What's in a name?
At one time I was commenting anonymously on several political blogs. I'm now commenting exclusively as myself, and I've noticed something interesting. My old pseudonym was an abbreviation of my middle name, and could be interpreted as either male or female. On reflection, I'm pretty sure that most other readers and commenters assumed I was male. And, while it could well be my imagination, I reckon people are more polite to me as a female entity than when I was assumed to be male, and are more polite to girls in the blogosphere generally - at least when they address them directly*.
All this is a propos of nothing in particular except that it was quite nice being a fake man. I felt as though what I had to say was the most important part of any comment or interaction I had online, and no quarter was given for the fact of my being female. It was like I'd sneaked into the secret boys' club where arguing is allowed. I loved it. It gave me a taste of a world where I was finally part of the male in-crowd. However temporarily.
* Whaleoil ran a post recently that was so misogynist in tone I couldn't bring myself to comment on it. And the comments that followed were worse. Improbably. They were all written with the assurance of men who expect only to be read by other men. For a link to the original post and comments, cut and paste this: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/?q=content/truffle-hunters-vote-labour. You've been warned.
All this is a propos of nothing in particular except that it was quite nice being a fake man. I felt as though what I had to say was the most important part of any comment or interaction I had online, and no quarter was given for the fact of my being female. It was like I'd sneaked into the secret boys' club where arguing is allowed. I loved it. It gave me a taste of a world where I was finally part of the male in-crowd. However temporarily.
* Whaleoil ran a post recently that was so misogynist in tone I couldn't bring myself to comment on it. And the comments that followed were worse. Improbably. They were all written with the assurance of men who expect only to be read by other men. For a link to the original post and comments, cut and paste this: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/?q=content/truffle-hunters-vote-labour. You've been warned.
Comments
I've definitely noticed too that people seem to be a lot less willing to listen to women and take them seriously. It's really sad too, as many of the most insightful things I read online are obviously from a female point of view.
You don't get the sexism in real life to anywhere near the same extent.
Anonymity now is a movement about being a troll, a monster, without repercussions. It enables people to explore their dark sides, to openly express their prejudices.
Summarised nicely in this image.
I'm suprised at the bitterness shown towards women by men on the Internet. You'd think most of us had been beaten with sticks as children by packs of women and were scared from the experience. Or at least within geek culture. I often read sad sad tales of men rejected, overlooked, and very spiteful for the fact.
Just before reading your blog I was reading this blog post which had been linked from a social news site. If you go through the comments you can see at what point the article became linked from the social news site and a number of angry men descend. To be honest the poor blogger probably wasn't intending that post to be linked so publicly. It's like witnessing "when the Internet attacks". Hello, the Internet has arrived at your blog and its pissed.
Anyway, I don't have a point. Just that the gender interactions I see online are quite brutal and misogynistic sometimes.
I post under pseudonym because I don't want to be Googled :)
I've been using lprent as a psuedonym since the days when I was restricted to 8 characters. Saved a lot of time because then I didn't get chatted up by every pimply faced juvie while discussing the intracies of c++ or windows API. Thats what would happen whenever I used my given name of Lynn.
lprent - I can only imagine the delight of geeks in online discussions upon discovering a girl who likes the same stuff they do. I feel for them (being a fan of geeks), but I have to say there is something uniquely annoying about trying to engage on a topic, only to have your efforts thwarted by an attention to your identity or attempts to change the topic of discussion to something more personal.
Oh I can imagine .. I've seen this over and over in geek forums. Sometimes it's just tongue in cheek "OMG there's a girl on the internet!" but often it's full on face in palms behaviour.
>it's amazing how women are expected to contribute to a particular man's sense of manliness - and when this doesn't happen, it's the fault of all women.
Hmm .. yes I think this feeling in geek culture has something to do with the Nice Guy (capital letters) persona .. which is way too off topic for this post I'm sorry :) but I have my own ponderings about this as someone who I think used to be one (I've reformed I hope to a nice guy - improper noun). My increasingly cynical perspective is that Nice Guys tend to use emotional closeness and friendship as a way of passively getting what they want from women. There's an expectation that they will receive. If they had muscles and tattoos, they'd be using those. A Nice Guy offers a woman they have a crush on friendship, closeness and a sympathetic ear and reveals their inner emotional sensitivity, because these are the best tools at his disposal, but the underlying motivations are the same as parading around without a t-shirt, it's just a lot less overt. Then they witness the girl falling for a nasty man with a motorcycle and decides she's a bitch. When this pattern has repeated over and over, he decides and all women are evil. Anyway, the general narrative amongst disaffected geeks who have become quite spiteful about women is something along these lines:
I started off as a nice guy, I offered equality and respect to these women, they turned around and went out with men who don't treat them anywhere near as nicely, I eventually realised women like to be treated badly, I've now started treating women badly and since I now get laid all the time I'm never going back to being a nice guy ever again.
Underlying that is a fairly sad admition of why they were wanting to treat women nicely in the first place anyway.
Apologies for a complete lack of relevancy :)
They sure did, at least up until I told them I was actually male.
My name happened as a combination of young parents with a naming problem, and a welsh rugby player on tour here called Lynn (at least that is what my parents tell me). One name fitted both genders.
You ever hear of that song by Johnny Cash - " A boy named Sue". Resonated with me. :)
In the absence of other cues, you do notice the difference. That is why I tend to use lprent or other genderless psuedonyms. I'm known to have some strong opinions and have been known to enjoy a good argu.. ummm discussion. But I found less discussion if I use my name, but I did get a lot more interest from the juvie's.
I've generally found that you can get a reaction when you cut to the jugular of someone else's argument. Especially if you slide in a veiled cutting remark that, if read by a person that is a bit wound up, implies that their value system is a bit flawed.
It is a technique well honed around my family by all genders. One of the main tricks, apart from observing the value systems, is to simply not care about 'winning' (because that is pointless). Regard it instead as simply exposing people to other ways of thinking. But to do it at an emotional level. Humans don't learn intellectually, they learn emotionally. You don't even bother arguing for what you believe.
There are some pretty effective practitioners on the standard. But you have to really look at them, because what they're saying isn't directed at you. You have to look at the attributes of whom they're targeting. Often to non-targets, it looks very reasonable and balanced. But to the target it looks like a red rag to a bull.
Like bull fighting, it is all about finesse. You shift the argument basis on the target continuously to keep them off balance and to slowly wind them up in knots. Think of it as playing with someone.
In the meantime you're having a reasonable discussion with other people on other topics. Because that is interesting. The stirring is just the fun bit.
Anyway, to get to the point of all this. You ever notice that most 'new' psuedonyms, when posting, get a long grace period? I'll give a guess why. The real trick is to enjoy the battle when someone decides to run a stir on you.
(evil grin)
But that is just to keep the flame wars from igniting.
Plus of course I've been around the nets for a long time. It gets boring after a while.
The argument I was thinking of when writing my last comment was with another newbie, and I’m assuming from the presentation of this person’s own blog that they’re a guy (tho who the hell knows). Maybe we were being careful newbies together. However the other party behaved differently to me than to other commenters - I thought I was being reasonably inflammatory in what I was saying and that he was deliberately being nice. Maybe I just missed the tone somehow, or was simply too subtle in my approach. Or maybe I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Fuck.
Maybe there’s a gendered component to how much joy one derives from taking someone down just for the hell of it, or in defending oneself from attack. This is admittedly a turn-around from the position I was taking in my last post about WoW - which is why the whole gendering of net-space continues to fascinate me. In your comment you mention “the non-technical blogs” as if they’re all the same. But blogs written and read by women (e.g mommy blogs) are a hellava lot more touchy-feely, in my admittedly limited experience, than the standard or any polly blog. And a lot less masculine. Discussion of mucus anyone?? Throwing that in a thread on a polly blog would be an interesting exercise.
I’ll reflect further on your representation of what happens on the standard when I’m there next. Is it comforting to note that lefty ravers are more skilled in the kinds of bullfighting you describe than the average frothing rightie or simply scarey to know that they too are a pack of vulpine psychos sniffing out the next target? One thing I do think though – when in the forest you have to run with the wolves. Maybe that’s why a lot of the net gets gendered – everyone wants to hang out with people who act and think in the same way that they do. And gender is quite a pervasive aspect of identity, although by no means the only determinant…..do you have a sister? And if so does she like to go online and flame the shit out of people?
http://www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/war/im_a_troll_folderol/index.html
She is a doctor of lit with a genius for WW1 poetry and has been funded to study online communities, and writes a lot about gender issues..all really interesting and covers similar ground. I have found her analysis of war poetry great for teaching. Cheers
Phil from Ohope Beach
I tend to view it as a form of self-improvement. Often I start reviewing the other persons response before I've finished writing my comment. It is always great when they manage to come out with something I haven't thought of.
To do that you have to be able to get inside their worldview. That is a very useful skill, if you can do it from as few cues as short written comments. When you have more cue, faces body posture, vocal tone, clothing, it becomes more powerful.
The other useful thing you learn fast on the written net is how to keep your temper under control.
I miss the pointless, loud, booze and politics-fueled arguments I used to have at uni. These are a good alternative..