Once people learn how to despise women, they tend to branch out.

but I expect you are right. Interesting.

Really. No one will say they 'hate' women. But they do and say stuff that is very anti-woman without even realizing it. Even women do it. All the time!

been times when I've had to "correct" a long-time (male) buddy on his attitudes. I'm a guy too BTW.

eom

I stand in awe of your rhetorical skills.

What's your point?

Dirty jokes, shrug off passes from married men, shrug off degrading comments about women. No wonder I and so many others got raped. You could say it was a hostile work environment.

My first boss when I was a 2nd LT told me he protested over having me assigned to him. He said he did not want a female because females never did any work because "their pussies hurt." He ended up giving me a top notch evaluation and told other senior officers, "She works like a man!"

but I feel so badly for the experiences you have had to endure in your life. No one should have to go through so much suffering.

What you describe is from the 2nd LT is precisely why rape is so common in the military.

Transcendently, wonderful, magically good experiences. I should probably talk about those more so I won't be such a bummer.

One such experience...that same boss, after he gave me the evaluation, and was no longer my boss, drunk one night as we waited for the first Gulf War to start....low enough no one else could hear...."I love you, Lorrie, but I don't love you for the reasons other men love you...I love your spirit...I want to just pack you in cotton and put you in a little box on a shelf and always keep you safe..."

I smiled at him as I walked away. "I know you do. I love you, too."

Last time I ever saw him.

Life is so complicated and hard to understand. I often think I am quite insane.

I want the rapes to end. I want better for others coming after me, that's all.

that must be because of your beautiful spirit.

Happy tears in my eyes. I guess I fit in here then with all the beautiful spirits in this group like you!

Did she hear some guys making a sexist joke, and tweet a photo of them, or did she accidentally tweet a photo of someone unrelated? And the guy got fired but she wasn't involved in the decision for him to be fired, was she?? It doesn't sound like she even worked in the same company as them.

The threads are confusing. I've been pretty busy and haven't been able to keep up on them.

I feel like tweeting their photo wasn't a great choice, but it doesn't seem like it should have been that big a deal. And I don't get why the guys ended up being fired, unless there was something else going on with them at work. Or did just one guy get fired?

And then she got fired? For tweeting the photo? I'm not sure I understand what's up with that either. Or did she do something else as well?

I agree that the level of hate generated by this is way overboard, and it can't be about one tweet. It's got to be because she's spoken out about sexism.

She overheard a couple of crude jokes, tweeted a picture of the two guys and repeated what they said. The conference organizers asked everyone involved about it. The guy got fired (rumors of prior violations as well), and she and her company were flooded with threads of rape, death, violent images, on and on. So she got fired. People are incensed because "she got the guy fired." They have now proclaimed she's getting everything that she deserved and shouldn't ever be hired again.

Photographing men who flash at them or otherwise harass them, to shame the men who are doing harmful things and to kind of take back their power. I wonder if she took the photos after being inspired by that movement?

I mean, if you're willing to harass a woman on the street, to her face, grope her, whatever--if you feel that is your legal right--then you should have no objection to your action being publicized, right?

What's so telling is that these jerks CANNOT TOLERATE being the object of the collective female gaze. They inflict their gaze, their objectifying standards, on us all the time, but the idea that their awful behavior and their sexual immaturity (and obvious lack of success, or else they wouldn't be harassing these women) would be publicized and ridiculed is intolerable to them. That's because we're treating them like they know they treat us. We're treating them like their definition of WOMEN. Like we're entitled to film their bodies and behavior and publicize and ridicule it. It's not so sexy then, is it?

picture on the net. isnt that just horrible. horrible.

i was not reading threads about this, so i was not sure what was up. but, hearing the men were being sexist asses, at a work convention where the sexist hostile environment is rampant, i did not get SOME of the men duers outrage.

i agree with your post, totally

The interesting double standard is that, while we are going about our business in public, being polite & courteous, they try to shame us for what we wear & how we look. They however, are being shamed for their behavior, not their appearance & they know the difference, although I don't know if they feel shame. They are being called out for the misogynistic bullies they are, & no matter how you look at it, that is true ugliness.

Fucking assholes, everyone.

Excellent analysis

and GROTESQUE. Makes me think some people - some guys - are just bubbling cauldrons of hatred.

Guys raised on porn to feel entitled to gorgeous, submissive women to serve them, hundreds upon hundreds, with no effort on their parts to offer anything to the other person.

Every man a king, deserving a harem whenever they snap their fingers.

I am thinking of the guy in PA who shot a bunch of women at the gym because they wouldn't provide him with sex....he felt it was his right, even though he was decades older than them and creepy. He became so angry that they were denying him what he felt was his right as a man, that he killed them.

I believe that sense of entitlement and unrealistic expectations driven by the porn industry, is behind an awful lot of that boiling rage.

I will do research on that and see if I find anything.

Not recognizing that these "gorgeous, submissive women" are simply doing it for the money, which in many cases isn't even enough money to really be worth it. And considering how socially isolated a lot of men - "geeks" maybe more so - are, especially from women, there's nothing solid and real to counteract the fantasy. So all these guys have is unbridled lust and unbridled rage, and nowhere to direct it - save maybe some unfortunate, random woman like Richards.

All in all, it adds up to a rather terrifying state of affairs. For instance, not to get too off-track but my sister was college roommates with the wife of the New York "cannibal cop" (Valle I believe is his name). Talk about a sick fantasy life spilling over into reality - Valle's case could be considered Exhibit A.

One major reason that I despise porn. I feel that it destroys any real chance of a real relationship. The imagination becomes so polluted with very bad ideas and there is no good way to banish these images from one's mind.

In a way it may be a vicious cycle - lack of a real flesh-and-blood partner feeds into unrealistic expectations, which in turn makes finding a real partner more difficult.

Here's some info on where this is coming from, on Reddit, the mens rights forum (called RedPill):

http://www.reddit.com/r/theredpill

and their "Feminist Victim Fund"

http://www.reddit.com/r/FVF/comments/1b1fmq/donate_today/


note the comments in both the forum and the fund page, racist ,homophobic sewage.

I've seen some of these "theories" about feminists posted right here on DU, I used to pride myself on having no one on ignore,now I'm up to 14.

but the extent of this animosity is truly mind boggling.

including du. and all the while it has taken more of our time to speak out against it, the retaliations has spiraled. now, if i go into a thread and make a simple, very simple comment it is OUTRAGE, RANTING and RAVING.

or more to the point

shut the fuck up

no.

story, let alone attempt to bring reason.

god no. that would make me a man hater.

make much sense of it. But I will say that most of the rabid anti Richards crap Ive seen on the internet has pretty much been the same "she deserved it" or my favorite " she's not very nice" because everyone knows,being nice is what is really important in business,much more important than your skills in any given job, this is proven by all the really nice guys who get to the top, none of them are ever abrasive or aggressive,ever,ever,ever.

but some of these guys (and, alas, gals) verge on stalking. They wouldn't let up. I had to use ignore for my own sanity. Some of them keep it up, even when they know I have them on ignore. I know that because a couple of times I've signed out to see who is replying to me.

The problem here is misogyny, online and off. It's a culture that has long conflated women in public with sexual availability, and punished public, presumably sexually available women with sexual violence. It's a cohort of trusted intellectuals – the legal system, big-name writers – positioning themselves as fair and rational by critiquing a victim's actions as much as violence and harassment. It's not just raping "bad girls" and issuing rape threats to women online; it's saying, "Yes, what those boys did was wrong, but let's also look at the role that alcohol played in putting her in that position" and "Yes, rape threats are terrible, but she really shouldn't have tweeted that picture." It's the impulse to remove gender and race analysis -- arguing that men get death threats, too, or that Richards is simply "difficult" and not perhaps only perceived that way because she's a black woman pushing back against the norms of a mostly white, mostly male industry.

It's always possible to explain way an unpleasant situation. There's always something that could have been done differently. But perhaps it's time to stop hunting around for how victims could have more effectively prevented their own victimization. Instead, let's look at the established patterns of sexualized threats online – there have certainly been enough of them. Internet misogyny isn't its own separate thing, existing independent of real-world misogyny. The two mirror each other, and the norms and assumptions that enable rapists are the same ones that enable rape threats online.

We shouldn't accept rape and death threats as a woman's price of admission to the internet. We shouldn't accept rape and death threats as a consequence of not playing by the always-shifting rules of the online boys' club. We shouldn't accept rape and death threats as punishment for making trouble, not asking politely or somehow behaving outside of the bounds of geek social culture. We certainly shouldn't punish women on the receiving end of those threats, as SendGrid did when it fired Richards.

Change only comes when we stand with those who are wronged – even the loud ones, the imperfect ones and the trouble-makers.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/26/adria-richards-gets-rape-threats-for-speaking-out-about-workplace-sexism

Seeing your favorite forum, I can guess.

I meant to have an interesting point. I would suggest a reading of "Odd Girl Out" by Rachel Simmons, for starters.

i cannot read a book to see if i can pick up this interesting point of yours, that you have yet to express.

what feminist are being misogynists?
what misogyny are you seeing feminist commit?

and that would be the gun group, that is you favorite. check your profile.

hit you on the ass.

first. i used the word strippin' in my Op about taking off. you know. strippin paint, varnish, clothes. that is a word that defines something. strippers do not have ownership of the word strippin. it merely means taking off.

secondly, in a thread someone made a comment about strippers. i further that comment with the comment that yes, we applaud and respect the stripper until we want to be crude, vulgar and denegrade the stripper. that was not a comment to strippers. that was a comment to the men that will defend the strippers saying they respect them, when they need and then turn around and be vulgar, crude and denigrate the women.

and lastly. here you men, that are so fuckin clueless have your gotcha moment stepping right into the sexist shit you so do not get. you are stating that i am comparing strippers to the protesters. as if i am denigrating the protesters to strippers. (do you see yet, where this is going, and the convoluted sexism you yourself created?). remember dude. we respect strippers and their right so even if i did compare the two, and i didnt, then that is not an insult to the protesters.

so ya, .... wonderfully fuckin stupid example you provide for us.

Because i've experienced how far feminine behavior in the workplace diverges from the mythical feminist ideal. I used to be a blue-collar supervisor in a factory, with a coed crew, and I'm sorry - but y'all are a mess! Is it sexist to ask someone to do their job, and not just the part they like? Why are some (OK, a lot) of words "crude and vulgar" when spoken by a man, but are otherwise innocent "girl talk"? Howcum asking someone to try a different method is a personal attack? Why is backstabbing and manipulation superior to tradecraft?

mess?

k

Is it sexist to ask someone to do their job, and not just the part they like? no

Why are some (OK, a lot) of words "crude and vulgar" when spoken by a man, but are otherwise innocent "girl talk"? crude and vulgar is not appropriate at work by either gender and most work environments have it written in policy

Howcum asking someone to try a different method is a personal attack? totally clueless what you are talking about

Why is backstabbing and manipulation superior to tradecraft? really? and what does this have to do with us messed up feminists anyway. lol. what does it have to do with anything.

edit to add... you never did point out the point you were making, but from an op that simply is not true. and you never did actually address anything in my reply to you.

seems to be a tough one for about everyone who has an issue with me. actually addressing what i posted, instead of fabricating shit and talking about that.

Whatever problems you have on your job have nothing to do with this OP. Nor is that experience universal.

There are labor laws. If they are that difficult for you to follow, don't work. It's really not that hard. Do your job instead of sitting around making crude jokes and creating a hostile work environment. Are you one of those guys who sits around complaining that you can't call black people N---s as well? Yeah, life in the 21st century is tough. How sad you can't express the real you at work. Suck it up. If you have a problem with something a woman says at work, take it up with her or your supervisor.

Lastly, try to make a point that relates in some minor way to the OP. You haven't interacted with the point on even the most superficial level. You haven't supported your point that women perpetrate misogyny. In fact, I don't think you bothered to even check the dictionary to figure out what the word means.

As far as I'm concerned, a woman receiving threats of sexual assault and murder - especially for a mild "offense" - is pretty much a textbook example of the term.

Apologize.

Just like Richards, for saying this: "You focus on Richards as somehow evil for daring to expose to the public what this guy was doing in public. You show yourself entirely unconcerned with the backlash against her. This entire incident is all about male domination, circling the wagons to protect men at all cost, and threatening women with physical injury if they dare expose to the public what men in that tech community do in their public workplaces. "

So then on the most basic level, I have this question: if what the guy said was no big deal, why is Richards's tweeting it such a travesty?

People don't act that aggressively unless they're threatened, and the psychological reaction to threat is fear.


Theres been a contingent of men have always feared women throughout history

Sometimes it is outright hate, or at least, in fact a lot of the time, contempt.

As more and more women enter these work places, the threat has intensified, work places have non- discrimination and anti-harassment policies already in place. Perhaps some are confused; there are actually there for a reason.
The rule;
Don't say (or act) sexist, racist homophobic (in some places) crap. Just don't do it. It's wrong. It's probably against the policies of your employer. Why is this such a difficulty? We've all seen these laws, these policies, I had to sign one upon hire at my current workplace. I have no problem with it.

for doing something similar and lose their jobs, I imagine. Yes, you are right that it has to be about fear. Evidently this field is heavily male dominated, which is why companies are particularly concerned about sexist behavior. They know full well they can get sued, which is probably why the guy was fired.

Have you seen this recent thread? http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2565443
I earned myself two more people ignoring me today. I suppose it's my "toxicity." They steadfastly argue it's irrelevant to bring up the fact the woman has been subject to rape and death threats. That has nothing to do with the situation, they claim. As far as I'm concerned that IS the situation. We don't know with certainty why these two people were fired because we don't have access to their performance reviews and other records at that place of employment. The one thing we do know about is the public reaction, which is the ONLY reason anyone is talking about it. That's why the public reaction IS the subject.

I noticed the blaming going on, the dismissals, the circular reasoning, the lack of knowledge of the situation, but forming an opinion anyway.

I have to confess that as far as public opinion, I've never taken DU too seriously. As any kind of standard I mean. But now I fear it reflects more accurately than I ever gave it credit for, at least as far as gender issues. I thought it was either deeply damaged folks who couldn't 'get' it, or ones who like to stir it up on-line. I don't use ignore because I ignore it. If I was battling on-line, which I don't really do, I'd have to use it.

I've been around long enough to see many good people leave, Gays, people of color. Even police officers--cops get a lot of crap around here, anyone who could be a 'target' of on-line attacks, however cleverly worded.

Feminists.

But I've never seen anything quite like this, and its not just here, and its not just this particular woman, or this particular situation. It seems to be happening fairly regularly, and we know about it because women are speaking out. Still are.

You are absolutely right, I think that's the part people are somehow missing. (Willful blindness?or institutionalized misogyny?) when women speak out against sexism-- they get threatened with violence. The focus on this particular situation, rather than create a dialogue about sexism, has created a not unfamiliar knee jerk reaction--it's her fault--Whatever way it's worded, add it up and that's what so many are saying.

And apparently not thinking much deeper than that. Very creepy.

and therefore will be ignored.

Ignoring reasonable is in fashion these days.

of male dominated companies & departments.

I go to a lot of technical Meetup groups & their are a lot of companies looking to balance out their tech teams with women. It's a good time for women to look for a job in tech in my area.

There are these hackfest meetups, where a big group of programmers gets together, are presented with a problem. Everyone brings their laptop & the group is broken into teams. Each team tries to code a solution. The short fest are usually 3-4 hours long. Recently there was a 2-day fest.

Anyway, one of the women coder groups realized that hardly any women went to these events & figured it was because there are so few women & they feel uncomfortable. So now the group schedules a pre-meetup at a coffee shop close to the fest & they descend on the fest en masse. I've yet to attend one, but when they told us about it, they were laughing so hard! They said the guys were stupefied. "Where did all these women come from?" resonated throughout the room. They said they were received very positively.

I thought it was a great idea.

They have one scheduled tonight, but I've got plans. Someday I'm going to go to one & I'll tell you all about it.

on edit: clarification

I hope you go to one soon.

be all of a defining moment in richards career. being used to specifically attack richards and her reputation with absolutely no one challenging the blog.

what is this crap. i do not know a lot about the net, but this just stinks.

in this thread of repercussions. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022565443

this is the poster that introduces this blog. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022565443#post54

even though richards supposedly had a good reputation of doing a damn good job, we have an amanda blum, that i could find no information on, telling us she did not like the woman. ergo, she is a bad employee and always has been. and we are suppose to say, oh, ok, well there you go. good fire.

damaged what appears to have been an otherwise excellent reputation.

just fuckin shame on everyone. so tired of this reputation assassination from speaking out against sexism.

cant tell you how much i appreciate this article. thanks.

that too many people prefer over the truth.

no matter what she did or said, threatening rape & death is never acceptable. Never.

I have been fortunate to work in very respectful environments with men who are happy to have me on the team so I can help take some of the pressure off. My experience has been that the sales department is more sexist than IT, especially after one of their team building meetings at a strip club.

Can't they all just grow up? Aren't they even slightly ashamed or embarrassed to be acting like junior high shcoolers?

I'd say more than half the salesforce at my company is women (including sales management) yet they still, at conventions, have the whole "let's all yuk it up at the strip club" thing.

So women either have to suck it up and go along with the whole pretending-they-are-having-fun-at-the-strip-club thing (unless they actually enjoy it, which some women possibly might), or don't go along, and miss out on the networking that goes on at said strip club.

Yep.

This shit is still alive and well in 2013.

"The Denver Steak Club" printed on it so the guys could expense their visit without question. One day, my boss, the CFO & a woman, was presenting to the sales team. After her presentation, she casually stated, "I'm going to have to go to this Denver Steak Club, cuz you guys all like it so much!" Some jaws dropped, some faces turned pale & some snickered. The VP of Sales shot them all a dirty look. She shot him her own scorching look & said to the team, "If you think I don't know what the Denver Steak Club is, get a clue. I better never see it on an expense report again."

Turns out she & her husband really did look for The Denver Steak Club & somehow figured it out.

Look at the support for it. Why would they want to change? They're 'cool' and 'fun'.

There's a new word for this shit, even: Adultescent.

It goes well with another relatively new word: Idiocracy.

I apologize to all the women for the inability of some other guys to embrace the women of the planet as our equals. So that we may finally forge a new chapter in human existence and move closer to a truly free and open society. I want to say that personally I don't know any of youse but I have nothing but respect and support for your cause.

I appreciate your support.

I'll address one:

When Adria lodged her complaint via twitter she used #pycon. She did this because it is an event organized and attended by social media geeks and she knew, because it is her profession, that the organizers would be monitoring social media during the event. She made successive tweets over about 15 minutes utilizing the hashtag #pycon.

1) Alerting the organizers that inappropriate language was being used
2) Alerting the organizers to their location
3) Alerting the organizers to the protocols of their own mission statement (maintaining and enforcing a comfortable atmosphere sans bigoted content from both the presenters and attendees)

Because she used #pycon. The organizers became aware of the situation, responded within 20 minutes of her first tweet and took action and notified Adria via private message that they were on it. Subsequently, the @pycon twitter account, about an hour and a half later, publicly acknowledged on twitter that they had responded.

There were a lot of accusations that "she didn't go to management", blah blah blah.

Well, she actually did go to management in a way that makes sense for the venue she was in and the confines of her profession.

First they said she "got him fired" by complaining. Then they said she didn't go through appropriate channels but Tweeted instead of going to management. Basically they were pissed off a woman complained and some juvenile guy lost his job for saying stuff, I can only imagine by their reactions, that they do all the time. If whatever the guy said was no big deal, it shouldn't have mattered if she Tweeted it. There were two guys from the same company making jokes. Only one was fired. There must have been something in his history that made that action the final straw.

None of them care about the death and rape threats and kept insisting they weren't relevant. They couldn't be bothered to be outraged by death threats. They were too upset by what they considered the far more egregiousness action of exposing a man's behavior. It's pretty clearly to me that few men on this site value equality between men and women, in fact they actively work against it, and they find many women as allies. Between this incident and the rape threads, I've learned exactly what it is that exists all around us. The lesson isn't a pleasant one.

She contacted, via twitter, those who were managing the event and monitoring their hashtag and in doing so, she was able enjoy the presentation she was eager to see without having to leave it physically to track management down to lodge a face to face complaint.