AH & Perceived Sexism

pickarooney

Am I wrong or is all this kerfuffle over ONE post in the reporter thread? One post which was not reported? There seems to be a tremendous amount of indirect references to supposed misogyny with no evidence yet demands being made of the moderation team to take action.

Would it not be in everyone's best interest to make a solid case based on actual content so that if something needs to be done it can be instead of this tedious hashing and rehashing of what amounts to a lot of hot air?

Adam

if you don't like a post, report it.
if you feel the mods aren't doing a good enough job, even after you've been told they are taking the issue seriously, leave.

i don't see the point of this thread.

the problem i think stems from the fact that if a woman started a thread entitled "lick it asshole, it's good for you" about the benefits of cunnilingus for males, you would not get males thinking "that feels demeaning...:(". and when women see a similar thread aimed at them, they take personal offence like the comment was aimed at them personally.

if you don't think you're going to like what you read, then don't read it. but don't decide to read it and then complain that it shouldn't be allowed. why not? just incase you can't exercise a little self control and choose to NOT read it?

Catari Jaguar

metrovelvet wrote: »

Honestly, its probably better if women avoid it. They probably need a space to vent their misogyny. Maybe that is better than repressing it? It has to go somewhere right?

But there's BGRH, TD, Cuckoo's nest, humour and tGC.

Is this the best solution we're gonna get: if you don't like it, ignore it? If you're sexually harrassed in work, just ignore it? We've seen the response to sexual harassment cases through the eyes of the AH lads.

Women have tLL, where male posters are more than welcome and I've never seen any anti-male sentiment, degrading jokes trowards men or bullying based on sex in there.

Gummy Panda

Who is this majority liah speaks for? Cause so far I only see a minority of the female AH posters here backing her up

Also I laugh at anyone saying 2006 - 2007 wasn't full of retard jokes. It's was full of yore ma and polish eating our swans posts.

I don't understand what this thread wants. Is it pro-active moderating without having to report posts? Mods responding quicker to reported posts? Harsh bans?

stovelid

cherub rock wrote: »

Basically respecting women would get in the way of the fun in the boys club. It's clear that boys fun > than female posters not feeling offended/ degraded/ uncomfortable

With all respect, when I see stuff like this, I just skip quickly to the next post.

And I'm somebody that is sympathetic to what is being discussed here, as most of my posts on this site down the years will testify.

Nevyn

metrovelvet wrote: »

Honestly, its probably better if women avoid it. They probably need a space to vent their misogyny. Maybe that is better than repressing it? It has to go somewhere right?

On the sites biggest and busiest forum, which along is 10% off all traffic and has a huge ammount of page impressions?

cherub rock wrote: »

But there's BGRH, TD, Cuckoo's nest, humour and tGC.

That sort of stuff is not allowed in BGRH, or the Cuckoo's nest or tGC or even in humour, all the ism jokes are in a private forum.

Wibbs

Adam wrote: »

if you don't like a post, report it.

This. If this or anything else offends then report it. The more reports the more it will change the forum. Goes for any forum.

Handsome Bob

I can't say that I've ever seen any bigoted abuse directed at female posters in AH, not over their gender anyway, That being said I wouldn't be an AH regular, I probably only check out one or two threads a day in the place, so I'm to some examples.

metrovelvet

Thaedydal wrote: »

On the sites biggest and busiest forum, which along is 10% off all traffic and has a huge ammount of page impressions?




That sort of stuff is not allowed in BGRH, or the Cuckoo's nest or tGC or even in humour, all the ism jokes are in a private forum.

Maybe it's permissiveness is why the forum is so busy and popular. Misogyny is popular.

liah

pickarooney wrote: »

Am I wrong or is all this kerfuffle over ONE post in the reporter thread? One post which was not reported? There seems to be a tremendous amount of indirect references to supposed misogyny with no evidence yet demands being made of the moderation team to take action.

Would it not be in everyone's best interest to make a solid case based on actual content so that if something needs to be done it can be instead of this tedious hashing and rehashing of what amounts to a lot of hot air?

No, it's over a hell of a lot more than that. A variety of posts (hardly just one) triggered last night, and appears to be the straw that broke a lot of camel's backs.

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Who is this majority liah speaks for? Cause so far I only see a minority of the female AH posters here backing her up

Also I laugh at anyone saying 2006 - 2007 wasn't full of retard jokes. It's was full of yore ma and polish eating our swans posts.

I don't understand what this thread wants. Is it pro-active moderating without having to report posts? Mods responding quicker to reported posts? Harsh bans?

The majority of women I'm speaking about are the ones who posted expressing their opinions, the majority of those women have no problem with jokes and just want the personal gender abuse to stop.

Still REAL sick of all the guys cluttering up the thread complaining about jokes being taken away, considering I and so many other girls have said so many times that it's not about the jokes and we don't mind if they stay. It'd be nice if they were tuned down a little but understandably that's not particularly realistic. So I'm perfectly happy so long as personal attacks based on gender are nipped in the bud a lot quicker than they used to be.

It's like their entire argument is "OHNOEZ CENSORSHIP I WANT MY JOKES!" and we're arguing two completely different things.. no matter how many times we explain it's not about censoring jokes they just keep hammering on the one point constantly. I really don't get it.

LoLth

Mod Note:

A user comes to feedback with a legitimate concern about a thread on a forum and wants to discuss it. Can we please limit the discussion to the issues raised and those issues vaguely related to them?

This is a FEEDBACK forum. If you dont have feedback, DONT POST. its quite easy. I have deleted irrelevant posts / trolling posts . From now on, trolling feedback will result in a ban from feedback. If all you want to do is disrupt other posters' ability to give feedback then I dont see why your opinion should matter in the feedback forum in the future

Gummy Panda

liah wrote:

So I'm perfectly happy so long as personal attacks based on gender are nipped in the bud a lot quicker than they used to be.

So you want more pro-active modding or faster responses to reported posts?

If its pro-active the easiest solution is to keep reporting posts. Mods see that certain topics cause a flurry of reported posts and will issue warnings asap.

If its response time, then there is not much that can be done bar increase mod count for ah and hope they are on at different times.

Logical Fallacy

Report the posts.

No?

Too easy a solution to a complex problem? I don't think so.

Proactively reporting the posts that you feel move beyound the line of a joke and into a personal attack on someone is really the best route to take. It will give the Mods and Admin a much clearer line of where people feel the line is being crossed and will allow them to build a better case for exactly how the plan to deal with the issue.

liah

Gummy Panda wrote: »

So you want more pro-active modding or faster responses to reported posts?

If its pro-active the easiest solution is to keep reporting posts. Mods see that certain topics cause a flurry of reported posts and will issue warnings asap.

If its response time, then there is not much that can be done bar increase mod count for ah and hope they are on at different times.

More active modding, I suppose, or at least more awareness for sexism/trolling against women. A lot of the stuff gets overlooked, the amount of women who thanked the OP, while they may not agree completely, should indicate that this is a common enough problem and it's not just one or two girls who are being oversensitive. It appears to be a few of us who have noticed malice on more than one occasion.

I've already said I'm going to be more proactive about reporting, as have quite a few of the other girls; if you've been following quite a few of us stated we'd never bothered before because we just didn't see it doing anything because we all thought that's just how AH was-- a place to abuse women, or a boy's club where we wouldn't be heard.

LoLth

Liah,

If you report sexist/insulting/abusive posts the mods will deal with them. They cant read every post on the site so they rely on users to hit the report button more than anything else. of course, you also have to edit your own use of the report button and think "am I reporting this because its offensive or am I reporting this because I'm sick of the phrase being used or the poster was insulting in X or Y other thread"

The mods of AH do take these issues seriously so please give them a chance before accusing them of not caring. As for the cleaning up of the thread, even mods sleep some time! (though I have heard plans to slip Ridilin into their drink at the next boards beers to reduce downtime).

g'em

liah wrote: »

No, it's over a hell of a lot more than that. A variety of posts (hardly just one) triggered last night, and appears to be the straw that broke a lot of camel's backs.

The majority of women I'm speaking about are the ones who posted expressing their opinions, the majority of those women have no problem with jokes and just want the personal gender abuse to stop.

liah, bear in mind that the thread that (I think) sparked all this off - the Sexual Harassment thread - was only started yesterday. As you probably know things can move on-thread very fast in a short space of time and the Mods are only human beings (and do an incredibly good job in that forum tbh) who rely on the report function to catch posts that might slip past them. They read ALL reported posts (of which there was a hyoooge volume last night!) and so reading them all, deciding what to do and actioning it can create a time-lag. The thread has been locked and it is being looked into so I can absolutely assure you and anyone else with any concerns that it's being taken very seriously indeed. Personally I think that thread crossed a lot of lines. I don't think it's a good example of how sexist threads are treated by AH Mods in general though as it still needs to be looked at. Don't forget there are also a number of posts that are deleted and actioned that you don't necessarily know about too

metrovelvet wrote: »

OP-Sexism on boards will never be taken as seriously as racism or homophobia because it's not even recognised as sexism in the first place.

Taken seriously by Mods or by posters? If it's the former, it certainly is, but due to the nature of various fora there's admittedly varying levels of tolerance of what's posted. If it's the latter - well, it's up to the posters to educate each other.

cherub rock wrote: »

Is this the best solution we're gonna get: if you don't like it, ignore it? If you're sexually harrassed in work, just ignore it? We've seen the response to sexual harassment cases through the eyes of the AH lads.

I don't think you can reasonably extrapolate that the banter shown in AH is a valid representation of how people would necessarily react in real life to be fair, particularly not in AH.

_feedback_

I posted this in AH just before the thread there was closed. "Here" etc. refers to AH. EDIT: All links should work now


I spent more than an hour reading this thread, then coming towards the end there was a link to a whole new thread in feedback. I found that pretty frustrating tbh. There were a few jokey replies here and it was very strictly moderated.

There were some very valid points made here. Jokes are fine, but the “hatred” posts are not. Some are not even hatred, they are just digs or snide remarks at women in general, and as Mr Cowen would say, they are uncalled for. Hatred posts against the gheys, travellers and even celebrities are being jumped on and users warned. Here, as soon as this thread appeared, mods jumped on it saying unfunny jokes were a no go area.

Having said all that, AH is a community in itself. There is a direction that everything goes – it goes towards bad attempts at humour and generally having a go at one another in a messy way. Some users will step over the mark and start flying insults and hate. But, one persons insult is hilarious to the next person. How is the mod meant to know? It goes back to the reporting of posts. Most of the female posters admitted to not reporting. It would cut out a lot of it.

Liah went to a bit of work putting this post of quotes together. But most of those quotes are from the same guy. If all the people that found it offensive reported them, he would have been dealt with.



Quote:midlandsmissus
Thank you Rose!

Men don't realise, how alot of women feel about this forum "ripped to shreds" is accurate.





Why go on a thread about how badly women are treated in AH and then blame all men?! You’re being hypocritical. I do realise, I’m not stupid.

Some female posters even say that they don’t contribute here anymore. Why not? Because of a few idiots who will hurl abuse at you? If you were in your local pub, the one you’ve been going to for years, and some idiot came over and kept insulting you and/or women in general. Would you just say nothing and then never come back? I don’t think so, you’d probably stand up for yourself and then mention it to Jimmy behind the bar, and tell him to deal with the idiot.

Another poster said that some of the abusive posts were thanked by a lot of people. It goes back to the whole “one persons insult is hilarious to the next person”. I just thanked this post a few minutes ago – I agreed entirely with the first two lines of the post but not it all – we all thank posts for different reasons – heck, I’ll go crazy and say we’re all different people!

Last thing here: The main outcome of this has been, try to report posts to help the mods out. Then this post appears.

After hundreds and hundreds of posts – can I respectfully ask – did you report those posts?

Dudess

Jokes are fine, but the “hatred” posts are not. Some are not even hatred, they are just digs or snide remarks at women in general, and as Mr Cowen would say, they are uncalled for.

Perfectly put.

biko

The thread in AH has become an excuse for the boys to tell women jokes and generally trying to derail it. It's sad since it was trying for a good discussion.
We might clean it and reopen later.

metrovelvet

I don't really visit AH that often. But my impression has been that sexism and misogyny are permitted so it would never even occur to me to report a post because it seems just part of the AH culture. That's how saturated it is with it.

neuro-praxis

liah, I feel for you. This is a drum that many female users have been beating for a long time. I used to try, but I gave up, because when internet discussions cause you actual real-life headaches, it's simply not worth it anymore.

One of the problems women face on this board is actually other female users who are desperate for approval and acceptance (not to mention reassurances of their attractiveness) from the male posting community. This will always be a problem.

I am very grateful for some of the AH mod responses on this forum, and for the male posters who are willing to speak alongside those of us who have felt humiliated by the treatment of male boards users at times. Thank you.

I recall a particularly offensive thread in AH a few years ago that I reported. The issue was a discussion of a woman who AH posters felt and I quote needed a good hard c0ck up her ass. The report was ignored (probably all of the mods have changed at this stage). I raised a feedback thread about it and was roundly abused and insulted in it, including being directly called a b1tch by two female moderators who like to be considered one of the lads. DeVore kindly deleted the offending posts because they really were shocking but the sentiment amongst the posters remained.

The trouble is that we want people not to be misogynistic anymore. That just isn't going to happen.

My personal solution has been to stay away from AH. The Ladies Lounge is a genuine welcome refuge (although I am mostly a lurker everywhere except Cooking & Recipes pretty much ) where you know you can post anything and it will be met with respect, even if everyone disagrees with you.

Dravokivich

liah wrote: »

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.

I believe this is something already covered in the charter...

"Attack the post, not the poster"

Don't just call it out as sexism, it's someone being a prick and throwing out needless abuse.

Anything along the lines of what you've mentioned there should be reported as abuse.

Don't just sit there thinking this offends me because I'm a woman and because of sexism and all the other ism other their it should be dealt with more stringently.

People who post like that respond in such a manner regardless of who it's directed to.

I've been accused of being an Eastern European, Pro -Nazi, Anti-Jew, Racist before based purely on my User Name here...

Did I look at that as descrimination or pre-judice? No, I saw it as needless abuse that had no basis on any truth what so ever and reported it as abuse.

That's all this is...

Logical Fallacy

metrovelvet wrote: »

I don't really visit AH that often. But my impression has been that sexism and misogyny are permitted so it would never even occur to me to report a post because it seems just part of the AH culture. That's how saturated it is with it.

In all fairness, i have never seen it written anywhere on boards.ie that you "not report a post for x reasons". If you find a post to be contentious or disrespectful or insulting, you report it.

billymitchell

Having only read some of the original offending thread, I think a few people should take a deap breath and a few steps back.

Report the posts and let the mods deal with the BS that was spouted. No point letting posters wind you up when you know thats exactly what they set out to do. If the mods arent doing their jobs, there are procedures for dealing with that.

AH is full of trolls and wind up merchants, so personally, I ignore a lot of the sh*te that is spouted on there!!

metrovelvet

Are you kidding? Reporting sexists post on AH is like reporting political posts in Politics or Allah posts in Islam or Waxing posts in TTL. It would never stop.

The thing is misogyny is never ever going to go away. EVER. Its like wanting people to not be misogynistic. You can't. It's a losing battle.

Toto Wolfcastle

I don't think it's fair to say that those women who are not on the side of the people who think AH is sexist want to be 'one of the lads'. I strongly disagree with the OP and I have no desire to be one of the lads. If the sexist jokes are ok, and it's just the abuse that's the problem, then report it as abuse. It will be dealt with if needs be. Whether it's sexist or not is irrelevant. Abuse is abuse. (Even if it's true, which is often is.)

dr.bollocko

metrovelvet wrote: »

Are you kidding? Reporting sexists post on AH is like reporting political posts in Politics or Allah posts in Islam or Waxing posts in TTL. It would never stop.

The thing is misogyny is never ever going to go away. EVER. Its like wanting people to not be misogynistic. You can't. It's a losing battle.

I don't think that's fair tbh metro. Neither the implication that AH is a hotbed of sexual hatred or that things won't go away EVAR.
That's a defeatist attitude.
Now please. Lets keep the discussion open rather than just bashing AH in feedback again.

Banned Account

Look, I'm generally a fairly level headed poster and whilst I enjoy a joke and a laugh I usually put a bit of thought into posts when I feel I have a point to make.

If I am to be 100% honest and to the point - this topic is really beginning to depress me. The fact of the matter from where I see it is that a tounge in cheek thread was started (pretty obvious from the title) and attracted some toungue in cheek remarks.

Next thing, some posters started to take offence with the manner in which the thread was being handled. At one stage comments were being made as to how men were blah blah blah.

This is really píssing me off at this stage. Quite frankly, if you believe that there is a serious issue to be discussed then open a new thread and frame it according to how you'd like to see the debate unravel - if people post in a manner that's out of synch with the discussion then report the post and it will be dealt with by the Mods whom I think do an excellent job.

I, as an after hours user, would find it totally unacceptable that a poster can staem in to a light hearted thread and force the agenda to the detriment of others. If you don't like the thread, report it, give your reasons and back out. If you want to debate, then do so but don't throw toys out of the pram because others won't play ball.

AH belongs to all of us and none of us, I have no right to demand that it conforms to my sensibilities and I don't believe that others have the right to dod so either. The forum, to me is fantastic and for all it idiocy and bad parts I wouldn't change it for the world.

I hate the CT forum so, you know what, I just don't go there - sometimes the most simple solutions are the best.

billymitchell

metrovelvet wrote: »

Are you kidding? Reporting sexists post on AH is like reporting political posts in Politics or Allah posts in Islam or Waxing posts in TTL. It would never stop.

I dont think people are on about reporting all sexist posts, more about reporting attacks on specific people, in whatever form they may take!

pickarooney

liah wrote: »

No, it's over a hell of a lot more than that. A variety of posts (hardly just one) triggered last night, and appears to be the straw that broke a lot of camel's backs.

I've finally read through the other thread including the examples you quoted and Thaed's Guardian article and have come to the conclusion that those making the comments are completely oblivious that what they're saying can be considered sexist. The line about jokes being OK but sexist comments not is moot in this light as it is utterly impossible to draw that distinction.

I can understand that constantly hearing the same 'jokes' over and over is tiresome and that the more you hear a 'joke' the less funny it becomes and the more it seems like a genuine attack, although the person posting it will very rarely realise this unless he's deliberately winding you up or has a serious grievance best left to other media.

The root problem, I feel, is fatigue. The same 'jokes', memes, comments, threads come up again and again and again and again the longer you stick around. There's no real fix for this short of logging off but it's a curious aspect of the human psyche that of the 1000+ forums on this site alone, posters keep coming back to AH to read the same things over and over.

tl;dr make better threads, drown the muppets