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.
And yet, you troll on…
Says the self-professed lying troll.
Except you idiots make arguments like that all the time! are you really so blind to your cult? its not radiator fluid, but its all women are golddiggers, all women are out to get men, all women will falsely accuse you if they can get away with it, all women have a programmed need to discriminate against men.
This is a comment from your beloved AVfM
above comment is for AntZ (obviously)
Go on Antz, do the experiment and show us your results.
Magpie, thanks a lot for that link. Now I have another timesuck to look through. 🙂
Try commenting as a woman on The Spearhead or RooshV! Even the most innocent remark is met by “Shut up you dumb bitch” and so on. For this reason I post on Yahoo Answers as a male, and I get much more respect, though someone did call me a Mangina the other day. But the abuse leveled at women online is remarkable. It’s easy to anonymously vent your rage online as your victims are unable to retaliate. I doubt they would ever have the balls to hurl such insults at a woman IRL.
WordSpinner – not my fault 🙂 I found that as a link from a link in the sidebar here at Manboobz XD
it’s hilarious seeing women on the spearhead agree with them but still get downvoted. The most extreme MRAs are so emotional when it comes to women they can’t even see when she’s agreeing with them.
I wonder how many misogynists even know a woman IRL. Besides their moms, I mean.
“It’s easy to anonymously vent your rage online as your victims are unable to retaliate. I doubt they would ever have the balls to hurl such insults at a woman IRL.”
They’re probably self-hating White Knights, Manginas. I see these guys doing everything for a woman and she still has no interest in him. They would be better off to get some balls and treat women how they deserve in public.
none I would hope, for the sake of those women. But there are lots of female misogynists and FeMRAs who rationalize the misogyny away by believing themselves super special and above those horrible women who dare stand up for themselves!
@Fembot See, even when insulting men they use gendered terms to discredit them. A feminist man is a mangina. He’s a pussy, a bitch, or a girly man. This is the issue I was taking with an interview of girlwriteswhat the other day. She talked about how she tells her son to “pull up his big girl pants” when he’s being lazy or whiny. They are not sexist, yet all their insults are insinuating that women/their sex organs are inferior. How often do you see feminists calling GWW or the other lady MRAs dicks or wopenises (lol, I don’t know, because I honestly can’t think of an insult that is similar. Maybe tranny or drag queen but that’s more a dig at the inferiority of lgbt’s than men).
Oh fuck Reddit so much right now:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/smyet/you_didnt_have_the_guts_to_say_no_and_regretted/
TW for victim-blaming and mass harassment of a FOURTEEN-YEAR OLD RAPE VICTIM.
Zarat, why the hell do you want to talk to us?
Holly, that link… wtf. That poor girl.
There’s a lot of people either saying or almost-saying that rape is a suitable punishment for a girl doing pot at 14.
Yep. Reddit is full of douchebags.
Actually, Jesus, I didn’t even fully process how fucked up that is.
Doing pot at 14? You are too young for such things! Someone should contact social services! You’re a bad, bad teenager, and deserve whatever happens to you while high, because you’re just too damn young.
Consenting to sex while high? Yeah, you’re totally mature enough to do that. In fact, you should know that you need to shout “no” 9 or 10 times so that the guy, who is young and naive, truly understands that you’re not interested in doing anything more.
Vomit vomit vomit.
I’ve done this experiment. I did it back on usenet. I did it in BBSs. I’ve done it on Blogs.
Digby did it, and the comments to her posts, when she revealed herself as a woman, changed.
One of the things I did was to look for a perrenial topic. Then I’d make a post, and save the text. A month, or two later, when the topic came round again on the guitar, I’d make exactly the same post, and see what I got in response. Some of the time I got very different responses from people who had previously commented.
Dx
That is SO fucked up. For Christ’s sake.
PROTIP: If someone says they’re unsure about sex, STOP.
I’m not even going to look at that post. There’s not enough of this amazing Märzen I’m drinking to cope with that.
It’s really good. The malt was dried over a slow beechwood fire, and tastes sort of like whisky, but without the burn. I rather like whisky, which makes this a really interesting beer. I shall have to get more of it.
What I notice most are the comments about my tone. I say something I think of as fairly dry and I am typing with an actual smile on my face and all sorts of people tell me how I am being too emotional or angry.
>>Yep. Reddit is full of douchebags.
Melisandre: “Lord of Light, shine your light on us. For Reddit is dark, and full of douchebags.”
When a female MRA is attacked by misogynists the other MRAs are too scared to defend her or even condemn the attacks. Don’t want to be called a white knight or Mangina…
What do we expect? Feminism has been hating on men for 50 years. Of course once ordinary men realize how they’ve been betrayed, they’re going to misconstrue feminism (modern chivalry) for womanism, and they’re going to hate on women. These are silly experiments conducted without regard to relevant parameters. We are simply witnessing the symptoms of an already diseased culture.
The hatred of women is a predictable response to the past 50 years of feminism. No surprises there. And it’s going to get a lot worse. You cannot hate without expecting hate in return. Any movement with the superiority of one gender implied in its name will ultimately be interpreted as a gender-supremacist movement, with a backlash being its inevitable result. I would have been more interested in these experiments had they been conducted before contemporary feminism had taken root.