women online: it's 2015; how broken is this still and what can a community do about it?

[cellio]

I asked a question over on the Community Building site on Stack Exchange and I suspect some of my readers might be interested or even have relevant knowledge: Detecting and preventing hostility to women? Excerpt:

I recently had a conversation with one of the users who stood by during [personal attacks directed at me], in which he said approximately: "Well what did you expect? That's how guys work -- if a woman pushes back against a guy all the other guys are going to rally to his side".

It's true that I was one of the only identifiable women -- perhaps the only identifiable woman (don't remember now) -- on the site at the time. In the 21st century and in an online community not prone to attract teenagers (the average age was probably over 30), it never occurred to me that this could be an issue. Some of the ad-hominem attacks I received take on whole new meanings in light of this.

How much does this still happen? (Any recent research?) And if I'm in a community where I don't think this is happening to people (but who knows, maybe I'm just blind), how do we keep it from happening?

Most of my online communities are well-behaved, polite, and AFAIK gender-, race-, and religion-blind. But not all communities are, obviously.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

NOT.

ALL.

GUYS.

[cellio]

I know. I was hoping I didn't have to further disclaim that. But I see that I didn't quote the "I know this isn't true everywhere" part that's in the question. Sorry 'bout that.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I only replied to you because I couldn't reply to the idiot.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

can't tell if joke or serious

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I am serious as Ebola.

If some guy is being an asshole and expects to have my support to fall back on, he will hopefully know better once he lands on the floor.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

cellio, I hope this doesn't upset you. You've done nothing wrong, I just spend too much time with well meaning but ultimately clueless men.

harvey_rrit

Okay let me clarify a bit. When a woman says "I had this problem" and your response is a critical opinion about what happened to the woman, you are actually, part of the problem.

You caused the OP (a woman) to apologize. You've caused a feeling of conflict. You don't notice because as a man, these feelings tend to not be as abhorrent to you as they are to women.

"Not all men" is used to distract from the real issue (and fish for validation, oh no, YOU aren't like that). The issue here is really the behavior of men, in the general. You included.

If you want to continue this further, my twitter handle is @zaralynda or post a message on the public page on my journal.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Oh Hell.

This is more complex than I thought.

I wasn't fishing for compliments. (When I do it's entertaining.) I was just indignant, and if I understand you right I engaged in a trigger.

I've got way too many triggers of my own to pretend this is the responsibility of the person subject to the trigger; in the past few weeks I've had to defriend three people for defending monsters.

I apologize to cellio for the trigger, and I apologize to you for creating the need to explain.

And thank you for the trigger-free explanation.

[siderea]

Thank you for being a staunch ally to women. Speaking personally, it always brightens my day a bit when I see men stand up for the rights of women.

I wanted to give you a heads up that the idiom "not all men" may not be the expression you want to use to describe your commitment to equal rights, because its original coinage and usage was to shut women up who were trying to report on systemic sexism. It was not a rebuttal to the address of other men who presumed on the sexism of fellow men, it was turned on women to try to invalidate or silence their reports of how widespread sexism (particularly, sex supremacist sexual violence) has been. As such, it has huge baggage.

It's kind of nice to see it used in a way which doesn't mean "Shut up, you stupid cunt". But when you posted just those words, and with such emphasis, well, I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only woman who heard you addressing the OP, "Shut up, you stupid cunt." Thank you for clarifying your meaning! But you might want to just avoid using the idiom in the future.

ETA: now with moar grammer

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I am a staunch ally to good people.

It's just that an awful lot of good people are women.

Your advice is wise. Should a similar situation arise, I shall make it clear who I am actually addressing, and that the person reporting is manifestly not the one giving offense to... well, in this case, any right-thinking person.

[dsrtao]

Most of my online communities are also well-behaved, polite, and gender/race/religion blind. This is because I don't join communities which clearly aren't.

About once a month someone (not the same someone each time) makes a genderist remark on a professional systems-administrator community that I frequent. They tend not to come back after that, because they are immediately met by "did you mean that women aren't as competent as men in this profession? because you're wrong." or similar appropriate responses.

[cellio]

This is because I don't join communities which clearly aren't.

Ditto. It's not always clear up front, or sometimes places change and by then you've invested in the place too and might want to fix it rather than just leaving. That was my situation. That one couldn't be fixed, but I hope others can. Sounds like your sys-admin community does a decent job of preventing that from taking hold.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the proportion of such places is lower than one might expect (unless you head for low places), but the reporting of such behaviors is much higher than one might expect.

But, I don't tend to sit around and watch people being gender-biased. I try to place a stop on it, if I can.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

I have OPINIONS on this, but most of it is anecdotal (like the current Wikipedia vs Gamergate stuff). I posted some research I'm aware of.

[cellio]

Thanks for that answer! I've got opinions based on anecdotes too, so I'm trying to get past my own assumptions and I figured somebody must be studying this.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I don't know research quantifying it, but it certainly continues to happen.

Just anecdotally, I think it tends more to happen in male-dominated spaces with a strong sense of community or membership-as-identity, and/or a topic/purpose that is male-identified. These are what let the men do this without having to be aware that they're doing it as a gendered aggression. Which often I do think they're unaware of, they're thinking of defending this identity from someone who doesn't get it, or asking for politeness from someone being unnecessarily shrill, or just making a joke. All of which are in reality strongly gender-colored and that hooks this behavior up to a driving force from our social gender patterns, but there's a way not to realize it. Which obviously helps people justify standing by silently, too, and it doesn't take much justification; speaking up is hard for people for a lot of reasons already.

There are site policies that help a lot (like that bad behavior doesn't spark long debates, just goes away), but I'm sure Stack Exchange knows about that.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

That is really decent of you.

As a man myself, I tend to think of that behavior in other men as the equivalent of the primate habit of throwing poo.

I would go so far as to say your analysis is generously charitable. It is also functionally better than mine, since it offers hope that at least some can reform.

Befriended on the spot.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I hope it doesn't sound too charitable. To be clear, I'm not letting anybody off the hook for what they do with whatever situation they find themselves given. And membership in a male-majority community is not a situation that would move a decent person to misogynistic abuse, either.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I got that.