So someone on Reddit did a little experiment that confirmed what we already know: that Reddit is overflowing with misogynist douchebags. Here’s the experimenter explaining her somewhat casual experimental protocol:
I noticed after two months as my female username I was constantly having to defend my opinions. I mean constantly. I would post something lighthearted, and have people commenting taking my comment literally and telling me I was dumb or I didn’t understand xyz. People were so eager to talk incredibly rudely and condescendingly to me. People were downright hateful and it made me consider leaving.
Then I decided to experiment with usernames and came up with an obviously male name. While people still disagreed with me which is to be expected, I had more people come to my defense when I had a different opinion and absolutely no hateful or condescending comments. I am completely shocked at how different I am treated since having a male username. I am not saying Reddit is sexist, well kind of yes, but I think it’s really interesting and thought that some other girls on here would want to get male usernames and see the difference for themselves.
She posted this in TwoXChromosomes, a subreddit devoted to women and women’s issues that is regularly overrun with angry MRA dudes and an assortment of FemRAs. This time the MRA squad didn’t take over the discussion, and numerous 2XCers reported experiences similar to that of the OP.
earthpeesfire noted:
I had a feminine user name years ago. Fuck that. It was like having a target on my back.
cantstopthe tried to duplicate the experiment on a smaller scale:
Just wanted to say that I made an alt yesterday with a female name, and continue to post the kind of things I normally post under this account. And today I was told I should be raped.
That has NEVER happened in all my 4 years of being on this site with various neutral names.
misscastaway also tried posting with a clearly female name:
I just tried posting on an discussion from this account. Immediately an insult including the word cunt and remarks on how I’m making a fool out of myself.
Might be a coincidence but when posting from my regular account (which is very gender neutral) that I use for discussions related to science, fitness, books etc I have never received this kind of behaviour. Not even when it turned out someone knew more about the subject and I was wrong/short in my knowledge. Then I was given another point of view, with a source – that was it.
I guess I’ll keep using those accounts in parallel now just to see if this was just by chance or if it really makes such a difference.
fatchick400 reported on the results of a similar experiment:
I created this account a few days ago to comment on some fat-hate, and have actually found it really interesting to see reddit from a different point of view.
The biggest surprise for me is the difference in how fat women are treated vs fat men. There is so much more hatred towards the fat women. A lot of people even refer to these women as “it”, completely negating their gender all together.
Meanwhile in the posts about fat men there are a few hateful comments, but they’re mostly full of light hearted jokes. In a few posts where the guys were obviously morbidly obese, barely anyone commented on the guys’ weight at all. Yet in posts with woman who are maybe 200lbs , mocking her weight always seems to be the main focus of conversation.
twofish added her experience to the pile of anecdotal evidence:
Most people on reddit assume I am male until I make it a point to say otherwise. More often than not, once it’s discovered that I own a vagina I’m no longer taken seriously, my opinions are belittled, and a slough of sexist and misogynist jokes/accusations get thrown my way.
I love Reddit for many reasons but it is one of THE most hostile places on the internet to be a woman.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, the locals largely dismissed the experiment as unscientific and biased. As DavidByron put it:
Just seems like someone who set out to “prove” her own biases. She was biased to begin with, she ran the “experiment” in a biased way, interpreted the results in a biased way and then presented them to support her initial assumptions.
It’s the usual princess feminism which says men have it easy and women have it hard even while the exact opposite is happening. Why wouldn’t she say which usernames she used in her “test” so others can look at her methodology? Of course it’s not serious but then that’s the point.
Others explained that they weren’t really sexist because they’re such earnest fanboys of GirlWritesWhat, a woman who is able to bypass the usual MRA misogyny by pandering to the misogynists’ fantasy of male martyrdom.
The woman who posted about the experiment in the first place has now popped in to the r/menrights thread, and has (very politely) suggested to Mr. Byron that he try the experiment himself. I guess we’ll see what happens.
As a man, I find this experiment fascinating and very revealing.
And as a man I certainly have the authority to say so.
The reason I started coming here is because of the sexism I was seeing all over the internet. I guess people’s true colors come out when they can be anonymous online.
I’ve been curious to try out the gender experiment… but it’d probably just raise my blood pressure, which I can’t afford right now.
I’d do the experiment, but I don’t want to go and see if people on reddit want to rape me. I’m a little flower sometimes…
Ah, that shitstain David Byron turns up like a bad penny! Quelle surprise.
I really love DavidByron’s economy of language: the phrase “princess feminism” has this wonderful effect of essentially proving their point while disagreeing with the point in the rest of the paragraph.
My guess is that we won’t see DavidByron attempt to replicate their results (lol Internet science is not scientific enuff), I would like to suggest a few alternative handles:
xXShelley69xoxo
StephanieDickinson
Sappha
LadyByron
Well, a minor bright spot: The Spearhead has been down for about a day now. Some degree of relief.
Scarlett: Not relief! I was craving hardcore lulz >.>
I’ve been doing this online for nearly 20 years with various gender neutral nicks and in offline correspondence sign letters etc. with my first two initials followed by my last name. Invariably responses start “Dear Sir” (They don’t even write “Dear Sir or Madam” any more like they did in the 80s and 90s) and address my concerns directly.
Over all that time it has become evident to me that things are getting much worse. I had suggested to various misogynist commenters in some forums to try this experiment but the reaction was always negative along the lines of “It wouldn’t prove anything”. Threatening belief with real life experience, that is observable factual events, seems to be the issue. Willful ignorance is certainly some people’s version of bliss.
Looking through DavidByron’s comment history I see that along with being an MRA he’s also … a Stalinist, who is basically the equivalant of a holocaust denier when it comes to Stalin’s genocidal mass murders.
Of course it wouldn’t prove anything to them, but the anecdata they pull up like with that group of lacrosse players or that girl who accused her father of molestation prove, beyond a doubt, that there is a matriarchy and that women are evil.
I imagine they are unwilling to test the experiment because they know full well what the results will be and that scares them. They’re afraid of having their fragile egos shattered when they’re called irrational, get insulted, and threatened. They would also have to endure the harassment that many a woman online has faced when she steps into a male-dominated forum. Then they’d have to admit that we’re not just making it up.
I mean, with my own experiences on youtube and message boards, I can cite many instances where I was called irrational, my appearance was attacked, sexist insults were hurled, I was told I was either boyfriendless with no hope of finding one, or that my boyfriend must be miserable, that everything I experienced in my life was in my head. All because of differing opinions. And I screen capped a bunch for a recent tumblr post too.
I would love to see this experiment play out complete with screencaps of similar ideas being said by the same person under differently gendered usernames and see the results. Someone should wait a while and try it. Document everything!
If I wasn’t so zonked, I’d go dig out the linguistic experiments that show the same text is evaluated completely differently when attached to clearly male name as opposed to female name. But I doubt that the rabid denialists would consider that any more substantive.
I would hope some of them would try posting under clearly feminine names, heh heh heh.
If they did post under a feminine name and get rape threats, they would still say women are too sensitive. After all, THEY weren’t worried by the insults and threats, why don’t women just laugh it off?
I’m going to do my own experiment and have an attractive female in photos, even when it’s totally unnecessary. Let’s see how positive her ratings are and how everyone agrees with her. There wouldn’t be a negative view of females on reddit if they didn’t use their gender for karma. She can change her user name all she wants but I would still be able to tell it’s a female from the lack of logic and accountability.
I haven’t seen any men cyberbullying a suicidal woman. Only females have done that to a MRA on reddit. You conveniently leave that out of your blog.
True. *sighs dispiritedly*
Also:
Look at all the hate against men on this blog. Look at all the hate for men who post on parenting blogs or wander into a mum’s blog. There are sites dominated by men and then there are female sites. It’s okay for females to have their own space but any time men try to have their own safe space they are called sexist.
Ithiliana, have a funny to cheer yourself up:
http://leasthelpful.com/post/21592764497
“If they did post under a feminine name and get rape threats, they would still say women are too sensitive. After all, THEY weren’t worried by the insults and threats, why don’t women just laugh it off?”
Pretty much this.
For a guy telling a woman that her experiment was “biased”, Byron doesn’t realize that he and his own movement have a skewed view on EVERYTHING. Nearly everything they quote is either a misrepresentation or a lie, and even when there are a FEW things they are right on…what do they do with it?
“Looking through DavidByron’s comment history I see that along with being an MRA he’s also … a Stalinist, who is basically the equivalant of a holocaust denier when it comes to Stalin’s genocidal mass murders.”
AKA Democrat
This is relevant to the OP http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-07-12-transgender-scientists-bias_x.htm
also there have been studies done that prove in the workplace, overweight women are judged more harshly than overweight men. Just another consequence of being born the sex class.
Very scientific.
I know a guy who was forced by a woman to drink radiator fluid. This proves that all women force men to drink radiator fluid. This in turn proves that all women hate all men.
Feminists are so full of it, there is no way to even talk to any of you.
LOL @ MRAs suspicious of anecdotal evidence, when that’s pretty much all they use
“I know a guy who was falsely accused”
“My brother’s friend’s wife totally screwed him in a divorce”
“A woman called me a creep for no reason”
these are the things you hear from these idiots all the time, but no one should dare question their manly, objective experiences!
Also the studies they DO use are either discredited and full of methodological flaw. They never examine the counter studies because it’s dismissed as feminist dogma or some bullshit. Many MRAs go as far to not even believe anything from academic institutions because it’s “leftist”
‘I guess people’s true colors come out when they can be anonymous online.’
Trudat
As usual, Antsy describes himself quite well when he thinks he’s describing others.
Zarat, you are so full of it that you are on a different planet.