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.
To some extent parents influence their children’s decisions yes, PARENTS, not just mothers. But it’s not like they grow up and develop their own goals, interests and careers or anything…oh no *eyeroll*
and yeah, many higher figures did influence societies perceptions of women. Religion and their enforcers being a major one. The authors of Malleus Maleficarum, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger who were Inquisitors of the Catholic Church swayed the public into believing witches were real and got women tortured and burned because of it. Women are having sex with the devil! Hey, its kinda like your modern day claim that women are having sex with thug alphas. Look at how misogyny just repeats itself every century!
Schopenhauer and Aristotle also wrote of women as subhuman creatures. More philosophers had a say I’m sure, other posters here could tell you about it since they know more about philosophy.
Somehow I doubt women had a role to play in the creation of laws that denied them their legal rights (coverture, lack of personhood, no vote) thank God those evil feminazis came and changed them though!
AWW I REGRET NOT NOTICING IT THE FIRST TIME SHARKY!! IT WAS FUNNY!!!
thx soren
Apparently a LOT of linguists are women. Just about every study we’ve read this semester is by a woman. And every time we would discuss one, the students would refer to the author as “he.”
Until toward the end of the semester. Someone finally caught on that they were all “she” just in time for the first article we had that was written by a man.
In that vein, the students always thought the participants in the study were men too. Even when clearly identified as women.
People generally assume I’m a man online, fwiw. A lot of times people say it’s the way I “speak.” Because girls all speak like lolcats or …???
People think guys use more numbers and measurements. I throw in that stuff when I’m trying to throw someone off; “he was 6’3” instead of “he was tall.” Gets them every time.
ChoCoMiNtie i ThNk cuz tHeY ThInk we type liek ThiS lol!!!~
“Hey, its kinda like your modern day claim that women are having sex with thug alphas.”
Satan – the ultimate alpha.
(Except for that whole thing where he got cast out of Heaven. That wasn’t very alpha.)
I dunno, getting kicked out of heaven and starting your own kingdom of fire is pretty alpha xD
pff, Satan is completely beta. He spends his time trying to get back in God good graces.
whoa, this is a … vigorous comment thread.
And that’s the part I don’t get, and the part “it’s the internet, it’s anonymous” just doesn’t explain. Why are so many people so chock full of hate in the first place?
Look up something called the “banality of evil.” The basic principle is that the vast majority of people – who in normal civil society behave normally – are in reality horrible sociopathic monsters, who will happily commit the worst atrocities the moment retribution or shame is removed. The most monstrous police states and tyrannies found that out readily: you don’t need to train people to torture and rape: you just need to create a scenario where torture and rape is permitted, and the torturers and rapist will come out the woodwork.
As for hatred against women, David Wong of Cracked (I know, I know) had a fairly insightful article about it a while ago. The money quote:
This is really the heart of it, right here. This is why no amount of male domination will ever be enough, why no level of control or privilege or female submission will ever satisfy us. We can put you under a burqa, we can force you out of the workplace — it won’t matter. You’re still all we think about, and that gives you power over us. And we resent you for it.
You can find a similar mentality in all those angry threads of dudes bitching about being “friendzoned” (hey bros, women aren’t a vending machine you put kindness into until sex falls out) and treating themselves – arguably the most privileged class of all – like some kind of oppressed minority.
I had not heard this before. I feel like I’m missing out. Where are my bears? 🙂
bugger. that name should say magpie
Not just bears; also sasquatches, I’m told.
jame is probably comment spam. the trick of repeating an older comment isn’t uncommon, and the link in the name is to a commericial site of dubious appearance.
Dave probably ought to delete it, lest other spammers see it as fallow ground. Older threads in particular are often mined for SEO nonsense.
@magpie
If you click your name in the top right corner, you can edit your profile to automatically fill in your display name
So…are you just waiting for a moment when you won’t get caught so you can commit terrible atrocities?
Or is this a theory that only applies to Other People?
That is… not what the experiments prove.
For instance, the Milgram Experiment shows that people will tend to feel deeply uncomfortable about doing unethical things, but will still usually do them if ordered to do so by an authority figure. The problem is not “people are sociopaths,” the problem is “people tend to listen to authority even when authority is clearly ordering them to do wrong things.”
I’ll thank you not to speak for me.
If you look at the Stanford prison experiment, the evidence appears to suggest that people will do clearly wrong things when presented with an ideology that makes it okay and social/institutional support (see also: everything from Abu Gharib to the Catholic Church covering up pedophilia).
So what it shows is that social pressure is REALLY convincing for a lot of people, particularly if it comes from authority figures, and that if you make it okay to do X Wrong Thing people will tend to do X Wrong Thing.
@Dracula
Amanda had, I thought, a good takedown of this article http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/misogyny-isnt-caused-by-male-horniness
Shadow – That was pretty good, thanks. I think the closing line is my favorite.
What ozy said. The Milgram experiment demonstrates the relative weakness of most people’s moral compass when confronted with an authority figure, not the lack of such a moral compass. The various steps through which people go to deresponsabilize themselves (and they are very consistent from people to people) only make sense if you assume the existence of such a moral discomfort with what these people are doing: cheating, for instance, where the subject continues to follow instructions and to ask questions and administer ‘shocks’ to hir partner, but tries to subtly lead hir partner to the right answer through emphasis or other tricks. If the point was that most people are sadists, you’d expect a large proportion of people not bothering or even leading the partner towards false answers.
In fact, you’d expect people to lead their partners towards the wrong answer.
Words like “slut” exist to control women’s sexuality through social coercion. I can’t yell you how many comments I’ve seen in MRA and PUA sites that run along the lines “unchecked female sexuality will lead to downfall of civilization.” Whoa.
I can’t TELL you…
Sorry about the typos. I hate my iPhone.