, and you also refuse to start a Pit thread and instead threadshit in the original thread? Then you draw a mod note or a warning. You don’t have the mods back you up because you’re being a Jerk to an approved group of people.
You can’t be a Jerk even if you’re being a Jerk towards men whose only crime is talking about sex in a thread that you neither had to read, nor post in.
You’re right. It’s not that hard at all.
But she didn’t comment about the topic of the thread, she didn’t comment on the billboard itself, instead her posts were about the other posters in the thread and how horrible they are for daring to look at a woman.
Bullshit moderation, but no less than I expected considering recent events.
(1) I didn’t think Diosa said a damn thing wrong. I hope to see more of her around here,
but
(2) Anyone who has a low tolerance for inept, erratic and despotic moderation cannot find happiness at SDMB,
so OP might consider looking into a backup chat room to post at.
Can you provide a list of topics that it’s now appropriate to threadshit in? Or is it just ones that some-but-not-all-women freak out over?
Actually, the SDMB generally has awesome moderation. Which is why a mod saying that she’s decided to make sexism a guiding principle and protect women who’re threadshitting, well, that’s why that can raise some eyebrows.
I really don’t understand why people are so hot and bothered by Diosa’s perceived “threadshitting”.
She basically just expressed her annoyance at people getting so excited about a generic picture of a woman in a bikini.
If someone started a thread about “the funniest joke I heard today” and I viewed the joke as racist or sexist, if I jumped into the thread and ridiculed the joke I don’t think I’d be accused of sexism.
Edit: and no, I don’t think going all pant, pant, drool, drool at the sight of a woman in a bikini is as offensive as a racist or sexist joke, but I can see why women get bothered by it.
Speaking for myself, I’m much less concerned with the mild threadshit (really, not at all) than the mod’s approval of it and general statement that it should be allowed.
Well, now that you’re in the thread, Marley, what’s your take on the situation?
Should it be legal for women to threadshit as long as they’re doing so in a thread which is started by a man to talk about an attractive woman? Was Ellen right when she said: “As I see it, if men demand to be able to pant and drool [not bizarrely negative or sexist at all, amirite?] about something as mild as the sight of a woman in a bikini [What, like men are visual creatures or something? Can’t we shame them into not being so… male?], women ought to be able to voice their weariness about it.”
This was not a thread started by a woman about her troubles during swimsuit season where guys came in with “Tits or GTFO!” (Which was allegedly the problem that this whole shift was supposed to address, yes?) This was a thread started to talk about a woman in a bikini, who wasn’t a Doper. And Diosa chose to threadshit in it, and then Ellen sure seemed to imply that in her moderation, she’d be fine with threadshitting as long as it was a woman doing it, in a topic that she personally found objectionable. Like, evidently, men talking about an attractive woman.
Is this defensible from the administration’s point of view?
And if so, is this a policy aimed solely at women who want to fuck with men on the Dope, or will this be a rule applied evenly in all threads? Can Der toss similar comments in any religious thread in MPSIMS or IMHO, for example? There are, I’d wager, more people who are annoyed by strongly religious folks than who’re annoyed by the fact that heterosexual men (gasp!) like women. I mean, as a life-long secular humanist, I often find fourth wave Feminism to be amorphous to the point of incoherence, prone to pathologically romanticizing victim culture, hostile to non-White-Knight men in general and to women who don’t side with their agenda, prone to trying to solve the issues of inequality between genders by focusing on only one single gender, etc… I’d wager I’m not the only one who holds fourth wave Feminism in disdain. Can those folks who feel similar to the way I feel, and I of course, threadshit in those sorts of threads?
I assume not. Hell, I hope not. We have the Pit for a reason, and GD for strident debates, but threadshitting doesn’t seem the proper way to deal with something that, as Ellen puts it, one is “weary” with. That sure seems like Jerk behavior, no?
Or is it just that Ellen’s offended by (non-closeted?) male sexuality, and wants to encourage women to be Jerks to men on the Dope? Does it not strike you as improper that in a thread whose OP was about a woman in a bikini, Ellen didn’t choose to moderate someone threadshitting, but to support them because men talking about an attractive woman is evidently quite offensive to her? What part of that is good policy?
To be honest, it’s fairly minor, if Jerkish.
What’s really somewhat shocking is that Ellen pretty much just gave the green light to any woman on the Dope who wants to troll/annoy/pick-fights-outside-the-Pit-with men.
Imagine, instead, if someone was bored and annoyed by the zombie craze. And they decided to mock the people who like Walking Dead, in a thread dedicated to the show. Then a mod responded that since Zombie fans are such losers, then sure it’s okay for people to voice their annoyance with those damned zombie fans.
Diosa didn’t ridicule the billboard (the equivalent of ridiculing a joke). She ridiculed the posters in the thread.
Seriously, who the fuck cares if some women are bothered by it? (And let’s not kid ourselves, some women actively enjoy it). Why does someone’s thin skin and propensity to take offense merit them, well, anything at all? Why do we care? Why on Earth is that fact that a woman, or a dozen women, are offended by something enough to give a damn about their objections?
Offense isn’t currency, reason is. And there is no valid reason for someone to go into a thread that’s clearly, from the OP, about an attractive woman, and then try to shame men into keeping their sexuality closeted. Or, at least, only expressing their sexuality if it’s properly approved by women.
I do not agree that it is ever possible for a so-called threadshitter to make it impossible
for anyone to discuss anything. I have never had a problem at boards that don’t get all
anal over it to skim right past any uninteresting post, threadshitter or otherwise.