I haven't read the responses to The Results are In. Because I'm scared to. I bet I offended a lot of people, and yeah I was being dramatic when I called the whole community sexist. I'm sorry for generalizing.
(Just in case that didn't get noticed right away...)
I'm sorry for generalizing.
I don't need to see anything that was written, scathing or otherwise, to chide myself for falling into the very mindset that I gripe at others for adhering to.
May I... tell you a little about my mindset? (If the answer is 'no,' then here's something for you instead! )
So, there's two stories that really shaped how I think about issues of equality. One has to do with women's suffrage. The other has to do with poop.
So, I don't know if this story was true or a thought experiment, but here's how it goes: Women back in the time were talking about how they should have the right to vote. Some women were saying, "Men have the right to vote, and women should have the same rights as men!"
Some other women responded to that with, "Well, women have a ton of rights that men don't have. Men give up their seats to women on the bus, men hold doors for women..." and so on.
But the first group of women answered with, "Those aren't rights. Those are courtesies."
Now I'm not sure if the whole toilet seat up or down argument was valid in 1848, but that's the bit about poop that brings me to my second thought:
A friend of mine was complaining to me about his brother's asshole girlfriend (seriously, even his grandma hated this chick). He was put off because she would come over to their house and use the restroom that he and his two brothers share and then bitch about the toilet seat being up. Her argument was that she shouldn't have to put the seat down, and she didn't want to touch an icky seat. (I'd like to take a moment to clarify, I have been to this friend's house and used the bathroom in question, and he and his brothers keep it very clean.) My friend's argument is that no one uses that bathroom regularly except three males. And (for the most part) they need it up. What's the big deal??
And you know what? He's right. He is 100% right! It's sexist that she thinks she's entitled to special treatment just because she's got different hardware. That's stupid.
I think together, those two stories actually sum up in the most simplest terms how to treat people. You give everyone the same rights (what up gay marriage!), and you don't treat people different or demand to be treated different because of shit like sex, race, orientation, age, social standing, ET CETERA.
Side note, my friend's brother dumped the bitch and is now dating a really nice girl whom my friend and his grandma approve of.
So yeah, if I kept your interest through all of that, here's your reward: I think it's friggin hilarious
As you've observed: saying than an entire community is prejudiced is prejudiced (e.g. "Redditors are sexist."). We all do better, as a species, when we focus on our own experiences. E.g. "When I went to Reddit, the comments by many of the people there made me feel that they were being sexist towards me." The latter (a) focuses on the individual, rather than sterotyping the group, which helps to defuse discrimination, rather than fuelling it, and (b) focuses on the experience, which is important in allowing others to empathise with us, which in turn is valuable in breaking down discrimination Even in the developed world, there still remains a great deal of legal and political sexism (the pay gap, career choices, maternity/paternity leave), as well as an even larger amount of social sexism (mens and womens roles, boys and girls toys, etc.). We've come a long way, but there's a long way still to go. Still: we're moving in the right direction, and it's okay to relax a little about it all. But when it comes down to toilet seats? Man, that's getting silly. You're going to wash your hands when you're done anyway, right? So touching a probably-pretty-clean-actually toilet seat for a few seconds isn't going to hurt you. You leave it whichever way you like; I'll leave it whichever way I like; and we'll both be nice to one another... it'll probably work out. tl;dr: Be nice to one another.
That's an interesting question. Can a community ever collectively hold an opinion? If I form a society which specifically states that its stance is that "blue-eyed people are superior to brown-eyed people", then that organisation could be meaningfully described as being prejudiced. If they act upon that, they could be described as discriminatory. But the community - that's the people in the society. There might (or might not) be some people in my society that don't share my opinion. Perhaps some misunderstood our motto, "blue good, brown bad". Perhaps some consider themselves to be infiltrators, trying to spy on us on behalf of the browns. Perhaps there are others who are in Blue Club because their parents, or their friends, or somebody they're attracted to is in it, and they don't actually agree with it. Perhaps some are members just because they like the people there, and not because they necessarily agree with the overarching politics. So I would say: Blue Club, the society - the one with the outwardly-stated opinion - is generalised. But the Blue Club members? Not so much. You might say, "our survey showed that all of the members of Blue Club, an organisation that claims that blue-eyed people are better, hold the opinion that blue eyed people are better than brown-eyed ones", because that explains the limitations of your measurement. But to say "all members of Blue Club are ocularist"; perhaps an overgeneralisation. And perhaps more-importantly: whether or not it's true that everybody in Blue Club agrees with me, it's still not-productive to attack them as individuals. Attack the policy, not the person. If we observe that Someplaceistan has laws that make it impossible for women to get jobs, or that make them "property" of men, then it's not fair to say that "all Someplaceistanis are sexist," or even "all Someplaceistani men are sexist". What we are disapproving of is the policies, not the people; and the sooner we can see the difference between the two, the sooner we can build bridges to understanding, rather than blowing them up.
Okay, I agree with that, particularly that we should attack policies, not people. I think there are cases where it is useful to generalize groups that don't have outwardly-stated ideologies (for example, when describing the political leanings of reporters for a given newspaper, or lobbyists' agendas) - with the critical distinction that these generalizations should not be done as a value judgments, but rather as observed trends of behavior for the purposes of rooting out possible effect of biases on information coming from those groups. In the case of reddit and sexism, therefore, I think it would be fair to say that language and behavior that objectifies women tends to be upvoted highly and given more weight by the community than criticism of such behavior, in at least the default subreddits.
Well-explained. It seems that you're saying that it's sometimes acceptable to infer policies and ideologies from the collective behaviour as a group. And on reflection, I agree. My real concern, I think, is that judgements like this, made from the outside, serve only to further polarise the behaviour. For example, describing Reddit as sexist, as an outsider, has the effect of removing Redditors who do not want to be considered sexist (probably because they're not), which in turn increases the net-sexism of the community. Labelling a community from the outside may help to shun them from wider society, but it doesn't help to fix them: that has to happen from within. (not that I know the best strategy to do that with Reddit and sexism, though, although I try to do my part to downvote/criticise/educate where appropriate)
Oh those points are not beyond me. When I suggested the community as a whole may be causing the rift, it was being dramatic. It obviously upset a large portion of people. Hence the apology. Though you do have to admit, it got people thinking. It got people wondering. And for all assertions that hubskiers are very nice, I can confirm that. When I came back, I had one PM saying "Hey, I want you to feel welcomed!" and one saying very politely that I wasn't much worth the time.