A Horrible Suspicion Just Visited Me

~ Clarissa

Might some people consider Wikipedia too “male” because there is no pink on the website?

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Published by Clarissa

24 thoughts on “A Horrible Suspicion Just Visited Me”

    1. I don’t know, bright colors could hurt the tender female eyes. Bright sounds too aggressive. Oh no, my feelings are hurt, let me go cry over your nasty, aggressive comment. 🙂 🙂

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  2. It has to stay in default internet colors, black, white, that blue, and purple for visited links. With all those people editing on all those different machines, if it added colors things would be chaotic — it would get messed up, guaranteed.

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    1. Not only not pink enough, but there’s no direction. Sites that are very popular with most women tend to give a lot clues and direction on how to use them, possibly related to this or the idea that extremely interactive sites appeal to most womens’ social nature (whether this is genetic or acquired or some combination of both).

      I’m also reminded of this:

      The Need for Surveillance

      Wikipedia is much more a people-free zone where a single user can navigate around looking for stuff without updates and pokes and reminders and hints blah blah blah

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      1. Who are all these women with social natures and when will I finally start meeting them? 🙂

        It’s like people are speaking in code whenever this topic arises. I’m SO from a different culture.

        “Sites that are very popular with most women tend to give a lot clues and direction on how to use them”

        – This is a different language to me. Aren’t men the ones who – according to every traditional stereotype – need to have directions forced upon them?

        Nah, I’m hopeless. 🙂

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      2. “Sites that are very popular with most women tend to give a lot clues and direction on how to use them, ”

        It’s the difference between martial arts class that accommodate both men and women and those designed only for women. The women have to be told specifically what to do in order not to hurt themselves, and to lose weight, and to gain the advantage psychologically, and to remain poised and to retain the faith that the weight of ethical valuations have moved further to their side through their concerted effort toward self-improvement. If they don’t get all these additional instructions and reassurance, they may feel that something isn’t right.

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  3. “Who are all these women with social natures and when will I finally start meeting them?”

    Be careful what you wish for…. shakesville (par exemple) is that kind of social atmosphere. The (not very good) move Dr T and Women is largely set in a hyper-feminine environment that seems calculated to repell men (and probably you).

    “It’s like people are speaking in code whenever this topic arises. I’m SO from a different culture”

    I know the feeling. I recently saw a Russian murder mystert (tot kto gasit svet) and had the idea I was watching something from a different planet. There was hardly anything like a motive I could relate to throughout the whole thing (the murder mystery as such kind of made sense) but time and time and time again I couldn’t make sense of why people were acting like they were. I’m thinking the translation must have been off.

    “Aren’t men the ones who – according to every traditional stereotype – need to have directions forced upon them?”

    Orders. Men (white middle class US men) like clear, direct orders (from those whose authority they recognize) and not vague hints and reminders. Otherwise they prefer direct requests rather than hints and oblique reminders.

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  4. As far as I’m aware, the only problem Wikipedia has with women is that it remains, as it started, something of a ‘boys club’ behind the scenes. By boys club I mean that the same issues plague it as do many other publicly oriented and contributive sites – contributors with female sounding names get their postings edited more aggressively regardless of merit, (to the point of automatic deletion in some areas) if your usename is female sounding you are massively more likely to be harassed in chat and discussion forums and a number of long established ‘editors’ think women have little to offer intellectually and have been there long enough that in a dispute, have the backing to win.
    So, women tend to repond by withdrawing altogether, (what’s the point?) siloing off into areas where there are other female contributors for support, or changing the psedonym into a masculine sounding one and going under the radar. Some do stop and fight openly of course, but the pervasive attitude of ‘your cites must be shit because you’re female and thus can’t know anything’ rather undermines the site ethos of ‘citation needed’ in a depressing manner.

    In essence, it’s not the format, or the process, or the site that’s the problem, it’s the assholes infesting it.

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    1. It goes along with the general decline in educational standards across the board. Pack mentality is just not intellectual and never was. Time to recognise it for what it is and step aside from it.

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      2. No, there are many who are still in the kitchen. Some of them openly, while others change their names to something more like ‘cliff arroyo,’ sort of a baggy, shapeless apron that erases the outline of the female form.

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        1. So Cliff Arroyo is a woman? Interesting. . . 🙂

          Let’s now guess how old Cliff arroyo is because this has been something I’ve really been wondering about. (With no reference to this thread.)

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      3. Chimp chatter. “Stay out of the kitchen” and “boys will be boys”. If I really despise someone, I never see any harm in letting them do what they were going to do anyway. I let, for instance, boys be boys. Now, I happen to know certain things that would make their lives less squalid and more fulfilled, but they are intent on being “boys”. Meanwhile, I’ve actually stolen fire from the men. I really have. I’ve figured it all out — what they men were keeping from me. I understand, for instance, the secrets of war and of warfare. Consequently, there is nothing I need from the boys, and I can leave them to their homolies and platitudunizing. It must give them comfort to know there is something in which they automatically excel.

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  5. “No, they stay in the kitchen which is the only appropriate female space”

    I was wondering if you’d get the reference*, but the takeaway is the same: Men rock! They can get rid of meddlers so easily! Treat non-traditional newcomers like traditional newcomers and they run away looking for a higher authority figure to intervene on their behalf.

    *http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_you_can%27t_stand_the_heat,_get_out_of_the_kitchen

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    1. I know the expression, of course, and in this context it can be used in a variety of ways. I agree with you, the fear of being in a public space cpmes from within and that is where it should be combated.

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  6. “So Cliff Arroyo is a woman? Interesting. . .”

    That would be an interesting twist 🙂

    But I was thinking more of the female ‘cliff arroyos’ I’ve met in some gaming communities online, who just like to pop in and play now and then and relax without having to put up with the bullshit of playing-while-female (male players have also made experiments of changing to female names – and, in some communities, didn’t last for very long under their assumed names as they were horrified by the reactions they were getting from people who thought they were female.)

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    1. I’m a little slow on the uptake today. 🙂 I thought you were privy to some curious gossip. 🙂

      I haven’t been to any gaming communities, so I can’t imagine what can be so upsetting in an anonymous gaming space. Of course, if people say it’s stressful for them to be there, I don’t doubt that. I’m just saying that my imagination doesn’t go so far.

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      1. For instance, being repeatedly informed in graphic terms of the various ways that you as a woman can/should be raped, having ‘teammates’ deliberately sabotage you (even to their own detriment) to keep you from playing the game because they can’t stomach a woman on their team, and then having your gaming account hacked into so that they can flood your email inbox with large image files of penises and violent pornographic images (I’m glad I used a separate email account for gaming and that they weren’t able to retrieve other personal information from my account). Also, depending on the gaming community, anonymity isn’t always preserved, especially if you meet up with people in the community offline, so harassment/stalking is possible there (though this hasn’t happened to me).

        None of these things are earth-shattering calamities; for one thing, they have nothing to do with my job or the more important parts of my personal life. I don’t even do gaming on a regular basis. But it’s still mind-boggling that for something like gaming, which is just a form of recreation, there’s still so much vitriol. Depending on my mood, I sometimes get good stress-relief poking back at the trolls who infest these spaces (not just the trolls I may battle in a game itself), but other times when I want to relax, I switch to a game that has a better community or I switch to a gender-neutral name, which deflects most trolls.

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  7. “Let’s now guess how old Cliff arroyo is”

    Older than you can imagi…. Hey you rotten kids! Get off my lawn! I swear, back in my day (incomprehensible muttering as I shuffle back inside to watch my programs).

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