Something I noticed whenever I don't put my gender down...

Post Reply New Topic

There's a weird saying I once heard - 'there are no girls on the internet'. I'm not sure what that means, except maybe it's assumed all posters are male and the women are just there to be eye candy.

Has anyone else heard that one? And have any different explanation?

Last edited by activebutodd on 14 Aug 2009, 8:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn't going to post anything relating to this site but.....I notice this too especially in forums where it's particularly dominated by male users....

Also, I'm not verifying that this proves anything...just my perspective but my posts seem to get ignored by guys.....

I'm not sure, but wouldn't you think a guy would want a female opinion if he were asking about females?

Then again most posters are probably not looking for input but feedback that either agrees with their "insight" or relates to their experience...if you count your gender of that relating to most experiences. I can understand that to a certain degree...

And lol....Pandd, normally I'll look at genders to be careful in the way I address someone when it involves relationships or whatnot, but I guess I never bothered. I thought you were a guy....

Whoops...made the same error...

I hadn't heard that, but maybe the implication is that "females" on the internet are really men.

Ha ha, yeah I think it does.

Lol, I've heard that too but I made the mistake by taking it literally.....>_<

There are enough guys who like to pretend they are female on various sites that it isn't a bad default. It happens on WP, although not nearly as frequently as other sites. Given that most of the pretenders are maybe 14, you can usually tell after a while.

Edit: I just ran acrosss this and it sums things up nicely...

, "On the internet, the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents."

In the semantics of the English language, there is no neutral gender. The is male and female. Take an object that should have a gender, but it's gender is unknown to you. What do you instinctively call it? Most people instinctively assume it is male, or refer to it neutrally with male pronouns. So I would assume that online this would only happen moreso. Take a person without a gender, and subconsciously, most people will assume it is male without good reason to assume otherwise. Just the remnants of a male dominant society lingering like a ghost in today's "prejudice free" world of equality.

I wish there were more options to pick here than male and female. I don't fit either.

I have not been on a discussion board as an obvious female; people either have to check my profile or ask (if I have the option of omitting it from my profile). Mostly being assumed male, I find that I attract very little attention. I have also not received much disrespect. This may be part of being assumed male or the sites I visit, for example, or it may be more related to my personality. I do not wish to experiment.

If I were to be obviously female, with a feminine avatar and username, I am sure it would draw far more attention; however, it is not the kind of attention I desire; I also risk being disrespected in the ways the OP mentioned. Some do not see women/girls as real people like they are; I've seen even the nicest of them admit it, saying how they used to put "girls" on a pedestal and be afraid to approach them, but saying they realised one day "girls" were just as human as they were.

By appearing male, I mostly avoid all the above, as well as being referred to as girl (though it still happens). When I see discussions on women and girls, whether started by males or females, there are so many general characteristics I cannot relate to, making me suspect I am a member of some third gender instead. It makes interaction that much more complicated for me (as if it weren't enough).

I find that saying very humorous, it's one of my favorites. Typically when guys say "lies there are no women on the internet" they're just being silly, it's juvenile. It's like saying "ew girls have cooties" when you're 20 years old. It's just joking.

I'll add a male perspective. if the topic is academic or technical and no gender is given I'll assume male until proven otherwise. Why, partly because guys talking about something is just guys talking about something. Suddenly if there's a woman involved things get a little more complicated. Things like if a certain topic gets brought up, and somehow something about that topic gets tied to something sexist a guy can get worried he might be supporting something sexist.

Random example, horses. From what I understand Arabians breed excellent horses, sadly it can be argued that they treat their horses better than they treat women. Of course a women might not make any connection and agree that yes Arabians breed great horses, or the topic of conversation might go of into a whole gender equity and rights argument. This is an odd example but can illustrate how suddenly guys start worrying how every little thing they say can get misconstrued.

There is also the issue of if a women brings up her gender, why is it being brought up. sometime it can be a simple pronoun correction, sometimes it's odd, and leads to second guessing previous statements, looking for something where gender might have been relevant.

Than there is that instinctive male need to try and impress members of the opposite gender (usually). Rather inconvenient, but deeply rooted and hard to catch let alone ignore.

That being said there are guys (a lot of them) that will dismiss pretty much anything said by women, or try to turn any conversation into a dating/flirting attempt to hook up.

Gender is just a big deal for most cultures. Misinterpreting or misrepresenting it is a big deal for many people.

Well I'm done intruding here, I just happen to find gender fascinating. And a topic of how people react to and judge another based on gender is just too interesting to ignore.

And people doing that creates a rift, and where there is a rift, there is the propagtion of things such as male privilage in the gender things, and closet racism with people of different races. Stop caring that the person next to you is different from you and the rift disappears. By treating people as different from yourself, you distance yourself from them. Not a way to build an inclusive society.

I want to try pretending that I'm a man sometime.

There are women who do it. In my experience, they pull it off better than those who pretend to be female.

I have never done it, but I never liked Halloween either. I have enough trouble being me, how can I reasonably be someone else?

Pretending to have a period doesn't go over too well. Trust me, born without a uterus, was once asked about how I dealt with periods so well at age 16, I couldn't think of a way to wiggle out of that, so I had to say "I haven't had one yet." This was after lying about having had them to fit in with the group. Needless to say, they wondered what else I lied about, and there wasa bit of a rift between us for a while.

So much so that people caught, or even suspected, of doing so are subject to savage beatings and even murder, with courts consistently handing down surprisingly light sentences to the perpetrators of the violence - if they are even prosecuted at all.

I haven't been discriminated against for being female, but I have been taken less seriously by some people because of my age.

But maybe the gender thing is mixed up in that, and they would respect a 14-year-old boy more than a 14-year-old girl...