Women and the Internets

[Ther]

(X-posted to AllRPG...sorry for linking there, but I'm more curious about your guys thoughts then theirs, of course)

Many of you will no doubt read what I posted in Liz's "Christmas Gift to You" thread (http://allrpg.com/forums/showpost.php?p=488054&postcount=20), and I would be lying if I said that Prince Mercury's initial post didn't touch a nerve in me, since I've always been sensitive to how women are treated or perceived on the Internets (for those of you wondering, “Internets” is the term our President uses and which I feel obligated to adopt). Since he refuses to engage with the points I made in that thread, and instead only accuses me of "trolling for years" (I challenge him to present evidence proving that, since there is none), my question to you is the following:

Do you think that women are often treated wrongly or unfairly on the Internets? I don’t think I’d be incorrect in stating that there exists a belief that the Internet is mostly populated by males, and that women are not as present as much as their male counterparts are. Do you believe that women are often treated poorly on the internet, or do you think that it's not as masculine and matriarchal as I might be accusing it of being? I’m mostly referring to the thought (even if it’s in jest) that women who actively participate on the internet are the types who might post naked pictures (or videos) of themselves. Is this the right attitude to have, or should it be excused as simply joking? Is such a belief harmless, or does it perpetuate a common stereotype that, frankly, shouldn't exist?

I’m curious as to what your guys’ responses are, and I look foward to hearing your thoughts, especially those that dont' involve personal attacks or "trolling."

[Mage Hunter]

I feel that women on the interent is a rather hard topic to debate. You have countless women who simply are on for the sake of their pornography. Since a large portion of the internet is devoted to that industry it taints the entirity of the internet. With that in mind its too easy to stereotype women in that regard. In the end I have to say that the internet portrayal of Women is often horrendous because of the porn junkies.

[Skie and Avery]

Men post nakies of themselves all the time too.

As for the rest, I don't think it's just on the internet. Anywhere you get a few women around many men, the men are going to take dominance. For example, take the trucking industry. Every time I key up on the CB to put out a bear alert or comment on something, I get at least two men coming on and asking if I want to spend the night in their truck, or they'll tell me to shut up and get back in the kitchen. The other day, I had to back the truck into a tough parking spot and when I went to go inside the truck stop, I was stopped and asked if I "backed that big thing in all by my little self."

It's unflattering, but I don't think that you have to be a complete bitch to win the fight over. I think that if women intelligently pick their fights, decide who and what they're comfortable joking around with and get some bawls to speak out against the ones that go over the line, things will change.

What the world needs is strong women who aren't afraid to be silent, but it seems like the only women hollering are the ditzy ones who make all the rest look bad.

[AdventWings]

*Whistles*

Wow... Touchy stuff... Someone's bound to step on other people's toes sooner or later.

Well, I'll start off then.

I agree that the thought that women (or ladies) that come on the Internet to post strip-tease images and whatnots are... well, frankly over-emphasized. It's like saying "Americans are easy" though I horridly beg the differ.

So, to respond to your question - In my opinion, it's all about the community said people are in. On a webboard like this one, there are people that, when faced with a crude remark, some just laugh hit off and whip back a witty response. Others... well, just aren't as forgiving or humorous.

There are numerous places where female users are mistreated, but there are also other places that they are as well regarded, or even much more respected, than male users. Stereotypes tend to collapse in a place where Identity is easily masked or completely ignored, but that's just me.

Therefore, I shall state that the statement is... Inconclusive on my part.

EDIT: Whoops! Me = Slow! That's for taking too long to type up a post. :D

[Reiko]

Well the Internet is a big place and really not all communities should be treated the same. There are a lot of raunchy sites and communities out there and women who want to have raunchy web cam videos out there have the right to do so, but there are also clean sites where that’s frowned upon.

While I can see why that it is a little worse on the Internet since the added anonymity allows closet misogynists to show there true colors with less threat of sexual harassment but it’s hard to control. The Internet mirrors the real world in that there are many types of people’s worldviews. In the end it’s really just to show that Feminists still have work to be done for equality.

[Empyrean]

About the popular belief that there are more men on the internet than women, I kind of doubt that. Now, I don't know the exact ratio of men to women on the internet, but I can tell you that there is probably NOT a greater number of men on the internet, and I'm not just saying that to be feminist-y.

I mean, there are several sites I'm on regularly that are, in fact, populated mostly by women (or so it seems, anyhow.) DeviantART, for one, seems to made up mostly of women, and I wouldn't be surprised if Livejournal and a few others sites were the same. You just have to look different places.

There were only a few times where I was treated unfairly on the internet, and I think the unfair treatment you're talking about comes mostly in the form of sexual harassment. You know, "Ooh, you're a girl? You should come over to my place...wanna meet somewhere? Wear something skimpy," or just things that imply something like oh, women are weaker.

And I'm not saying this happens all the time...but stuff along those lines can pop up anywhere, and not just on the internet. Almost every day at work, I have someone stop and comment on how there should be boys doing my job, which involves a lot of manual labor (even though I'm stronger than a lot of the guys. Even in my art classes where I was the only girl, I've had comments from my own teacher about how since I was a girl, I wasn't strong enough to open a can of turpentine by myself (except I was). And other times, where I've gotten weird looks because being a girl, someone wouldn't think I'd be playing a lot of video games (which I do).

This is where I agree wholeheartedly with Manda - that you have to be intelligent and strong when stuff like that crops up, and be sure you can draw the line between joking and seriousness and everything.

So yes, there is unfair treatment of women on the internet, but personally, I don't think it's quite as prevalent as you think. Though I could just have been lucky enough not to be on the receiving end of it. And no, I don't like the thought that a lot of women are only on the internet to post naked pictures and videos of themselves, though there are women (and men) who do, and they disgust me.

If I made no sense, I apologize. I tend to go off on a tangent.

[Sorahn]

I apologize for this, but I can't resist the urge to post it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/MRX_Rotary/women_internet.jpg

lol all joking aside, I think there are plenty of women on the internet. Especially on certain sites. Myspace is the first thing that comes to mind. My sister and all her friends and all my girl-friends are all totally OBSESSED with Myspace. I was also rather amazed at the number of girls who play FFXI (which has consumed my life).

Are they treated unfairly? I don't think so. But maybe I just haven't noticed. *shrug*

[Stevo]

http://rebelrockrunners.org/gallery/d/15940-2/gtfo.jpg

You made some very valid points against them and eplained it in a clear paragraph. I hate it when someone replies 2 word posts in lines of : "stfu troll" to things like that.

Ive played WoW for some time and I noticed a similar effect:

Once people find out your a woman youll get flooded with whispers of "Mother's basement dwellers" <awesome one, santhalas :)) asking you to make them your digital slaves.. or something.

That, or people expect you to show you boobs everytime you talk about posting a picture.

I tried making a female char once. Its clearly the easiest way to make money in WoW since alot of people will beg you to be in their parties. screw tradeskills, roll a female human/night elf priest.

It just shows how shallow people can be, especially when masked by "teh internets". I guess the only thing you can do is ridiculize them by putting their heads on dancing christmas elves, the person in question was clearly offended by that as he claimed he made that post as a reaction to that.

[Krugor]

I agree with above posters; there are quite a lot of women on the internet. It really depends on the community what kind of responses they get. It's the same for a lot of other 'groups', like role-players for example ;)
It's human nature to pick on the minority, especially on a thing as the internet since it's pretty anonymous. People will say or do things they won't do as fast in the real life, such as the rude remarks towards women. I think the lack of repercussions has something to do with it. Of course this doesn't make it right and it might surely offend women, but trying to stop it might be near impossible. Seriously, anonymity is the key here. I've seen sites that were created in honor of someone who recently passed away get spammed with racist and other hateful remarks. I've seen news sites get destroyed by idiotic people who think making insulting remarks of other people's misfortune and sorrow is funny. It's crazy. The internet is just a magnifying glass of the real world and as such shows that we still have quite a lot of work to do.

Well anyway, I just realized most things have already been said by above posters :( ...at least we're thinking on the same line here, that's good :p

[Letho]

An interesting fact: Recent research shows that there are currently more females playing MMORPGs then males. It's not directly related to the topic perhaps, but I found it worthy of a mention.

[galadra]

I didn't really have time to read what other people have posted, so if I overlap, apologies. :D

I think that this isn't so much as a debate about women on the internet so much as a debate about women and their perceived role in society--"Get in the kitchen and make me a sammich, woman!" also varies as "Get in the kitchen and me a baby, woman!"

I know that when I play World of Warcraft and I get on vent, I've (thus far) always been the only girl on it, and I always get special treatment because of it (not gonna lie there). Women (and girls) seem to be expected to like makeup, to like shoes and possibly be whores/b*tches (link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYnn51C3X_w), seen in both the mom and kelly), and to be generally shallow. Oh, and dumb. NO place for a woman in politics, you know. Our way or the highway. We control sex in the bedroom. We have short tempers. Etc etc.

I don't agree with any of that, btw. Except that I know that I get special treatment being a girl and all on a predominately-perceived male-only game. A lot of the guys I play with seem to know this, too, because they're usually playing female characters themselves.

I'd like to keep going on and on about this, but I need to leave .... about three minutes ago. (eek)

[Chiroptera]

The Internet is a place where people can maintain anonymity while playing the role of whoever they can't or won't be in real life. That boobalicious slut on MySpace could be a conservative nun in real life, and that smart-mouthed, badass hunk could be a shy wimp with good photo-editing software. The Internet, I believe, brings everybody to an equal level adn lets them be who they want to be, and if men or women choose to demean themselves by posting porn and adhering to stereotypyes, they deserve whatever derision they receive.

[Ithermoss]

Hell. I posted my butt on the internet, and you people didn't hoot and holler. I don't see what the big deal was.








BEWARE THE ASSQUATCH

Edit: Wait. Manda posted it. Whatever. The point is, my butt was there.

[None So Blind]

Edit: Wait. Manda posted it. Whatever. The point is, my butt was there.

I still have that pic in my photobucket account... Hell, for a while it was my desktop. You have an ass that loves the camera, my friend.

[Lucien]

Or his camera loves his ass.

[AdventWings]

Please don't remind me... *Stabs his eyes out with a pair of chopstick as sporks are hard to come by*

[Sheex]

Interestingly, the amount of women (and men) putting up nude pictures of themselves is surprisingly little. At least, according to this (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/16004858.htm) particular article anyway.

Myself, I'm of the opinion that the thoughts of men (and women) will always be based off of whatever community is speaking. For example, without a doubt there are many groups of men who simply do think that women are weaker than men in many aspects. However, if the table is turned, there are several super-feminist websites the claim men are the root of all evil as well as under-developed apes.

Personally, I think both groups are pretty stupid. But that's just my two cents.

[Djakara]

Do you mean women on the internet or women on forums/RPGs/what-have-you? I think you're dealing with completely different animals there. I feel that most people on forums, men or women, tend to act with lower inhibitions than they would in 'real life.' Partially, this is becuase the social costs of certain taboo behaviors are lowered, and also because if you do piss a whole bunch of people off, you can just leave the website.

In that regard, I think it wouldn't be surprising to find more women "act like sluts" on the internet than women who are sluts in real life. I've seen men do similar things, talk about how much beer they drink, weed they smoke, the parties they went to, the game they have IRL, as ways of trying to make them seem cooler.

If people didn't want to come on the internet to present themselves as a more likeable persona, how is it that we don't have a single ugly character on Althanas?