AH & Perceived Sexism

liah

A lot of arguments made here (once you get past the usual AH bs): http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056033100

I'm not going to rehash everything, but as a summary for those who aren't aware, there was a thread recently which spawned a few misogynistic attacks towards a few female AH posters, including myself. The remarks in question are quoted a few times in the above thread if you care to search them, you can also find them in my post history if that's easier.

Basically, a lot of girls are upset about the general attitude towards women that seems to be increasing in AH. The majority of the women's opinions is basically that light-hearted jesting is fine (e.g. "Get in the kitchen! ") but personal attacks on posters who have done absolutely nothing to trigger it (e.g. dismissing posts with what amounts to "you're an ugly manhating feminazi" while ignoring any valid points a female poster has made) are unacceptable.

A few of us feel that while racism, sexuality, religion, and politics are incredibly well moderated and kept as clean as possible, remarks against women tend to be greatly overlooked.

Personally, my desire is to simply make things equal for all groups. I believe snide, snarky remarks clearly intended to offend should not be made towards anyone, not only women, but because I am female and this issue has currently come up it's what the focus of this thread will be on, so hopefully it will not end up in a "well what about OUR group?"-- if you feel that way, start your own thread, but please do not turn this into a men vs. women or women vs. anything debate or "my group has it just as bad as/worse than yours" pissing contests.

Hopefully the other women will share their personal views, as I can't speak for everyone.

Edited to say, can anything be done about the juvenile references to the matter at hand in various threads cropping up around AH? It's incredibly demeaning that us trying to stand up for ourselves is met with mockery and a slew of new snide in-jokes. Really doesn't help encourage other women to express their views and kind of makes a point for the ones who were making references to feeling intimidated.

Winters

gb2kitchen.

Nevyn

Winters Post above reported, anyone else who think's it's out of line in this thread please report it also.

liah

Chrissake.

You know what? I give up. This obviously will never be taken seriously (this is Feedback, not AH ffs), I don't know why on earth I thought that it would.

Can you like, just not make a joke for once? Just once? When I'm trying to actually start a real discussion on something that concerns a large amount of boards users?

AnnyHallsal

Jokes about, or made at the expense of, women are treated far more leniently than other areas of prejudice. The thread liah flagged was an extreme example of this, and should have been caught by a Mod earlier. There are clearly a number of female boardsies who feel their voices aren't respected. I'm not advocating censorship of AH, but I think Mods could step in a bit more often when comments about female posters become overtly derogatory. The lack of patrolling or discipline has led us all to believe that sexism of various shades of seriousness is acceptable. This should be clarified.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

AnnyHallsal wrote: »

Jokes about, or made at the expense of, women are treated far more leniently than other areas of prejudice. The thread liah flagged was an extreme example of this, and should have been caught by a Mod earlier. There are clearly a number of female boardsies who feel their voices aren't respected. I'm not advocating censorship of AH, but I think Mods could step in a bit more often when comments about female posters become overtly derogatory. The lack of patrolling or discipline has led us all to believe that sexism of various shades of seriousness is acceptable. This should be clarified.

umm.. you are advocating censorship of AH. That is exactly what you are advocating. There's not even any wriggle room about it.

Nevyn

liah wrote: »

Chrissake.

You know what? I give up. This obviously will never be taken seriously (this is Feedback, not AH ffs), I don't know why on earth I thought that it would.

Can you like, just not make a joke for once? Just once? When I'm trying to actually start a real discussion on something that concerns a large amount of boards users?

Liah those two are ex mods and trolls by any other name.
Don't let them get to you, and don't let them goad you into getting into a tit for tat with them.

Ectoplasm

I'd like to second what Liah has said. Much of AH is lighthearted banter and that's what makes it fun but the concept of 'attack the post, not the poster' doesn't always appear to apply if the original poster is female. It'd be great if this wasn't allowed to slide.

Tallon

liah to answer your question, personal attacks are NEVER acceptable.

The kitchen thing is funny (from a fellas POW) but if you, or any other FM poster feels like this, report the crap out of it

To illiterate:
'Liah, get in the kitchen' IS abuse
'woman, get in the kitchen' is an attempt at humour, and should be seen as nothing more

Winters

Thaedydal wrote: »

Liah those two are ex mods and trolls by any other name.
Don't let them get to you, and don't let them goad you into getting into a tit for tat with them.

I actually legally changed my middle name to "Troll".

AH is AH, a hey mix of random spouted idiocy with added idiocy. Why not have a similar thread on a more respectable forum where more logical and higher class posting is carried out in?

liah

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

umm.. you are advocating censorship of AH. That is exactly what you are advocating. There's not even any wriggle room about it.

And you're speaking without actually having a clue about anything the thread is about. You're what we're sick of.

Herbal Deity

Can I restate what I said in the other thread, as I feel it was lost in the crossfire?

If a sanitized general discussion forum is desired, why isn't one created? Attempts to change AH will not work.

Nevyn

Tallon wrote: »

liah to answer your question, personal attacks are NEVER acceptable.

The kitchen thing is funny (from a fellas POW) but if you, or any other FM poster feels like this, report the crap out of it

To illiterate:
'Liah, get in the kitchen' IS abuse
'woman, get in the kitchen' is an attempt at humour, and should be seen as nothing more

Funny how if you mirror that with the line "men are bastards" it get up male posters noses in ah, same with the "men are rapists".

AnnyHallsal

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

umm.. you are advocating censorship of AH. That is exactly what you are advocating. There's not even any wriggle room about it.

I don't need you to tell me what I am or am not advocating. I'm advocating fair modding, not censorship.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

liah wrote: »

And you're speaking without actually having a clue about anything the thread is about. You're what we're sick of.

I have been following this controversy for a full four minutes.

Nevyn

Herbal Deity wrote: »

Can I restate what I said in the other thread, as I feel it was lost in the crossfire?

If a sanitized general discussion forum is desired, why isn't one created? Attempts to change AH will not work.

Because the admins have said no time and time again.

Super-Rush

Liah if there is a thread about this in After Hours already, why did you feel the need to come here to talk about the exact same subject?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

AnnyHallsal wrote: »

I don't need you to tell me what I am or am not advocating. I'm advocating fair modding, not censorship.

so you want the mods to clamp down on speech you find unacceptable, but you don't want censorship?

stovelid

Light-hearted jokes about women, even 'sexist' ones should stay. Along with other topics. I'd hate to see another whittling away of previously-allowed funnehs.

Clearly some of the posts in the Sexual Harassment thread were nasty - the 'feminazi' ones already alluded to were the pits: even more so for me because they were aimed at a female poster that I respect a lot. That said: to me they breached more general boundaries anyway: personal attacks and trolling, for example

AnnyHallsal

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

so you want the mods to clamp down on speech you find unacceptable, but you don't want censorship?

It depends how you define clamp down.

dregin

AnnyHallsal wrote: »

It depends how you define clamp down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4t4iCe-bK0

Ickle Magoo

I remember posting in AH about something reasonably serious and the well thanked response was they were going to stick a finger in me.

The sheer volume of posts and one-liners would never be trotted out to the same extent advocating discrimination against race or physically harming another race or whatever because it would be accompanied by a ton of bricks waving a ban-stick, that's the annoying thing.

liah

Okay, I've bolded and put in red the exact type of sexism we're upset with.

How can you possibly argue that that sort of sexism is okay?

And stop with the "don't take away AH's jokes!" We're not! We still make jokes about gays, men, women, poles, brits, etc. etc. without being offensive. The problem is, when offensive comments are made TO gays, men, poles, brits, etc. etc. the issue is usually resolved within a matter of minutes. When it's in reference to women, it's seen as completely fine.

I don't understand why this is so unbelievably unreasonable to some of you and I think it's kind of frightening how hard some men are fighting for their "right" to be offensive towards women.

Last time:
JOKES = FINE
OFFENSIVE MISOGYNISTIC ATTACKS = NOT FINE

Not sure how many more times I'm going to have to say it..

Tallon

I don't think this thread is about 'woman' but more about the abuse that certain woman posters are subject to, and in turn, pawned off as general feminist slagging

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

no, it really doesn't

there is quite a bit of censorship on AH. racism, travellerism, romaism. if you want censorship, just come out and admit it. we can at least have a discussion about that, but so long as you're outright refusing to be straight with us I don't see how this can proceed much further.

I feel given the current scandals I should point out I didn't intend to be homophobic when i asked that you 'be straight' with us.

--edit

damnit all, stop posting until i've had a chance to reply to the post I wanted to reply to

liah

super-rush wrote: »

Liah if there is a thread about this in After Hours already, why did you feel the need to come here to talk about the exact same subject?

Because it was suggested by multiple people within the thread to start one in feedback. So I did. Is there a problem? I just felt the matter might be taken more seriously over here, although apparently I was wrong. Move it wherever you wish I guess.

TheZohanS

Thaedydal wrote: »

Funny how if you mirror that with the line "men are bastards" it get up male posters noses in ah, same with the "men are rapists".

Ahem.... you're wrong, and I bet there wasn't one reported post, nobody on thread complained.

Micky Dolenz

liah wrote: »

Because it was suggested by multiple people within the thread to start one in feedback. So I did. Is there a problem? I just felt the matter might be taken more seriously over here, although apparently I was wrong. Move it wherever you wish I guess.

The AH Mod team are taking this very seriously.

dregin

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

I remember posting in AH about something reasonably serious and the well thanked response was they were going to stick a finger in me.

The sheer volume of posts and one-liners would never be trotted out to the same extent advocating discrimination against race or physically harming another race or whatever because it would be accompanied by a ton of bricks waving a ban-stick, that's the annoying thing.

Just so you know. I think I may have thanked this post for COMPLETELY different reasons to the other thankers.

Sound.

AnnyHallsal

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

no, it really doesn't

there is quite a bit of censorship on AH. racism, travellerism, romaism. if you want censorship, just come out and admit it. we can at least have a discussion about that, but so long as you're outright refusing to be straight with us I don't see how this can proceed much further.

I feel given the current scandals I should point out I didn't intend to be homophobic when i asked that you 'be straight' with us.

--edit

damnit all, stop posting until i've had a chance to reply to the post I wanted to reply to

I would admit it if I did, but I don't. This I interpret to be trolling, ie intentionally derailing the thread.

Super-Rush

liah wrote: »

Because it was suggested by multiple people within the thread to start one in feedback. So I did. Is there a problem? I just felt the matter might be taken more seriously over here, although apparently I was wrong. Move it wherever you wish I guess.

Thats a bit unfair don't you think. I've read back through the thread and you have been listened to and Mickey D has been cleaning up the thread as quickly as he can.