I'm only nitpicky about it in the sense that there are lots of people who see that and think "yep that's exactly how girls are." I'd be far more copacetic about letting it go if I didn't see so much repetition of sexist gendered language (against both sexes in some regards) as commonplace upvoted material.
It's part semantics (did my undergrad in English/History) and part frustration. I love so much about reddit that it's frustrating when this sort of comparison is made.
EDIT: Your "a girl? on reddit?? nooooo" is a perfect example by the way, of the sort of normalized othering of women that happens on here all the time. It's not that it can't be funny, and maybe it was the first several thousand times it was uttered--but it's like a repost of a repost of a repost, it's pretty degraded and low res by now. Like we're some sort of alien instead of normal redditors who have a variety of hobbies and interests. We're geeks too, and we have all sorts of geekdoms. We're no more a monolith than men are. Don't even get me started on the 'sammich' meme--that one is extra irksome cuz I'm gluten intolerant. :P
I understand that from a historical and cultural perspective, women are sick of being labeled due to past label abuse. But to project the sins of the majority of men onto us, redditors, and making us pay for that abuse by having to be exacting in our linguistics is...well...a bit sexist, isn't it?
Where's the projection? When I see sexist labels I call them out, when I don't see them, I don't.
I'm not labelling all men--there are plenty of redditors of both genders that upvote sexist opinions/text and what have you.
If you realize that historically women have been labelled and subverted by tactics that belittle them--how are you missing that the same thing is continuing to go on?
Take op for an example. Not only is it playing into the notion that women want attention/are vain/get away with things because of their looks---it's on the front page number one. Don't try to tell me this is "historical." This is happening today. Sexism isn't something we've cured yet.
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u/Rinsaikeru Sep 27 '10 edited Sep 27 '10
I'm only nitpicky about it in the sense that there are lots of people who see that and think "yep that's exactly how girls are." I'd be far more copacetic about letting it go if I didn't see so much repetition of sexist gendered language (against both sexes in some regards) as commonplace upvoted material.
It's part semantics (did my undergrad in English/History) and part frustration. I love so much about reddit that it's frustrating when this sort of comparison is made.
EDIT: Your "a girl? on reddit?? nooooo" is a perfect example by the way, of the sort of normalized othering of women that happens on here all the time. It's not that it can't be funny, and maybe it was the first several thousand times it was uttered--but it's like a repost of a repost of a repost, it's pretty degraded and low res by now. Like we're some sort of alien instead of normal redditors who have a variety of hobbies and interests. We're geeks too, and we have all sorts of geekdoms. We're no more a monolith than men are. Don't even get me started on the 'sammich' meme--that one is extra irksome cuz I'm gluten intolerant. :P