From a previous post on this site called It Seems My Silence Was Heard:
They had that rule because of previous ugly incidents, such as someone on one of their lists trying to get support for fighting with the school about their child only to find that someone who worked at the school was also subscribed and was printing off ALL their hate-filled, angry screeds about the IDIOTS working for the school and adding them to the child's FILE at school.
It's perhaps less bad these days than it was back then, but to this day people tend to act somewhat like "This public discussion on the internet is between YOU AND ME." They often act like they are talking to a long-time friend at a bar, so slightly tipsy, and on a slow night with no one else in earshot.
Actual reality: They are probably talking to some random internet stranger they don't REALLY know well, even if they have hung out on the same forum for years, and doing so in writing where potentially any and all of 8 billion people on the planet might read it.
The reality is that conversations with ANYONE on the internet are NEVER "just between you and me," NOT EVEN "private" ones where, say, you emailed ONE person in specific instead of an email list. If it is in writing, someone can forward it, even if they have to screenshot it to do so.
Talking to people like "It's just YOU and ME" when on the internet routinely causes problems. Adapting to the internet and acting like everything you say is being said on stage into a microphone to an audience and doesn't involve ANY one-on-one interaction also causes problems, just DIFFERENT ones.
This piece is being put on THIS blog because it fits with my theme of sorting "public" versus "private" relationships and behaviors. This issue on the internet is not remotely peculiar to women. An awful LOT of people seem to feel like "This is a PERSONAL and PRIVATE conversation, just YOU and ME." and, worse, that often fosters a "We are FWENDS!" mentality, often flying directly in the face of actual reality.
The above quoted blog post is about my personal policy for interacting with an overwhelmingly male forum, Hacker News. On that forum, I seem to be the highest-ranked openly-female member.
And other women are often a bigger headache than THE MEN.
Unlike my carefully thought-out policy of keeping in mind that this is a public space and anything I say here has MANY witnesses and so people I am speaking with will feel embarrassed and get MAD if I do not keep that in mind and choose my words carefully (and it will come back to bite me), WOMEN have a history of behaving like "This is just between YOU AND ME." and, WORSE, like we are FWENDS because we are both girls and most of the other people here are not.
Most women seem to default to this "Everything is a PERSONAL and PRIVATE relationship" mental model and they habitually go to public spaces, which are FREQUENTLY male dominated, and they want to impose on people PERSONALLY and insist that if you have ANY ethics at all, you should champion their cause of looking out for women in this cold, cruel man's world that has no place for them and won't RESPECT them and will not kiss their personal boo boos on demand and make everything all better, boo hoo.
I NEVER expected that on Hacker News even at my most deranged and I was pretty deranged for some time while very sick and homeless and ETC.
I AlWAYS felt I had an obligation to be diplomatic.
Why? I don't know. I have long chalked that up to "my mother's mother came from a low level noble family and my mother was one of twelve kids." But, honestly, I don't know how I got schooled with that and why that is something that makes sense to ME and which is deeply embedded in my psyche in some sense.
It has a long history of creating trouble for me because in other ways I didn't know how to do this PUBLIC behavior thing and most people who have jobs and yadda apparently are desperate for more "personal" stuff, so me being what I think of as DIPLOMATIC in a public space other people are often happy to intentionally misinterpret as me "throwing myself" at them and we are now best friends for life having met only 30 seconds ago OR I am their new ONE TRUE LOVE and they will stalk me and harass me until I agree with that nutcase conclusion.
And when they decide I am their new best friend for life or one true love, it is inevitably a one-way street. They EXPECT me to ALWAYS perform at this "international diplomat brokering peace to save the universe" level of kindness and respect for them as an INDIVIDUAL while they randomly piss all over me to their heart's content.
And it took me a long time to realize most people simply CANNOT give back what I do for them and do NOT at all deserve that level of service from me while being openly assholes to me every step of the way.
I have gotten better at NOT being so personable and not giving as many openings for people to USE as fodder for their brand of crazy, which has substantially reduced the amount of crazy I have to put up with but WOMEN still seem to think I somehow PERSONALLY OWE THEM something because we are both gals AND on the same forum AND I am the highest-ranked woman there.
Bite me, bitch. Do NOT use my fucking comments to further YOUR openly hostile man-hating agenda and thereby sling mud all over me in your efforts to announce to the world that your problem is not YOUR deficiencies but how MEN are ALL sexist pigs who refuse to give you the respect you DESERVE.
No, you dumb twit, FEMALE culture STARTS with giving everyone "respect" and then TEARS YOU DOWN and sees what is left standing when they are finished with their Mean Girls routine. MALE culture starts with you are a total fucking loser with zero goddamned points and you will EARN RESPECT here.
If the guys have ANY respect for me, I EARNED IT. And you are NOT somehow OWED a piece of MY reputation because we both have girl bits between our legs instead of boy bits. You have done nothing FOR me and probably have NOTHING to OFFER ME.
Other groups do this too. This dynamic is part of what goes so badly sideways with trans individuals wanting the whole world to bend to their Pronoun Problem and trying to insist YOU help them out with their big PERSONAL issue and slandering you if you don't.
You can bet money they won't play hero for YOUR sorry ass if you need some random stranger to fall on their sword for you, poor baby. They have problems of their own, how dare you ask!
I get it: It's aggravating as all hell to be the ONLY one in the room and having to figure out how to navigate the social dynamics with a zillion other people and no one cares, not their problem.
But I always felt it was LARGELY on me to do that if I wanted to participate on Hacker News, not the job of the rest of everyone there to personally take on my personal issue because I'm a big fat baby.
If you are JUST MEETING SOMEONE and interacting with them FOR THE FIRST TIME, I don't care how famous they are. You FEELING like YOU "know" them because you watched their movies or read their comments on this forum for years or whatever does NOT give you a close, intimate, personal relationship akin to their SISTER or MOTHER or FAVORITE aunt where you can piss all over them and embarrass them and etc and expect them to IN RETURN treat you WONDERFULLY, like FAMILY they LOVE.
Us being BOTH the same gender does NOT make you MY "family" and you embarrassing me and slinging mud at me and implying to the zillion and one MEN listening to this NOT PRIVATE conversation with some selfish bitch I have NEVER SPOKEN WITH BEFORE that I must be on your man-hating, resentful, narcisstic side because we both got GIRL BITS is you being deeply, deeply offensive and harming my hard-won public reputation, so up yours and don't ever speak to me again, please and thank you psychobitch.
People do this all the time where they think "This person was NICE to me, so they are my FRIEND" and PROMPTLY act like buttholes and PUBLICLY ask them to be "allies" in a hostile situation where publicly agreeing to help amounts to cutting your own throat AND you can BET MONEY this generosity has NO HOPE of coming back to you if you stupidly fall for this shit.
And THIS garbage is probably part of what contributes to some women saying things like "Women eat their own."
If you need ALLIES, try THIS instead: When someone is kind and respectul to YOU in a public setting where you feel very alone and like an outsider, be kind and respectful BACK.
Don't promptly start crying on their shoulder like you are a brain-damaged five year old in need of an emotional ambulance. It WILL NOT MAKE YOU FRIENDS.
Plus, if they are saying thank you and my only response to that is "You misgendered me," that's going to feel pretty negative to them. They will feel publicly embarrassed and picked on as their "reward" for kindly thanking me, something they did not have to do.When I joined an email list for homeschooling gifted kids, they advised people to not say it on list "if you wouldn't be comfortable seeing it on the front page of your local newspaper."
And they aren't the only one who will get the ugly message. It will also tell other members "God, don't talk to this bitch. She has no manners and will publicly embarrass you over minor details no matter how nice you are being to her. Who the hell needs this drama?! Yeesh!"
Such behavior puts a chill in the air and makes men afraid to talk to me lest I bite their head off for no real reason. It causes people to walk on eggshells, which de facto helps to Other me.
There are better ways for people to learn that I'm a woman than nitpicking nice comments whose only flaw is they assumed I was one of the guys on an overwhelmingly male forum because I fit in so well. That's about the worst possible way to educate people about that detail.
They had that rule because of previous ugly incidents, such as someone on one of their lists trying to get support for fighting with the school about their child only to find that someone who worked at the school was also subscribed and was printing off ALL their hate-filled, angry screeds about the IDIOTS working for the school and adding them to the child's FILE at school.
It's perhaps less bad these days than it was back then, but to this day people tend to act somewhat like "This public discussion on the internet is between YOU AND ME." They often act like they are talking to a long-time friend at a bar, so slightly tipsy, and on a slow night with no one else in earshot.
Actual reality: They are probably talking to some random internet stranger they don't REALLY know well, even if they have hung out on the same forum for years, and doing so in writing where potentially any and all of 8 billion people on the planet might read it.
The reality is that conversations with ANYONE on the internet are NEVER "just between you and me," NOT EVEN "private" ones where, say, you emailed ONE person in specific instead of an email list. If it is in writing, someone can forward it, even if they have to screenshot it to do so.
Talking to people like "It's just YOU and ME" when on the internet routinely causes problems. Adapting to the internet and acting like everything you say is being said on stage into a microphone to an audience and doesn't involve ANY one-on-one interaction also causes problems, just DIFFERENT ones.
This piece is being put on THIS blog because it fits with my theme of sorting "public" versus "private" relationships and behaviors. This issue on the internet is not remotely peculiar to women. An awful LOT of people seem to feel like "This is a PERSONAL and PRIVATE conversation, just YOU and ME." and, worse, that often fosters a "We are FWENDS!" mentality, often flying directly in the face of actual reality.
The above quoted blog post is about my personal policy for interacting with an overwhelmingly male forum, Hacker News. On that forum, I seem to be the highest-ranked openly-female member.
And other women are often a bigger headache than THE MEN.
Unlike my carefully thought-out policy of keeping in mind that this is a public space and anything I say here has MANY witnesses and so people I am speaking with will feel embarrassed and get MAD if I do not keep that in mind and choose my words carefully (and it will come back to bite me), WOMEN have a history of behaving like "This is just between YOU AND ME." and, WORSE, like we are FWENDS because we are both girls and most of the other people here are not.
Most women seem to default to this "Everything is a PERSONAL and PRIVATE relationship" mental model and they habitually go to public spaces, which are FREQUENTLY male dominated, and they want to impose on people PERSONALLY and insist that if you have ANY ethics at all, you should champion their cause of looking out for women in this cold, cruel man's world that has no place for them and won't RESPECT them and will not kiss their personal boo boos on demand and make everything all better, boo hoo.
I NEVER expected that on Hacker News even at my most deranged and I was pretty deranged for some time while very sick and homeless and ETC.
I AlWAYS felt I had an obligation to be diplomatic.
Why? I don't know. I have long chalked that up to "my mother's mother came from a low level noble family and my mother was one of twelve kids." But, honestly, I don't know how I got schooled with that and why that is something that makes sense to ME and which is deeply embedded in my psyche in some sense.
It has a long history of creating trouble for me because in other ways I didn't know how to do this PUBLIC behavior thing and most people who have jobs and yadda apparently are desperate for more "personal" stuff, so me being what I think of as DIPLOMATIC in a public space other people are often happy to intentionally misinterpret as me "throwing myself" at them and we are now best friends for life having met only 30 seconds ago OR I am their new ONE TRUE LOVE and they will stalk me and harass me until I agree with that nutcase conclusion.
And when they decide I am their new best friend for life or one true love, it is inevitably a one-way street. They EXPECT me to ALWAYS perform at this "international diplomat brokering peace to save the universe" level of kindness and respect for them as an INDIVIDUAL while they randomly piss all over me to their heart's content.
And it took me a long time to realize most people simply CANNOT give back what I do for them and do NOT at all deserve that level of service from me while being openly assholes to me every step of the way.
I have gotten better at NOT being so personable and not giving as many openings for people to USE as fodder for their brand of crazy, which has substantially reduced the amount of crazy I have to put up with but WOMEN still seem to think I somehow PERSONALLY OWE THEM something because we are both gals AND on the same forum AND I am the highest-ranked woman there.
Bite me, bitch. Do NOT use my fucking comments to further YOUR openly hostile man-hating agenda and thereby sling mud all over me in your efforts to announce to the world that your problem is not YOUR deficiencies but how MEN are ALL sexist pigs who refuse to give you the respect you DESERVE.
No, you dumb twit, FEMALE culture STARTS with giving everyone "respect" and then TEARS YOU DOWN and sees what is left standing when they are finished with their Mean Girls routine. MALE culture starts with you are a total fucking loser with zero goddamned points and you will EARN RESPECT here.
If the guys have ANY respect for me, I EARNED IT. And you are NOT somehow OWED a piece of MY reputation because we both have girl bits between our legs instead of boy bits. You have done nothing FOR me and probably have NOTHING to OFFER ME.
Other groups do this too. This dynamic is part of what goes so badly sideways with trans individuals wanting the whole world to bend to their Pronoun Problem and trying to insist YOU help them out with their big PERSONAL issue and slandering you if you don't.
You can bet money they won't play hero for YOUR sorry ass if you need some random stranger to fall on their sword for you, poor baby. They have problems of their own, how dare you ask!
I get it: It's aggravating as all hell to be the ONLY one in the room and having to figure out how to navigate the social dynamics with a zillion other people and no one cares, not their problem.
But I always felt it was LARGELY on me to do that if I wanted to participate on Hacker News, not the job of the rest of everyone there to personally take on my personal issue because I'm a big fat baby.
If you are JUST MEETING SOMEONE and interacting with them FOR THE FIRST TIME, I don't care how famous they are. You FEELING like YOU "know" them because you watched their movies or read their comments on this forum for years or whatever does NOT give you a close, intimate, personal relationship akin to their SISTER or MOTHER or FAVORITE aunt where you can piss all over them and embarrass them and etc and expect them to IN RETURN treat you WONDERFULLY, like FAMILY they LOVE.
Us being BOTH the same gender does NOT make you MY "family" and you embarrassing me and slinging mud at me and implying to the zillion and one MEN listening to this NOT PRIVATE conversation with some selfish bitch I have NEVER SPOKEN WITH BEFORE that I must be on your man-hating, resentful, narcisstic side because we both got GIRL BITS is you being deeply, deeply offensive and harming my hard-won public reputation, so up yours and don't ever speak to me again, please and thank you psychobitch.
People do this all the time where they think "This person was NICE to me, so they are my FRIEND" and PROMPTLY act like buttholes and PUBLICLY ask them to be "allies" in a hostile situation where publicly agreeing to help amounts to cutting your own throat AND you can BET MONEY this generosity has NO HOPE of coming back to you if you stupidly fall for this shit.
And THIS garbage is probably part of what contributes to some women saying things like "Women eat their own."
If you need ALLIES, try THIS instead: When someone is kind and respectul to YOU in a public setting where you feel very alone and like an outsider, be kind and respectful BACK.
Don't promptly start crying on their shoulder like you are a brain-damaged five year old in need of an emotional ambulance. It WILL NOT MAKE YOU FRIENDS.