regarding moderation

Post Reply New Topic

It was better when Hyperlexian was around I miss her she was good at enforcing against sexism against women as well as men!She looked out for both men and women and yes she is a feminist! She would scold women for bashing men but also scold men for bashing women!

The rules for this forum were written YEARS ago, by (um) me, back when I was a moderator. They are still up as a stickie. Moderators have always and will always try to balance the different needs of those who come to this forum. Follow rules, and there should not be an issue. It really isn't that complicated.

Of course, if you all think they should be changed, that is another matter, but sometimes I think the stickie is so old that no one ever reads it.

TBH, we're still working things out ourselves regarding a moderation policy. And of course we need a response from Alex before we can actually do anything.

We do understand that sometimes people are trying to figure things out (however, if you're trying to figure out the entire opposite sex, you're doing it wrong. All men are unique. All women are unique. Try just figuring out whichever one you're interested in at the time.). We understand that people here are socially awkward and say things the wrong way sometimes. (Although "I'm autistic and thus frustrated with women" is not an excuse; the women here are autistic too and we get sick of some of the s**t that gets said.)
We understand that sometimes people say things in anger that they don't really mean.

Mr20 is making a good point about the obvious sexist things.

But the things said based on studies are sexist too? Like if I showed a study showing that "most women like taller men" or that "most sex offenders are men", is this sexist to do so?

Or if I say something a generalization based on social observation, like "most men ogle on big breasts" or "a lot of women gossip a lot", are these sexist things to say? I knew lot of both genders who would agree with both observations.

Maybe women who don't gossip or men who don't ogle would be bothered and feel unfairly associated with the majority's or lot's behavior but does that makes these observations wrong or sexist?

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 28 May 2014, 8:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

this is why I'm recruiting the help of a pro.

But to take your examples: a lot of social generalizations to do with gender are actually wrong, and come out of sexist (and harmful) stereotypes. The one closest to the top of my head is "women don't know how to negotiate", which comes from the starting-wage disparity between men and women in corporate jobs, where you might actually have some hope of negotiating for a higher salary. Routinely, men start at higher wages than women in the same jobs. This "women can't negotiate" notion spawned a whole industry of "we must teach these stupid women this business survival technique, because clearly they're too dumb to pick up on their own and lack business genes" workshops, and books, and magazine articles, &c. But in fact it was pretty much hooey based on old sexist ideas to do with women sucking at and not belonging in business.

There were three bits of research that took it apart, finally. One was that employers, both male and female, tend to be incredibly sexist in hiring. (These kinds of studies get done by using resumes or candidates with identical backgrounds, but different names/genders.) They'll not only choose a man over a woman, assuming him to be more capable and smarter, but offer him thousands more to start. If an employer's disinclined to spend as much on a man as on a woman, then negotiating's not going to help her make up that difference. On the contrary, it's likely to make her look pushy and like she's got an inflated sense of her own worth. (I just got to see this process up close, btw. It's pretty damn insulting when it happens to you.)

The second is that women are actually tireless, clever negotiators when it comes to negotiating for their teams -- and they're also more successful that way, because there are stereotypes still at work saying that a woman who demands something for herself is an unnatural, selfish b***h, but she's allowed to go to work (gratis) for someone else. And yep, I do that too. No problem going to my boss and getting raises and hours for my students, nor with finding them opportunities, introductions, etc.

And the third is that both women and girls negotiate all the time with each other; the style is merely different from boys'/men's. It's far more cooperative, generally, and there's much more emphasis on making sure that everyone gets a piece, everyone's included somehow.

So the problem isn't that women are stupid and helpless in business. The problems are that there's already a bias against women in pay, and that men (and women trained in men's negotiating style as default business style) expect women to negotiate the way they themselves learned to do on the playground, showing a lot of muscle and being over-the-top and playing chicken -- they don't recognize women's style as "negotiating", nor are they inclined to recognize negotiation on behalf of a team as benefiting oneself.

If you want to talk about gossip and women's chattiness...yep, this has been studied, too. Turns out guys are just as chatty if not more, also huge gossips. But that's not the cartoon that we've got out in the public eye.

Anyway -- so it pays to be careful with the generalizations, and be prepared to back them up with something more than "everyone knows" or "you see it all the time in the movies" or some such.

I wasn't saying those generalizations are necessarily true, they can be countered and refuted by a study, and studies can be refuted by other studies too during a conversation in the thread.

But my question was, would mods consider these sexists and should be deleted? In particular, if you are a mod, would you delete those? Or if Who Am I given full authority, would she delete them too?

Well, hold hosses, Boo, this is why I want to talk to people here and see what other forumites have to say. None of those are questions I'm prepared to answer yet, and when I do, it'll likely be in the form of propositions.

The problem with "x can be refuted" is that someone then has to spend the time and energy refuting it, and get smacked in the face with it in the first place. I mean a dozen or so people can show up here saying, "Autistics are two frustrations away from a shooting spree," or "in general, men with Aspergers smell bad and will try to cheat you," and other such things all the time, but I doubt you'd find it reasonable to have to (a) show up here and find fora full of such comments or (b) refute all the posts with studies, and do so each time someone made the same stupid bigoted generalization.

Not really relevant, but the salary thing you talked about reminded me of this somehow:

Yeah, I'm not surprised. But it's also not a great trial, because they're changing two variables at once, and that muddles things. Did they avoid Jennifer because she's a gay-rights activist (and maybe gay herself), or did they avoid her because they thought she was overqualified for the job?

And what did the cover letters and resumes look like?

An inspiring cover letter can make a HUGE difference.

Very good points. And, there is the aspect of over qualification. The position is for an administrative assistant, which is a very subordinate and task-oriented position. Based on my resume with an MS in computer science, lots of Fortune 500s, and project management/leadership experience, I'd probably get flushed.

Okay, so I talked to the director of the women's center here about helping us come up with a reasonable policy for moderating sexism (I imagine the same policy can be used as a template for moderating other -isms). She thought it sounded like a great project, and says she's in. A little about her background and what the center does (I have her permission to tell these stories):

She is sensitive to issues to do with life on the spectrum. For her, that awareness and training started in childhood; her brother has Down Syndrome, and at the time, where they grew up, the schools put Down's and autistic kids in the same classrooms; her brother had many autistic classmates. So she was exposed to autism quite early, at a time when that was unusual, and is sensitive to disability generally.

The women's center does counseling for those who can't afford a counselor or want a feminist orientation; the counselors are doctoral students in psychology, usually. The director helps train them in counseling autistic clients. She also helps the local rape crisis center with programming/counseling for autistic victims of sexual abuse.

As for men's programming, the women's center has run programs with a volunteer group of men for six years. They do anti-violence programs, bystander training, and programs for the fraternities, and have some considerable background in social pressures on men, particularly to do with gender policing (men pressuring men to "be male" in particular and narrow ways).

So, to get started then: she likes the idea of coming up with concrete examples of "sexist/not sexist and why, also why it matters", and she very much likes the idea of inviting questions about sexism and moderation of sexism from forumites to help generate a useful set of examples. So go for it -- ask away, think about (and/or post) your own thoughts about those questions, and we'll see what she's got to add to the process. I bet we can come up with something useful -- and, per SoftwareEngineer and others, educational -- by the end of the summer.

Actually, that sounds very interesting. I'm hoping the policies are expanded to be truly gender neutral and they don't discourage those, male and female, who come here with issues from laying those issues on the table for some helpful support. I'm also interested in seeing how how things go regarding interpertation of mild sarcasm, teasing, humor, and playful banter. If you wish, I'll be glad to be contacted by your instructor and lend whatever participation I can. Seriously speaking, you may want to see about turning this into an independent study project for credit. Who knows, this miserable subject may turn out to be fun and result in an A+ on your transcript.

I wouldn't.
I'd be inclined to moderate someone who said things like "studies show that women prefer taller men, therefore any women who says that she likes short guys is lying". I don't think you'd do that, but there have been guys here who've told women that they are either lying or don't know their own minds.

I guess I don't understand why it is so hard to say, "the women I've met seem to all prefer tall men" instead of "women prefer tall men." Traditionally, that is ALL a poster has had to do here to keep from upsetting anyone. COUCH the phrases, keep them unique to your personal experience, and use language that makes it clear you realize you could have misunderstood what was going on.

Is that really true? I know that you often see the figures thrown around about how women make less than men, but I have also read several studies/reports that say that when you account for education level, job role/industry, work experience, hours worked, and so on, women make basically the same as men do. I know that I have worked in 3 different companies, and my female friends/co-workers who started at the same time all were paid identically to me (the ones that I was close enough with to talk about that to at least). It could be because those jobs were in large companies though, and larger companies often have standards around pay and the prevention of discrimination.

Note: I'm asking this because this is an issue I'm curious about and feel quite strongly about. I REALLY don't want to get involved in the whole sexism/feminism/chauvanism debate that's been going on here lately.