regarding moderation

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But that requires making a judgment call. What you consider sexist or a need to step in, somebody else might interpret differently. I'm talking about specifics (specific posts and how to deal with them). If someone came in and posted something that was obviously hate-filled and negative, no question the moderator should step in. If someone posts something and it offends a bunch of people (as evidenced by many people replying with angry posts rebutting what the person said), the moderator should definitely step in. But there are a lot of messages that I have seen where the guy is obviously misguided but it would be better for him to be redirected by his peers instead of having the moderator step in. That is all that I am saying. It is a judgment call in each situation. I am not against saying something to someone who makes sexist comments. My question is about when the moderators should step in and when regular WP users should step in. I think regular WP members (male and female) have a responsibility to make this a safe and supportive environment, not just the moderators. This is a huge site, and Alex and the moderators can't control everything that everyone posts on this site.

The thing in quotations--"Do not show up here and be chronic with sexist remarks or you'll be banned"--sounds perfect to me. I understand exactly what that means. Having a pattern of negative speech means you will not be allowed to participate in this community anymore.

Last edited by em_tsuj on 29 May 2014, 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this issue. I don't think that a person who is offended by such statements should tolerate those statements. I am not sure if a moderator should step in at that point. I think the person who was offended should say something to the person who posted the offending post. If no one steps in to challenge the sexist things in Example B, I think a moderator should at least step in and say something. It shouldn't go unchallenged by anyone. I see it as more of a judgment call (with your specific example).

Anyone looking for love should forget studies. People are not statistics, they are unique individuals.

I realize things change with different moderation teams, but I don't actually think it is helpful for rules and moderation to prevent EVERY misstep before it happens. The hope is that members can actually learn something by seeing the reactions of other members, as long as the original offense was not too extreme. Granted, I haven't seen much change in the worst offenders after all these years, but sometimes a light goes off for someone, and that is the sort of thing a support forum is FOR.

Have you considered the possibility what you saw was a typical autistic meltdown under pressure, as opposed to the real characteristics of the individual being exposed?

I like this, but to put it into some perspective...which I think is important, not to say that moderation is not needed, but that perspective should be taken into account for the males that make such comments.

For many aspies having no social skills means you virtually out of the courting game indefinitely...hell, I can't even get friend-zoned. Want to know how many female friends I've had in the last 10 years? 20 years? Zero. And being a male I'm supposed to be the aggressor, meaning I have to weather A LOT of rejections to even find one women remotely interested in me. That stuff just DEVASTATES a humans ego.

At some point you begin to collect and compile all the rejections in your head and run them one by one, keeping you up and restless at night. Then recalling each one and their mode of rejecting you, one by one... Hell it probably qualifies as PTSD at this point.

That stuff piles on and keeps piling on until you begin to question why you're even here. I used to believe that at some point I would just grow "thick skin", which was a lie, it never came. I can't approach women readily anymore because it's just stockpiling volatile munitions in my head at this point.

I've said it before but if my life is any indication for what some of the male aspies have to go through, then there isn't a well deep enough to fill their tears, that crap is just brutal. I even think it's probably one of the worst places you can end up in life, i'd rather be in some sh***y third-world slum with a faithful companion than to fester in this 1st world hell of loneliness.

It's easy for me to see how you sometimes get comments that are misogynist, but the pain that people feel from those comments really pales in comparison to the hell that the commentator has already and is continuing to experience. I mean if my life is any indication... then you can bet that A LOT of tears have been shed before that comment was ever made, and I'm not talking about quiet tears, but full-blown weeping. Moderation is important but I don't think any aspie forum can expect all the males to be silent about their suffering, especially those on the more unfortunate ends... it's their suffering that leads to frustrated outbursts.

the ToS state otherwise, however. why should sexist comments like in my example b) be tolerated by moderators more than an equivalent racist or homophobic statement? why is it publicly acceptable on this forum to slag off all women, but not other marginalised groups? how is that fair?

There are pretty narrow studies in which the applicants have identical backgrounds, are male/female, and the guy's offered the job more often, also offered more money. (Which makes me wonder: are the offers to the women from places with a collection of attitudes that make them both woman-friendier and poorer? Or are they from low-self-esteem places that assume they'll have to settle for the woman because the guy will never take their offer?)

In general, though, those "accounting for factors" studies tend to leave out a lot of sexism that forces those issues. Say a married couple has a baby. The woman takes three months off, during which she'll still kinda sorta be working from home; the guy gets a promotion and a raise because his boss assumes he'll now be willing to dig in and work more, also more reluctant to quit, what with the new responsibilities at home. (This really happens.) When the woman goes back to work, people are happy to see her but kind of annoyed that she's not johnny-on-the-spot with her work right away, and tolerate this, also expect less of her because she's exhausted, and assume she won't be available for things that happen outside normal work hours. In other words, she's already being mommy-tracked, even though she's quite as capable as she was before, and presumably there's this husband fellow who can also take care of a baby.

Very quickly it becomes apparent that if someone's work has to suffer because the baby's sick, or there's no daycare today, or someone has to take the car in, it should be the wife's, because she makes less money. And in fact she does do more of the childcare and housework. Not because she wanted to, but because every social and financial pressure pushes that way. In sum she actually does much more work than the guy does -- she's got her job, still professional, and she manages the family. But her rate of advancement's now much slower. Another problem: if she pushes back at home, tells the guy, "nuh uh, your career's not more important than mine even if you do make more money, you'll just have to miss that meeting today and sit home with Ethan because it's your turn," she's running a real risk of winding up a single mom, defending herself against charges of being career-obsessed.

Fast-forward 20 years. Kid's in college. Dad's high up the ladder. Mom's a smart cookie who's made "trade-offs" and is likely doing work far above her pay grade just because she can -- in fact, Mom also helps Dad with his work. On paper, though, Dad looks like he's worth $40K more as an employee. Why? Because Mom hasn't had as many promotions and her salary's much lower. Could she step into a job at a much higher rank, though? Probably. If anyone would let her. But, you know. That wouldn't be fair. That'd be letting her jump the queue.

Look no further than Mrs. Clinton, who left her law practice to help in her husband's politics business and raise her child. Lady was voluntarily unemployed for over a decade, and caught a lot of flak when she tried to make real work for herself in his administration. But she seemed to have no trouble hitting the ground running as a US senator.

As a single mom, I built a freelance career that had me working more or less around the clock, but free to pick up my daughter when school let out, be here when she was sick, etc. I served on community boards and had responsibility for helping to decide who'd receive about a million a year in social services grants for family services. I also stopped damaging state legislation from home, in my bathrobe, thanks to nice research skills and the ability to communicate well with legislators. Within about five years of starting freelance work, I was working at the top of my field -- still as a freelancer, no benefits, no stability. When my daughter got old enough, I took a part-time university job where I help materially in bringing in millions of research dollars, teach, and recruit/train/manage employees.

At that job, I make less than a graduate student does. Obviously my skills and the actual work I do are worth multiples of that. As a single freelancing mom with no family to fall back on, though, one does not accumulate the resume lines that say "candidate for high-level job". Oh, I do get offers of high-level jobs -- I had an offer just recently to develop a whole new writing program. For which they were prepared to pay me less than $10K/yr, because after all it's not like I'm an important, highly-paid person. The opportunity was presented to me the same way you'd present it to a recent grad you want to exploit, someone young and disposable who'll work like a dog for no money. I said no, I don't need the resume-builder that bad, thanks. They have no other candidate with my combination of education, skills, and industry connections, so they've just stopped looking for now. I have no doubt that in two or three years they'll get serious and try again -- and hire someone comparably, or almost-comparably, qualified at several times what they offered me.

So you have to be very careful about these "well, she's been out of the workforce, she doesn't have the job rank, she's been working in areas where the salaries are low, she hasn't put in the hours" rationales. The presumption there is that the woman's off doing some form of non-work in all those hours (motherhood gets almost zero respect despite the fact that it's serious work) -- you know, screwing around while the guys are working. So naturally, you know, she just hasn't paid her dues, and that explains the salary differential.

What's the diff? If the remark itself is offensive, moderate the remark. Let the guy collect himself and come back, apologize if he likes, and go on. If it's something he's doing all the time, then the mods have to decide how often they want to go around cleaning up after him. I don't see the point of the special pleading here.

This (bold) is what a well-thought-out policy is for, and that's what we're working on. Questions, thoughts, hypotheticals, keep throwing them in.

I didn't say that it was.

But you are very unrealistic if you think that guys who get rejected all the time by girls and are frustrated by this rejection are not going to develop some misogynistic attitudes and, not having filters on what is appropriate to say, will say misogynistic things on this forum. It is going to happen again and again and again on this site.

I just don't think dumping everything onto the moderators is the best way to deal with these types of things. Social norms are established by what members in the community generally find to be acceptable behavior, not what the rules say or what authority figures say. I like to see misguided thinking rebutted by wrongplanet members (members of the community) instead of having moderators (authority figures) step in.



That's your opinion. I don't find such things offensive, even though they are directed at my gender.



I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Thanks

Honestly, I interpreted your specific example as someone who was hurt by men and was justifiably angry and was venting. People do it all the time. I wouldn't be offended by it. I have a thick skin. If you repeatedly made angry comments about men and some of those were threatening, I would be upset. That's where I think moderators need to step in.

In your specific example, I would hope that other WP members would step in and try to convince the person that not all men are bad. If no one stepped up to the plate, then I would be okay with the moderator intervening. (BTW, I am not offended by racist or homophobic speech either even though I am black and a member of the LGBT community, so my policy would be the same no matter what the marginalized group. I do get concerned when people start threatening violence though.)

you know, what I'm hearing a lot of here is, "I (or Guy) should get a pass, because I have suffering, people should just understand and deal." But everybody's got suffering, and a lot of it's pretty bad.

Klowglas, not to detract from the pain of rejection, but I don't know how many times women have to tell you that this thing about "society says men have to be the aggressors, we have special pain from rejection women are never exposed to" is pure hooey. Women can and do ask men out. And can and do get rejected. It's been going on for decades now, happens all the time, we haven't had to wait for Sadie Hawkins' Day since...mm, not in my lifetime. And I'm old.

I do think it's possible to post things about "I'm lonely and in pain" without appending "because women are b*****s/men suck/etc".

Actually, let me amend that. What I'm hearing is "this site collects tons of men who can't get a girlfriend and don't know why and are massively frustrated and hurt because of it" -- so misogyny.

And what that says to me is that alternate (and healthier) ways of handling the massive frustration and hurt are necessary.

And my first thought after that is "do not try to solve someone else's problem."

However: this is very much the sort of thing that the women's-center director (henceforth Tammy) deals with. I'll show her these comments and see what she has to recommend. Because I think you guys are right, the problem can't be dealt with just by saying "don't have that problem here".

I'll answer your question with a personal story. One day, while school children were walking home, a kid picked up some rocks, stood behind my car, and he threw the rocks while shouting taunts at three other little boys walking ahead. He threw rock after rock, but never hit any of the other kids - the rocks hit the ground short and simply rolled up to the group. The group of three eventually succumbed to the taunting, picked up rocks, and threw them back at the kid hiding behind my car. Of course, some of the rocks struck my car. It's an old Suburban with the rear seats removed which I use as a hauler - I don't care about it's cosmetics. I stepped outside whereupon the kid hiding behind my car stood up, pointed at the group of three, and proudly proclaimed "Those guys threw rocks that hit your car!" I called out to the three and they walked back with their heads hanging in shame - one was wiping back tears. With all four standing in my driveway, I told the boy who had instigated the rock fight the leave my yard and never return - I told him that is absolute and permanent. In anger, he left. Then, I had a chat with the other three. First, I told them they were not in trouble, I didn't care about any damage to my old junker, and I did not intend to tell their parents. After that, we talked through what had happened. During our chat, they realized that a bully, using manipulation, had set them up for trouble and provided them with the ammunition, plus the bully made himself the target, so he might evoke sympathy later. I told the kids, bullies have a standard pattern of development: First, they throw rocks directly at people and hit them; Second, they get their victims the throw rocks at others (in this case, my car) and get in trouble; Finally, they get their victims to throw rocks in their own faces and hurt themselves. I told those youngsters to watch out for people, like the bully, who manipulated them, because that type of bully only gets worse - they become more proficient, more manipulative, and more destructive. And, bullies think alike, so the bulling of one is a segue for another - bullying is often a team effort. A victim can be passed from bully to bully like a baton. In the case of the three kids, I hope knowledge alleviated their vulnerability.

There is another pattern followed by the manipulative bully: Step one, they try to convince their victim that everything the victim does is wrong; Step two, they try to convince their victim that what the victim did was right, but the way the victim did it made it wrong; Third and finally, the bully commits absolute emotional sabotage by convincing their victim that everything they do is wrong, simply because the victim did it. All three steps can be done through both subtle and brute means. If I had yelled at the three kids with all the rest that might have happened, what do you think the instigator would have said to the group of three?

In a way, the matter was quite simple, the group of three little boys had absolutely no excuse whatsoever for hitting my car with rocks.

Last edited by SoftwareEngineer on 29 May 2014, 6:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.