What % of women landing & propositioning other women are actually SGTWOH?

And here I've always thought of you as male. "Ponsonby" sounds male to me, even if he also sounds a bit of a poofter. And you have no forum avatar pic, and I've never met you in world or pulled up your profile.

...What prejudices about women's writing?

How long did it take you to hatch that awful pun?

UGH!

About as long as it took you to come up with your crack, I suspect.

But I'm glad you joined in: I wouldn't want to be "shell"-fish about this . . .

/me flips you all The Bird

*catches and eats the bird . . . . what, I'm a cat*

No, I don't see myself as a "victim" Waterstar. I'm a big girl: I wouldn't be on this forum if I couldn't handle the fairly frequent spates of nastiness that erupt.

What I DO see is a recurring pattern of responding to discussions on this or other topics by turning to personal attacks that divert attention from the actual subject at hand, and make it suddenly about the credentials or "tactics" of the participants. It's not about bullying, or being nasty: it's about shifting the centre of the discourse from the tale to the teller. To be school-marmish for a second, from logos to ethos. And it's a pretty common rhetorical technique, the ad hominem attack. No wonder: it frequently works.

Well, it has succeeded here pretty well; you are to be congratulated. A thread that had evolved naturally (and I will remind you that it was not I who introduced the subject of VAW here, it was Clarissa: see post #58 and following) into a fairly lively and interesting discussion, sanctioned and contributed to by the OP herself, has now been pretty much extinguished through the redirection initiated by yourself and a handful of others.

So, remind me: who was doing the derailing here?

Incidentally, I search in vain through the post (#10 for examples of the "myriad small devices" I purportedly use to display my disrespect, and that triggered, apparently, your outburst against me and charges that I am a "crusader" not worth responding to. It was, I thought, a pretty respectful response to your points, most of which I thought were valid and worthwhile. But maybe you saw something I am missing?


Well, my last was about 2 weeks ago, Melodie, on the subject of "sex workers" in SL. I'm sure there will be another soon.

Chickens I know about . . .

Pep ( . . . but I'd prefer not to know about their organic distribution channels. )

PS I don't dislike women at all! On the contrary, some - not many - are absolutely wonderful. It's just that most seem to think they deserve my respect without earning it.

While the people behind the avies might turn out to be two sweaty guys, if what they see on their screen works for one night of pixel boinking then more power to them. I think the danger comes from the assumption that any woman who won't voice or give RL info must be a guy. It makes it too easy to manipulate someone into giving/doing such things.

I don't ask for RL info from people and I don't readily give it. If it is something which comes up in the course of conversation with someone who I am close to, that is one thing. Otherwise, I assume while in SL that they are whatever they present with their avie.



LL really does fail terribly at the first hour experience. I haven't seen anything improve as far as the company they brought in, or the Community Gateways that newbies can go through either.

Such tools as the Survival Kit described here would be an invaluable resource to newbies and the community as a whole. In a perfect world, it shouldn't be up to the person being bothered to TP away or log off. Being able to use the inworld tools like mute, ban, AR etc. are the closest we have to that.

While you can lead someone to water, you can't make them drink. The tools to know how to safely meet people and socialize in SL give them the choice to drink.

Yeah.

I used to make that assumption, but then I've encountered one too many 'over the tops' that voiced with a female voice, or who I would end up knowing in RL (back when I was trying MMOs).

Just try an MMO sometime - especially something like WoW, you will find a large number of women refuse to play anything -but- a 'blingy bikini clad' elf.
- But... likewise, a large number of men on female avatars choose the same thing.

(it can be funny at moments like Valentines when half a server is hunting for the sole female orc or minotaur that exists on the server, and she - one of them once having been me back when I was playing that, is hanging out in some hidden corner laughing like crazy at people's efforts...)


Now I just figure, some people want to be pretty, and some don't (then again, I thought the minotaur was very graceful, and that's why I had it - the elf looked like a boy).
- some feel it demeans their feminist ideals to desire or even to actually be pretty (this is my mother's generation of lesbian). Others feel they are owning their sexual nature by being in charge of their beauty.

Online -gamer- society makes a -LOT- of very negative genderized assumptions about people, and women in particular. Starting with a lot of biases than any sign of intelligence, sexuality, expertise or assertiveness is masculine... women in these assumptions are only sexual, in fact also only concerned about pretty or beauty, online if they are paid and porn...
- SL is not a game, but it inherits a lot of gamer assumptions at times.

Go romp through facebook for a few hours. Plenty of women there who you can see are women being over the top about beauty, bling, and sex without asking for your money or even giving a d*mm about you and what you think of them.

Again, contrary to the oft expressed belief of others, I don't eat babies.

Pep (I can't find a sauce that is right for them.)

Meh. For me, it's not about what you are wearing, but rather why you are wearing it. And as it can be pretty hard to ascertain why someone else has chosen to put on some astonishingly tacky and/or revealing piece of ick, I try not to assume that it's because they are a) on the make or, b) a guy. I simply work under the assumption that they have astonishingly tacky taste.


Certainly. But it also depends upon the social makeup of the places you hang out. SL is replete with morons, but I've found that not too many of them seem to want to pass their time in my bookstore ...

We may be able to remedy that. I was scoping out a lovely Vore cooking store the other day. The variety of available sauces was surprising ...

I did!

er, I mean...

That's right!

*raises hand*

And I came in here today to say just that. I read threads backwards, usually, though. At least, when they become pages of the same discussion, as this one has.

Scylla isn't the one who brought it up, nor the only one posting on the topic (don't both sides of a discussion count? or only the side that disagrees with the particular poster's opinion?) just the one whose posts consist more of fact than opinion.

Mine are based on my own observations and experiences and those of people I have personally known, in RL and in SL, but I know just how much those count in most discussions! (I've never understood why experience counts less but there you go.) She's been fair even when the discussions have taken another turn, and patient, and responds to each post, which is more than I can say for me.

SO here...let me be the scapegoat! I'd make a lovely stew.

LOL !!

Hee.

Looks as though I need to revive the "Same Old Putrid Tactics" thread.

The one being employed here, of course, being the "make some unsupportable claim, then when asked to support it, say 'I already did, can't you read?' Then when it's pointed out that the 'I already did' is quite false, post a few more insults. Rinse and repeat.

Silly Pep! We see what you're doing!

Sorry for posting so long a quote, but the post to which I'm replying (reproduced here) is a couple of pages back, which merits a full quote, I think.

Anyway: it really is amazing how differently people can interpret the same thing.

Some of the assumptions Nika makes here are unwarranted, chief among them the idea that This Thread Has Been Derailed. I, the thread's originator, do not consider it to be derailed. What gives Nika the right to make this determination?

Second, the interpretation that Nika places on Waterstar Eilde's post: namely, that it constitutes "announcing her intent to silence HERSELF". It was clear to me when I first read it that it was no simple statement of Waterstar's intentions, but rather an exercise in sarcasm. Really, Nika, you consider it to be a genuine, sincere and unironic "apology", as Waterstar claims? And not a snide means of labeling Scylla a 'crusader' [single quotes because the word Waterstar actually uses is "crusade", not 'crusader']?

Well, to each her own. Though I do wonder who is endowed with the right---and how they achieved that lofty status---of rendering judgment on WHEN the expression of opinion is "proselytizing" and when it is merely exercising one's right to express an opinion.

I don't get a scolding too? Oh come on....I feel left out.

Okay, you made me laugh out loud.








Oh, the not-uncommon sexual stereotyping that leads some to take writing purportedly by males more seriously than writing purportedly by females. Not everyone subscribes to such stereotyping, thankfully. But in my years on message boards I saw enough instances of patronizing responses to posters with clearly-female names, to want to avoid the issue by having a gender-neutral (if poofter-y) name. ^_^


EDIT: on second thoughts, I'm wondering about having used the 'poofter' terminology. I honestly don't know to what degree this term is considered offensive. A lot? A little? Not at all?

If it's 'a lot' or even 'a little,' then I'm willing to remove it. Maybe it's one of those words like 'the n word' that is used frequently (and usually ironically) by the people to whom it refers without causing offense, but IS offensive if used by a person of differing demographic characteristics.

How about it, gay men? What do you say?

Also, what odds that those whose metaphorical oxen are gored by any discussion involving gender, will attempt to make hay of it, with displays of Outraged Indignation and High Dudgeon and the like?

It does seem rather likely. I suppose I could delete the post now to head it off, but...I'm curious. Possibly I'm doing people a great disservice by imagining that they would attempt such a thing.

I will blushingly confess that the name had conjured up for me the image of a protagonist from a late Victorian novel ... I sort of imagined you taking tea in a sumptuously furnished parlor, looking very dashing in your Hussar's uniform ...

Well, a girl can dream, right?


It's odd, given that it's actually pretty hip to be a woman writer these days. An awful lot of the older established writers -- Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Doris Lessing to name a few -- are women, as are a large number of the up-and-coming young writers.

But then, I guess it's a given that most forum and message board posters are not reading Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Doris Lessing ...

I absolutely agree with this; it's an important point.

(Though perhaps newbie women are less susceptible to it than women who've been in SL for a while, as the newbies won't be aware that the assumption that those who won't voice are male is practically a meme in SL.)

Probably not. Though perhaps the forays of Ms. Atwood and Ms. Lessing into science fiction might have attracted the notice of a few SLers. (I'm thinking of "The Handmaid's Tale" and the Canopus in Argos books.)

(When I've noticed fiction being mentioned, at least in the Forums, it's virtually always science fiction.)

Yes, I've had the experience of forming a mental picture of someone encountered online, only to have that picture disrupted by the news of their actual demographic characteristics. It's an interesting facet of online anonymity (and disturbing in some ways that it means so much---so many of us adhere to a philosophy of 'it's character that matters, not demographic traits'....and yet we ARE affected by the demographic traits.)

True enough: assumptions can be dangerous.

Why do people always ignore Rebecca Ore when they talk about female SF writers?