The Internet is Light Years Behind with Attitudes Towards Women

Social equality is something that the world has been striving towards for the last few hundred years. The definition of it has changed dramatically in that time but society has generally progressed and become more equal. During the enlightenment it was about giving power to the people (Upper-class white men) rather than the Monarchies and from then on giving rights to all people be it blacks, women, the poor etc. Today's society does have its flaws but you would definitely agree that the position of the previously disenfranchised parties has continually improved over time. For the purpose of this article I will focus on women.

For example it is no longer acceptable in any work place or social setting to harass someone based on their gender which is a marked improvement from how they were treated in the past. This is in no small part due to the work of feminist and women's rights groups throughout the 60's and onward and continues today. There are constantly issues being brought up in politics and business about equal pay and equal distribution of top ranking positions among both sexes. Its no secret that true parity has not been reached but we are still heading in the right direction.

However this brings me to the main point of my article. Why is the internet so far behind this social trend? You don't have to visit sites such as IGN or Gamespot (though this is the same on just about any website) for very long to notice the huge discrepancy in attitudes towards the male and female editors of the site. I am constantly shocked by some of things that are written in the comments that are leveled at great writers who are just doing their job. Admittedly a lot of hate gets thrown at the male editors but where it differs is that the comments are rarely sexual in nature. Whereas with the women I would say more than half of the comments, at least, relate to their gender or are outright sexual harassment. Only yesterday I was watching a daily fix that featured Alexis Cozombolidis and the first few comments went along the lines of "show us your chest area" or "I would do naughty things to your body" (serious paraphrasing). It is appalling for one that people find this type of comment acceptable to put online but also for the sheer amount of these comments that get written.

There have been countless examples of other editors being abused for bringing up gender issues in their articles. It was only a few weeks ago that Lucy O'Brien wrote an opinion piece about the crass nature of the sexual violence portrayed in Ground Zeroes. This was simply her exercising her right to an opinion and also to fulfill one of her job requirements which is to write about games! The level of hate and vitriol which proceeded towards her made me sick. I have no problem with her arguments being analysed but the commentors were so quick to fall back on the fact that she has lady parts and therefore use that as the excuse for why her argument was wrong. Take this against an article from one of the male editors, say Greg Miller. He is often criticised by a lot of the commentors for the points that he makes. However no-one ever says "show us your wang".

A reason that I give for this is because there is a major double standard in the gaming community towards each gender. It is a community that is undoubtedly male in its majority (although the gap is closing). There is therefore often a closed-minded attitude that games and games discussions are the domain of males. This is simply not the case in the real world anymore. I find it ironic that it is expected that all females on the internet need to identify as sexually desirable to the vocal male audience who sit back in their studies feeling better about themselves by leveling hatred towards people who simply love video games. These same guys probably aren't exactly knockouts themselves but they feel justified in their abuse because gaming is, for them, a male domain. On the other hand the looks of the male editors are never an issue.

The difference between the internet and the outside world is that people can comment anonymously and have no fear of the consequences. Imagine if one of these dickheads came up to a women and told them to make them a sandwich or to take their clothes off. They would (hopefully) get kicked in the nether regions or they can even be fined for saying such a thing. Obviously this is a lot harder to police on the internet but I would hope social decency and an awareness of how backwards these comments are will eventually weed the dickheads out of the social forums that ALL people like to take part in. But until then lets just be accepting of each other and use the comment section for constructive, non-detrimental discussion of the medium we all love.

There is a lot more that I would like to go into on this issues but this is enough for now. Hope you enjoyed reading it!

Cheers,

Lachie

Go make me a sandwich.

I am sure the successful women working in a vibrant exciting and probably rather well paid journalistic environment are more than capable of shaking off the criticism from armchair critics. I imagine the vast majority of these authors post their content and do not bother to grace the comments section. I learned very quickly there is scarcely anything worth reading in those comment sections. I agree its wrong, but I imagine they care far less...I mean who cares what some idiots on Gamespot think?

@always_explicit: I agree that they probably do not care that much about the general clientel or read the comment section very often but the fact that they would have to avoid it is wrong. This shouldn't be a place that any woman finds they need to be careful just because there are so many immature people spoiling the experience for them.

tl;dr

If that's actually the case, then it's because people can speak their true minds without running the risk of being socially alienated and marginalized or of having to deal with hostility and aggressiveness of the majority. Dissent on social issues seems to be risky these days, that's why some people may feel tempted to use other mediums to voice that dissent and express themselves.

In a nutshell, don't try to shove enlightenment down people's throats in real life and you may witness a sudden massive shrink in that gap. Admittedly, that said shrink will be in favor of what you might perceive as "negative attitude towards women"; meaning, it would pull the attitude towards women in real life to it rather than the other way around.

I agree they shouldnt have to avoid it...its a shame. But the blatant sexism only comes from their ability to post anonymously with minimal chance of negative consequence.

@always_explicit: If only they could be named and shamed and have their comments follow them around instead of fading into nothing

stoping sexist comments on the internet will be something hard to achieve considering the internet is full of 13 year old children, specially gaming sites, i deubt those comments come from adults. kids say stupid things, and the effect its just multiplied by the anonymity of the internet.

Of course, this all going off the assumption that "women on the internet" are in fact, actually women at all.

You never can be too sure...'To Catch a Predator' taught us all that. lol

Holy TLDR Batman!

I will just say that the internet is really good at bringing out the worst in people so I don't find anything surprising.

On top of that you do get genuine cases of female attention whoring/attention whoring guys claiming to be female which really does not help the situation at all...

absolutely true. when i was younger my friends and i would spend a lot of time in chatrooms just blatantly harassing people for our own amusement. why did we do this? because we were children and we were assholes.

It sure is a conundrum

You should stay away from the comment section on Yahoo articles, the comments and hatred there is almost unreal lol.

TLDR

join the illuminati

The Internet ?

Go to the office place, woman still get treated like they're less than a person. Don't even get me started on service women.

The internet is the least of women's problems.

why does this matter? not even a problem

Imo you can't really separate internet misogyny and bigotry from the real world. Even without the internet we'd have creepy douchebags mailing their fantasies to public female figures (after all, this happens to tonnes of actresses/models/,.etc) or equally creepy douchebags trying to justify certain kinds of rapes, like in that recent thread.

Of course the problem is that tonnes of people just don't care (look at all the people here who think that long-term large scale sexual harassment isn't "important", just because it's on the internet or because they've never experienced it), or try to deflect blame for misogynist behaviour away from the actual misogynists i.e. victim blaming.

Cliff notes version?

The Internet offers easy anonymity, so this is no surprise. I also wonder if females really make up a large portion of the gaming community as some statistics say. Playing Farmville and Angry Birds doesn't make you a gamer. Sorry, ladies.

The anonymity gives people license to be offensive. It isn't limited to sexism. Racism and homophobia are far more common.

Especially in the Land of YouTube Comments. It brings out many peoples' true colors.

I wouldn't even call it true colours. Lots of people who troll on the internet aren't that hateful in real life, even amongst their close friends or family. A lot of people just take extreme license with the anonymity and while some probably are that hateful, I doubt most are.

I suppose you're right. I'm sure a lot of people only do it for the shits and giggles.

Pretty much this. Internet commenters don't matter. Like, at all.

I'm sure that there is a fair share of little teenagers out there making these comments. But I'm also well aware that there is just as many 18-40 year olds trolling the internet trying to make themselves feel better by being pricks to others.

The Male is the superior human form and is a fact.

Its true people just do it because somehow it makes them feel better about themselves. I'm sure there are better ways to do this however other than making a public space uninhabitable for certain groups.

Maybe not intellectually in some cases...

Social equality in society is still far from perfect.

The fact that people still think it's wrong and despicable to hit a woman after she attacks you with no provocation says a lot about it.

Or kind of like when a woman shouts for gender equality, yet if you try to discuss something with her she'll pull the "How dare you argue with a woman? you freaking swine you have no respect for us!".

Really if you're going to ask for equality, that means renouncing to silly privileges like those.

Sure,but I doubt a female would even hit the top 20 of most ever.

Agreed. I hate that fucking double standard. If a woman starts attacking a man, I think he has a right to defend himself just as much as a woman has a right to defend herself from a male assailant. And I really hate the classic, "But women can't harm men as much; they're not as strong". What if this woman has a knife or some type of weapon capable of bludgeoning? And while it is true that women are not as physically strong as most men, they are still capable of inflicting bodily harm with their hands and feet. They want equality? They get equality, not stupid little shitty privileges.

Did this actually happen or is it a hypothetical? I couldn't imagine it happening in Australia, is it an American thing?

@killzowned24: Thank you for reinforcing my points made in the blog

Oh sure, they aren't obviously hateful, because they aren't anonymous and they know that their prejudices can potentially bite them in the ass. But that doesn't mean that they don't genuinely FEEL that way about the issue, and simply cover it up.

Now sure, there are some people who troll about anything and everything. Their goal is simply pissing people off, even if what they say completely goes contrary to their values. But that's arguably even worse. Ask yourself, what would it take for you to go against your values and destroy your credibility in the eyes of others? I suspect you'd do it (I know I would), but it would probably take some fairly extreme circumstances. You probably wouldn't sacrifice that part of yourself just for the end goal of making people mad or upset. That would indicate that you place "making people mad" at a higher priority than "getting people to take me seriously, and staying true to what I believe". At that point, you're destroying just for the sake of destroying, even if it personally hurts you. And that's arguably WORSE than someone who just genuinely believes in misogynistic ideas.

Anyway, for the most part, I don't see most people as being like that. That includes internet behavior, with anonymous profiles. In my experience, even "trolls" tend to have their limits. As in, a liberal commenter might "troll" conservatives, but he usually reserves that level of trolling for the conservatives. Sure, the anonymity allows him to be more of an ass to the people who he disagrees with, but the point still remains that he still (usually) overwhelmingly directs his attacks to the people who he DISAGREES with. The internet just allows him to be more vocal in expressing things that he already believes. Blaming it on internet anonymity and stating that it's not the person's true colors is to me sort of hogwash. It's the equivalent of someone who gets violent or racist after drinking too much, and then apologizes the next day saying, "it was just the booze talking." That's sort of bullshit. Things like "booze" and "internet anonymity" might lower inhibitions, but they don't suddenly completely change a person into someone else. If you aren't a racist, then getting shitfaced drunk isn't gonna make you say racist shit. If you end up getting drunk and saying racist shit, that's only because the booze lowered your inhibitions enough for you to say what you REALLY FEEL on some level. Similarly, there is nothing about internet anonymity that causes people to say misogynistic shit. A shitload of people use the internet, and internet anonymity doesnt turn them into misogynists because they weren't misogynists to begin with. I'm not saying that the misogynists on the internet ACT like that in real life. They probably don't. I'm just saying that if they didn't THINK like that on some level, then the internet anonymity wouldn't be enough to turn them into raging bigots the second that they get to be anonymous. Internet anonymity makes people bigger douchebags, but in my anecdotal evidence those people still tend to align with beliefs and values that they actually TRULY hold. Even most of the trolls I've met online still tend to make an effort to establish their personal values and then adhere to them.

No, the COMMENTS don't matter. The COMMENTERS absolutely matter. Internet anonymity does not have the power to cause mass delusions in people and make them have misogynistic thoughts during the time that they are on the internet. Anonymity lowers inhibitions, it doesn't make you completely change your beliefs.

Screw the internet comments. People can ignore that. What people fail to realize is that the people making these comments are REAL people, often people in positions of authority. The asshole you see making hateful comments about women or men or blacks or christians or atheists or homosexuals could be your own freaking boss. Hypothetical example: If you're a known atheist and you recently got passed over for promotion, and then you found out that YOUR BOSS had a habit of anonymously going to internet forums and trolling about how much he hates atheists, would you still be as quick to separate his internet personality from his "real" personality?

The hateful comments on the internet aren't the problem, they are just a SYMPTOM of the real problem. Misogynistic comments on the internet are not the real problem. They are just a symptom of the real problem: apparently a hell of a lot of people are still hateful towards women. And many of those people absolutely are in positions of authority, and have the very real power to **** others over in real life.

Its called trolling. Comments made with the sole intention of inciting ill feeling/arguments and offensive in nature. To make a racist comment on a forum doesnt necessarily = the poster is in fact racist. Nor does it mean he believes in the slightest what he has written. Sometimes its just to sit back and see the sparks fly. YOU IDIOT.

See....just did it. Called you an idiot. I dont believe it. However if I hadnt typed these additional sentences to confirm I wasnt serious I have no doubt some form of silly back and forth would have continued. All the while I would be here laughing at you for falling victim to bait posts. I really dont think the comments on gamespot regarding Carolyn or any other female reviewer are indicative of a large scale sexist society. I think its just the internets being the internets.

The commenter don't matter because the people they're directing their hate toward don't give a shit. In the situation we're talking about, that makes them irrelevant. The anonymity of the internet won't change people's beliefs, but it gives them freedom to express them with no consequence, and we have no way of knowing the motive behind these comments, or how much they've been exaggerated because the people posting them are making them behind a bright screen.

These people may matter in the real world -- and we have no idea if they display this kind of behavior in the real world -- but in this arena, they could not matter less.

You believe i'm an idiot to some extent. As in, even if you think I'm an intelligent person overall, yo think that my comment was stupid. You disagree with what I said, and your calling me an idiot is simply an exaggeration of what you were truly doing: disagreeing with something that you felt to be wrong. Whether or not you deliberately exagerrated for dramatic effect is beside the point. The point is that the overall sentiment is still spot on. You saw something that you disagreed with, and expressed that you disagreed with it. Again, like I said, people tend to MOSTLY only troll the people who they disagree with. Internet anonymity lowers inhibitions. The question is, WHY does it lower inhibnitions? Answer: because anonymity reduces the consequences of doing or saying what people want to say or do. The key word being WANT. There are places where I can anonymously give BJs through a glory hole, but I don't do that because I don't want to.The ability to do something anonymously is not sufficient to get people to do something that they don't on some level ALREADY WANT TO DO.

Your fundamental flaw is in believing that the internet is somehow independent of "the real world."

It's not.

I believe it was Edward Weston who stated that :"all photographs are self-portraits". I believe that comment, but he didn't go far enough. The sentiment here is that visual and literary art are communication. There is a speaker trying to express an idea, and he/she is trying to do that in such a way that an audience can understand what he's trying to say. That idea being expressed is ALWAYS going to contain nugget's of the communicator's values and beliefs.As in, he believes this thing to be wrong, he believes that thing to be ugly, he believes this thing to be dangerous or scary. And you can't avoid it, because the way you see and express is filtered through your own values and experiences.

And what the hell are internet comments if not an attempt for people to communicate who they are to the world? We're all publishing our personal diaries, crossing out the name doesn't somehow make the sentiment meaningless.

@MrGeezer: I think we have a difference of beliefs when it comes to the purpose for internet comments. I've always seen internet comments as something that's implemented to give readers a false sense of importance, and somehow their opinion actually impacts those outside their immediate circle.

Honestly, I think removing internet comments altogether would do everyone a world of good.

I lost interest in reading about halfway through. You started out like you actually had something to say, but then it just started turning into a rant and I lost interest.

@MrGeezer: Nice posts! I think that's a really interesting connection between peoples drunk mind and that of when they are using the internet. I think it definitely brings out the 'hidden' true character of people. I posted this somewhere else but i would also relate it to 'casual racism' where people might make a racist comment in jest but there is always some sort of hidden agenda to the comment and a percentage of the comment that is truly believed by them. People might think it is funny to make a sexist joke but it is actually detrimental to the women using the internet and very backwards in a society that no longer tolerates that behaviour. The internet is just a cover for certain people's bigotry!

@always_explicit: I think there is a point when you can't keep blaming the internet as just being the internet

" But until then lets just be accepting of each other and use the comment section for constructive, non-detrimental discussion of the medium we all love."

best of luck on your mission

10 years from now and you won't care the slightest btw

10 years? Give him 6 months on the internet.

lol too true

@MrGeezer: Nice food for thought posts there =)

these people have a backwards mentality, you can't blame them