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Woman-Friendly Barbelith - commentary and analysis

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:10 / 05.03.06

The problem with the other thread is the difference between singular and group action. If I want to respond to something there I can, because I'm posting on my own. If however I'm posting at the same time as Haus, Sleaze, Randy, Flyboy et al, we're dominating the thread, as here. I can see and agree with Sleaze and Haus's points of views (and would personally like to see 'male' taken out of the summary for this thread, this is not supposed to be a mirror-image of that thread) but thought this would be the best attempt that could be made to stop that thread from being male-dominated.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:52 / 05.03.06

Whereas I'm more of a mind to simply have posts from male-identified members in that thread moved for deletion - if everyone knows that a post will disappear, it's unlikely to derail or dominate.

What I'm questioning here is the idea that the male-id'd posters need to be able to comment on what is supposed to be a discussion being held between female-identified members without the onverwhelming volume of the expectation of masculine discourse, and that if a space is not created for them to do that, they will have no choice but to bowl into the female-friendly space and take it over. This may be anthropologically true, although I hope not, but it need not be true in terms of the technology of the board.

13:30 / 05.03.06

Well, I kind of understand the desire to respond within the thread itself. It's not about male/female, it's purely about numbers - that is, by limiting the people who can reply to comments made within that thread to a specific group, you're increasing the chance that comments that *should* be responded to - either because they demand expansion or deserve an answer - won't be. That's frustrating, and it's nothing to do with gender.

However, my main concern with this thread is that it's going to push the other one down the forum and out of sight, for much the same reason. And, sure enough, that's precisely what's happening.

I think that the only chance of avoiding these problems is if there's a longer deadline on that thread remaining f-id only, with it being opened up to all once that period of time has passed, and this one being locked for the duration.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:11 / 05.03.06

Well, if that were to be the case, I think it would say something of itself about the other thread, but before I posted this, the original WF thread was at the top of the forum and this thread several places below it.

16:23 / 05.03.06

I'd be much more interested in a thread on how to avoid making the kind of responses that make a space woman unfriendly. I know I needed to be educated in this sort of thing over the years, it's the ingrained stuff that's most difficult to shake.

And men don't need a space to respond to the 'women only' thread, I though the point was that the whole board is a male friendly space.

If we have to take any points raised and talk about them in the Feminism 101 thread.

18:15 / 05.03.06

Perhaps we need a third thread, one in which male-identified, female-identified, and indeed otherkin-identified posters can respond to points raised in either this or the original 'woman-friendly Barbelith' thread from a non-gender-identified perspective?

Tryphena Absent

18:30 / 05.03.06

Can I suggest that this thread might be worth something if it had been used for its intended purpose. Right now it's pushing a thread that it is meant to respond to further down Policy so can you please stop debating its worth here, either use pm or the Feminism 101 thread to discuss it and make a final decision as quickly as possible please.

In the meantime it might be an idea to use it as the abstract dictates.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:47 / 05.03.06

Yes, and shame on the people who insensitively posted to the Moderation Requests and Is Something Wrong With Barbelith threads as well!

Tryphena Absent

19:52 / 05.03.06

Should I not try to keep threads on topic? I can stop if we're not meant to do that anymore.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:49 / 05.03.06

Nina- I agree that this thread is only worthwhile if it actually does what it's supposed to (which it clearly isn't, and which, for quite a while the F101 thread hasn't been either)- but Lady's right, as far as "pushing down" the woman-friendly thing goes, if a godzillion people posted to this thread, all it could do was push other threads down ONE PLACE. And then they'd be back at the top as soon as someone posted to them. Unlike the vast majority of your points, this one I really don't get.

23:54 / 05.03.06

I've sort of been avoiding these threads, but this paragraph from Papers caught my eye:

It intrigues me to watch everyone defining their own streams of feminism (feminisms) in the two threads and when Nobody's Girl came into things I wondered if maybe there were more effective ways of splitting or differntiating the "brands" of feminism so that it doesn't feel like an overwhelming CONCEPT (using NG's example of being a woman at odds with the anti-child-bearing aspects of certain earlier branches of feminism)? I'm not even sure what I'm asking, but it can be ridiculously difficult to specify what exactly you mean by feminism and how you relate to it (from what I remember of the Paglia, for example, she said something about gay men hating women because we're afraid of the Vagina or hate it or something - something I can't quite match up with how I actually view women and how I feel as a feminist man).

Paglia revived the old 'vagina dentata' thing, didn't she? In any case, I agree that it'd be useful to attempt to focus in on particular issues. I'm unsure, for example, whether, as a gay man, my own instances of misogyny (and one reason I've avoided the discussion thus far is that it's making me uncomfortably aware of misogynist stuff I've posted in the past) stem from the same sociocultural root as heterosexual male misogyny, or whether some of it arises from the kind of ambivalent maternal transference that seems more common among gay men. It may be useful to distinguish subtypes of misogyny in the same way as citing 'brands' of feminism.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:15 / 06.03.06

Gay male misogyny (is that spelled right? Looks wrong to me) seems to spring mostly (in my mind) from groups of gay men who are too busy peacocking for each other's benefit to worry about women (my partner and I have tended to stop hanging out with many of our earlier friends because whenever we brought the girls 'round, they'd get ignore) or they're subconsciously viewing women more as competition (because they can't grasp that conversion might not be an option). Have you identified any other reasons for it that you can see?

We stopped hanging out with some of the boys because, well, we also like to have the girls around as well. It's embarassing to sit next to someone with your female friend on the other side of him and have him turn his ass up into her to talk to you like she wasn't there. And it was sometimes quite easy to get caught up into the "exclusive gay male" social scene and then it felt uncomfortable and gross afterward.

01:01 / 06.03.06

I'm not going anywhere near the post above me, but I am curious about this, from Ganesh:

I'm unsure, for example, whether, as a gay man, my own instances of misogyny (and one reason I've avoided the discussion thus far is that it's making me uncomfortably aware of misogynist stuff I've posted in the past) stem from the same sociocultural root as heterosexual male misogyny, or whether some of it arises from the kind of ambivalent maternal transference that seems more common among gay men.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "ambivalent maternal transference," number one, and number two -- are you sure this is a problem that even mostly affects gay men? It seems to me that issues with one's mother affecting one's relationships with other women (sexual or otherwise) is a syndrome pretty prevalent among a lot of us (the male us, I mean). That aside, though, what I'm really interested in is how you'd define the term -- it's the "ambivalent" part that I'm having a hard time getting in the context.

02:58 / 06.03.06

Can I just say how pleased I am that, no more than three or four days after the Feminism 101 topic came up, we now have a male poster calling himself, wait for it, Sensitive Rapist.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:48 / 06.03.06

Huh.

Ze's just a very specific Sensitive Criminal?

*

04:03 / 06.03.06

That sounds like banning, to me.

04:07 / 06.03.06

Ze may be a silly little child acting out, trying to be competitively humorous and turn a piping hot situation on its head. I've PM'd him that hir name change is inappropriate and that ze should start a thread in Convo about name changes that are about detournement and shock value. We'll see. But if we can save hir, we should try.

*

05:27 / 06.03.06

I'm upset about it for the same reason that I was careful not to use the actual word "rape" in the coercion thread. There are people of all genders who, due to past events in their lives, have an extremely powerful, uncontrollable negative reaction to seeing that word, among other triggering factors. While I believe that people who may be triggered in this way have a certain responsibility to protect themselves from being exposed to triggers they can't handle— I wouldn't recommend that someone in this situation go to a hardcore dungeon party, for instance— I also think that people have certain reasonable expectations of what they will and won't find in everyone's favorite message board. Someone taking on a name like that one is not what I would reasonably expect on barbelith, and if I were in the situation I've described, I would be very upset and probably leave. This is not about protecting the weak, here. It's about maintaining a high quality of posters by making sure the ones we have feel comfortable posting here, in favor of people who are going to be jackasses and haven't contributed anything to the boards.

There. That's my rant. Now, if this person can be given the option to change their name back immediately, I suggest that it be done.

*

05:29 / 06.03.06

Correction: In the coercion thread title and abstract. I think it's reasonable to assume that someone who would be triggered by seeing the word "rape" would avoid a thread about sexual coercion.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:38 / 06.03.06

I'm a little surprised there isn't some sort of guidelines on proper ficsuit names, but maybe I've missed something on the wiki.

Ban? Rehab?

07:24 / 06.03.06

I have told him that I will move for his posts to be deleted if he doesn't change his name right fucking now.

07:45 / 06.03.06

Will he be able to though? Is it possible for the mods to unlock the "28 days wait"-feature?

If not then I feel Sensitive ...... might do well to take a time out from the board until ve can alter it.

07:52 / 06.03.06

Bloody good point. I forgot about that.

I'll suggest he takes a hiatus.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:18 / 06.03.06

I'm a little surprised there isn't some sort of guidelines on proper ficsuit names

I don't think it ever occurred to anyone that somebody could be quite that dumb.

10:07 / 06.03.06

But he's not being dumb, he's being challenging or challenged or something.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:03 / 06.03.06

You say tomato...

(Not wishing that to sound snarky, btw. I'm in full agreement with everything you've said on the subject).

14:46 / 06.03.06

It's ludicrous, is what it is. I can understand wanting to be a bit incendiary, but just - actually, spectacularly lacking in empathy and insensitive.

23:45 / 06.03.06

Considering that gentleperson's number rolls back to the two-thousands, you'd think ze would know better.

23:47 / 06.03.06

I'm sorry. My "gentleperson" was supposed to be ironically polite, but it seems crass in context of a "Sensitve [blank]ist". Apologies.

02:25 / 07.03.06

Smells like an old friend, actually.

14:15 / 07.03.06

Smells like an old friend, actually.

Yeah, with nearly a thousand posts, he's not exactly a newbie. I know he posts a lot in the comics forum and made some of the more controversial posts in the Lost (US) thread, but some people change their names so often that I can't remember who he used to be.

miss wonderstarr

15:22 / 07.03.06

Sorry to ask something on a new topic, but related I hope to this thread.

The talk about how people responded to "Ganesha" and so on made me think for a moment about starting a "female" persona on Barbelith. Then I considered these issues:

-- would it be "female-identified", or does that mean something more? ie. can you be female-identified just by saying on a forum "I'm a woman" or by letting people believe you are female, or does it mean you identify as female in real life?

-- would it be unethical in any way for me to pretend to be female on Barbelith? Would I be misleading people if, for instance, people took my female-ID posts as evidence that new female members of Barbelith were becoming more openly assertive and confident since the Feminism and Women-Only threads? Would it be unethical of me to take on a female ID because I wanted to post on the Women-Only thread?

-- would it be a laudable experiment in gender roles and people's reactions to them, and in exploring different gendered experience, or different aspects of self, for me to take on this role for a while and then reveal it was I, kovacs? Or would that be trolling in a bad way, and bannable or open to condemnation? Would people feel justifiably hurt and deceived, or should they welcome the experience of having their perceptions about gender tested through my experiment?

15:39 / 07.03.06

Hmm, well, I just re-read that and inserted 'black' wherever you said 'female' to check out the feel of the persona idea. It didn't feel very comfortable at all.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:47 / 07.03.06

Well, it's a non-point, in a way, because you'd be breaking the board rules by having a spare suit, but other than that... hmmm. It's interesting. As you noted, the problem is that you can't but alter the experiment by being in it. Your classic example here is Sanford Lewin.

OTOH, they are called fiction suits - it's possible that one could experiment with an identity at odds with one's real-world gender identity without that being in itself an act in bad faith...

15:49 / 07.03.06

Yeah, it seems as if the previous cross-gender posting experiments were more inadvertent somehow - I think that yours could be interesting, but I think it could also, and more likely, go badly awry.

For the record, and though I doubt of it's much relevance, my Barbelith experience has been almost exactly the same as my grandson's was - nobody's treated me any differently.

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