Sexism, Misogyny and the rise and rise and rise of the internet asshole....

a reply to: undo

Are you talking about yourself? It sounds like it.

originally posted by: Domo1
a reply to: undo

Are you talking about yourself? It sounds like it.

nope, i'm a female. it's just a guy i know. he told me the whole sordid tale. it was heart wrenching. like the ride in the paddy wagon, in the middle of the summer, for some 2000 miles, with no air conditioning and so on. people were dying on the trip to their court date, before it was even proven if they had committed a crime or not.

this is me fussing about game making software (so you can hear i'm female)

a reply to: neformore

Great thread. As a petite woman, I have experienced all of what you describe on the net, and in person. It is definitely pushing the boundaries more and more. It used to be subtle enough you couldn't do anything about it. Sometimes it still is, while being totally insulting. Some of these guys are quite skilled at that. There isn't much you can do, but attempt to disengage and go the other way, as quickly as possible…..

Wish I had a better response or offer to deal with it, but I don't, and I've learned as a woman these days, that no one may help you, either, because "they don't want to get involved." It's just the way it is. Pretty sad, really.

obviously, the issue is real but the extreme response to combat it, is totally unacceptable. limiting people's free speech is not an option, as all it will do is limit yours till you can't even talk in public anymore. and THAT ain't gonna fly.

a reply to: undo
I definitely agree with that, It's why I said in my response that I don't know the answer to the problem, only that I know it is a problem. BTW, I love Randvious's explanation of a woman being a lady…"as the world burns around her," and this requiring chivalry of her. These are mostly lost principles, I think, these days, sadly…

That said, that's part of the answer, I know, is how you handle it, personally, if possible. Sometimes, it just isn't possible, and you just have to walk away, as I said. Or run…..

a reply to: neformore

some men are still just cavemen in their heads.....i have a new flatmate and last night we and a couple other boys were on the drink....my neighbor came up and offered me a singlet he didn't want,my flatmate got it and said he wanted it it,tried it on and it was too small,so we were having a laugh at him...i point blank said to him hand over the shirt fatty....at this point he was somewhat offended but his reaction was gold...he was like "me man...big strong" just like a caveman would he then starts talking about his prowess with women.....to the point where we were all laughing at him with his garbage stories...

i would post up some of what he said but that would violate the T&Cs....but what it came down to he was on about how he likes to use and abuse women and discard them when he is done.....at this point he calls prostitute to come over ..lol it cost him $350 for half an hour and he was so proud of himself....he was so proud of himself it was ridiculous....sad thing for this guy is he desperately wants to be in a relationship and yet has no clue how to be in one.....and he thinks of women as inferior to himself...pretty sad really ....

then don't give yourself an introduction.

if you start off every conversation on the internet with. Im a female from Blank. This includes showing a picture of a human being male or female alike.

People will say anything to *troll*. Men get called other names, Things you can call woman but don't happen as often but im not gunna break T and C to give you some examples but...

Basically its the kind of presentation you give that draws certain critisim. If you give a lot for people to nit pick at. They will do it. Reguardless of the format or the outlet of media.

And it all depends on the context of how much information is revealed.

On the internet, No one can really know if you are a male or female unless you give them the info nessisary to draw up conclusions.

Woman get really angry when you start generalizing sexual things about them, so that is an obvious target. I'm sure a minority believe what they are saying. Majority of them just like to piss people off and do so because its self fullfilling.

People do it in the real world as well. Perhaps not as vulgar as online, but they bend the rules with loopholes such as labeling insults with things that can be interprited as constructive critism. Talking aside, People do a lot of congrigating to sabatoge individuals, So its just how the western society is.

Of course in other parts of the world if you get caught saying certain things on or off the internet it can land you in Jail. I think China is one of those places.

Anyways point is, this is to narrow-minded of a topic.

People just need to stop being nasty in general, but to fix that problem. Would be to stop sexualization in media completely. Will these types of people go away? No because when people are left without a purpose they can do some pretty crazy things. Like wanting to rape people and not caring if they died because they feel their life is finished anyways. Lots of crime is fueled off this drive as well, Its a core psychological problem that effects all income brackets.

I just as much people that will insult others and argue every point just as much as woman dislike the sexist terms.
But everyone caught in these types of thoughts are living in a box anyways. So It's no issue for me unless i see it in person.
Unless the guy physically attacks a girl, i could care less what he says about his GF.

It's her problem who she spends who time with not mine. And i am not indangering my life for chilvary. If woman want to date assholes that's fine with me. Just as long as they don't try beating everyone up in close proximity i have no reason to bludgon them with a rock.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
If speech is to be stifled in any form, it should not be a law that does it. It should be society that does it.

Speech is not action. Rights cannot be trampled with speech (short of outright libel). Hurt feelings can abound. No argument there. But speech, by itself, is not capable of infringing on rights.

That said, I have no issue with someone taking a poke in the nose for their comments. While I believe in free speech (full, unbridled), I also believe in chivalry. And "fighting words".

There is a difference between expressing a differing opinion (even in a vitriolic way), and rape and death threats (Or doxxing with rape and death threats). This is the extreme manifestation but those things are often defended by the cry of "free speech" for the internet. That isn't just hurting feelings, that is intimidating people into shutting up and it is becoming more prevalent. Women are the more often targets of those extremes.

If someone tells me that I'm wrong... Ok.

If someone tells me that I'm wrong and I should gang raped, or murdered... Not ok.

I'm sure that you understand the difference. I'm also sure that you are not implying that rape and death threats are constitutionally protected rights. Unfortunately, many of these angry men (and most are men) take advantage of the reasonable nature and assumptions of most people as a blind. For them, free-speech-for-the-interwebz and don-t-go-online-if-you-are-so-sensitive is a convenient catch all for behavior and speech that IS that extreme, and frankly worse, but it would be a T&C violation to post some of the horrific, graphic detail of some of those direct quotes.

There aren't very many of these guys. They are outliers but they are NOISY outliers that flood various venues with fake accounts and spout their crap over and over and it is getting worse. It creates an overall social patina that perpetuates misogyny, and I believe that sometimes this has real world consequences even now. The long term effects will probably not become apparent for years yet. I agree that informal social sanctions would probably work best but the behavior won't be curbed if we try to shut down, shout down, minimize, or dismiss the people that are saying it is wrong.

a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

my mamma warned me about guys like that when i was but a lass. i realized i was gonna have to find me a nice man, and i did.

a reply to: redhorse

if someone harrasses me sexually because i'm female i laugh, but that's because i'm so old none of that stuff works anymore (ye olde procreative days are behind me thanks to menopause, and with it, went my interest in sex. just not interested in that anymore. now i'm more interested in the more permanent things).

a reply to: neformore

You mentioned Muslims, and I think there is an extreme example in Islamic cultures of how males see women.

It's like the more we advance in some areas such as communication and technology, we go back to the dark ages in others.

The unique thing about ATS is it is very difficult to determine the gender of many prolific posters here. I've had interactions and was certain the member was a guy, later to find it was a female. For me it didn't change my opinion, but I did wonder how I may have changed my responses if I had known the member was a female.

In a world where people turn a blind eye to the brutal oppression, abuse and discrimination of women and girls because it is politically correct to do so...

Maybe there is a lesson in that. Think about it.

a reply to: ausername

you would think forms of government like communism, which were at one time considered to a futuristic utopia type of governance, would embrace sexual equality, but in fact, they don't. as part of the platform requires them to view all humans as just animals with larger brains, women become cows in a herd of cattle, disposable for the good of the planet (notice the abortion/murder of millions, perhaps billions of female children down thru the centuries, even up to today, in places like china and india, not to mention sharia law issues. in china, modern day officials of the communist party, turned a blind eye while their traditional population aborted an entire generation of female babies. fewer heifers means fewer people later on. in effect, modernization carries with it the threat of the annihilation of women, everywhere, including in countries and forms of government that are traditional as well as modern.

a reply to: redhorse

while i understand what you are saying, I would rather run the risk of death threats done anonymously over the internet (with maybe a very rare instance of something more nefarious) than run the risk of stifling free speech.

Free speech requires one thing: that we, from time to time, hold our nose and walk past speech that we don't like. Fred Phelps, for example.

a reply to: neformore

Why aren't the nomal guys - the decent ones - the thinkers, the responsible ones, why aren't we reporting this in droves? Why aren't we acting like a society should do?

Because we are here on ATS .

Partly joking,

I hang around ATS not because the wide range of topics, nor the Subject Matter Experts, but because you can actually have a conversation with strangers around the world without getting into personal attacks for the most part. I have come across many forums where I have seen first hand what you are talking about and I stay away from them. Not because I get offended but because I get nothing from them on any level.

IMO The cause for the rise of Aholes on the net is because:

1. A lot of people don't like to be challenged once they make up their mind and they get defensive.

2. However, the majority is probably because Idiocracy principles. The Aholes and ignorant far outnumber and out conceive the smart ones. This is seen every election year when the masses outnumber the smart one and continue to vote for the same two party system that created the laws that caused the problems in the first place.

With that said I support Aholes and their rights to be Aholes when it comes to freedom of speech.

there was one guy on here that told me point blank that god doesn't care about women at all. and that white people were the devil. and that being female and white, made me totally useless and irreparably evil, with no future or eternity. i was quite distraught that there are people out there who actually believe stuff like that. being raised in a culture where we were presumably building a future of equality with value being returned to women as more than just walking wombs, had guarded me against that type of thinking. it was a shocker. more shocking than some guy gawking at my chest or making perverted comments.

a reply to: undo

well get this then....my girlfriend is moving in here next week...and when we told him when she was last visiting he turns round and says to her "great well then you can cook,keep the house clean and give me a $50 reduction a week in rent.....anyways you can imagine what my girl thinks of him after that.....i think something along the lines of "creep"

I've been online since the mid 90's and I agree completely with the OP. As a woman who also games online I've heard everything horrible you can imagine. My gamer-tag does not sound female and I can't tell you how many times I've thought I was playing with decent people, and thus decided to put on my mic, only to discover that they turn into awful people when they hear my voice and discover I'm female. Lewd sexual demands, derision, violent outbursts. Maybe 1 in 100 men I play with is a decent person. Even the ones who don't directly take part don't say anything against it, or might chuckle a little. This leads me to believe most men, or at least a lot of them feel this way about women. But usually keep it to themselves where its become unacceptable in mainstream society. But online, they can be their true selves because no one can stop them.

Am I reading some of these posts right?

Are some of you saying it's ok because it's "freedom of speech"?

Imagine you are out in a bar with your significant other, or daughter and some random guy walks up to her in the middle of your conversation because he's heard something she said and he disagrees with, tells her she's a slut and walks off, then comes back a few minutes later and calls her a whore, then comes back again and tells her he's going to track down where she lives and rape her because she's stupid and looks like the type that could do with a good rape to sort her out

Think about that. You'd be sitting there telling her it's just freedom of speech.

Except you wouldn't. You'd have taken his head off, or called the cops, or the venue security and had the guy removed, or all three.

And anyone who suggests they'd do otherwise is a liar.

So why sit at your computer and defend it as "freedom of speech"?

a reply to: neformore

threats of violence are different than calling a woman a bad name.