Okay, keeping ‘em coming fast and furious. This one is from Lauren at Feministe, since I just referenced her cat problem. Feminism Green Gabbro is “shocked! that people who call themselves liberals could be so eager to distance themselves from…

I have to confess, I’ve been accused of “trying to show how logical (she) is” in a writing assignment. At the time, I just thought the prof. in question was a chauvenistic ass, and was actually too shocked to respond, either on the spot or afterwards to the department. (This was a LONG time ago; these days, we’d have a little chat about sexism in the classroom, and if it ended up in front of a department chair or dean, so be it.) I’ve never considered writing style to be gendered; there are just clear, concise, and well-constructed arguments, and then there are those that are not. Ummm, educated and un-educated styles, perhaps. Formal and less formal. I’ve just never (mentally) assigned gender to the various styles.

I’ll be interested to hear what you have to say. Feel free to e-mail me directly if you feel this isn’t of enough interest or on topic enough to post here. Thanks!

The board was mostly political bitching and it was pretty spread on both sides. Diehard conservatives and liberals and whatnot. Because the community had been around for so long, it was rather like a family.

However, I came to the realization that a very large majority of the men on the board still believed in antiquated stereotypes and felt that bashing on the base of gender was completely okay as long as it was directed at women. Often a female opinion would be reduced to nothing because it came from the female brain or it would be assumed that the poster was hormonal in some sort of way. Which was odd because most of the women there do not follow the common “stereotypes” of women.

It had gotten to the point that the women were quick to point out that they weren’t like that woman. If anyone posted something that a stupid woman had done (which was not unusual as stupid things were posted about both genders all the time) there would be some women quick to point out that they weren’t stupid like that woman. Yet, none of the men felt the need to justify themselves if a post about a stupid man came up.

Which I found very telling to the nature the board had eventually developed. Whenever a woman was attacked and accused of being a “woman” more often than not the woman was left to defend herself because the other women were afraid of being accused of being a “woman” along with her. In fact, the other women were usually strangely silent if something like that happened.

When it finally happened to me I had to take a long hard look at the way the board had grown, or rather not grown. I’m not what many people would call a feminist if only because the definition of feminist for most people has grown to cover only woman issues and I am concerned with the issues of both genders equally. (Yes, I know this is the actual definition of feminism, but that seems to have disappeared in this day and age.) I have very few traits that generally fall under what common society thinks of as female (which is absurd anyway).

But when an issue I was having and the responses I had to help were reduced to me basically being a stupid woman and then being blasted by a large majority of the men on the community for being a stupid woman, I realized it was time. No other woman commented on the issue and no other woman spoke on the issue, except for the one woman that seems to need almost unhealthy acceptance of men as she takes every possible opportunity to state she’s not like “that” woman. Or any woman.

I left. Haven’t been back. Didn’t post any goodbyes or anything silly like that. Just left. It wasn’t a healthy environment. I’ve been on male dominated boards where there are two types of female posters. One that flirts all the time and everything is sex. And one who gets into the debates. I’ve been taken seriously as the latter. The former almost never does.

And I’ve been on boards where gender matters not at all. This was not one of them. It was time to go. I’ve got better things to do with my time.

Mr. Pete, you’re very right. color me embarassed.

let that be a lesson, kids. speed reading kills!

B2 – You’re right that flattening responses in to a binary relationship is potentially problematic. My thought in designing the study was that I was looking at the degree to which a given participant could be said to have been engaged by the other respondents. Since we’re in an online forum where nods and smiles or other non-verbal cues are impossible (aside from mods, and man, I didn’t wanna go there in a pilot study), and where the social cost of ignoring someone is nil (as opposed to ignoring them in a face to face discussion, where one tends to look rude to onlookers)… welll… response rate seemed like the best way to go. I stand by it, though you’re right to note the issue.

So for the comments that have not received response I am certain that many are written by women in a woman’s style. So the readers can unconsciously pass them by having identified the comments are “inferior.”

i get asked quite often which sex/gender i am during blog discussions… while i have never actually said that i’m a sex/gender i’m not i confess i have sometimes let some nasty folks run along with their idiotic assumptions just so the wall is that much harder when they smack into it.

and it is true that many times getting responded to simply means getting piled on or set merrily aflame – tho a blog would get pretty tedious if all the comments were “yeah, baby!” “ditto!” “what she said” “hip hip hooray!” etc…

I don’t know. It seems to me that you can look at this issue and see anything you want to see. How do we know that Kos readers don’t actually want to encourage female participants, and take it easier on them by not taking them to task for inaccuracies or statements that they disagree with? We don’t, really. Sure, if you go in hoping to find evidence of groups being deliberately excluded, you’re going to find it. How many Asian-Americans post on DailyKos? If I post there as “KoreanDemocrat” and don’t get responses, does that mean Kossacks hate Koreans? My gut feeling is that DailyKos probably is kind of a boy’s club, but I don’t see that feeling supported or disproven by the information I’ve seen so far.